Tag Archives: karate training

Speed Drilling in Karate

Newsletter 703
The Secret of Speed in the Martial Arts

Let’s talk about speed in the martial arts.

We used to have this exercise
back at the Kang Duk Won
it was called ‘Speed of speed.’
And,
it was brutal.
You faced your partner,
and there was only one attack:
a chop to the neck,
you turn the hand
so the flat of the hand strikes the shoulder.
What made it brutal was the times
when you collided with your partner.
Neither of you was faster,
and you both ended up hurting.

making faster karate techniques

speed kick in karate


 
Believe me,
as stupid as it sounds,
you won’t see this exercise
anywhere in the martial arts.
It just hurts too much.

Yet,
here’s the thing,
after a few months of doing this,
of suffering bone bruises to the forearms
you found that you were faster.
Some lower belt would come in
and he’d just start to twitch
and…WHAM!
you were hitting his shoulder so hard
his head near fell off!

Now,
I tried teaching that,
and people didn’t want to learn it.
Man,the groans and moans.
So I persisted,
and had small classes
of REALLY tough martial artists,
but I kept thinking about speed.

I thought about the kenpo
circularity of motion theories and drills,
but hitting somebody ten times in a second
didn’t allow one to get the body behind any of the strikes.
Hmmm.
So you have to be fast in the intuitive sense,
in the sense that Speed of Speed built up,
of seeing when somebody was starting to move,
and moving before him.
THAT was when you could get the whole body behind the strike.

So,
have you ever watched the Magnificent Seven?
The scene where Yul Brynner claps his hands?

I started out with the hands apart,
standing in a back stance,
and the partner has to close the distance
and punch the chest before the hands clap.
Worked like a charm.
Easy to do,
not so brutal,
and directly applied to increasing power through weight.

And,
there were variations I tried,
one of them,
of unusual interest,
is standing to the side with a stop watch.
Tell somebody to punch when they hear the stop watch click,
and click the stop watch a second time when the punch touches the target.
Interestingly,
times were being measured in a full second.
Yes.
That long.
No chance at all
of the punch being fast enough to work.
But what turned the trick
was to stand behind the person being punched,
and let the person watch you click the stop watch.
Man,
then they sped up,
and that was because you got rid of all reaction time,
and the puncher could see and anticipate.

But isn’t that what it is all about?
When somebody is about to punch
you don’t wait for the punch,
you look,
you examine,
you analyze,
you predict when it is coming.

Usually it starts with some kind of emotional set up,
but with the stop watch there was no emotion
and guys could get past the idea of emotion,
get past fooling each other with twitches and tells,
and directly view the factors of the strike.
People got fast real fast,
and we could tailor the strikes,
increase speed in everything
from blocks to kicks to whatever.

Now,
you can use this data,
do the exercises,
make your own exercises,
have some real fun,
and get past a lot of stuff,
and increase speed in the one area
that really matters,
putting weight behind a real strike.

And,
if you have a little extra hair on your chest,
you can always try speed of speed.
To this day
I know that that exercise,
as crude and brutal as it was,
was the one that made the real difference in me.

Okay,
if you want to increase speed
because you have perfect alignment in your body,
and perfect alignment WILL increase your speed,
then check out the Master Instructor Course.

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/4-master-instructor-course/

AND,
BTW,
I’ve been fooling around
making a few sites just for grins and giggles,
so try this one…

http://combatselfdefence.wordpress.com

It’s aimed at explaining things about matrixing and neutronics,
and how they apply to the martial arts.
It’s not for everybody,
and I’m not done with it,
I’ll be working on it as time goes by,
but it’s at a point where
I thought people would appreciate it,
maybe even have some insight as to what they would like on it.
Feel free to leave comments on the site,
what you think,
any advice,
whatever.
It actually gets to me
faster than an email.

Okay,
it’s the middle of summer
so act like it!
Work out till you sweat COPIOUSLY,
and enjoy an occasional beverage.

Have a great and work out filled weekend!
I
Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/4-master-instructor-course/

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The Secret of Light Kung Fu and How to Walk on Water

Light Kung Fu is one of those ancient myths that has a lot of substantiation. There are directions in old textbooks concerning the discipline, and every once in a while you see something really astounding that makes people think that such things are possible. This article is going to be concerned with directions for reaching that high Kung Fu ability.


light kung fu

Creating the Sphere of Chi Eneregy

Basic instructions for learning light kung fu, and being able to do martial arts techniques like jumping six feet straight up, are usually childish, or esoteric. The childish are usually consist of directions like, ‘dig a hole and jump out of it one thousand times. Take one cup of dirt out of the hole every morning, and in ten years you will be able to jump out of a twelve foot pit.

Let’s see: one inch a day, 365 days times ten years, 3650 inches divided by twelve…guy should be able to leap over 300 feet vertically. Maybe it was a cup of dirt every week? But that would still be over near 30 feet vertical.

The more esoteric directions consisted of things like breath to the tan tien while you do the dragon farts move. The second chakra must be engaged on year three, and the sixth chakra will awaken on year eight. Meditate to Mohammad constantly while you do this.

The childish and the esoteric out of the way, more confusion is often introduced by scientists. I came across the following directions for light kung fu on a karate forum. Gigong is just the ability of transition of body weight between the two feet in such a way that the body weight never gets enough time to rest its fullness on to any of the legs in any period of time…and the paragraph goes on to analyze shortening the cycle of stepping.

This last description is most interesting, but there is always a problem when somebody tries to describe something that is beyond physics with…physics. What I mean by this is that physics describes how the universe works, but it doesn’t really tell you how the mind can manipulate it. I know scientists will argue with what I have just said, and try to inflict their reasoning on the phenomena, but science can’t define the supernatural, such as light kung fu, raising the dead, or, say, walking on water.

I had a student who managed to walk on water. His method was to run across the corner of a swimming pool. He would get a running start, do a couple of things with his mind, and run over the surface of the water without dropping into the drink.

What is of interest is what he was doing with his mind. Gravity can be measured, of course; it can be described by science, but it is still an idea that you must believe in for it to function. We are raised up to make physics work (trained by schools slanted towards the scientific method), but the secret of light kung fu is to untrain your mind, to overcome the idea of gravity, and that takes a lot of kung fu discipline.

Simple Exercise to Increase (Decrease) Reaction Time in Karate

I always surprised when I don’t see exercises like the one I am about to tell you about used freely in Karate training. The following exercise cuts your reaction time down to nothing, and it does it with just an hour or two of training. Check out the video, and then I’ll tell you more.

Where I came up with this one was in feeding people punches to help them block. Being a bit insane, looking for more punches to block, wanting to do the exercise faster and more so i would get to the end of it, I decided to have two people feed the defender.
So two people would stand, shoulder to shoulder, in front of the blocker, and they would throw slow strikes.
Not fast. You can overwhelm easily, and there is no gain then. And, you don’t want to create bruises. You want the guy to input data, not refuse the data because he is getting hurt.
But feed the strikes slowly. Left or right, doesn’t matter. Just keep feeding them slowly.
Now, the two feeders should be looking for the edge. They should be trying to find the point of overload, and stay just below it. You don’t want to go so fast the blocker can’t block, you just want him to get used to it all. After a short while, you’ll find that you can bump up the speed of your strikes, and the blocker learns faster.
Now, one thing to be careful of.
The blocker will overload, and this might manifest in a number of ways, maybe just missing the blocks all of the sudden, making too many mistakes, that sort of thing. But usually the blocker will want to strike back. He’ll snap. He won’t hit hard, but he’ll be unable to stop himself from hitting back.
Well, of course. He is overloaded, filled to the top, and he needs to relieve the pressure. That’s okay.
Try to catch it before it happens, and simply rotate one of the strikers into the blocking position. Round and round we go.
Now, this works wonders. Do it during class, five or ten minutes at a time, and within a month the students will get very relaxed, their blocks will hurt more (tell them to go softer), and they won’t be overwhelmed when the fists start flying fast and thick.
If you like this training tool, check out Monster Martial Arts. I have all sorts of drills like this one embedded in the courses. I especially recommend Matrix Karate. Do a matrix of blocks and you will learn ten times faster, and know ten times as much. And make sure you pick up a free martial arts book on the homepage while you’re there.

The Hardest Thing to Overcome in Karate Training

Karate Traininng Will Make a Man Out of You!


I’m speaking as a martial arts teacher here, but I trust you will be able to use my data concerning the hardest thing to overcome in Karate training, or any martial arts training.
I’ve had people come in my school and tell me what I was supposed to teach them. They would lay out their curriculum, and then disappear.
And, if you think this is an oddity, consider the old Japanese zen parable (made famous by Bruce Lee), you can’t put more tea in a cup that is full…you must empty your cup.
One guy came into my school and all he wanted to do was find a temple on the mountain and kneel at the feet of the master and learn all the really secret things. It was obvious that he had been reading too many comic books; he just wasn’t connected to reality. Heck, if I had told him to do a horse stance for five minutes he would have cried and wailed like a baby.
The main thing these days is the youtube martial artist. This is a guy who has poured over youtube, looked at all the martial arts, done what he saw on the screen. He actually isn’t toobad, except that he has no idea what he is doing. The snippets on youtube, no matter how extensive, are not instruction, they are advertising clips designed to lure the unwary and easily excitable.
What? You thought you were going to find the secret of the universe on the internet? that you could just google ‘Secrets of the Universe’ and they would just flash onto the scree…instant enlightenment and all the martial arts downloaded into your brain like Neo?
Empty your cup, grasshopper, then learn how to sweat. The best things in life are not necessarily free…they have to be earned with sweat and bruises and a humble attitude.
Pickup a Free Martial Arts Book ar Learn Karate Online. In Karate training, or with any martial arts, it’s best to start at the beginning and dedicate yourself.

Most Powerful Punch Karate Training Methods!

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.

Real Karate Techniques Don’t Use Muscle Memory!

I come across these internet huckster sites every once in a while, or some psycho babble fellow who thinks he knows something, and they talk about increasing muscle memory, but they are just plain wrong. The fact is that real karate techniques don’t use muscle memory, nor do any other martial art, be it kenpo or aikido or whatever.  Check out the video, and I’ll tell you all about it in the article right below.

First off, who’s fighting (doing the martial arts drill)? You are. You use muscles, they don’t use you.

When somebody punches at you, do you jump out of your body and let your body fight? Nah. That’s just silly.

When you get in a  fight  you tell your body what to do, and it does it. And you don’t rely on muscular memory patterns.

Yes, when you first memorize something, there is a pattern, and you could call that muscle memory, but it is really installing a circuit in your mind. Incorrect training and that circuit stays there. Correct training and that circuit goes, and you take charge.

The real key here is that people are interested in selling other people hogwash by fancy labels. So don’t believe that muscle memory crap. It is you memorizing, and then you doing, and you should be in charge of your muscles, telling them what to do in the moment, and without putting things on some sort of muscle automatic thing.

Look, the guys who won the championships will tell you that you must do the work, but that is a matter of spirit. You must do the punch, but that is a matter of you. Muscle memory has almost nothing to do with actual fighting, real karate techniques, nor any real martial art worth its salt out there. Check out my site, Monster Martial Arts, and you’ll find an approach that is so far removed from that type of thing you won’t believe it.