Tag Archives: karate

If You Think Your Mind is a Mess…Try the Karate Mind!

The Karate Mind is a Way to Fix the World!

Speaking of the Karate Mind, a friend of mine recently made the observation that his mind was a mess. But I knew that he had got it wrong.  You see, it’s the world that is a mess, and the mind is just reflecting that mess. Actually, his mind was doing a pretty good job of reflecting what was out there.

karate mind

The Karate Mind Can Fix the World!



So how do you get rid of the mess ‘in your mind?’ People think there is something wrong with their minds. Uh uh. Not even. My mind is fine, and don’t you go playing around with it.

But, if you do want to make your mind reflect accurately, and without being disturbed by the mess it is reflecting, then you should learn karate.

A heaping helping of forms and freestyle will go a long way. You learn to concentrate, to focus your thoughts, and, interestingly enough, the mind starts to become immune to the mess that is the world.

You focus your attention, you still see the world the way it really is, but the world doesn’t matter. You get the power to say no to car salesmen, yes to good looking girls, no to that one drink too many, yes to that adventure that is right around the corner and is going to change your life.

And, interestingly enough, as you change your mind, you will notice that the world changes along with you. The world, you see reflects you….once you take charge of your mind.

So if you think your mind is a mess, I suggest you reconsider. The mind is not the mess, it is the world that it is a mess. You can, however, gain control over your mind, and make it work better, by simply practicing martial arts, and that will change the world.

Sports are good, theater is fine, but only in the martial arts do you really face real problems. You face that punch and learn not to look away. You feel that destructive energy, and you ward it off and move on in. Now that is the way to handle life, the mind, and just about anything else that comes your way.

This has been an article on fixing the world by achieving the karate mind.

 

Three Secrets of True Shaolin Kung Fu Training

True Shaolin Kung Fu Training Methods!

The gains people get from true Shaolin Kung Fu training are absolutely incredible. The key to gaining all these benefits is to train in the correct manner. After all, you could have the sweetest piece of steak in the world, but cook it improperly and you’ll have a charcoal mess.

shaolin kung fu training methodsWhen one is learning Kung Fu one should always move the body as one unit. Six Harmonies Boxing proposes that one should move the hand with the foot, the knee with the elbow, and the hips with the shoulders. This is technical and sound advice, which tends to isolate body parts even as it unifies them.

As for the hands and feet, one should step or twist into a stance in conjunction with the starting and stopping of the hand movement. For the knees and elbows, one should properly align the body when doing any movement. For the hips and shoulderes, move them together and you will be putting all your body weight into whatever motion you are doing.

The second of the three secrets of Shaolin Kung Fu training is to use the waist when turning the body. This is something that people begin to learn naturally after understanding the points about moving the body as one unit. The advice here is to use the waist to make the body turn, don’t turn the arms first and expect the body to follow.

If you move the arms first, the body weight is going to be trying to catch up, instead of projecting weight and energy, and this tends to separate weight from action. Separating weight from action will delete real power from a move. If one studies this concept carefully they will end up developing the true chi power of Shaolin Kung Fu.

Lastly, one must focus on proper breathing. There is a commonly held principle that one should breath in when the body contracts, and out when the body expands, but there is more to this principle than just that. One must breath, and use that breath to guide awareness through the parts of their body.

To make this happen one should ‘swim with awareness’ when doing the movements of their kung fu patterns. This means to push the hands through the air as if moving great weights, this sometimes makes it look like one is swimming through molasses. Of course, this tends to be more true in the internal manifestations of Shaolin Kung Fu training, but that is fine.

To summarize, these are three very important points that many people neglect, or simply just don’t appreciate. Yet they are key to progress in the martial arts. Make the body parts work together, use the whole body, and put breath awareness into your motion, that is the simple and plain secret of true Shaolin Kung Fu Training.

shaoin training

Martial Arts Quiz to Find your Martial Smarts!

Take the Martial Arts Quiz now!

This Martial Arts Quiz will let you know how much you know in the martial arts. The questions cover a range of martial arts, and instructions for grading are at the bottom. Begin now and write down the answer to each question.

karate quizWho was the Chinese movie star named ‘The Little Dragon?’  What was the significant Samurai martial art learned by the founder of Aikido? What was the name of the brothers who built a national chain of Chinese Kenpo Karate studios?

Who was the founder of the Chinese martial art wherein the practitioner spends his time ‘walking the circle?’ Who was the first American President to take Judo instruction? What was the title of the movie that Bruce Lee didn’t finish before his death?

Which Karate system received the official blessing of Master Gichin Funakoshi to spread his style of karate (it was not Shotokan)? What is the name of the World Taekwondo Headquarters in Seoul? Who was the Taekwondo instructor behind the martial arts in ‘Billie Jack?’

What is the title of the book penned by the Samurai who killed sixty people and lived the last years of his life in a cave? What martial art trains one in the use of the weapon called a Parang? Who was the first owner of Black Belt magazine?

What length of time did it take Bill ‘Superfoot’ Wallace to achieve the rank of black belt? Which athlete did Bruce Lee watch the movies of in a mirror to make sure he got the movements of on both the right and the left sides? What was the title of the first book the founder of Chinese Kenpo wrote on the martial arts (listed in wiki)?

Who was the ‘spy’ who wrote the first book on Shaolin to receive widespread attention in the US, and what was the name of the book that he wrote? What was the name of the first chop sockie flick to really make it big in the United States? Who was the Chinese actor to kill a villain in a Chinese movie made in the late 70s, and then play that same villain in the movie ‘Kill Bill?’

To find any answers you don’t know do a google search. To figure out your score take the number of questions you answered correctly and divide by 18. Don’t worry if you didn’t score high, for now you know all the answers to this martial arts quiz and are a smarter person.

martial arts quiz

Your Martial Art Doesn’t Work, and the Hells Angel Threw Me Through a Wall

Does Your Martial Art Work?

outlaw karateI had studied Chinese Kenpo Karate for two years. I was an instructor, and I had written the training manual for my school.Then I ran into a Hells Angel.

The story actually started when the restaurant I was working at hired a geeky looking kid. I didn’t like him much, but then one day I saw him kick a wall. The wall shook like the 1906 earthquake, and I knew that he knew something I didn’t.

So I got to know him, and he said he studied Kang Duk Won Korean Karate. He said he didn’t know it well, which I found hard to believe because I had seen him kick a wall harder than a donkey kicks a pervert. He said, however, that his brother knew a lot more than him, and let’s go talk to him.

So that night, I think it was a Tuesday, we went down to a house in Sunnyvale to meet his brother. As we pulled up Alex said to me, “I should probably tell you that my brother is a Hells Angel.” I blinked, but, naive me, heck…I knew Kenpo, right?

His brother was a couple inches under six feet, a little shorter than me, but he had the outlaw look in his eyes. We talked martial arts for a while, and then he boldly stated, “Your Martial Art doesn’t work.” Then he wrapped two of the gnarliest fists I had ever seen into my shirt front and told me to work my first technique on him.

I began to move. I held his fists in place with one hand and brought my forearm up to break his elbows, I struck his wrists with my nerve paralyzing downward chop, and when I went to chop him in the neck he tossed me through a wall. Yes he did…all the way through the wall.

He laughed and helped me up, and then he told me to grab his shirt front. I did, and he showed me the self defense technique from his martial arts school. He reached over and punched me in the chest so hard that…that’s right, I went right through the wall again.

This is a true story, and being tossed through a wall twice changed my life, definitely changed the way I was learning martial arts, and prompted me down the road to other martial arts and how to really make them work. I spent over a half dozen years at the Kang Duk Won Korean Karate school, worked alongside all manner of people, including hells angels and other outlaw bikers. Included in my education was why a martial art doesn’t work.

Amreican Karate

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.

Beat up the World with Karate and Make Peace Now!

Good Karate Throwing Technique

I usually talk about Karate forms and applications here, or other stuff that is juicily violent, but let me move to an area that explains why we must be so violent.
We must be violent so that we won’t be violent.
Get it out in the dojo, and what’s left is peace in your soul when you walk around.
But, it’s deeper than that. Let me go whole hog here, and explain the actual process that is working here.
You have heard me say before: control the body to control the mind, control the mind to control the spirit. It’s true. But this is actually a condensation of the five circles surrounding a human being.
You perceive, but what is it that perceives? It is the ‘I am,’ the awareness of awareness unit that is you.
And you have dressed yourself with mind, emotion, body, and chaos.
Chaos is fighting, that’s the outermost circle, that is the world. A buunch of idiots running around and threatening and shaking their fist and getting in trouble.
Train the body and you instantly move out of chaos. You have a plan, an idea, and you are no longer subject to, or perhaps I should say victim to, the violence of a world gone amok.
But, as you train the body you begin to gain control over emotions. You stop getting angry, you lose fear, and you start being happy most of the time. And when you aren’t happy you simply move through and get happy.
Controlling the emotions is the start of controlling the mind, and now you are on the verge of controlling the world. The world, you see, will adhere to somebody who has control of their mind. Simply, the people who can’t control their mind look for some way to get their mind back under control, so they rub up against the sane.
From the mind we move into spirit, and I’m going to stop explaining now, because once you get there you won’t need any explanations.
The point here is that that is why you study the martial arts, not to beat people up, but to get rid of the desire to beat people up, and this has far reaching effects. Think about it, world peace by practicing your karate forms and elf defense moves. Now we’re talking. Drop by Monster Martial Arts if you want to dig into your sanity and learn the truth about the Martial Arts.

Gun Kata!

Perhaps you’ve seen the movie, Equilibrium. Great movie, with a ‘gun kata’ in it.
Interestingly, I ran into a fellow one day, and we started talking, and we got on the issue of mechanics and martial arts and gun control. There were some interesting points made, and I’ll tell you about them right after the video.

He described gun control the exact same way I was describing martial arts.
And we were both surprised, because other people don’t understand these types of physics.
A physics apart, and i had run into one of the few people in the world who could understand, and had even made inroads, into the physics behind everything.
Guns. huh.
I’ve seen them in Golf (probably got me started, my dad taught me gold and we had all these mags every month, and in the mags were geometrical renderings of swings and things.) A fe other plaes, but in all places only in bits and pieces.
It seems that the world can only see in pieces.
Anyway, it was interesting.
Gun mechanics.
Gun physics.
The Gun Kata.
Martial Arts.
It’s all he same if you can only put the pieces together.
Check out my further thoughts on the matter of Karate at Monster Martial Arts.

The Secret of Real Karate Power is Fanaticism!

I chuckle when I see these young kids train. They look so good in their karate uniforms, they are so proud, yet I wonder how many of them can be crazy enough to really learn the real martial art, and actually get some real karate power.
Check out the vid, then I’ll tell you more.

Look, if you want to saw a piece of wood, you don’t take a half a dozen cuts and then stop, you watch the cut, make sure it is happening right, and you continue, no matter how sore you get, until the wood separates.
Now, if you want to break a brick, a simple trick, you simply set it up and start hitting it. And you hit it and hit it, and you focus on it until you don’t even see the rest of the world, and the brick eventually separates.
Now, there is more to it, you want to be able to break that brick with one chop, but the message here is that you have to give yourself over to a fanatical mindset.
You have to dedicate yourself, and do it and do it and do it, and have the firm knowledge that you will not quit, that you will squash any ideas of quit, that you will get where you are going.
It’s funny, I see some martial artists from other countries, and they are actually a little more rabid than USers. Well, there mommie didn’t let them stay home from school if it was raining. She didn’t bring them milk and cookies and console them if the homework was tough…she told them to dry up and get the durned job done.
That’s how it used to be in America, and thats why we achieved greatness.
We can have greatness again, even if you were coddled as a school child.
Simply dedicate yourself, be a fanatic. Tell yourself you are going to do that form a hundred times a day every day for one year,a nd then do it. Belive me, you will understand that Kata, and you will have abilities that you never even dreamed of when you were a lazy school kid. It’s up to you, but you have to give yourself over to fanaticism, and that is the secret of real karate power. If you want to learn more about this mindset, pop over to Monster Martial Arts and pick up a free book. It’ll tell you how to arrange your martial arts so the fanatical mindset can really bite.

The Big Thing Wrong with Classical Karate Training

You know, Karate sometimes gets a bad rap these days. You see all the MMA guys trashing their opponents, and you wonder why, if Karate is so good, you don’t see it in the octagon. The reason, of course, is the problem with Classical Karate training methods.

In traditional karate classes students are lined up in a mass, and they kick and punch and do everything as one unit. This is fine, for beginners. The sad fact, however, is that one rapidly travels through being a beginner, and then needs to have a different teaching method.

Class exercises are fine to warm up, but there is no real exchange of information going on between teacher and student. Oh, you think that everything is in the forms, that you just need to do the forms and enlightenment will burst upon you? Well, true to a certain extent, but there is also the fact that if you hold to this opinion too hard you are saying that karate is for stupid people.

Oh, I’m serious. Look, Karate, be it goju or shotokan or uechi ryu or whatever, depends on physics. And, once a person has mastered the first set of physics, there is a second set of physics pertinent to the mind and the spirit. But, because of antiquated training methods, methods that were used to control unruly children (not teach them) nobody in the martial arts really knows what the second set of physics is.

Let me take one point and blow it up a bit. I had a student who had the most terrible form, and he had taken a year of classical martial arts training. He was terrible, but-smile in the eyes of his teachers-he was rigid.

So his shoulders overextended, his body was always turned the wrong way, his punches wouldn’t hurt a six year old girl, but he was deemed good because he was rigid. All his muscles locked into place at the execution of technique. And, you can see this same tendency on any number of youtube Karate videos.

Now, one of the first rules of combat is, ‘a sitting duck is a dead duck.’ Heck, the reason that bully told you to stand still and face him was because he wanted a stationary target. And this goes against the real karate somebody would learn if they could get past the rigid, no information instruction that is offered in nearly every karate class in the world.

Real Karate is liquid, and the focus points are so short they can’t be perceived, and the karateka is able to move in any direction without preparation or telegraphing. True Karate is like a whip, and only the fist tightens, and that momentarily when it smacks through some fool’s face. Karate is a study in motion, not in rigidity, and that is just one of the problems with Classical Karate Training.

If you want to see some excellent karate, check out my Temple Karate DVDs. I’m old, I’ve been doing classical karate for over forty years, but I’ve still got some liquid left in me. There are eleven forms, with TONS of self defense applications.

Half a Year of Karate!

Do you know how much you can get done in Karate in a half a year?
The reason I say this is because the year is half over. So if you can remember what you were doing at Christmas, or New Years, and any resolutions or things, then you could have made a lot of things happen since them.

If you are studying a classical art, you could have gone through a belt rank or two. You could have a couple of martial arts forms, had a ball doing lots of kumite, and generally be fit and healthy, and your mind would be calm.
Now, if you had been studying my Matrixing program, you could actusally have your black belt by now. Serious. It’s a three month program, but it takes a lot of work. But six months is enough time to do a lot of work. So you could actually be there.
And, here’s something interesting, if you slacked off a little the last few months, maybe been distracted by the news or something, you can realize that every moment you live and don’t do what you love is a moment wasted.
Hey, if it’s not Karate, then what is it? Kung Fu? Yoga? Ballet? If you love it, then why aren’t you doing it?
Got a dream? You’ve had six months to pursue it. Didn’t do it? It’s not too late, so get yer fanny in gear and get going!
Don’t you understand? I’m telling you to ignore everything that gets in your way, everybody that slows you down or distracts you. I’m telling you that you should pick a goal, and having a black belt is an absolutely incredible goal, and GO FOR IT!
Now, do you want to go waste another night drinking beer, or do you want to be somebody? Do you want to be strong and fit and quick in the mind?
Okay, I’ve enjoyed this rant, and especially because I know it is so right and valuable. So spend the time between now and the end of the year working out and finding the real you. If I can help you reach your goals in Karate, if I can help you get to Black Belt, drop by my site, Monster Martial Arts. My email is there, and I answer all emails. See ya.