Category Archives: karate bunkai

When Bruce Lee Killed Karate!

Yes, Bruce Lee Killed Karate!

It’s funny, Bruce Lee came to the martial arts publics attention when he wrote the article ‘The Classical Mess,’ and common opinion was that Bruce Lee killed Karate.

bruce lee workouts

Bruce Lee Killed Karate!


At the time, everybody thought it was a death blow to Karate. It was an attack upon the forms method of teaching. It was the deathblow. It was predicted that karate schools everywhere would pack up and fade away and whimper.

Actually, he drove people into the karate schools at an astounding pace. I don’t believe there has ever been a surge into the martial arts schools like the one he started.

Now, what was the classical mess thing? He was merely in favor of more reality based training.

And, his ideas weren’t bad. Karate guys everywhere read them, liked them, and karate changed.

One of his ideas included less technique and more drilling. I remember learning sticky hands and seeing what he meant. It was great.

Another of his ideas had to do with kicking heavier bags, because people weighed more than the bags that were out there at the time. That was another fine idea. And, today we have heavier bags.

The main thing, however, was for the student to wake up, to be aware in the moment, not to be bound by the things he was learning, and by the limitations of practicing a static technique. In this one, he was right, and he was wrong.

He was right, the Karate student does have to wake up. He has to be in the moment. But, the idea that form training doesn’t lead there is in correct. When one does forms one is building a circuit in the body and mind. Eventually, once one has practiced the circuit long enough, it suddenly disappears.

It’s true, practicing a technique until it is a circuit, and then further, and the circuit just disappears, and the student is left with…open eyes.

Now, one could argue that Bruce didn’t understand this, but he had practiced in Wing Chun long enough that he should have.

Personally, I think he was just so excited by all the arts he studied, and he was seeing how they all connect together, that he spoke a little too quickly. Considering how much he gave us all, he can be forgiven.

At any rate, as I pointed out, though he disagreed with certain karate training methods, he offered enlightenment that we could change such methods as we needed to. And, in the end,  it’s not true that Bruce Lee Killed Karate…he helped it become better.

Kung Fu Freestyle is the Next Step!

Accelerating Karate into Kung Fu Freestyle

Good morning!
A happy work out to you.
Lots of happy work outs to you.

krate freestyle

The True Power of Karate!


Thanks for the response to the Rolling Fists video,
this newsletter is going to be about Rolling Fists,
but let me meander a bit,
there’s a lot of stuff on the course,
and I want to make sure people understand
what I am doing on it.
Here’s the URL,
before I go on.
http://www.monstermartialarts.com/Learn_How_to_Fight.html

It’s funny,
I’ve got large martial arts sites,
have been selling courses for half a dozen years,
and this is the first course to really go into fighting.

Yes,
just about every course has its freestyle method,
and Matrix Combat is a very thorough overview,
but…it was time I did this.
I probably need to do this for each step
of the freestyle method
outlined in Matrix Combat.

Incidentally,
before I go on,
Matrix Combat is offered free
when you order Rolling fists.
The first few orders it will be mailed separately,
but it is all coming together now.

Anyway,
The problem with most freestyle methods
is that they devolve into fighting,
people get jumpy,
and how you going to learn
when you don’t trust your partner?

So,
let’s go…

Most important,
learn to do freestyle
in a method which builds trust,
doesn’t fall into a contest,
then data can be exchanged,
and absorbed,
and the learning process can take effect.

Next,
the Freestyle method I do on Matrix Karate
is large,
works at the entering distance of a fight,
builds responses,
and creates intuition fairly fast.
The next problem,
is how to close up the distance,
which decreases the amount of time
one has to respond,
and keep and enhance the intuition.

The way to do this is to build and hold
to a distinct concept.
Concept training is always
ten times faster than normal training.

Normal training you have to repeat something ten thousand times
searching for this thing called ‘muscle memory,’
which is actually a false concept.
To call a reaction a muscle memory
is to say that the body did it.
But intuition is when you do it.

Anyway,
on the Rolling Fists video
we close up the distance,
speed up the hands,
and present the concept.
It is so logical
it is absorbed almost instantly by the student.

Now,
there are lots of things I go into on this course.
The concept
the pieces of the concept
retaining and building intuition.
and so on.

One of the most important things I go into is
is increasing impact by lessening effort.
This is an odd concept
which seems to be the reverse of normal teaching,
but which is the essence of the true art.

Think about it this way…
muscles don’t hit,
you hit.
The key is to get out of the muscles,
get out of the body,
and throw the body at somebody.
Throw the body
and focus the impact in a smaller area.

This is a hard concept for some people,
they have been sold so much bushwah
on the importance of muscle.
Yes,
muscles are important,
nothing wrong with a good,
physical work out.
But remember:
It is the mental game that is most important.

Now
the message here
is that to understand what I have said so far,
you should know more than one art.
Remember,
when I was teaching EW this stuff,
I was teaching him a second art.
I was teaching him
the Shaolin Butterfly.
The thing is,
if you have more than one art,
then you likely have enough the degree of polish,
which means…
the amount of refined control,
to understand and apply this second stage of freestyle.

Make no mistake,
it is an accelerated freestyle.
Once you have done it for a few months
you are going to find that it is pretty extreme.
in the beginning,
it looks like just a simple exercise,
but as your perceptions increase,
as you become more able to see what is happening,
and to use the concepts in ‘regular fighting,’
you will suddenly note
that you have made yourself
a huge and distinct advantage
over Joe Normal,
and even over various systems
that claim to have the best freestyle methods,
but are missing the Rolling Fists piece.

And the Rolling fists is missing.
I named it Rolling Fists,
and avoided the name lop sau,
because it goes so very much further
than that drill ever went.

Guaranteed,
it is a method of freestyle that you have never seen
except on my courses.
And,
guaranteed,
it works ten times faster
to make you twice as good.

All right,
I’ve rambled enough,
hopefully made a few points,
and i thank you for the opportunity
to explain these things.
I hope what i have said is timely,
and encourages you.

So,
have yourself a great and wonderful week,
and here’s the Rolling fists URL again
http://www.monstermartialarts.com/Learn_How_to_Fight.html

and I’ll talk to you later.

Al

kung fu freestyle

 

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.

 

First Time and Only Time I Ever Struck Somebody with a Karate Punch

You Don’t Want to Use Your Karate Punch Like This!

A Karate punch can be a terrible thing. Proper Karate training and you can shatter slabs of ice, stacks of boards and bricks, and even kill 1000 pound bulls. You can also make bad errors, such as I will point out in this martial arts article.

karate punch
I had been training for over two decades, striking the makiwara (punching board), practicing with friends, and even writing karate books on what I had discovered in the martial arts. Interestingly, in all that time I had never actually struck another human being. I knew I had a powerful punch, I had just never been in a situation where I had to use it.

I was in charge of a hotel in Los Angeles in one of the poorer sections of town. One day I leased a room to a pleasant appearing fellow, and shortly discovered that I had made a deal with the devil. This fellow had a second business of pushing drugs. Now, aside from actual medical marijuana cases, because of my martial arts training I don’t stand for drugs.

One sunny day I ascended upstairs and confronted the fellow, and told him that he had to stop selling drugs. At first he hemmed and hawed, tried to change the subject, but I kept after him. Finally, he just laughed at me, “The police don’t bother me, there’s nothing you can do about it, so leave it alone.”

Shocked, I blurted, “I want you out of here, you’re gone…now!” He just laughed at me some more. “It’ll take you months to get me out of this apartment.”

I suddenly went calm, and that is not a good thing, for it meant that I had been pushed too far. I dropped my weight into an hourglass stance, power surged up my frame and pulsed out my arms, and I struck him in the chest with two gnarly fists. What happened then was truly astounding.

Having never struck another person I had no idea what it would feel like, or what was going to occur. First, I felt this enormous weight surging back up my arms and through my body and into the ground…it was much more mass and resistance than I had realized. Second, a long second later–that’s right, there was actually a gap of time before the effects of my karate strike were realized–he began to launch through the air.

He flew up and over the bed and smacked against the wall, and he slowly struggled to his feet, rubbing his chest his hands, his eyes wide, “You can’t do that!” That just made me even more angry, and I started after him, then realized that he had told me something significant, “Why not?” “Because I’ve got somebody in the closet!

I went to the closet door and yanked it open, and a naked man stood there shivering in terror. That’s right, the drug dealer was gay, and his boyfriend had come to visit him, and…what the heck had I just done? In using my karate punch I had abused all the good things i had learned in the martial arts, I had struck another human being, and was left with a very sick feeling.

 

Karate Kumite…Should You Get Emotional when you Fight?

Karate Kumite and Clint Eastwood?

Karate Kumite and Clint Eastwood, I never thought I’d say those two things in a sentence. In the movie ‘The Outlaw Josie Wales,’ Clint lectures some sissy pioneers about how to get mad dog mean when you’re fighting for survival. There is truth in his statement, but there is, especially if you are involved in classical martial arts training, a lie.

monster martial artsThe truth is that you have to raise up your desire to survive. You have to be willing to do more than you have ever done before. You have to be willing to fight harder and never give up.

The lie is that emotion increases your desire to win. To understand this, and other things concerning emotion and the martial arts, we have to define what, exactly, emotion is. The odd thing is that if you look in a dictionary you will not find a good definition.

Emotion is not ‘mood,’ or an ‘instinctive state of mind,’ and that sort of definition tells us nothing. So consider this definition: when somebody is unable to accept reality he/she creates a mental turmoil that is emotion. That’s a good one, and I know because I made it up, but we have to look deeper if we are really going to understand emotion, it’s value, and how to handle it.

The Neutronic definition for this concept called emotion is: ‘Motion inside the mind.’ You get angry, and in your mind you want to make motion towards somebody (hit them in the head with a hammer). But it is all in your mind, and, though that can be used, it is also a little less than real.

When you strike another person, would you put energy into your knee? That would be a waste of energy, am I correct? What you want to strive for, as a martial artist, is to put energy only into the fist, or the foot, or the body part you are striking with.

When you put energy into body parts other than the one(s) being used you are being inefficient. This same concept holds true for emotion. Energy put into emotion is not energy put into the desire to win; to win it is best if we increase our desire to win, and we need to get mad dog cool and determined, not extra angry.

Emotion is not to be discouraged, for emotion is a handle by which we can read others, release our own feelings, experience love, and that sort of thing. However, emotion in a fight can inhibit a person’s will to fight. When it comes to Karate Kumite you must increase your desire to win without falling into emotion, or trying to use emotion in any way.

Is there a thug on your block? Want to learn how to fight? Karate Kumite is the fastest and most efficient way to defend yourself in the world. Mouse on overto Monster Martial Arts to find out more.

Karate Chop Is Not The Deadliest Strike One Can Learn In Karate

Karate Chop Touted as Deadly Strike, But it Is Not!

Karate chop him, screamed the actress, and I had to stifle a grin. This was a cinematic effort where neither the actor, the writer, the director knew anything about the real martial arts. They were like those people back in the fifties who used to think that a karate chop to the neck would kill people in their tracks.



When I first began studying the art of Chinese Kenpo Karate I was told that a spear hand strike to the solar plexus or the neck was the deadliest martial arts attack one could deliver. Just stick those steel hard fingers in the soft areas and watch your opponent die. A spear hand was supposed to be better than a karate chop, but only by a little.

Then I heard about the Dim Muk strike, or what is referred to as The Death Touch. You tap a villain on a special spot on their body and they drop dead. Of course, it would take a couple of decades to master the Chi Power necessary, learn all the pressure points and times they were vulnerable to strikes, and by that time I’d be ancient and too slow to deliver such an attack.

One day a student was walking past my Karate instructor holding a piece of thin particle board. He stopped, grinned, and held the board out. Break this, he challenged my instructor.

karate kickMy instructor’s name was Bob Babich, and he was a thin fellow with stringy muscles. Given the target, he sunk his weight, pivoted his hips, and snapped a single finger. A single finger, and when he brought it back, he had left a nice, neat, little hole in the particle board.

Many people think I am telling fairy tales when I relate them this story, but the fact is that the single finger trick could be done by no less than fifty people on Taiwan back in the 1950s. Many kung Fu masters from across China had sought refuge in that little nation to escape communism, and many were able to do this rather unique strike. Unfortunately, there were not enough students willing to undergo the training necessary to such a feat, there weren’t as many people to draw from as in China, and the single finger trick has pretty well died out.

Interestingly, one of the fellows who nibbled at the single finger trick was Bruce Lee. He could stick a finger in a soda (beer) can and leave a hole, and this was back in the day when cans were made of real metal and not this cheap aluminum stuff. This was good, and one wonders whether he would have mastered the single finger trick if he had lived longer.

At any rate, when students ask me what the deadliest karate trick in the world is I tell them about the single finger technique. It is not a made up fable, it is the result of real and dedicated training in arts such as karate, kung fu, or any other legitimate martial art that has stood the test of time. And, as for the karate chop, that is a good karate technique, but it is only the first step on a much more real journey.

Before you learn the one finger trick you have to learn The Secrets of The Punch. Mouse to Monster Martial Arts for that.

Learn Karate By the Simple Trick of Flipping The Matrix

Learn Karate the Right Way!

To learn Karate or Taekwondo or Kenpo, or to learn any martial art, there are many different methods. Unfortunately, most training methods work in limited ways. There is one training tool, however, that can be used in any martial art, and drives the learning curve straight up the wall.


Most methods of learning, you see, rely on monkey see monkey do, which is pretty much the slowest and most inefficient, martial arts method in existence. The fastest and most up to date method for learning a martial art is by the science of matrixing. No offense, but if you live in some out of the way place and haven’t come across matrixing, you could probably do a quick google search on matrix karate, or matrix aikido, and find out what it is.

At any rate, there are some rather simple methods one can use if one decides to learn by Kung videos, learn taekwondo online, or whatever. The first method, though it is still of the monkey see monkey do variety, is to learn a form or martial arts kata. The learning curve starts to take off, however, when one realizes that they can practice the form facing in any of the four directions of the compass.

One faces in a certain direction when learning a form, maybe because they are watching a martial arts video, gets used to the direction, even uses key things in the environment to orient themselves. So to start facing north instead of south is actually a good thing. One quickly discards environmental cues and starts inputting the form without need for external reference points.

A second way to learn self defense forms is to simply do them on both the right and the left side. Everybody comes across this one pretty quickly. To do the Kung Fu forms, or the karate techniques on both the right side and the left side tends to ‘wake up the brain,’ and to make the student consider martial arts moves in new lights.

learn karate onlineThe third way of studying martial arts forms is to do the moves in reverse. Do your Karate kata backwards-not just the order of blocks and kicks and such in reverse order, but reverse motion the moves themselves-and the martial arts are quickly going to open up. Not many people have experienced this little trick, it is hard to do, but man…does it work!

Now, we have actually left most martial artists behind with the last thing we did, and that’s too bad, because things are about to come undone. Once one learns how to write a matrix on a martial art-be it karate or kung fu or whatever martial art they practice-they think they have opened up wide new horizons of martial arts. They have only scratched the hide of the monster, however, for there are two other things that one can do that are simple and yet have profound results.

First, one can put matrixes together; just as the matrixes use basic techniques to open up other techniques, one can use whole matrixes to open up other matrixes. Second, one can actually flip, or reverse, matrixes, and this one opens up the mind and causes massive amounts of data to unfold. Of course, one has to learn how to write a matrix first, and then do a few of them, but once they have done this they will be able to reverse the matrix and learn martial arts faster; they will be able to learn Karate or taekwondo or any martial art they want faster than Neo can play hop scotch.

Learn Martial Arts, learn Karate or Kenpo or whatever, by learning the fastest and most efficient training method in existence. Mouse to Monster Martial Arts.

This page has been about how to learn karate through the fastest and easiest methods known to man.

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.

Making the Right Karate Form

I was watching Karate on the youtube last night, and I was struck by how little people know about the correct form of the martial arts. Check out the vid snip right below, This is how I explain how you get good form, then continue with the article.

They turn their feet out at the wrong time, they separate their body into pieces, they do so many things that dissipate energy and lessen intention.
And I am not talking beginners here, I am talking about people with decades of experience.
Now, it wasn’t always that way. When I started the martial arts were fresh to the shores, and we bought everything we could, read everything we could, and were thirsty for day.
And, we thought about what we were learning.
What has happened that has destroyed the martial arts is the fanatic desire to have ritual.
If I do what teacher says, I don’t have to think, and then I will learn.
Do you see the corruption of logic here?
How can you learn if you don’t have to think?
Why do you think colleges are turning out people who can’t learn?
Because they memorize in ritual, instead of learning how to think.
Question, man, you have to have a question.
And not a questino as to the next piece of the sequence of the kata, but a question as to how it works, why it works, what’s the best (better) way to make it work.
Argh!
That’s all I can say, Argh!
Frustration for a society that prefers to go blind.
Well, the way to not go blind is to ask questions, demand answers, and not be satisfied with what you are taught.
I tell you this,
your teachers have already bought into it,
so be careful of your teachers.
If they can’t give you good reasons for what you are doing,
good scientific, sound, logical, technical reasons for why the form is constructed the way it is, the best way to make a technique work,
all the secondary techniques off the first technique, and so on,
then you are following the blind.
And, don’t believe me.
Check out my sites, see if I make sense, and then you will know whether my words here can be believed.
Monster Martial Arts is one site. Got oodles of stuff on it. Articles, courses, everything.
Or, check out Learn Karate Online. Got an actual free lesson or two on it.
Go on, see if I make sense.
I understand why people are leery of the net, there’s so much crap out there. It’s the same old same old. Well, I tell you, this is the brand new brand new, but you aren’t going to see it if you don’t take a look, and you won’t get it if you just shut your mind up and stop asking questions.

How to Train in the Iron Horse Form in Karate

Analyzing the Iron Horse Stance in Karate!

The Iron Horse Form is one of the best katas in Karate, and in all the Martial Arts. IT gives strength, power, energy, focus, and really makes you feel like you’re getting to the heart of the art. Here’s my version of it. Check it out, and then I’ll tell you more.

To practice this you should loop it and do it in sequence maybe ten times. Don’t do it just once, keep doing it.
Concentrate on the moment of focusing energy down, and letting yourself float sideways to the next position. Have the differences between these two things firmly in your mind.
Have a partner and mirror each other. Critique each other, and get lower and longer and more explosive. Be twins in motion and structure.
Practice just standing in the horse stance (called Kiba Dachi in Japanese). This is called Horse Meditation, and if you can hold the pose for just five minutes, you will have an immensely strong stance, and you will be generating tons of pure, raw power.
Above all, do it every day.
And, most important, look for applications,a nd practice those applications until you can make them work against anybody, and in situation or environment.
Remember, when you do the horse stance you are gripping the ground, enabling yourself to move over slick surfaces, and this could mean on wet grass, oily cement, or even through puddles of blood, and yet still hold your balance and footwork.
Drop by my site, Monster Martial Arts, and check out Temple Karate. I’ve got ten forms plus the one you see on this page, fully broken down and set for combat.