The Method to My Martial Arts Madness!

When I was beginning my martial arts practice

my intent was to learn every single art I could.

These days I practice forgetting every martial art I can.

I can’t wait to see what people make of the above statement.

Without context, 

it sounds stupid, idiotic, and can be used against me.

But with context it is a different story.

Here is the context…

To understand the Martial Arts you need a large data base.

You need to understand how different arts do their kicks,

how combat strategies differ.

And so on.

But once the database is large enough

you have to focus on the techniques that work for you,

and the number of techniques that work

is surprisingly small.

So you go through a thousand techniques,

you become able to do them,

but some of them you are able to do better.

Some of them work better,

and work better in combat,

and work better with your body.

So you pare down the thousand techniques

into ten or twelve.

My ten or twelve techniques are based on specific concepts.

For instance

First concept = control the distance

Second concept = move left or right

Third concept = up or down

Fourth concept = open or close

Fifth concept = right weapon for right distance

Sixth concept = collapsing the distance

Here’s the breakdown:

control the distance so you can be the one attacking.

Move left or right so you can disrupt his analysis of distance.

Up or down refers to whether he will kick or punch, although it can be constructed differently.

Open or close refers to whether you can trap his limb or not.

(are you working on the outside of his arm, or the inside?)

Right weapon refers to if he is at punching distance

can you beat him at that distance,

or shift to a distance (weapon)

you can beat him at.

Collapsing the distance refers from going from 

kicking distance to punching distance

to knee distance to elbow distance

to grappling/takedown distance…

Ir shift to whatever distance is your strength and his weakness.

Pretty simple, eh?

So at first I practiced specific arts for specific concepts.

TKD for kicking

karate for punching

Wing chun for elbows,

aiki/jujitsu/etc

for grappling.

And so on.

I distilled all this from the breaking down of thousands of techniques,

And I broke everything down using matrixing.

And i found that individual arts are nothing but smaller modules,

and if you can study a half a dozen modules

you’ll have your dozen techniques or so.

Anyway,

that’s the way I did it.

Obligatory ad here…

‘The Last Martial Arts Book’ has 11 ratings for 5 stars.

(There is a video version of this book with no stars yet)

My two yoga books have 9 ratings between them  for 5 stars.

‘The Book of Five Arts’ has 7 ratings for 5 stars.

‘The Science of Government’ has 6 ratings for 5 stars.

‘Chiang Nan’ has 5 ratings for 5 stars.

My novel, ‘Monkeyland,’ has 5 ratings for 5 stars

That’s a lot of good ratings

so hopefully you’

ll find that useful

find the book/course that is right for you,

and matrix your own martial arts.

Have a great work out!

Al

And don’t forget to check out the interview

How to Fix Karate! (volumes one and two)

volume one is at

And volume two is at…

The Geometry of Fighting in the Martial Arts!

T-Day is over!

Long live HanaKwanMass!

You’ve been warned! ;0)

Many people think the martial arts are all about fighting.

they are about a lot more than that,

but let’s just consider the fighting aspect.

I was okay as a fighter.

Some people thought I was good,

some people could kick my ass.

It happens.

But I didn’t care about fighting

I wanted to understand.

that was my goal.

I consider martial arts as a way to understand life.

As time went by I became better at fighting.

I was aging, 

I didn’t have the strength,

but I found that with intense practice

i could see what people were going to do before they did it.

Then I wrote the Flow Chart.

Take a glance at it below

and then I’ll tell you what it means.

What this weird thing is is an analysis of motion in the martial arts.

The squares are the footwork.

I probably could have used a key,

or better terminology.

But if you think about it

it gets understandable.

You’re standing about where the ‘wing chun’ label is

and you either step out,

or you cross step,

with the right or the left foot.

The oval refers to hand techniques.

I had a lot of fun making this,

trying to make sense out of where i would be

what direction I would be traveling,

which foot or which hand,

and so on.

I was influenced in the creation of this by Eddie Rickenbacker.

He was a WW1 flying ace,

and he would imagine himself in the center of a bubble,

and try to imagine all the directions he could be attacked from

and what he would do for each attack.

My Flow Chart is more concerned

with facing a person,

and imagining incoming directions, motions, hands, feet,

and so on and so on,

and what to do about each possibility.

The take away from this,

was I was able to understand each art

as it relates to each art.

Taekwondo at the kicking distance

Karate at the punching distance

Aikido moving in the direction of a circular punch

Pa Kua Chang against the direction of a circular punch.

What I have said here

is VERY simplistic.

Every art has solutions for every incoming attack.

But by isolating the concepts of an art

I was able to use all arts together.

So I began using these concepts in teaching.

I would freestyle with a student

and restrict myself only to the footwork of a specific art.

Some of my conclusions were:

No trouble with Karate because I had trained

that specific art and was familiar with specific solutions.

We had kicks in karate so I was able to understand 

and isolate taekwondo.

I was not able to use Aikido purely,

but it became the most powerful of my tools

when I was able to isolate Karate and Wing Chun

and then put them together

(understand at what distances they could be used

and developed Lop Sau (circling fists)

I was never able to use Pa Kua Chang.

At all.

When I limited myself to X stepping

every student I had,

from the lowest white belt

could kick my ass.

Interestingly,

I would see people use it who had studied only Pa Kua

and it was very effective.

My training methods,

being eclectic,

hurt me in this one instance.

So here’s some ways you can use the Flow Chart

help yourself isolate concepts from other arts.

help yourself understand how concepts

from various arts have become mushed together

and how that interferes with your understanding.

figure out to be more specific in your training and drills.

Do these simple things

and you will find a lot of gold in the Flow Chart.

Okey dokey.

I was looking at Amazon,

and I have some highly rated books.

Look for my author’s page if you want all my books,

but here’s a short list of my highest rated books.

The Last Martial Arts Book has 11 ratings for 5 stars.

My two yoga books have 9 ratings between them  for 5 stars.

The Book of Five Arts has 7 ratings for 5 stars.

The Science of Government has 6 ratings for 5 stars.

Chiang Nan has 5 ratings for 5 stars.

And a whole bunch of books have 1 or 2 ratings for 5 stars.

Search for the Al Case author’s page

if you want to examine those,

or the lesser starred efforts.

And,

that’s about it.

HanaKwanMass is coming,

so think about what art you want to gift yourself,

or some one else.

Have a great work out!

Al

And don’t forget to check out the interview

BTW

I’ve got nothing but five star reviews on 

The Science of Government.

It’s really nothing more than applying matrixing to politics.

Matrixing + Politics = Sanity

I told you matrixing works with anything.

Here’s the link…

How to Fix Karate! (volumes one and two)

volume one is at

And volume two is at…

How to Go Beyond Fighting in the Martial Arts

The Point of Martial Arts Fighting

The number one reason people get into the martial arts is fighting. Everybody has had that bully in their background. Everybody would like to feel bigger, stronger, free from the threat of violence.

About the first and only science of the martial arts…matrixing.

Now, to be truthful, if you just want to fight, I recommend going to a boxing club for a few months. You’ll get in shape, you’ll learn what it feels like to get hit, and you’ll learn how to hit back.

If you think there is something more than fighting, however, then you must look to the martial arts. You must believe that the world isn’t just a struggle for survival, but that there is a point to it all. You must believe in yourself as a human being, and that you can actually ascend to higher levels of awareness.

First you must build a structure for containing the knowledge in the martial arts. This is why you do forms; this is something that boxing does not have. This is the mechanism which will elevate you.

Second, you must achieve discipline. I don’t mean the discipline where you get a belt on the bottom as punishment. I mean the discipline of doing something every day because you love doing it, and for no other reason.

Third, you must study a system that has logic. The reason for this is one of expedience. You don’t want to spend decades sorting through the bushwah. You want to get there while you are still young.

Fourth, you must not stop. Drill those basics patiently, open your eyes and look. You must not just work out, you must invest awareness into your art.

The Martial arts, you see, are a manifestation of the spirit. It is your awareness filtered through your own logic and spread across the heavens. Life is heaven, you know, but only if you can isolate the art of your soul and show it to the universe.

You can learn the truth about Martial Arts fighting.

Here’s an article about people who can’t confront martial arts violence.

Chuck Norris Puts Out Line of Pink Martial Arts Gear!

Chuck Norris Wore Pink to Beat Up Bigots!

It’s true, a whole new line of pink martial arts gear, and it’s pretty obvious Chuck Norris is coming out of the closet. At the very least, coming clean about a not so honorable period of his life.

Reson and the Age of Kenpo Karate

Apparently, many years ago, before he became more famous than Rock Hudson, Chuck used to tend bar. He would wear a pink apron and pick fights with anybody who made a remark.

He was young, and he excused such behavior by saying, ‘I just want to rid the world of bigots.’ On the side he would say he was just looking for ways to practice his martial arts.

And, you can believe the above is true because…I read it on the net!

Actually, a fellow wrote into a forum I was on and wanted to read an article on this thing he had heard about Chuck Norris wearing pink and picking fights with drunks, so I thought I would oblige him.

The fact of the matter is that I was learning martial arts, I was a new instructor at the local Kenpo school, when Chuck was making  a name for himself on the martial arts tournament scene.

Every week, it seemed, Chuck was winning a tournament, taking down some of the biggest names, taking home the biggest trophies.

Then, a couple of years later, when I was a black belt and out teaching at my own martial arts school, he became a movie star!

Man, we would flock to the movies, watch him beat holy heck out of uunsavory charcters, and we would cheer!

My particular favorite fight scene of his, more even than the battle with Bruce Lee in ‘The Way of the Dragon,’ is in the martial arts/horror flick ‘Silent Rage.’ There is a reality in the barroom fight with the bikers that is so darn nifty it takes the breath away.

Now, over all the years of Chuck Norris, all the movies and the TV show, I have never heard anything scurrilous said concerning him. In fact, people would always remark how he was the most polite fellow they had ever met, how he went out of his way to be kind to people.

Tough guy? Maybe. Certainly a tough karate fighter.

Bad guy? Not to my knowledge.

Wear pink and beat up drunks? Negative.

In spite of all research, in spite of my sleazy talents as a yellow journalist, I could find no mention of Chuck Norris wearing pink and beating up bigots.

All I heard was good things.

And, the Chuck Norris line of pink Martial Arts gear? Made it up.

About the Author: The author began martial arts in 1967, and does not use a pink pen when he writes. He has written over a dozen martial arts books on such subjects as Pang Gai Noon, Kenpo Karate, Marine Corps Martial Arts, the One Year Black Belt System, and, of course, Matrixing Karate. You can find these books at AlCaseBooks.com.

Be sure to subscribe to this blog.

MonsterMartialArts.com has the best martial arts home study courses on the planet.

How to know somebody in the martial arts

Newsletter 707
How to know somebody in the martial arts

All right!
Another perfect day!
Perfect for martial arts, that is.
Everything else is okay,
but martial arts are…THE BOMB!

To know when somebody else is going to do something,
that’s good martial arts.
Not to have reaction time,
but to be intuitive.

I was in a forum the other day,
and this fellow said you couldn’t know somebody,
that if you thought you did you were prideful.
He had lots of fights,
and based his opinion on that experience.

Look,
in a fight there is give and take.
It is a game,
somebody wins and somebody loses.
Martial arts are not about losing,
so you don’t want to train in something
that will teach you to lose some of the time.

What you want to do is train in a method
where you learn to win all the time.
Where you see the fight coming
and learn to avoid it.

So you take turns being the attacker,
you learn to analyze what is happening
so that you can know what is happening.
The key here is called awareness.

To train in forms Will make you aware of what your body can do.
To train in applications Will make you aware of what the other body Can do.
Then freestyle will make sense; then fighting can become a learning experience.
Without forms, Applications, drills,
And all the other tools of karate or any other martial art, freestyle is just fighting.
It is just fighting and there is only marginal increase in awareness.

So what this fellow was telling me,
When he said you couldn’t know anybody,
was that he could not become aware.

Is there anything other than awareness in this world?

Your time from birth to death,
and before birth and after death,
Is nothing more than the sequence of you being aware.
Every experience you have had or will ever have,
Is nothing more than the track of your awareness.
Right now, The whole universe is nothing more
Than what you are aware of.

There is nothing more than awareness.

So why not use the martial arts to train that awareness?
Will that not only enhance your existence?
If existence is only what you are aware of,
Shouldn’t you use whatever tool you can
To increase that awareness?

Okey-dokey,
If you want perfect form,
If you want to be able to make any application work,
If you want to actually become aware in freestyle,
And not just A fellow who trades wins and losses,
Try the master instructor course.

Your awareness depends upon it.

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/4-master-instructor-course/

So, great to be back,
Have a fantastic workout,
And I’ll talk to you later.

Al

There is No First Strike in Karate

Hitting First in Karate

There is no first strike in Karate is an old saying. It s also, as plain as it seems, very misunderstood. To explain it people always say things like, ‘you have to let the other guy strike first,’ or, ‘we believe in non-aggressive behavior,’ or something like that. So here is the truth about ‘there is no first strike in Karate.’

Let’s say you’re driving your car home from work every day, and you learn what the community driving patterns are. There’s always a traffic jam at the Main Street light. Kids let out of school late onThursday on 4th street. If you turn left at Town street it is one way with almost no lights.

In other words, you learn to ‘know’ what the driving patterns are in your town, and you adjust your driving to take advantage of those patterns. In the martial arts, such as Karate, or for that matter, Taekwondo or Aikido or whatever, the same holds true.

You face enough students you learn that a shoulder dip presages a kick; a blink is an attempt to hide an attack; a subtle breathing inwards is a prep for a rushing attack. In other words, you learn to ‘know’ what your opponent is going to do.

The beginner, of course, doesn’t know anything. But he faces enough people, pays attention long enough, and these fighting patterns become obvious, and he learns to ‘know’ his opponent.

There are many things that can get in the way of learning to know your opponent. If you let emotion cloud your perceptions then you can’t see clearly enough to ‘know’ your opponent. If you study a system that believes in fighting, instead of developing awareness, you won’t ‘know’ your opponent. If you practice a system that preaches things like ‘adrenaline dumping,’ then you won’t learn to ‘know’ your opponent.

Things like emotion, the joy of combat, using adrenaline in your strategy and practice, these things all interfere with looking at what is happening, and being able to learn to know your opponent.

You see to know somebody you have to look at them, and the looking must not be distracted, and that means cultivating a stillness within, a stillness without such things as emotion or other errant thoughts or occurrences in the awareness.

If you learn how to achieve stillness within, which is to say if you learn to pay attention without being distracted, by emotion, by other things, then you look, and you learn to know.

Now, let me ask you a question: if you can look at your opponent, and if you ‘know’ that he is going to attack, would you striking first really be a first strike?

I hope you see the obviousness of the answer. But if you don’t, then simply continue with your practice. Look at your opponent, learn how to recognize, and to act, upon the twitches, the broken breathing pattern, the dip of the shoulder or the turn of the hip, and you will learn how to know your opponent, and then there will be no first strike in Karate.

The author has near 50 years of karate training. You can tap into his knowledge, learn how to know your opponent, by checking out the books and video courses he has written/produced. His website is MonsterMartialArts.com

Karate Fighting…A Basic How To Do It Guide

Karate Fighting is Blast!

Had a student query me about karate fighting the other day, got me thinking. He wanted to enter a stickfighting tournament. Tournaments are fun, but they are different from the street, and the same.

Fighting on the street is chaos, a struggle for survival. It takes a while to cultivate the mindset that will stay calm in combat.

Fighting in a tournament is more controlled, you can focus on one opponent, and this requires a whole different set of skills.

First, you’re going to want to load your muscles for the forward and back motion. This is a constant adjustment of foot and leg angles to provide the best traction and the most leg thrust; you need to be able to go forward fasdter than he can block, and go back faster than he can hit; and you need to be balanced between them so you don’t get caught ‘flatfooted.’

Second, you need to hair trigger your mind. You aren’t going to go on reaction time here, you are going to have to go on your ‘reads.’

Third, there ain’t no third. Fighting is that simple. Well, maybe you should do a thousand hours of various training drills to cultivate the unique mindset required for controlled war. Or all out war, if you happen to be of the street fighting sort.

Oddly, I remember when karate freestyle became a corrupt game controlled by fighters with no respect, who just wanted to fight, who didn’t want to learn about themselves.

It was a tournament over in some small town above Richmond, California. This was back in the late sixties. I was fighting in the tournament, striving for pin point control, trying to get that moment of transition from thought to action into one blink. I looked over at the next ring, and the ‘Karate sensei’ was telling his white belt fighter to run across the ring and hit his opponent. And he did.

But this wasn’t Karate fighting, this was just fighting. It was the desire to win, with no appreciation for technique, and no way to better as a human being.

I didn’t fight after that.

And, after that fighting went full contact, and would eventually go MMA. Through all the years that impression, of the karate instructor just telling his beginning student to just hit his opponent, stuck with me.

I’m sure that white belt was abused, probably lost his teeth in some dark alley brawl, and has a gnarly opinion that people listen to. Unfortunately, that opinion is worthless, for it is based on fighting, and not learning how to get over fighting in your soul.

This has been about karate fighting.

Karate Kumite…Emotion And Mad Dog Survival

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.

The 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 isn’t ‘mood,’ or an ‘instinctive state of mind,’ except in the vaguest of terms. When somebody is unable to accept reality he/she creates a mental turmoil that is labeled emotion. That’s a good definition, and I know because I made it up myself, but we have to look deeper if we are really going to understand emotion and how to use it.

The Neutronic way of defining emotion is: ‘Motion inside the mind.’ You feel rage, and in your mind you want to make motion towards somebody (hit them in the face with a baseball bat). But it is all in your mind, and it is not really real.

When you punch somebody, would you put energy into your knee? That would be a waste of energy, right? What you want to strive for, as a martial artist, is to put energy only into the fist.

When you direct energy into body parts other than the one(s) being used you are not being efficient in your motions. This same idea holds true in the subject of emotion. Energy put into emotion is not energy put into the desire to win; to win it is best if we get mad dog cool and determined, not extra angry.

Emotion is not to be discouraged, for emotion is something we can use to read others, vent our feelings, experience love, and that sort of thing. However, emotion in a fight can stultify a person’s desire to fight. When it comes to Karate Kumite , or any other type of classical martial arts freestyle, you must increase your desire to win without falling into emotion, or trying to use emotion in any way.

Five Things That Will Insure You Win At Karate Freestyle

Doing Karate Freestyle is actually one of the most efficient ways of learning to fight in the martial arts. The frantic action can be translated into street combat, it sharpens all the senses, and it tunes the mind and body to a fine pitch. This article is going to tell you five things to work on that will make your karate kumite top notch and hard to beat.

First, watch your opponent’s eyes. Watch everything, but watch where he is looking, how he is looking, whether he blinks, when he blinks, and so on. The rule is simple here…you can’t fight what you can’t face.

Second, use your stances to load the legs with power. This means the closer your opponent gets, the lower you get to the mat, and the more energy you build between the front leg and the back leg. When it is time to fight, lift a leg, release the spring, and let that power propel you faster than a rocket on steroids.

Three, don’t ever bother to think about your emotions. Emotions are weird things that happen inside your skull, they run around inside your mind. Simply, if you let yourself pay attention to emotions, then you aren’t using your senses and intention to pay attention to combat.

Four, have a good and well planned strategy for anything that might happen. If he is moving in a certain manner, then analyze that motion and move with him. If he is motionless, figure out how to angle yourself to best benefit and greatest advantage.

Five, realize that making mistakes are the secret of learning. Don’t get angry because you messed up and got tagged, figure out what you did to get hit, and what you need to do in the future to not get hit. This is probably the most important of the five things listed here, because it is the key to all learning, and not just in the martial arts.

These five things are simple concepts, but they must be adhered to, refined, and made to make sense. My first lesson in freestyle consisted of the instructor telling me to raise my hands, letting me know that he was going to beat me up, and then doing so. It was a terrible teaching device, except that I watched him, and I learned.

The next time I freestyled I did so against a student who hadn’t had that lesson. So I did the things that the instructor did to me, and I came out on top. So the five things are eyes, legs, emotions, strategy, and always learn when you make a mistake, and these are the key points that will help you become a full time winner at Karate Freestyle.

Drop by Monster Martial Arts and pick up a free book on Matrixing.