Winning with the Martial Arts

Newsletter 803
Make Your Day with a Martial Arts Win!

Great Afternoon!

I was teaching this morning,
and it is almost impossible to describe
how wonderful one feels
after sharing the martial arts.

Sharp,
quick,
strong,
happy.

Hey,
I thought I’d share a win.
I get wins all the time,
and if I’m a little busy,
so what…
I can still share a win,
right?

Before I do,
however,
google is figuring out
how to send newsletters into Spam folders.
So put me in your contacts,
or just go to
https://alcase.wordpress.com
and sign up.
The newsletters always end up there.

Now,
here comes a win from Jason W.

I’ve trained on two continents officially hold 1 black belt, and unofficially am that level in 2 others. I am currently working through the purple belt level in your Kang Duk Won course. I have to say that the workout is as tough as anything I did in Hapkido, but I am slowly getting there. The KDW material is filling in all the holes I had in my training. It’s really amazing how much stuff the instructors leave out or don’t even know. About a year ago I was at the place where you started in developing matrixing. I was looking for ways to bridge all my training into a logical system apart from the individual styles. I am lucky I found your site. I saved myself about 40 years of headaches! Just keep up the good work.

Thanks, Jason.
I appreciate kind words,
I love your win.

Jason is doing the course at
KangDukWon.com.

I wrote it in attempt
to keep alive all the material
I learned at the original Kang Duk Won.

So,
have a win,
and share the arts,
and if you have a win,
send it in.

If you want to beat the blues,
read the wins.

Okley donkley,

you guys have a GREAT work out,
and I’ll talk to you later.

Al

KangDukWon.com

And don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter at
https://alcase.wordpress.com

http://www.amazon.com/Matrixing-Tong-Bei-Internal-Gung/dp/1507869290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423678613&sr=8-1&keywords=tong+bei

The Difference Between Tai Chi Chuan and Karate

Tai Chi Chuan vs Karate

One of my work out partners,
way back in the Kang Duk Won,
decided he was going to do Tai Chi Chuan.
He figured it would be easy,
because of his karate conditioning.
He threw his back out so badly
it took him two years to recover.

Soft, flowing Tai Chi Chuan,
and it was too tough for a young karate guy.
What’s wrong with that picture, eh?

What is wrong is simple,
when Bruce, my friend,
did Tai Chi he thought he could just do a karate kick slowly.
But karate is fast and explosive,
the leg is out and back,
in Tai Chi the muscles have to strain to keep the leg up.
And I mean a whole sequence of muscles.
Bruce’s muscles,
though karate powerful,
couldn’t support the leg for an extended period of time,
and the result of his attempting to do such a thing
disrupted the muscles
all the way back to the spine..

Now isn’t that interesting,
tai chi chuan has more ‘weight lifting’
in its moves.
Karate has the fast explosion,
and the muscle tightening (focus)
builds the muscles.
But those muscles are built
at the beginning and end of the move.
In Tai Chi the muscles must support the weight,
throughout the move,
for a long(er) period of time.

A simple difference,
but it leads to an important concept.

Karate is explosive energy.
Tai Chi is suspended energy.

The difference manifests in movements,
in timing,
in focus of concentration,
in emptiness,
in energy.

Now we could actually analyze these differences
from different points of view.
But what I’ve said here is probably the best point to start.

Not speed,
not sensitivity,
though those are important,
but defining how energy is actually used.
Because how energy is used
defines the other terms.
This concept is core.

This is not to discourage you from trying,
but to caution you,
and help you make the transition.

If you do your karate forms slowly,
and round out the edges of your motion,
you can get Tai Chi power.
Just take it easy when you begin.

If you do your Tai Chi forms fast,
you can find Karate power,
and pretty easily.
But you do have to adapt to a different mind set.

Explosive and slow
two sides to a coin,
two sides to the martial arts.
And there are many more sides that these concepts can lead to.

Here’s the link to the Five Army Tai Chi Chuan course.

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/five-army-tai-chi-chuan/

Have a great work out!
Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/five-army-tai-chi-chuan/

http://www.amazon.com/Matrixing-Tong-Bei-Internal-Gung/dp/1507869290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423678613&sr=8-1&keywords=tong+bei

New Pan Gai Noon Black Belt!

The Value of Pan Gai Noon

Good morning!
Hmm, afternoon.
Well, good whatever.
It’s easy to lose track of time,
you just sink yourself into a work out and
zingo bingo,
where did the time go.

Before we talk, I want to announce
Will Stockinger!

Will completed studies on Pan Gai Noon.
I think he might be the first
Pan Gai Noon black belt
I’ve awarded.
He’s been sending me videos for a while now,
and he made it look good on the videos.
So well done Will!

A word about the PGN.
Karate is my base art,
I collected a lot of systems over the years.
As I went through these systems
I began to understand certain things
about how Karate evolved.
I understood these things
not from people writing about them,
but from doing the forms myself,
and feeling the changes.
Mind you,
there were a lot of holes,
but Matrixing enables one to find
and fill up the holes in a martial art.
Anyway,
long ago I came across the saying,
that if you don’t know sanchin
you don’t know karate.
And it’s true.

Once I realized this I began to research sanchin.
I collected the various forms of it,
and I realized something:
Uechi Ryu sanchin is for dynamic tension.
Goju sanchin is for breathing.
Shotokan sanchin is for technique.
As you can see,
this represents how sanchin developed from China.
And I began to wonder,
what sanchin looked like in Pan Gai Noon.
But I couldn’t find much on it.
So I relied on matrixing principles,
and set the thing to concepts
which are in buddhist belief systems,
and I wasn’t doing sanchin as a karate form any longer.
Yes, there was still the pop and power,
but there was also flow and emptiness,
and this made the form different in a lot of ways,
opened my eyes to a lot of different concepts.

One of the things I realized
is that you don’t need people to pound on you
to make your form work.
You need gentle pressure
that will make the chi in your body respond.
Pounding doesn’t make the chi work,
it makes the muscles work.
But if you do body testing
the way I describe in
The Master’s Handbook,
then it is different,
and the form is different,
and,
here’s something interesting,
the techniques become different,
and you start to see a logic of technique
that I haven’t see in any other art.
The techniques flow,
and there is a progression of technique
that is startlingly matrix-like.

So these old guys,
back in China,
had designed a system over the decades
and centuries,
that described a closed combat system
that had an inherently matrix-like
progression of techniques.

Mind you,
the student wouldn’t see it,
it’s hidden in the form.
But if you do it long enough,
then it sort of pops at you,
and you start doing the principles of the martial arts,
and not just the techniques.

So that is how I structured
my Pan Gai Noon.
to represent the principles,
to establish the more matrix-like
progression of techniques.

And I wrote about this
in a variety of places.
The Matrixing Chi book
uses Sanchin as the starting point
for developing chi.

I’ve also done a video course,
which is available as part of
‘Evolution of an Art,’
at Monster.
I think this is the only place
where I’ve recorded Sanseirui.

Then there is the book
‘Pan Gai Noon.’
I think it is based on the course book,
with a few things added.

And,
there are lots of places
where I’ve touched upon the art,
written articles about it,
and so on.
Here is one of the best…

http://monstermartialarts.com/three-secrets-pan-gai-noon-karatekung-fu/

So there is a lot of things you can do
to examine my work,
and make up your own mind.

At any rate,
I do consider Sanchin,
and the other two forms,
seisan and sanseirui,
as extremely important.

Okay,
if you’re interested,
I recommend the Evolution of an Art course,
it’s got three arts in it,
Pan Gai Noon, Kang Duk Won, Kwon Bup.
That’s three books,
and three sets of video tapes,
for the price of one course.
And the books on those courses,
are also in the books I’ve
put upon Amazon.

Here’s the link
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/evolution-of-a-martial-art/

And,
that all said,
oinkly donkey
time to move on.

Again,
congrats to Will,
thanks for your hard work.
Yours is an amazing journey.

And,
to everyone…
HAVE A GREAT WORK OUT!

Al

PS
Have a great Superbowl sunday!
And don’t forget to work out
after you pig out!

Five Martial Arts Books Written over Twenty Years Make an Encyclopedia

I Wrote an Encyclopedia of Martial Arts

There are five books in the Martial Arts encyclopedia, and they cover Karate from China to America, from the first transmutations of Kung Fu to the latest scientific innovations.

Pan Gai Noon, is on of the more important Chinese Arts that influenced Karate

Kang Duk Won is a pure form of Karate before the Japanese went power crazy on it.

Kwon Bup is an American version, very powerful and straight forward.

Outlaw Karate is the record of my attempts to create a style of Karate that could be done in one year. A black belt in one year really is a heady concept.

And the last book, Buddha Crane Karate, begins going into matrixing concepts.

I haven’t listed as an encyclopedia (though I did at one time), and that is because these five books were written over a twenty year period. They have different software programs, different technologies, and, taken together, they are ragged. So I list them as separate books, but they are an encyclopedia of Martial Arts. They are all technique, not a lot of words, just the actual moves.

You can find the Encyclopedia of Martial Arts on this page.

http://alcasebooks.com/martial-arts-books-2/encyclopedia/

Outlaw Karate Training Book Released!

The Release of Outlaw Karate

Time for a March work out!
Everyday
all March
when April comes
you will just laugh.
Guaranteed.
You’ll be powerful,
strong,
light on your feet,
and having so much fun…
you’ll be laughing.

I’m releasing the Outlaw Karate book on Amazon.
So let me tell you about Outlaw Karate.

My son came to me,
he was around 16,
and he said,
‘Dad,
I want to learn Karate.’

There is a particular joy
about passing the art
down to one’s own flesh and blood.

It continues the saga of enlightenment,
and improves the race
on a VERY personal level.

So I told him to get a partner.
He got his friend Josh.
Then Mike called me up,
one of the first guys I taught in Los Angeles,
and he was actually mad at me.

“What do you mean having a class
and not letting me know?”
And he brought his son, Tracey.

Then a guy called me out of the blue,
asked if I taught Karate.
Hmm.
So I gave him directions to my house.
Then,
the very first night,
Charles knocked on the door.
He had been one of my models
for one of my early videos.
He had just dropped by to see what was up.
He looked past me
at the guys stretching.
He didn’t even ask me,
just said,
‘Oh,
you’re teaching again.’
And he walked past me and took his place.
‘I knew there was a reason I wore my gi today.’
And he laughed.

So,
out of the blue,
odd,
not a plan,
but it was started,
and here is the thing…
have you ever had a class
where not one single person
missed a class
for an entire year?

UnFINGbelievable.
And,
I have to say,
I was a bit inspired.
I was absolutely and delightfully brutal.
Toughest class I ever taught.
If somebody didn’t punch hard enough,
I stepped in and knocked somebody up against a wall.
‘Not hard,’
I would say,
‘but thorough.’
Don’t damage,
but make sure you push him hard enough
so that your punch will work!’

If a throw didn’t work,
I would step in
and bounce somebody’s body on the floor.
‘Merge with the planet!’
I would say.
And I would grin.

And,
the class responded.
Mike had broken fingers for a solid year.
Every time they started to heal,
somebody would break them again.
I just laughed and said,
‘you’d better learn when
to keep your fists closed.’

Tracey ended up crying almost every night.
He hates it when I tell this story,
but we broke the little boy
and ended up with a man.

Somebody,
don’t know who,
cracked my son’s sternum.
Got an X ray
and it was actually chunked in
about the size of a knuckle.
Doctor said,
‘No more Karate.’
Aaron ignored him,
told me to go shove it
when I tried to keep him out of class,
and continued.

Everybody was hurt,
injured,
beaten,
and grinning.

I always remember the night
Josh had had enough,
he actually turned around,
ran out the door,
and ran up the street,
tears streaming from his eyes.

He was back for the next class.

The weirdest thing I ever experienced
during that year,
was when working with my son,
I would look at his body,
and think,
I’m doing this with my own body.
Really freaked me out.

And,
lots of things happened
to the guys because of that year.

Josh went to a party,
a riot started,
and he positioned himself,
and stood there
in the middle of a total riot,
and nobody attacked him.
Nobody came at him.
Everybody left him alone.
They just looked at him,
solid,
capable,
in control,
level eyed,
and they went away.
He became a rock star,
was in several bands around the LA area.
Said he loved to pound the drums,
reminded him of Karate,
and that Karate inspired him.

Aaron,
he was on his way to work one day
and he got jumped by two muggers.
He knocked one to the ground
and totally one.
One punch.
Then turned and kicked the other one so hard
that he flew through the air
and hit a parking meter
and bent the pole.

All the guys had something weird and wacky happen to them.
Five of them made it to Black Belt.
Charles was already past Black Belt
from his previous studies with me,
so it didn’t matter with him.
He was just there for the class,
anyway.

You could probably find things about Outlaw Karate
if you searched my blog.
Some rewrites of this,
some other stuff.

Outlaw Karate was a combination of arts.
I took Kang Duk Won
and Kwon Bup,
and I threw out the repeat techniques.
I boiled the forms down to six,
very simple,
direct to technique
patterns.
And,
here’s the thing,
this happened about 1991.
I had written most of the graphs for Matrixing,
I had sorted through hundreds of arts,
looking for the best stuff.
Inside Karate had asked me to write a column for them,
simply because they liked all my articles.
They liked the way I phrased things,
gave things the earthy feel,
and communicated to the individual.

So I was on the edge.
It was still a few years,
but Outlaw Karate
was the toughest Karate I ever did.
And it was sleek and powerful,
and there was no fat,
just brute, raw power.

Most important,
it was probably the ‘spring board’
to matrixing.
Right after that,
I put together the perfect forms of Matrix Karate,
and evolved the art.

But I had to get down and dirty,
roll in the mud and the blood and the beer,
so to speak,
to evolve out of what everybody thought
Karate is supposed to be.

I named the system Outlaw
not because of all the Hells Angels and other bikers
I trained with back at the Kang Duk Won,
but because I was going outside
what people thought Karate was.

So,
that’s the story.
And,
I am releasing,
officially,
the book I wrote on Outlaw Karate.
Includes all the forms and techniques.

It was previously only available in PDF
with the Outlaw Course
at the Monster.

It’s right here on Amazon at…

http://www.amazon.com/Outlaw-Karate-Secret-Ultimate-Encyclopedia/dp/1496049527/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393865022&sr=8-1&keywords=outlaw+karate

Check it out,
and have a great work out!
Al

Staying Young and Fixing Pain with the Martial Arts

Get Rid of Injuries, Get Young, All with the Martial Arts!

no matter when you open this,
stop everything you’re doing and work out!
Better than vitamins and pain killers.
Better than a trip to the doctor…
or even a sharp stick in the eye!

Okay,
I want to tell you how to achieve eternal youth,
how to cure yourself of any illness,
and all through the Martial Arts.

The idea and inspiration for this newsletter came from Terry S.
Thanks, Terry.

Terry sent me an email,
and in it was a notion I have come across before
and which I had entertained.
Getting older,
feeling the aches and pains,
feeling the stiffness,
and…here it comes…
giving up the hard martial arts and doing the soft martial arts.

This is actually pretty significant,
if you’re a hard martial artist,
it is REALLY difficult to give up your love.
So here is my email back to Terry,
with a thanks for making me think over this stuff…

Now, shelving hard arts. Nay! Don’t do it.
I once didn’t do Karate for a long while, and I missed it so much, and I did lots of tai chi and pau kua, but…I wanted my Karate!
So I started thinking about old zen sayings, stories of various masters, and lots of other things. And, I really went neutronic on the thing.
Now, one of the reasons I gave up Karate was because I was getting massive headaches. I don’t get headaches, and I knew I was throwing more power and my body was getting older, and I was literally giving myself whiplash.
Now, first solution, make the body stronger. But I don’t feel like doing that sort of physical exercise. nothing against it, but it was taking me in a direction I didn’t want to go in. I wanted intention, spiritual oomph, not muscles.
So, conclusion, do Karate without muscles.
First I started doing all my forms tai chi style, and, you know, it actually worked!
But, there were all sorts of problems. Tai Chi relies on what I call ‘suspended energy,’ you hold the arms up, the legs, and so on. This actually hurt my back, and various other body parts. The reason was because I thought I could hold the stances because of all my karate. But karate develops ‘explosive energy,’ and though the muscles develop accordingly, they are not prepared for suspended energy.
So I tried different things to adapt the stances, change the forms, all sorts of things, going through all my forms.
In the end, tai chi is better for tai chi, but I found some interesting ways to practice karate ‘tai chi style,’ without losing the karate oomph.
First, don’t lock the whole body when focusing. Focus only the fist. Keep the rest of the body loose, make sure there is a line from the earth to the fist (or through the block); have somebody push on your fist (or block) and channel to the ground. The person must know how to push so the energy travels without wiggling, and so the person being pushed on can correct with small motions. If you have to correct with large motions against the push then you are out of alignment before you have even started.
Now, doing it this way, I found that I could move faster and faster, didn’t get the blinding headaches, and could do karate full speed.
And, this led me to something quite interesting…doing your martial arts without ‘mass.’ Energy has a certain mass. So instead of running energy, and creating mass, I was moving the body empty, and that’s why I was picking up speed when I should have been slowing down because of age, injuries, and so on.
This became handy as a way to handle injuries, incidentally.
And, I thought about things zen and what old masters said, and having the pliability of a child, and being innocent, and all that sort of thing, and I have seen two year olds crawl like maniacs through small spaces, run bent kneed under tables, and laugh and never get tired.
Why?
Because they are moving without mass. They haven’t learned how to use muscles, and are not putting all sorts of attention on ‘hard’ modes of operating the body.
Then I started getting younger.
I watched people I have grown old with, watched them as they went to walkers and oxygen canisters and even motorized wheel chairs.
I could probably run a marathon right now. The other day I was sprinting full tilt across a field playing with my dog.
Old people, my age people, were watching, and I could feel the amazement in them. What the…how is Al doing that? Why isn’t he using a walker/oxygen canister/motorized wheel chair?
Because I figured out, logically, that to be young you just have to take the mass out of your body, the locked up energy, the considerations that you are old and ready to dodder around.
Anyway, I don’t mean to rant, and I really should put some of these things down in a newsletter, so I think I will.
Thanks for the idea, and good luck figuring out how to do TKD masslessly. Let me know of your progress, and share any wins or probs with me. Maybe you can help me figure out more stuff.
Have a GREAT work out!
Al

So,
there is the email,
with a few spelling errors I made fixed up.

If you do the martial arts masslessly,
your body doesn’t lock up energy,
doesn’t become inflexible,
retains muscle
(on retaining muscle,
you’d think you wouldn’t,
but you do.
I guess that even moving masslessly the body has to work,
you just don’t know it).

The end result of moving in this fashion
is greater health,
injuries start to go away,
the body fixes itself,

It’s like getting the benefit of Tai Chi for health,
but without the new age stuff…
you do it while retaining combat practicality.
In fact,
your combat practicality increases.

Now,
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention something.
Matrixing.
Look,
it is a decision,
this whole thing is a concept in the mind,
but you have to do the martial arts
to a point where you have discipline and awareness,
then you use the discipline to channel the awareness,
then you have the spiritual oomph to make a real decision.

It takes a fair amount of awareness
to truly move the body without mass,
let alone make a decision of that sort.

So,
Matrixing will align your form,
make it more efficient,
and enable you to get discipline and awareness
MUCH faster.

That all said,
if you want more data on healing the body,
go to Neutronic Healing.

If you want more data on Matrixing,
go to Matrix Karate,
it’s the first course on Matrixing.
Shows how to make the matrixing graphs,
gives you ALL sorts of data
about matrixing,
along with a complete karate system
you can use as a template to matrix ANY martial art.

Okay,
Have a great work out!

Al

PS
I lost all addresses and records in my recent computer crash.
That means I lost a lot of data on how to guide people through matrixing,
catch duplicate orders,
and so on.
I apologize,
but you can always write me with any question or concern.
aganzul@gmail.com

Bak Mei Will Kill You, Dog!

Five Volume Technical History of Karate!

Funny thing, I was putting Martial Arts books up on Kindle, and I realized that I had a history going on. Here is the way the history works.

1. Vol one Pan Gai Noon
2. Vol two Kang Duk Won
3. Vol three Kwon Bup
4. Vol four Outlaw Karate
5. Vol five Buddha Crane Karate

Do you know this Okinawan Karate Master?

Now, the first volume deals with martial arts in China that went to Okinawa. This is where the Bak Mei of the title of this blog comes in. He was supposed to be a renegade priest from the Shaolin Temple. Started his own style, and even killed a bunch of Shaolin priests. Supposedly. Anyway, he is big in fiction, go look at Kill Bill part two and Gordon Lui plays the nefarious Bak Mei. Or White Eyebrow, as the name translates. Anyway, this volume is not about Bak Mei, but about Pan Gai Noon, which may have come from Bak Mei.

The second volume deals with the Kang Duk Won. This is Karate as it was taught before it left for Japan. This is the style as it was taught to Funakoshi before he took it too Japan. Very interesting to see the differences, and, i have to say, this is where the internal power comes in. If I had studied Shotokan, or one of the Japanese styles that have been altered for tournaments and such I would not be able to put out a candle from a foot or so away with a punch.

The third volume deals with Kwon Bup. Kwon Bup is Karate after it came from Japan to the US. Specifically, it is the art developed by the only man in America to have ever mastered the one finger trick. The one finger trick is when you thrust your finger into a board and don’t break it, but, rather, leave a hole. True.

Did he help Karate? Or hurt it?

The fourth volume, Outlaw Karate, is my attempt to separate the two arts of Kang Duk Won and Kwon Bup, which were taught to me at the same time, and to recombine them into a more powerful and smoother art. It is the first time I ever taught a black belt in one year, and it led me to a tremendous bunch of realizations, all of which brought me to Matrixing.

The fifth volume is called Buddha Crane Karate. It was actually bundled in with my Create Your Own Art course, as it is a perfect example of how to create your own martial art.

Now, that is the history, and a sampling of the arts it took to come up with Matrixing. I say sampling because before I came up with Matrixing I learned every form and technique from Shotokan, Isshin Ryu, Shito Ryu, Goju Ryu, and Uechi Ryu. And, I learned a lot of other forms from other styles of Karate. And I studied Aikido and Wing Chun. And  northern and southern shaolin. And many styles of tai chi chuan and pa kua chang. And I studied weapons, usually from Japan or Indonesia. And so on.

So, I did my homework, for those who think I am a dabbler, a get rich quick schemer, or some other nefarious sludge.

And, I left written records so that people could understand things about what I studied, how I studied, how I was effected, and how I actually managed to come up with some of the martial arts courses I offer.

Look, to be honest, mine is probably the largest and most comprehensive study of martial arts in history. And I say this because I was able to avail myself of things the ancients didn’t have. Magazines, books, VHS and other video formats, and, of course, computers.

Now, I have no doubt that others will be able to study more, the internet is growing after all, but I lived in unique times, when the information blossomed, but was still caught in something called ‘Closed Combat Systems,’ which means that the information of the martial arts systems hadn’t been muddied and confused by other systems, but was still in a relatively pure state.

And that’s the story behind my five volume technical (the books show forms and techniques, not a bunch of yak) History of Matrix Karate.

After one has done Matrix Karate, they should look into the history, examine the classical influences, and expand themselves.

Or, if one has no interest in matrixing, but is just eager and anxious to explore as many martial arts as possible, the five volume History of Matrix Karate is on Amazon on Kindle. don’t know where, exactly, but a little googling and you’ll find them.

Have a great day.

The Meanest Taekwondo Kicks You Can Ever Develop!

Want Hard Kicks?

Out of all the great kicks I have ever witnessed, and this includes all my practice in Karate, Taekwondo and Kenpo, the ones Ted launched were the best. This was back a ways, back in the last century, and training methods were just becoming known. And the things we did were often extreme, to say the least.

Practicing Kicking in 1974.

We often didn’t have hanging bags, so we would kick mailboxes and telephone poles and whatever else came to foot. The crucial item to this, however, was good form, and the number of times you threw a foot while practicing. I tell you the truth when I say that how much you practiced was the key to it all.

Ted was known for throwing lots of kicks. Most of the budding kenpoka would throw a dozen kicks each side, not all the kicks, and consider that they were breaking a sweat, so they must have really worked out. Do you understand?

Ted would saunter into the dojo a couple of hours before class and begin work. He would start with yoga, do a full regimen of stretching, and then he would start his work out. Two hundred kicks for each side for each particular kick.

I know what you’re thinking, they were only airkicks, right? Nada. He would start with air, move into bag work, and by the end of his workout he was really pounding those bozos.

Most important was his attention to detail. He was obsessed with his hips being just right, the arc of his foot being perfect, and the shape of his foot upon impact. He was a perfectionist, to say the least.

One day he was driving home, got behind somebody sleeping at a stoplight, and he tooted his horn. This big, huge, monster got out of the car and stomped back towards Ted. Ted stepped out, raised his hands for peace (a perfect ready position in the martial arts), and tried to move back.

The monster drew back a gnarly fist and started to punch. Ted launched a rather perfect and speedy wheel kick to the chest. The bully sat down on the asphalt and stared up in shock.

“I don’t want to do this, man!” But the bully got up and charged. Ted executed a perfectly arced, full hipped, ball of foot wheel kick to the man’s chest.

The fellow collapsed to the ground, and Ted got into his Ford and drove off. And the message here is pretty easy to get. No matter which art you do, Karate, Kenpo or Taekwondo or whatever, pay attention to detail, and practice like you mean it.