How odd.
There are billions of people on this planet…how many do you know?
You probably become acquaintances with a couple of thousand during your life.
You probably know a couple of hundred by name.
You probably have about ten or twenty that you can call friends.
Here’s the interesting thing, through the martial arts I have far more than ten or twenty that I can call friends. There are people that I studied with, and we’re talking back over fortry years, that, met again, the friendship is as solid as ever.
There is just something about sharing combat with a fellow that bonds you closer than ever.
The good news is that this is the type of combat where you don’t kill people, you just fatasize and plan and strategize until you have no desire to kill, and all you are left with is friends.
How odd.
Check out Learn Karate Online. It’s a good site with lots of tips and things. Make sure you get the free ebook on the home page.
For the last half dozen years the legend of just how tough Chuck Norris really is has been growing. Hundreds of ‘factoids’ had Chuck doing everything from conquering the martians to ending the war, uh, all wars, and all with a grunt and spinning side kick.
So how tough was he?
He learned Korean Karate (Tang Soo Do) in Korea. An assignment in that country would make anybody tough. The winters are long and hard, the summers are boilers. In addition he is supposed to have earned his black belt in just over a year.
He taught martial arts, and eventually made his way into the movies. Movies don’t make a person tough, on the contrary, they usually soften a person up, compromise his morals.
Chuck did have his troubles, an out of wedlock child, but any compromising he did seems to have faded, he must have learned his lessons, and in finding a more moral (Christian) base for life he seems to have found his true toughness.
He has promoted drug awareness through his programs, and fought the spread of AIDS.
In addition, the martial arts programs he started are in full swing. His Chun Kuk Do martial art has thousands of followers world wide.
So how tough was Chuck Norris? Well, he beat Hollywood, and he helps the downtrodden. All those other factoids, like Chuck scaring the devil into closing down hell, or convincing Obama not to run again, they are just icing on the cake. If you want real tough martial arts, the best martial arts on the planet, drop by Learn Karate Online. Pick up a free martial arts book on the upper right home page of Learn Karate Online.
Good Karate Training will Give You the Most Powerful Punch!
I always liked the karate training methods for making the most powerful punch. Some of them worked…and some of them resulted in injury to the student. Here’s a quick rundown on them.
Bashing the fist against a tree. Damages the fist, sometimes badly, requiring even years to heal.
Punching a Makiwara. Okay, long as you don’t over do it. Fifty punches per hand is recommended by some.
Thrusting fingers into cauldrons of heated iron pellets. Right out of the kung fu movies. The real sequence is to thrust spear hands into sand, build up to pellets (over months and even years), and finally thrust them into iron pellets.
We used to spear hand the sand, and it worked, but it took time. I haven’t met anybody who has reached the iron pellet stage of training, but hey, go for it! Just make sure you use plenty of dit da jow hand curing herbal solutions.
Push ups on palms, then fists, then half fists, then outstretched fingers, then thumbs, then two fingers, then one finger. Fantstic training method. Works lke a charm. Takes the brute out of force and teaches that the secret of true muscularity is in balance.
And, there are others, but this should hold you for now. Gonna take a while to get on top of that single finger, right? Happy work outs to you, but this karate training method is guaranteed to give you the most powerful punch. BTW, pick up a free book while you’re on my site.
Tekki Kata, also known as Haihanchi, is one of the best forms in all the martial arts. Many people refer to it as The Iron Horse. As this name indicates, it is a horse stance form, and the karateka moves from side to side while performing it.
The power generated by this Okinawan Karate form is absolutely awesome. The deep stance works the legs, and the tan tien starts to pump up, and one feels the chi power course through the frame almost from the get go. It is usually taught around black belt level in systems such as Kyokushinkai.
When I first learned Naihanchi I would practice while facing a partner and having ‘kata races.’ We would mirror each other, and go back and forth, building our speed and perfecting our moves. Eventually, we would find a harmony of motion that one will not see in many martial art patterns.
When I asked my instructor about it, he said it was designed for fighting in rice paddies. The footwork enabled one to grip the ground no matter how muddy. The sideways motion paralleled the earthwork in the rice paddies, where other foot patterns would result in loss of footing.
As my studies continued I came across the concept that the form was designed for riding a horse. Even if a warrior lost his weapons while riding a horse, he could keep fighting while gripping the horse with the leg strength built up by the form. I found this a fascinating notion, but it didn’t ring quite true.
In time, I happened across the book ‘Shotokan’s Secrets,’ written by Dr. Bruce Clayton. The good doctor claimed that the kata were actually designed for actual fighting in the Imperial throne room of old Okinawa. This theory at first seemed odd, but the more I thought about it the more sense it made.
Imagine the scene: invading troops attempt to capture the king of Okinawa, and the front row troops use the movements from the Pinan forms (Heian katas) to create confusion. Meanwhile, the advanced bodyguards move sideways across the back of the room while the king is hustled through a rear door and to safety. This theory not only made sense when analyzing the specific movements, but in the historical and psychological sense, too.
What the truth is will be debated as long as Karate is taught. Of course, it doesn’t matter as long as that fabulous form generates good, old fashioned ‘chi power’ by the bushel. Call it Naihanchi, Tekki, or just the Iron Horse, this is one Karate Kata that is good for the ages.
On of my favorite kata was Kima Chodan. It has several other names, Tekki, the Iron Horse, and so on. It was also the favorite of Giochin Funakoshi, he spent ten years playing with it.
The reason it is so great is that it is a power form. Getting low in the horse, stepping back and forth, just powers up the tan tien like nobody’s business.
One of my favorite things was to face a partner and mirror the form. We would race, find harmony, critique each other endlessly. A mirror that actually talked…how cool was that, eh?
For those who would like to go extreme, it’s fun to put a heavy weight vest and go crazy, or to hold dumbells and go crazy.
After a while the power jacks up, you start feeling like nobody in the world could stop you, and man, ain’t life a hoot!
Anyway, here’s my version of it. I learned it forty years ago, and I haven’t tweaked it much, so it’s a pretty pure version. Comes not through the Japanese lineage, but direct to the Okinawa Masters who taught Gichin Funakoshi. If you want to learn more about the old Karate forms surrounding Kima Chodan, or Tekki or the Iron Horse or whatever you call it, check out Temple Karate at Monster Martial Arts.
Been working hard on this Free Karate Lesson Online. Check out the video, it’s a good example of how I take things apart so you really can understand them, and then I’ll tell you about the free Karate…
I wanted to cover stances, blocks, footwork, and get the student to actually do a small form. The trick is to keep it simple, and make sure the steps are quick and easy.
After all, people want to do the bam and slam of UFC type sports, and I want to convince them that Karate, as an art, has more to offer.
You don’t want to wrestle on the street.
You want to maximize your blocks and strikes.
You want to build some of that famous knock out power that Karate power is famous for.
On this last, you can’t develop this while wearing gloves. Gloves stop the transmittal of energy, and thereby the hands are demoted to mere bludgeons.
Anyay, check out the free lesson at my site, Learn Karate Online. And it really is free. I don’t even ask for your address. I’m figuring that the benefits of the lesson will be so obvious that people will want to sign up for the newsletter, or just order right on the spot. That’s Learn Karate Online.
I just wrote a post for one of my other blogs about energy. The post is at…
http://alcase.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/the-different-chi-power-manifestations-of-the-martial-arts/
I was sort of loose in that post, so let me nail it down for your progress.
Oh, check out the video first, then I’ll tell you.
Karate is one of the best places to start energy manifestation (chi power and all that), because it starts with a simple explosion. Once you can explode, however, you need to figure out what to do with the energy that you have exploded.
Shaolin might turn and roll it, Pa Kua might spiral it, Tai Chi will suspend it, and so on. Every system has specific things they do with energy. Even the same systems will emphasize different progressions of this thing called Chi power.
That said, it can take too long to develop chi without Karate. And it can take too long to develop chi power even in Karate unless you have proper matrixing. Matrixing is logical and will enhance all progress and speed of progress.
The most important thing,however, is to change courses when you learn how to explode. You must ‘go backwards,’ learn how to empty yourself, and try different manipulations of the body if you want to find different manifestations of energy.
A Karate student who just keeps doing the same old same old will tend to stagnate. You know a lot of people drop out of Karate after getting their black belt in that hard art? They know, intuitively, that karate, once so wild and wooley and invigorating, has become a stop point. They know that they must seek elsewhere to continue their upward progress.
Anyway, that all said, stop by LearnKarateOnline (dot)net if you want to start your journey in that basic and yet most advanced art, or if you want to revitalize the things that you learned long ago, but which you need to pick up again in order to progress onward.
What does a Karate Kata mean? It’s a dance, it’s a book of techniques, it’s a method for controlling and teaching large numbers of people without the need for data. It’s zen, it’s one thing at a time, it’s a belt arrangement system.
It’s a recent invention that dates back two thousand years…and it shows you exactly and precisely and where to place them clodhoppers you call feets. It’s data arranged out of order in a set sequence. Whatever they are, do them long enough and you will know Karate.
Well, maybe. Maybe not. After all if Gichin Funakoshi is to be believed, Karate is changing and changing…here is his direct quote.
“Hoping to see Karate included in the universal physical education taught in our public schools, I set about revising the kata so as to make them as simple as possible. Times change, the world changes, and obviously the martial arts must change too. The Karate that high school students practice today is not the same Karate that was practiced even as recently as ten years ago [this book was written in 1956], and it is a long way indeed from the Karate I learned when I was a child in Okinawa.”
The classical Kata attributed to Gichin Funakoshi are called Heian. This writer learned, from a lineage other than the Japanese, Karate forms called Pinan. And there were distinct and stark differences between the two.
The Heian are violent, forward stancing, explosive, in your face, one punch one kill. The Pinan have focus in the fist, work out of the more defensive back stance, modify the explosion exactly to the work being performed, are subtle and polite, and believe in getting along with your fellow man.
Of course, my bias holds, the Pinans are better. They were created before the young turks of the Japanese college system altered them for tournaments and power and fighting and power and glory and power and…well, power. The Pinans were created before lust was in vogue.
Of course, that said, this writer’s bias taken into account, one can modify the forms back to the way they were. All one has to do is adjust the angles and modify the mind. Ahh, modify the mind…perhaps it is not possible…but one can hope.
If you would like to view the original Pinans, maybe even take a free Karate lesson, try Learn Karate Online.
You do those forms and you feel the power start to take hold, you feel your body energize and get stronger and stronger. Finally, you have the power! You can explode with instant energy that is unstoppable. What now?
Well, what now is that you need to take a second step. The second step is not more power.
What? You don’t like that answer? But you’ve already got enough power…what do you need more for?
Let me ask you a question, if you had to fight ten guys, would you fight ten times as hard?
Nope.
You’d fight one tenth as hard for each guy.
So you don’t get more energy and violence and move faster and faster…that just wastes you. What you do do is learn to be efficient, to create the effct of more energy with less effort and less motion.
So when you get your black belt, start to look around. See if other arts will compliment this concept. Look at yourself, see if you can hit softer…and yet create greater effect. There are methods, you know. It is possible…you just have to break out of the method you’ve been trained in and…reverse your path.
Yeah,
you read that right.
Once you hit black belt…you have to train in the opposite direction, get softer and softer, until people can hardly even see you.
I used to train with some of the toughest guys in the world, outlaw bikers. But they all bowed quickly and stood silent in the presence of the most polite man in the world. What he knew in gentleness was far greater than all their massive muscle.
Well, think about it, and while you’re thinking about Karate power, head over to Learn Karate Online. If you have always wanted karate but never went for it, this is your chance. If you started, and, for whatever reason, dropped out, this is your chance.
Back in 1967, when I was studying Kenpo Karate, I used to drive my instructors crazy. I kept coming in with books and doing forms out of them. Specifically, from the Best Karate Series by Nakayma, I found first Heian Two Karate Kata, then Heian Five, and I was in heaven.
I loved the power of those stances, I loved the feeling in the air when I did those whole body movements.
And, of particular interest to me was the art of the jump. I figured out how to swing the leg and rock the body into a launch. I figured out how to pull those legs high up under me, and then land low. The idea was to jump over a low sword swing, and then land under a high sword swing.
These are things that you don’t learn in MMA. I have nothing against MMA, I just don’t study it because it is sport instead of art.
The intent of sport is to beat another person, the intent of art is refine the self (achieve perfection).
I don’t mean to speak ill of other physical disciplines, because there is something to be learned from all, and darn, there is a part of me that just loves a good competition. But when it comes to my personal evolution, I prefer the art, and to this day, near forty-five years later, I still practice the Karate Kata known as Heian Five, or as it was called in the traditional martial arts school I later went to…Pinan Two. Check out my site for Evolution of an Art, it has three complete classical martial arts, dozens of forms, hundreds of techniques, and all sorts of things that will aid you evolution as a martial artist.
