Category Archives: ed parker

Free Karate Lessons Are A Fantastic Way To Learn Martial Arts!

My official beginning in the study of the martial arts was back in the late sixties. I walked into an Ed Parker Chinese Kenpo Dojo, signed a contract, and began to learn Martial Arts. The truth, however, is that I had been getting free Karate Lessons for a long time before I walked into that school. Check out the video, then I’ll tell you about it.

They weren’t much, as far as martial arts lessons went, but they did the trick. They kept my attention, and they kept me happy. After all, they were the best type of physical and mental conditioning, they were a good way to learn I could handle the bullies, and they were fun.

The first thing that caught my interest was knuckle conditioning. We used to knock our knuckles on walls and fences and boxes and anything that got in our way. That resulted in a lifelong interest in good conditioning, different types of punches, and a desire to have the hardest punch I could have.

The second thing I learned was simple arm bars. This was good, as simple things always work the best. To this day I take the most complex of fighting techniques and look for the simplest method of making them work.

The third thing I gleaned had to do with learning how the different parts of the body worked. I examined feet, hands, arms, legs, how the joints worked, the back, everything I could. I even read medical books trying to understand how the body worked.

Fourth, I engaged in a rudimentary sort of grappling. This was good because I took away from that experience the lesson that grappling wasn’t handy for fighting. You grapple, and you are tied up, and somebody else runs up and kicks the back of your head, and there might be weapons involved, and…no thanks.

The main thing I discovered from reading books, working with friends, and just having fun pretending we were big and tough, was that sweat worked. The hours we spent lifting iron, running, wrestling, and trying those techniques from out of old Bruce Tegner books and the like…they were golden hours. It was a youth that built strength, character, and the desire to go forward.

The point I am making in this article is that the martial arts aren’t for everybody. So look around on the web, Google Free Karate lessons, (I always recommend Karate as a great art to start your martial arts with) or some other like term, and see what comes up. Do a few tricks, see if they work on friends, and find out if you have the character and kind of mind to be a student of Karate.

Get a Free Karate Lesson, head on over to Learn Karate Online!

Friends in the Martial Arts

Analyze Everything...Leave Nothing to Chance!


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.

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.

The Importance of Pinan Five (Heian Five) Karate Kata

Perfection of Body...Perfection of Character!


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.

Real Karate, Real Freestyle, Putting Aside Fighting

Back in the sixties real karate instructors differed in their opinions towards freestyle. Yes, it was necessary to keep students in the door, but there was freestyle, and there was fighting. Check out the video, my student is really trying to stab me, and I use control instead of fighting to manage him. I’ll tell you about one of the wildest tournaments ever right below that.

My school went to a big tournament in San Francisco.

During one of the matches one of the brown belts jammed his finger, and the second bone on one of his fingers actually came out of the socket and slid over the third bone. The refs looked at it, said he had to go to a hospital and have somebody straighten it out. He wanted to fight, however, so he pulled it out himself and kept fighting.

Interestingly, in spite of this type of die hard enthusiasm, my instructor pulled the entire school out and went home. Well, he didn’t pull them out. He just gathered everybody together and said fighting had little to do with learning how to control an opponent through kumite. He said we were free to remain, and then he left. Everybody followed him.

He was right. Fighting is for people who don’t know the martial arts. A person who knows the martial arts controls his opponent. He predicts him, manipulates him, and does what he will with him.

That’s the difference, of course, between real karate and somebody who likes to fight, and that’s the difference between sport and a real martial art. Check out the variety of different Karate programs at Monster Martial Arts.

I have a confession to make, I used to practice Shotokan Katas while I was going to an Ed Parker Chinese Kenpo Karate style martial arts school.

I kow, heresy, I am impure, oh sob and moan.

But, on my behalf, Kenpo was originally Shotokan. Check out the video, and then I’ll tell you about it.

You didn’t know that Ed Parker Kenpo Karate was originally a shotokan based hard style of Karate? But it’s true! If you look at the first book Ed Parker wrote, it is a sequence of techniques that, when put together, make up the forms of Shotokan.

Mind you, it might not have been Shotokan proper, might even have been Isshin ryu, or shito ryu, or something like that, but the point is made. Chinese Kenpo was originally basic Japanese Okianwan Karate.

Why did it change? Because Parker never got his black belt (Oh, I think he did, but not from Thunderbolt Chow). So he taught a bunch of fellows Karate, ran out of stuff to teach, and started teaching a type of made up Kung Fu.

Look, I know a few dunderheads will get upset with this history, but it’s fairly accurate, there are a slightly different versions out there, but it seems to hold up when you do a little basic net research, and especially when you see that first book.

So, when I say I was doing Shotokan Karate (the Heians out of the Best Karate seriess by Nakayama, while I was studying at an Ed Parker Chinese Kenpo Karate style of martial arts school, that isn’t a bad thing. Heck, if it was good enough for Ed. Right? Check out my site, Monster Martial Arts,  lots of books and courses and things, all the way back to the martial arts taught in the sixties.

Karate Instructor Sees the Light, Teaches the True Art!

Most Karate instructor courses are boot camp, or an accelerated form of ‘monkey see-monkey do,’ or just a bunch of extra forms to learn. Actually, an instructor has to know specialized data, none of which is taught on the instructor courses I’ve seen. Here’s what happened when one fellow saw the data on the Master Instructor Course.

“As I started reading the Instructor Course things that I had been teaching started to become clearer. I could see why you had chosen one move over another in each form. And for the first time I could really explain to my students not only the whys and hows, but how to take the core moves and expand it to fit any situation.

My students have started coming up to me after class telling me how much more they are enjoying it, and that the classes have stopped being so ridged and now flow in a kind of give and take between me and them. I have stopped being a task master and started having fun and letting them teach me as well.

I also now found that I can more easily critique techniques that I see others as well as my own. I can almost feel what is a pure technique that belongs to an art and one that someone just threw in because they thought it looked pretty.”

This is the mark of a good teacher. The ability to see technique or form and know instantly what is right with it, and what is wrong.

Feel free to check out my Master Instructor page. It works not just for a karate instructor, but for any art, because it deals with the true principles of the MartialArts.Pick up a free ebook on the home page while you’re there.

Win #56

I wrote a blog the other day, I think it’s on the Matrix Martial Arts blog, that talks about world peace, putting down the sword, and I had the most terrible thought afterwards.

The real meaning of Budo, when you go into the root of the hieroglyphics, is to ‘lay down the sword.’ To make peace.

In other words, you learn how to fight in order tolearn how not to fight.

In other words, you have to pick up the sword before you lay down the sword.

And here is the terrible realization:  I have to convince a thousand people to go to war, to create one man to go to peace.

Man! That’s ridiculous!

but that’s how many people start the martial arts, and nevermake it. Actually, the statistic is quite a bit worse than that. But…there it is.

I have to convince people to be warmonging savages just to get one fellow to believe in peace.

Oh, if only we weren’t all warmonging savages tobegin with…then I wouldn’t have to do anything!

Well, having dispensed that bit of cheer, go ahead and drop by Monster Martial Arts, pick up a free book, and learn to (choke) kill.

HanaKwanMass! (Hannakah, Kwanza Christmas!)

Win #31–A Great Win from a Kenpo Master

It’s interesting to note that most instructor courses are boot camps on toughing it out. As if becoming tougher makes a guy an instructor.

An instructor should have knowledge, and the ability to get that knowledge acorss to the student. If you understand this last sentence, then you understand the spirit in which the Master Instructor course was done.

Data. Pure and simple. Me to you. You to student. That’s all.

The joy is that it is the correct data. Here’s a win from a fellow who studies kenpo.

The benefits of the material in this master instructor course far ?outweigh the price paid. The things that I have gleaned and continue to glean could fill volumes of tomes. I have gained an unshakeable foundation in my art and have begun to bridge all the gaps of knowledge that I had been left with from previous instructors. Where was this information 24 years ago? This course is one of the best things to ever happen to me. ?Thank you Al Case for the gift of knowledge! Be blessed my teacher, Rev. Ernest A. Ross

Man, can’t argue with a win like this. He saw, he used, and the data is him. Any Kenpo student can become a kenpo master by understanding the data on this course. Period.

You can pick up a free Karate book to augment your teaching curriculum at FREE KARATE BOOK!