What Really Happens When You Hit Somebody

Newsletter 699
The Science Fiction of Hitting People

Good morning!
Lard,
newsletter 699!
That’s almost 700 times
I’ve told you to workout!
Well,
it’s an advice
that is worth the repetition.

Okay, I was reading a collection of sic fi shorts one day,
this was when I was a teenager,
long time ago,
and one story really hit me.

A space ranger has followed a criminal
to a small planet.
There’s nothing on the planet,
more like a large asteroid,
just all bare,
with a couple of boulders here and there.

So the space ranger and the criminal
they get in this gun fight.
And they are shooting away,
and suddenly,
a bullet hits the rock
right next to the ranger.

He spins around,
thinks somebody is behind him.
But there’s nobody,
and then he realizes what has happened.

He shot at the criminal, and missed,
and the bullet went all the way around the planet,
and almost hit him.

The gravity of the planet is just enough,
that bullets don’t fall,
they go into orbit at three feet off the ground,
and they take three or four seconds
to go around the whole planet.

Now,
he’s got one bullet left,
and the criminal knows it,
so he tries a desperate gamble.
He lines up the boulders
he and the criminal are hiding behind,
and shoots directly away from the criminal,
not towards the criminal,
but directly away.

The criminal hears the last shot,
it doesn’t come anywhere near him
and he jumps to his feet to charge,
and the bullet hits him right smack square in the back.
It had traveled around the planet.

Now,
what does this fantastic tale
have to do with the martial arts?

Well,
I realized,
as soon as I read that story,
what it meant.
It meant that if you do something bad,
it will travel all the way around the universe,
and hit you right in the middle of the back.

Karma,
baby.
Payback.
What goes around comes around.
literally.

The thing is this:
You create your life.
If you treat people meanly,
then you will be treated meanly.
If you treat people fairly,
guaranteed,
people will treat you fairly.

Those guys who worked in concentration camps?
They may not know why their lives suck,
this lifetime,
but it is their own doing.

And that guy who lives fat and sassy?
He treats people fairly,
makes sure he pays his workers enough.

Want to know something funny?
I knew this girl who ran a big company.
and the company was a big, fat, rich success.
And I asked her daughter once,
what her mother’s biggest problem
in running this company.

You’d think it would be people who quit,
arguments in the mail room,
a fight or affair,
or something like that.

Nope.
Her biggest problem was remembering when birthdays were.
She was always checking her books,
making sure she didn’t forget a birthday,
a chance to send flowers,
a walk down to shipping and a pat on the back
for a job well done…
and what could she do for her worker?

Do you see how it works?
And it starts with the martial arts.
You learn to fight,
and start choosing not to fight,
and you become aware of compassion,
and the chance to treat people right.

And what’s the alternative?
Being mean.
Treating people badly,
and then wondering why you are always having problems,
man,
its almost like somebody was shooting you in the back.

Don’t turn around, man.
Just look in a mirror.

Oinkley donkey.
I need you to check out this page…

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/yogata-the-yoga-kata/

You’ve been good,
so it is time to reap the rewards.
Good health,
freedom from injury,
rehabilitation,
best warm up or cool down
in the existence of the martial arts,
in the history of man,
in the history of warm ups and cool down.

And,
past that,
have a great workout!

Al

Hitting Harder in the Martial Arts!

How to Hit Harder in the Martial Arts!

I had an interesting question today
this from a person who didn’t study the martial arts
He asked me
“How do you break those bricks and boards
and not end up with arthritis
in your hands?”

Good question, eh?
The reason
I told him
is that it is not how hard you hit,
it is hitting gently
and letting the power accumulate
over the years.

I remember my brother
back when Karate first hit the news,
punching a telephone pole
to make his hands tough.
He ended up with bruised and bleeding knuckles
that hurt for months.
And,
sorry to say,
there are schools of martial arts
that do that type of training
to this day.
They believe in
‘no pain no gain,’
which is one of the worst sayings ever.

Look,
pain is a warning,
a signal that you are in danger
that you might get hurt.
You don’t ignore pain.
You learn to edge it,
to use it,
but you never deliberately hurt yourself.
That’s like printing
‘stupid’
on your forehead.

But,
you put up a makiwara,
you tack some rug pads to a tree,
you hang a heavy bag,
and you hit it not hard,
but softly,
gently,
just hard enough to feel it.
Then you don’t bruise your knuckles,
you make your whole arm strong
working out day after day.

You don’t change your body…
you change the way you think about the universe.

And,
that leads us to the second part of this thing.
There are three depths for striking.
Skin deep,
muscle deep,
bone deep.

To hit the skin never causes a bruise.
It pulls the punch,
and you can strike as hard as you want
nobody gets hurt.

BUT…your punches don’t develop real power.

So you punch a little harder, to the muscle.
This can cause a bruise,
so you have to learn how to tighten your muscles,
or,
how to hit just barely hard enough
to rock the muscle
but not bruise it.

This needs a high degree of control,
but you know what I say,

there is an art to destruction,
but the true art is in control.

Now,
the third depth of striking
is to strike to the bone.
This causes bruises every time,
and puts the bones at risk.
You can,
with a little practice
break bones pretty easily.

This depth of striking
takes a lot of awareness,
not a lot of mindless bashing,
but a lot of concentration
and focus,
and awareness of what,
exactly,
you are hitting.

There’s a great book,
‘Iron and Silk’
by Mark Saltzman.
Got made into a movie.
Guy goes to China and learns Kung Fu.
Well,
the guy who taught him
was famous,
was in movies,
and one of his training regimens was
to strike a piece of metal 2000 times a day.
He would just walk around
holding a little plate of metal,
and punch it.

When they shot the movie
they asked him to hit the plate,
and he did,
and the sound of his knuckles striking metal
made everybody sick.
They had to dub in the sound.

Now,
that is a punch
developed over time.
When you see the movie you realize
he is not hitting the plate hard,
just doing it
over and over and over,
and,
a couple of decades,
and the mere sound of that punch,
makes people sick.

Now,
go read the book,
rent the movie,
really fascinating stuff.

Okay,
so are you working out a lot?
Do you have a sheet of paper hanging on your bedroom door,
so you can see it every day?
Or taped to the mirror in your bathroom,
reminding you to work out?

Think about this punching thing,
about the three levels of striking,
and where you want to be in your martial arts.
Not tomorrow,
but in a couple of decades.

Go on,
make a plan,
stick to it,
and answer the question that guy asked me.

And,
that said,
if you have books on the martial arts,
feel free to donate them to Monkeyland.
My email is aganzul@gmail.com.
Check your shelves out
maybe you have an old Bruce Tegner book,
or a DVD that you are no longer interested in,
send me an email,
and I’ll send you my address up here.

And,
sorry to say,
but you
will even have to spring for the postage.
We just don’t have the cash up here.
But,
the idea is to have
the greatest martial arts library in the world.
So if you have anything to contribute,
it would be appreciated.
Some day in the near future
I’ll make a list of books
we have in the library.

But,
wouldn’t it be great
for people to come up
and not just learn the best martial arts in the world,
but to have access to EVERY single other martial art?
To be able to do research into other martial arts?

Now,
that’s about all this week.
Check out this URL

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/3a-blinding-steel-matrixing-weapons/

And have a GREAT work out!

Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/3a-blinding-steel-matrixing-weapons/

Monster Newsletter #306–Happy Memory Day!

Happy Memorial Day!
It’s gonna be a good one,
you know?
A day off means more chances to work out…
and that means
more chances to makes the world right.

And,
speaking of making the world right…
this last week
Inside Kung Fu did a photo shoot with me.
That’s right,
gonna get an article on me.
Yippee!

Now,
they wanted to do it on Five Army Tai Chi.
Isn’t that interesting?
All the arts I’ve studied,
the matrixing I’ve done,
the Neutronics I’ve developed,
and they wanted to specialize on one art.

Well,
that’s okay.
Fame happens one step at a time,
and even if the article only looks at one area,
a lot of people will be exposed to Matrixing.
Enlightenment happens one step at a time.

But,
that all said,
I thought it would be interesting to turn back the pages a bit.
I’m always pushing Matrixing,
and I talk about the whole picture,
but I don’t usually go into the whole picture.
So let me do that.

One of my first matrixing realizations
had to do with the potentials of four different arts.
A block from karate could be slanted
to become a block in kung.
And the block in kung fu,
if worked a bit with footwork,
could become an aikido move,
and that cold become a tai chi move.

Now,
you’ve all seen the commonality.
Many people write to me about that concept
and how matrixing takes it and finally explores it
and shows the truth of it.
But the original concept for me,
came from aligning the following four arts,
karate,
wing chun
aikido
tai chi.

Weird mix,
eh?
And,
I did pretty good with it.
Lot of mistakes,
but a lot of doors opened,
doors of perception,
and I explored an amazing variety of potentials.
Mixing this art with that,
that art with this,
and nothing seemed to work,
and,
finally,
I laid out thousands of cards on my living room floor,
all the techniques I knew,
and,
somehow,
I made the F’er work.

That weekend,
that headache,
enough techniques from enough arts,
and it all resolved.
I finally saw the whole picture.
And I immediately went to bed.
My head hurt that much.
Figuring it out had blown so many brain cells,
had blown out so many mental circuits,
there wasn’t much I could do
but pass out.

And I think I fell into a slot of time.
I don’t think anybody else will figure Matrixing out.
The changes in communications,
from reading to movies to VHS to computers…
but I might be wrong.
In a way,
I actually hope I would be wrong.
I mean,
some enterprising fellow,
who actually stumbled across the exact right question,
and all the data available on the internet,
youtube examples of forms and techniques..
heck,
maybe the next guy will far surpass me.
I would hope so.

But,
regardless,
the martial arts are a geometry.
Karate tries for a straight line.
Kung Fu tries for an arc.
Aikido tries for a full circle.
Tai Chi tries for a full circle, but compresses it.

And,
though I have described the geometry adequately,
it is so inadequate.
My words are so inadequate.
There is just so much to the martial arts…

Anyway,
the reason I offer the core package
is because it represents matrixing
for the whole martial arts.
Hard (karate)
to soft (Aikido)
with the in between arcs of Kung Fu
and the overview of the exact and accurate physics of the martial arts
(the master instructor course)

And,
if you don’t like those arts,
the kung fu package
does the same thing,
but from an entirely different viewpoint.

And,
the funny thing is,
I’ve done the same exact things
for the weapons package.

There’s lots of ways to teach matrixing,
to lay out the geometry and physics
of the entire martial arts.
But,
though you become matrixed from the get go,
you really need all the courses.
You need the whole picture.

I don’t usually push it,
or explain it,
though,
because I don’t want to scare people off.

Yeah,
some people look at the whole thing
and get freaked.
There’s too much.

But,
I always have a few people
who simply get one course a month.
Go right through the whole thing,
and that is a great way to do it.

The money doesn’t become too much,
you have time to work on the material
of each course,
works out pretty good.

Huh,
I was just thinking…
does anybody remember my first selling gimmick?
I actually advertised the courses for a dollar a disk,
and then,
when people came to the website,
I explained that there would be ten dollars S & H,
Hah!
Funny thing is,
nobody ever got upset.
They just grinned,
thought it was pretty funny,
even got a lot of orders.

I mean,
a dollar a disk,
that was just too good to be true,
and they didn’t mind the joke.

Anyway,
ten bucks a disk
ain’t too bad.
But that old selling gimmick I came up with,
it makes me laugh.
All my mistakes aren’t criers,
some of them are laughers.

Anyway,
Here’s the link,
get you started,
two DVDs
164 page book on CD,
and you can take any art you study,
and plug it into the template
that I offer.

Monster Martial Arts

Even if you study kung fu,
or wudan,
or that esoteric and rare almost forgotten but not quite lost version
of the Shaolin Golden Duck…
it will make a different and totally logical sense
once you plug it into the Matrixing.

You guys and gals have a great weekend,
and don’t forget to hoist an adult beverage to me and mine,
and I will do the same for you.
And,
if you’re kid…make it a soft drink.
Heh.

Have a great work out!
Al

:o)

This is one of my favorite techniques, took it rom Pinan Five.
The Deadly Power Punch Technique From Korean Karate!
Leave a comment if you can, it helps my statistics.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
Mohandas Gandhi

The Toughest Karate Master In The World!

While there have been many fantastic karate masters, only Mas Oyama can honestly lay claim to being the toughest karate master of all time. This is most interesting, because Karate came from China, was born on Okinawa, and migrated to Japan, which became the ‘Land of Karate.’ Mas Oyama, (birth name–Choi Yeong-eui), however, was not from any of those countries, but was born Korean.

Mas was born into Japanese occupied Korea in 1923. He took his first lesson from a Chinese migrant worker named Lee when he was 9 years old, he was told to plant a seed, and to practice jumping over it as it sprouted. It is said he could jump fantastic heights because of this.

After World War II Mas lived in Japan, where he was ostracized for being Korean. In 1946 he enrolled in Waseda University and took instruction from the second son of Gichin Funakoshi in Karate. Because of his Korean status he trained in solitude, and many would claim this solitary lifestyle would keep him dedicated and free of distractions, and enable him to achieve a very pure and high level of Karate.

From Waseda University he went to Takushoku University, and from the son he went to the father, for at Takushoku he studied with the father of modern day karate, Gichin Funakoshi. After shotokan he moved to Goju Ryu, studying with Chojun Miyagi. He was eventually promoted to 8th dan in that system by Gogen Yamaguchi.

During this time Mas Oyama picked fights with anybody and everybody, specializing in fighting the US military police. He was in so many fights that his picture was on virtually every police station wall. Eventually, and probably because of his notoriety, he was advised by a friend, Mr. Neichu So, to retreat to the mountains and live a life of seclusion and hard training.

Mas Oyama spent 14 months in hard training on Mt. Minobu, then, later, another 18 months. He returned to Tokyo a polished and fierce fighter, and became quite famous for being unbeatable. During this time he took to fighting bulls, knocking the horns off them, or killing them outright, with nothing but his bare hands.

Eventually, Mas established the Kyokushinkai, which became renowned for its brutal and tough training. One of the hallmarks of this type of training is the 100 man kumite, in which a fighter faces one hundred opponents in the roughest type of freestyle imaginable. The schools of this toughest Karate master are now spread throughout the world.

The Most Powerful Kicks In The Martial Arts

I learned this type of kick some forty years ago in the Kang Duk Won Korean Karate. This was the forerunner of Tae Kwon Do, and the unfortunate truth is that these kicks aren’t practiced anymore. Why, I don’t know, because this type of kick is the hardest kick, the fastest kick I know.

I call this move, no matter what type of technique you do it with, the pop kick. Whether you do a wheel, a side, or a snap, the basic principle remains the same. You replace the right foot with the left foot, and place the right foot on the target…this all has to happen at the same time.

By same time I mean that the right foot and the left foot begin motion at the same time, and the left foot hits the ground at the same time the right foot hits the target. By doing it in this fashion the whole body compacts at the same time, then the whole body expands at the same time. This causes a very pure explosion in the tan tien, which is a point a couple of inches below the navel, which is the energy generator for the body.

In addition to the purity of explosion you will feel in the tan tien, which will tend to concentrate energy in the kick, you will experience a sudden weight on the support leg at the same moment you experience weight in the kicking leg. This sudden weight tends to make the explosion of energy even more pure and violent, and yet tends to control it precisely. This will supercharge your technique.

If you are doing this technique with a snap kick, make sure you get the knee high enough so that the foot comes in straight, and doesn’t slide up the front of the target. If you are doing a side kick, make sure you turn the hips so that the weight of them really slams into the target. If you are doing a wheel kick, make sure you get the hips up high enough so that the kick can fly in truly horizontal.

The fourth technique would be a spinning motion to the rear, and is done with a side kick. You would practice all four kicks against a wall, learning how to lift up at the same time, and place the feet on the ground and the wall at the same time. You don’t have to hit hard on a wall, save that for a bag, control is a great thing to have that will actually give you more power in the end.

We used to have all kinds of set ups for these techniques. We would slap the attacker’s guard hands as we pre-stepped, and the we would do it subtle, and then be in the kick before the target knew we were on our way. As we practiced the explosion would get finer and more pure and more full of energy.

Make sure you use it in a variety of stances, and you will have a truly expanded arsenal of martial arts weapons. This is a great kick to practice, and it is born of the successful union of karate power and TKD kicks. Japanese martial arts or Korean martial arts, this is the fastest kick, and the hardest kick, and perhaps the most effective kick I know.

Using Karate Techniques To Break Bricks Without Breaking Your Hands!

Using Karate Techniques, which are the same as Hapkido techniques or gung fu techniques, it is incredibly easy to break bricks. I’m not going to say that your grandma could do it, or a child, but you could. Heck, a little work and practice, the ability to decipher the sacred words I am about to impart, and you could be smashing the holy heck out of sun dried rectangular blocks.

Now, there was a fellow went to the orient, and he knew martial arts, and orientals loving their back yard barques, and even a few beers (pretty American, those orientals) everybody laughing and joking, and they asked this American to break a few bricks for them. You breakee bricks! We have good time!

So the American chopped a brick and the brick sat and stared at him and he near broke his hand. Those wacky tailgate orientals, you see, had baked an iron rod into the brick. Oh, ha ha ha…isn’t that funny?

Well, actually, it is pretty funny. I tell ya, those orientals keep it up and they’ll be downright American! The point here is…don’t break what you don’t know about, select your material to be smashed with care.

This subject of picking your material is pretty important. People who break big stacks of ice, for instance, neglect to tell you that the ice has been pre-broken and stuck back together, which makes the ice easy to break. That tends to bend the game.

And, the people who break stacks of bricks or boards often do so by placing spacers between the bricks or boards, which, again, makes the bricks or boards pretty easy to break. Have them break the bricks and boards without spacers, and you are seeing a real power break. And, yes, your humble author can break five one inch pine boards, that’s five inches of wood, with no stinkin’ sissy spacers.

When you pick a brick to break, pick a dry one, dry ones are easier to break. If you want your ten year old cousin, or your grandma to break a brick, cook it in an oven for an hour or two. And, it helps it you set the brick with one end on the ground and the other end on another brick, and drop the end of the brick as your hand hits the brick, this increases the sharpness of impact and makes the break that much easier. Now, those are the tricks, except for the specificsthemselves.

When you break a brick have your hand loosey goosey, and slam it down, and tighten it upon impact. This will focus your energy and protect your hands, and I have seen these principles in virtually all martial arts. Korean Karate techniques, Shaolin techniques, Kwon Bup techniques, Kenpo techniques, they are all based on the same principles, and these principles define how easy it can be to break bricks.

If you want to learn more tricks and technqiues, come on by Punch Em Out. We have the most powerful punches and the strongest kicks in the world. Period.

After 30 Years in the Martial Arts What It Feels Like To Hit Somebody!

What happened when I finally used my fists somebody, after 30 years studying the martial arts, studying Kenpo and Kang Duk Won and Aikido and Wing Chun, and all sorts of other stuff, and what it felt like, was a crack up…and it was a wake up call. I tell you this little tale not to put forth bashing gays, or to encourage you to get in fights. Hitting people, after all, though nothing happened to me on this occasion, could have ended up with me being sued, or at least thrown in the hoosegow.

I was manager of an apartment house in Southern California, and it was on a bad side of town. One day a fellow came by with a dog on a rope, and I told him (in a polite manner) that dogs weren’t allowed in the apartments. He just looked at me and grinned, “Why don’t you tell him,” and he nodded to his canine companion.

I went to the tenant he had visited and told him that he would have to tell dog owner not to visit again, and I was met with a rude attitude. I started taking note of the type of people that were coming to see this tenant, and I realized that the guy was selling dope. This is where the story gets nasty.

I knocked on the door to his apartment and was let in, and I told the fellow that drugs weren’t allowed, and that he would have to move. He just laughed at me and announced, “I’m not even going to pay rent from now on, and you can’t do anything about it!” So I punched him.

Now, I merely dropped my weight into the sanchin stance, and I punched him with both fists on the chest. Man, he flew over the bed and struck the wall. But it was a stunning wake up to me. I hadn’t really damaged him, and I couldn’t believe the feeling of actually hitting somebody.

The shock jarred my arms and shook my shoulders, and my strike was not effective. I had knocked the stuffings out of bags for years, but the feeling of 175 pounds of human flesh was entirely different. I realized than that I had to change my training methods. If this had been a real fight, with somebody willing to stand up to me, I’d have a knock down drag out on my hands.

Anyway, the tenant jumps up, and he’s sobbing, an adult and he’s actually crying, and he says, “You can’t hit me!” Well, I wasn’t going to punch him again, I had suddenly realized how incredibly idiotic I was to lose it like that, but there was a ring of truth to his words. So I growled, “Why not?”

“Because my friend is in the closet!” I was frozen for a moment, then I crossed the room and opened the door to his closet, and his naked, gay lover was standing there, trembling in fear and with a really sickly grin on his face. Well, I learned something, I was going to stick to regular training in classical martial arts like Aikido and Tai Chi, and figure out a way to make my strikes really real, and I was going to avoid fighting.

‘Punch Ups’ Build the Most Powerful Punch in the World!

The purpose of the exercise I am about to detail is strictly for punching power. This is not for getting into that bikini, or flexing in that mirror, this is so you can use that gnarly mitt on the end of your wrist to knock over the fattest elephant you can find. Period.
Most exercises are rather generic things, tune the whole body, maybe isolate a muscle group at best, and they are not designed for a specific function.
This exercise is designed for a specific function, and to define that function, let me ask you something. When you punch somebody…where do you feel the weight?
You feel the weight when you hit the target.
So why do you need to do a full push up?
A push up is like a punch, you extend the arm and support weight, but why support weight all the way through the punch? That, as will become obvious later on, might actually slow your punch down!
Don’t get me wrong, I am not disparaging a complete push up, I think you should do lots of them. They are good for the whole body. But we are talking about the punch here, and we are talking about the working end of the punch. We are talking about the end of the punch where the rubber grips the road, the foot hits the pedal, or, if you will, where the knuckles hit the ribs. Or jaw, or whatever.
That said, I want you to do your push up in the following manner.
Lay on the floor, keep your body like a plank, and push up to six inches from full extension, that is where your punching push, your ‘Punch Up,’ is going to start.
Push up to full extension, lower six inches.
Push up to full extension, lower six inches.
Got it?
Now, you are supporting weight at the exact peak of the punch, the place where the arm has to support sudden impact.
Want to jack it up?
Push that last six inches so hard your body rises six inches off the ground. When your fists slam down you are going to receive almost exactly the same jarring effect as a punch.
Now, a couple of things we want to be aware of.
It is best to do these push ups on your fists, and when you do so, wear gloves. You don’t want to abuse your knuckles, you don’t want to bruise them so that you can’t strike somebody, you want to build them up and use them.
Keep your body straight and like a plank. You will find as you do these push ups, that your core starts to burn. The core is incredibly important. This is the belly wherein the energy center for the whole body resides. All power comes form the core, so make that core strong, and never let it sag an inch.
Remember that it is your shoulders we are most concerned with.
Forearms are cool, as are biceps and triceps, but when you punch something the real shock goes into the shoulders. Think about what I am saying. Do some of these six inch ‘Punch Ups,’ and isolate exactly which parts of your arms take the shock.
You will find that the shoulders are the most important thing in the whole equation.
Okay, now comes the question…how many?
A lot.
I want you to consider something. Does a fellow who is going to run a marathon do fifteen minute sprints? No. He runs all day.
Yes, a punch is like a sprint, but to get the best sprint you are going to have to work those arms like a marathoner works his legs.
Obviously, start out slow, and spread them out over the day, and if you feel any pain at all in the shoulder joint, if it starts to stress, back off. We want to buildup the shoulder, not tear the rotator cuff or otherwise disrupt the working joint.
One thing to remember here is that we are not going for bulk. Bulk can actually work against you. If your arms are big and thick then there is more mass to move, and it takes more time to move more mass.
No, what we are going for here is density. Feel a marathoners legs and you will feel ungiving density. You simply can’t put your thumb into his muscle. That’s kind of muscle you want, and specifically in your shoulder if you are going to have a great punch.
Now, where is that pesky elephant?

The One Thing You Need To Know To Have The Most Powerful Punch In The World!

Power, in the Martial Arts, especially martial arts like Karate or Kung Fu is often measured by how hard you can hit. Thus, people hit the bag and the Makiwara, and they do push ups to strengthen their arms, and…and they are doing it all wrong. You see, there is one critical factor that they are missing, and so all their push ups and punches and other exercises are for nothing.

I want to make a point here…and I can only do that by asking you one specific question? Where, during your punch, do your arms bear the most weight? The answer is obvious, they bear it at the end of the punch, when the arm is nearly extended.

So why do you need to push up your arm through the whole range of motion from the floor? Being strong at the beginning or middle of the punch is not important. Concentrating your work out through the whole range of motion is nothing but a waste.

So, do a work out, make it gentle and general, and build up your arms as a whole unit, then focus your work out on the end of the punch. This is easy to do, you can do it for virtually any exercise. All you have to do it isolate the part of the exercise where the arm is nearly extended, and put weight on that part of the exercise.

Let’s say you’re doing a push up. Do the push up until your arms are nearly extended, then do go to town. Do as many six inch push ups with the arms nearly extended, as you can, fast, concentrating on keeping your belly tight.

Here’s the trick, you need to feel the strength in your shoulders. The impact of the punch, you see, is going to go up your arms and into the shoulders. Thus, it is the shoulders that must become dense and strong.

Make the shoulders thick and dense, and do the exercise at various times of the day, until the muscles of the shoulders become as matter of fact as the leg muscles of a marathon runner. It’s funny that people have never thought of this, and I wonder at it, but it is common sense. I suppose the problem is that people get a general idea of exercise and never actually look at the exact goal they are trying to accomplish.

So do those ‘end of the arm six inch push ups like a maniac. Do them and breath and put your awareness in your shoulders, letting your shoulders grow and grow. This is the way you develop a punch that is stronger than anybody else’s, this is how you have the most powerful punch in the world.

How Speed Relates to the Overall Picture of Good and Rare Martial Arts

Whether you study Karate, Kung Fu, or that rare martial art from Faroutistan, speed is vitally important to the martial arts. If you are going to be successful in freestyle, you must be faster than your opponent. Even in the doing of your forms, speed gives a certain efficiency that is necessary to the successful martial artist.

That said, there is another side to speed, a side which embraces the entire martial arts and is the mark of your progress over the decades. This is a side which relates to the speed of the art you are practicing, and the speed of what is happening inside your head and in your life. I am talking about the speed at which you do your art.

The beginner is blown out by the fun of the martial arts, and he races breakneck through his forms. He spends hours tweaking his form, studying the angles of his limb so as to maximize speed of launch. Usually, this process takes about three years, but it can take longer, or lesser, depending on the individual and the art he is studying.

Remember what I remarked about spending hours going over your form? This is the start of the intermediate student, this is where he first starts to learn that the art is more than just exuberance and gotcha, but a real live window into the soul and potentials of humanity that were hitherto undreamed of. This is the start of growing awareness, and this is where the student first starts slowing himself down and starts looking at what he is actually doing.

This intermediate stage is practiced by all of the hard artists, they spend hours doing their forms and studying how to be efficient in motion, and it eventually slows down to a study of Tai Chi Chuan. Whether the student engages in actual Tai Chi, or just slows his forms down so he can best examine, analyze and correct them, is moot. What is important is that the student is looking, not just doing mindlessly and blindly.

Awareness you see is an oddity. One can become aware through the simple act of looking. Thus, looking is free, and awareness is free, and it is the point to all life.

Without awareness there would be no life. Or, one could say that life is according to the degree of awareness that the looker develops. Thus, the value of the martial arts, as they proceed slower and slower and thus create more and more opportunity for looking, is incalculable.

That all said, I do not wish you to curtail your studies of speed until you, personally, have reached a point which is satisfactory and obvious to you. Live, go fast, exuberate luxuriously, for you should give full throttle to all stages of learning to fight, even and not matter if you are studying a rare martial art. One should not sacrifice youth to old age.