More Powerful punch through a gentle martial arts technique

Newsletter 875

How to Hit Harder in the Martial Arts without Hitting Harder

Excellent!
It’s friday.
It’s end of the week work out day!
Get all set up for working out all weekend.

Hey,
great title, eh?
So let’s start at the beginning.

My first experience in resistance was a kicking bag.
Kicked the crap out of it.
Bounced it up to the ceiling,
day after day after day.
Yet,
it wasn’t right.
It didn’t feel right.
Hit it,
kick it,
it didn’t feel like a human body.
But I practiced it for power,
then kicked bodies for control.
Worked my techniques,
practiced my freestyle,
but knew there was something lacking in my reality.

Then they came up with kicking shields.
Excellent.
Much better than a bag.
You had to hit it right,
in spite of the fact that your partner could flinch and twist.
You had to figure out how to move his weight,
without sending him through a wall.
A lot better.

But the interesting thing was that the old drills,
drills I had been doing for years,
began to connect.
I began to ‘feel’ inside my opponent’s body
with my fist and foot.

Look,
this isn’t strange.
If you put your hands on somebody’s arm
you can feel the biceps.
You can feel the striations,
you can feel the bone underneath,
you can feel the nooks and crannies,
you can feel how the arm works,
and you can feel what it takes,
and where,
to damage it.

That’s with your fingers,
but you can feel with your fists.
You can feel with your feet.
And here’s something interesting.
The universe is mostly space,
and this includes the human body.
So if you knock on a door
you can listen,
and ‘feel’ (become aware of as if through radar)
And if you knock on the human body
with your fist or foot,
you can listen,
feel the space inside,
as if radar,
like thumping on a watermelon to see if it’s ripe.
It’s easy.

And,
when you can do this
an interesting thing happens.
you can hit softer,
put more awareness into he strike,
and cause more damage.

It’s true.

And here is why:

you begin to believe in your punch,
and your belief is so strong
that your opponent believes in your punch.

It is so fascinating,
to ‘nick’ somebody with a punch,
and watch them feel the pain.

But you have to be very careful.

But the more you experience this
the more you believe
the stronger your punch gets
and the softer you punch
the more effect it has.

Fascinating.

So keep hitting that bag,
build your reality,
but study the punch,
feel it,
build a belief in it,
after a bit of time,
not a great amount of time if you matrix,
your punches are going to be amazing!

Real gorilla stoppers.

Here’s all the data on punching…

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/hard-punch/

Now,
have yourself a GREAT 4 of July,
do a bunch of extra work outs,
and celebrate the freedom
and the second amendment,
that allows us to practice our killing art.

Have a great work out!

Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/hard-punch/

http://www.martialartsinstructortraining.com

http://www.amazon.com/Binary-Matrixing-Martial-Arts-Case/dp/1515149501/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437625109&sr=8-1&keywords=binary+matrixing

go to and subscribe to this newsletter:

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Google doesn’t like newsletters,

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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

Gordon Liu, Cal Worthington, and the Most Powerful Punch in ALL the Martial Arts

Newsletter 860

Let’s talk about perfection in your work outs.

I’m pretty lucky.

I grew up through the so called

golden age of martial arts.

Though,

truth,

I think the golden age is just over the hill,

we’re on the cusp of great things,

things that the ancient masters would eat their hearts out for.

So,

in this golden age of martial arts

were some wild ass chop sockies.

Chop sockies are the name we’ve given kung movies

of the seventies and eighties.

Special effects consisted of trampoline kicks,

and the most terrible acting imaginable.

But for a country that had no martial arts

this was the holy grail.

Gordon Liu was the ringleader

of this massive influx of kung fu.

‘Thirty-six Chambers of Death,’

you know?

And,

one night I was watching late TV.

During the eighties

late night was supported by Cal Worthington.

Stick with me now,
I’m going to take a little trip…

Cal Worthington sold cars on late night TV.

He would put a tiger on the hood of a car

and call it his dog ‘spot.’

One day I needed to buy a car,

so I headed over to Cal Worthington’s place,

kids and wife in tow.

Now Cal had a song that played on TV.

The song went…

‘Go see Cal, Go see Cal, Go see Cal!’

And I didn’t know that my two boys couldn’t understand the song,

and had replaced Cal’s lyrics with their own.

So we hoped out of the car

a bunch of sales men were leaning against a nearby car,

and one of my boys went up to them

and asked if this was really where Cal Worthington  lived.

The salesman smiled and said yes.

My boys immediately launched into their own version of the Cal song.

‘Pussy Cal, Pussy Cal, Pussy Cal!

Needless to say,

the salesman were lying on the ground and holding their guts.

They couldn’t stop laughing.

I tried to get one to stop laughing.

I said, ‘We need a car.’

Between laughs he said, ‘I don’t care!’

And the laughter started up again.

Okay,

that was a long way to go,

but here’s the thing,

amongst those bad, old movies that Cal supported

was a little gem called, ‘Mad Monkey Kung Fu.’

At three in the morning,

one summer night,

I was watching that thing,

and the hero gets his ass kicked,

and he is training in this weird stuff called Monkey Kung Fu,

and suddenly I see the training gimmick.

He hits with his outstretched fingers,

then, without retracting his hand,

he goes forward with his knuckles,

then, without retracting his hand,

he goes forward with his fist.

I looked at that.

I started going around the house,

hitting walls, doors, anything that was a surface.

Fingers, knuckles, fist…

Fingers, knuckles, fist…

Fingers, knuckles, fist…

And,

I knew it was a movie gimmick.

I knew it was bogus,

but I couldn’t stop practicing it.

Fingers, knuckles, fist…

And,

over the course of months

I tweaked that sucker into different forms,

explored different timings,

and things started to happen.

When I began kenpo,

back in 1967,

I used to hang a piece of cardboard,

and strike it with a backfist.

Eventually,

I was able to make hole on the cardboard,
but I stopped because there was no place to go.
I make a hole and…so what?

What was the next step?

Then,
years later,
I found the Mad Monkey Punch,

and this obsession gripped me again,

‘and over the months I began to put holes in things.
cardboard,
pieces of drywall,
whatever.

Now,

everything is connected in this universe.

somebody touches your little toe,

and even the hairs on your head feel it.

When I started practicing the Mad Monkey Punch

I was already at the point
where I could make holes in cardboard with a backlist,

and I could do push ups on two straight fingers.

And, I had done  a ton of Tai Chi,

Tai where I shifted the body back and forth,

causing weight to go back and forth,

causing a feeling of energy going back and forth,

like water in a  bathtub,

as it were,

and I suddenly began putting that into a fist.

Here is the equation:
Kenpo snapping backfist.

Push ups on two perfectly straight fingers.

The Mad Monkey Punch.

Tai Chi sloshing around inside my karate body.

equals

a fist that can penetrate the body.

There are three depths when striking,

strike the skin,

hitting as hard as you can,

but leaving no pain.

strike the muscle,

causing bruise.

strike the bone

causing the bones to shiver and break.

I sometimes am teaching people,

and when I want to make a point,

I strike for the bone.

The students INSTANTLY crumple up.

They jump back and rub their shoulder,

and wonder how the heck an old man can hit so hard.

I don’t hit so that the body is flung back,

in fact,

I hit and the body doesn’t go anywhere,

it is just revulsed from the introduction of total body invalidation,
invalidation that the student can feel
from the little toe
to the hairs on his head..

Sometimes you can see me do this kind of punch on videos,

but not often.

I’ll have to shoot a video on it,
showcase it for you.

it really is easy,

but it took a long time to develop,

especially since I didn’t know what I was doing.

And I really didn’t know what I was doing,

but it was like I was caught in a current,

and bouncing off significant rocks,

until an idea or two formed in my head.

Connections.

Everything in the universe is totally connected,

but it takes awareness to see it.

The martial arts grow that awareness,

but you have to have patience,

and a wee bit of faith.

Anyway,

I hope I have inspired a few of you

to explore some of these things,

snapping backfists
totally straight two finger push ups,

mad monkey punches

tai chi until you are sloshing bathtub of energy.

Or maybe something I’ve said

has connected with something you already know,

or caused a spark to happen,

or something.

You know,

if you wish to know what I know,

to tap into my 50 years of martial arts obsessing,

it’s all in the videos and books.

Try this one…

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/hard-punch/

That’s a book written on punching.

A whole book,

listing ALL the exact methods I used,

how I figured out the sequence of energies,

to make a perfect punch,

and the exact drills I did.

Actually,

there’s three books bundled here,

read about the other two at the bottom of this page.

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/hard-punch/

Thanks for being martial artists,

and have a great work out!

Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/hard-punch/

http://www.amazon.com/Binary-Matrixing-Martial-Arts-Case/dp/1515149501/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437625109&sr=8-1&keywords=binary+matrixing

go to and subscribe to this newsletter:

https://alcase.wordpress.com

Remember,

Google doesn’t like newsletters,

so this is the best way to ensure you get them.

You can find all my books here!

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/

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

How to take a punch in karate

Newsletter 857

Armor in the Martial Arts (part two)

It’s Saturday!
Time to work out ALL-L-L-L day long!

Hey, look at the title,
Armor in the martial arts…part two?
I thought I’d written everything I wanted to,
then thought about it,
and realized I was only half done.
You can check out part one on MonsterMartialArts.com (the blog)
But let me finish the article right here.

I told you the secret of taking punches
was easily learned by just doing the forms,
doing techniques out of the forms,
and practicing breathing.
Let me splain.

When you breath,
you breath out when the body expands,
and in when the body contracts.

Or,
you breath out when you strike somebody,
or when you are getting struck.

This is simply aligning the
in and out’ of breathing
with the expansion or contraction,
so to speak,
of the body.

But it is a major alignment.

Just remember that you must breath as if to the tan tien.
The tan tien is the energy center an inch or two below the navel.

Now,
oxygen will not reach the tan tien,
it will go to the bottom of the lungs and stop at the diaphragm.
But…this starts a sensation of energy
that continues downward from the diaphragm
and condenses into the tan tien.

When you breath like this,
hold out your arms in a relaxed manner,
and you will feel a tingle in your finger tips.
This is an indication that
as you focus on the tan tien
it creates energy,
and this energy can be cycled through your body.

Now,
we come to the interesting part.
You can,
by just being aware of a body part,
direct energy to a body part.
Become aware of your right index finger,
and you will feel a sensation in your right index finger.
If you don’t,
you just need to practice directing your awareness
until you do feel the sensation.
I spend a lot of time,
quite serious here,
just thinking about my right index finger,
then my left,
then my right,
and so on.
Just feel the awareness wake up the finger,
making it tingle,
and begin to glow with energy.

When you practice forms,
by breathing like this,
you are putting energy into the body part
used in the form.
The fist,
the foot,
the block,
etc.

When you do the forms
you learn how to breath.
when you do the techniques,
and somebody strikes you,
you become aware of the place being struck.
Again and again and again.

First you tighten the muscles,
but,
because of proper breathing,
you are directing energy into the site.

Eventually the energy you are pushing through the body
goes there automatically.
First into the fist,
or foot or whatever,
then into the body part being struck.

Somebody hits you,
and the energy just slides through the body.
Sometimes you can feel it moving.
Sometimes it just sort of erupts into a shield,
a deep sort of shield,
that stops the strike.

It usually takes a while to get this ability,
but it won’t take long if you know what I am saying here.
When I learned
nobody told me,
took me years.
But by the time I made black belt
(about 3 1/2 years)
the energy was moving,
going to where I was going to get struck.
And the pain of getting struck totally stopped.
People would hit me
and there was literally no effect.
Other guys in the school just accepted this.
They were going through it, too.
People on the street were sort of amazed.

It is not the same as taking a punch in boxing.
In that discipline you tighten the muscles.
In the martial arts,
probably because of the kind of strikes we were taking,
the muscles would tighten,
but the important thing was
the energy moving under the surface.

Okay,
that is the other half of the article,
what I should have told you yesterday.
Better late than never, eh?

So,
if you have a copy of the book I wrote,
the ‘Kang Duk Won,’
(amazon or, possibly, the Monster website on one of the courses)
then you can pick it up,
do the forms,
do the techniques,
and you’ll get there.
You’ll have to practice,
ignore fellows who say,
‘You won’t see that on the street!’
Because you are going deeper,
looking for other abilities.
And,
to be honest,
you can make that art work on the street,
but you have to commit yourself to the art,
you have to work to make it work.

But the Temple Karate course is better.
I give you more forms,
forms aimed at that building this sort of ability,
plus a few other abilities.
The forms are slightly tweaked to be more efficient,
and I show you how to make it work.
You see me do it on video.

But,
up to you,
either way is excellent.

And,
if you think you have enough data,
you could just try to apply stuff I’ve said,
including today’s blog,
to other arts.
Karate works best,
but there is usually too much degradation of form.
The Kang Duk Won,
as I studied it,
bypassed the Japanese influence,
stayed with some of the chinese internal practices,
and is about efficient as it gets.
Kung fu,
I don’t know.
That is really going to depend on a lot of factors.
But there you go.
That’s the way,
all you have to do is dig in and commit yourself.

Have fun,
Have a great work out,
and I’ll talk to you next.

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/temple-karate/

Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/temple-karate/

http://www.amazon.com/Binary-Matrixing-Martial-Arts-Case/dp/1515149501/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437625109&sr=8-1&keywords=binary+matrixing

go to and subscribe to this newsletter:
https://alcase.wordpress.com

Remember,
Google doesn’t like newsletters,
so this is the best way to ensure you get them.

You can find all my books here!
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/

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 Size of the Bullet…the Size of…the Fist?

ANSWERING QUESTIONS OF FORCE IN THE MARTIAL ARTS

The following is a quest editorial by Alaric Dailey

Why is it, that karateka punch with 2 knuckles? why is it, that boxers punch with heavily padded gloves? And why was it unfortunate for Art Jimmerson (the boxer) in the first UFC to wear a single glove. Furthermore, why do big slow bullets have a reputation for stopping power vs smaller faster bullets (specifically the .45 vs 9mm argument).

New book about the fist power of Karate…click on the cover!

It all has to do with penetration vs dissipation, when it comes to force, a martial artist must put as much weight and power into as small of area as possible to maximize its effect. Making the chosen weapon as small as possible, increases its penetration.

Pads dissipate the force, spreading it out over a wide area, and adding a nice soft surface. In the old days people did bare-knuckle boxing, and hitting the head with bare-knuckles is extremely dangerous, and can cause major damage, this is why boxing added gloves. Boxing gloves are huge and bulky, and they still manage to knock each others brains silly, that gives you some idea of how hard they are hitting.

When sparring in the martial arts, we will often wear pads, to dissipate the force, so that we wiggle the persons nose, rather than smearing it all over their face.

Thus when Art Jimmerson went into the first UFC with a boxing glove on, he went in taking away power off his punches and eliminating his ability to grab.

A really great demonstration of this can be seen with an sewing pin and a balloon. Sewing pins have that nice round end, and you can press pretty darn hard with the round end and never pop the balloon, but turn it around and use the sharp end, and it penetrates immediately popping the balloon. The round end dissipates the force, the sharp end penetrates!!! Easy as that to see.

As a related note, bullets travel SO fast that they have the opposite problem, they have a tendency to go directly through the target, rather than imparting that energy and stopping. At subsonic speeds the .45 has the larger diameter and slower speed to impart more of that force into the FIRST thing it hits, where the 9mm has a tendency to got right through the first thing and second. The faster and smaller bullets can pass right through and do LESS damage. This is why you use hollow-points for self-defense, they open up, causing them to slow and impart that energy, or at least more of it. This tendency for over penetration is something to think about when choosing a home-defense round, so when you shoot the bad guy, it doesn’t go through him and harm someone else.

How to Put the Empty in the Fist

Karate means empty hand.

And some people say it means

you don’t hold a weapon.

That’s cool,

but there’s a heck of a lot more to it.

Do you know this Okinawan Karate Master?

First,

the mechanics.

From a horse stance,

one hand goes out

and the other comes back.

This is balance.

Second,

beginners are taught to twist the fist,

palm up at the chamber position,

palm down

when you extend and tighten the fist.

This is a method to create more loose-tight.

More focus.

To focus the energy.

and,

with the subject of energy

we have left the mechanics.

One of the things people should do

is sink into a horse,

and use the retracting hand

to pull an opponent.

This is fascinating stuff.

You pull the hand,

you pull the weight,

and the core  has to shrink,

and the tan tien has to explode,

even while it is pulling.

Very interesting stuff.

How do you pull while exploding?

The thing is,

this is where it all opens up.

This is where you start to examine

the fist as a line of energy.

This is where you start examining

blocks as planes of energy

that sheer the line of energy that is a punch.

This is where you examine

how to compress the triangular energy of the stance

while you do what you do

on the top half of the body.

And these things lead to such concepts as

the arms as cones,

sucking blocks,

paralleling motions to create harmony

sucking energy from stances,

and ALL sorts of other things.

I should write a book on these specifics,

maybe I will some day,

but right now…

all we care about is lesson number one,

how to explode energy in a straight line

with the fist actually becoming empty.

Now,

truth,

this data

and a LOT more

is in ‘The Punch,’

which is here,

http://www.monstermartialarts.com/The_Punch%21.html

But,

let’s just take one narrow slice of the procedure.

I realized,

at a certain point,

that what I was trying to do

when I punched somebody

was stick a stick (of bones)

through a watermelon.

I then wondered if it was really necessary to tighten the fist.

And,

it wasn’t.

Now,

before you get all excited,

you SHOULD do all the basics exercises,

and that includes learning how to make the fist tight.

Remember,

I didn’t understand this

until after I had learned how to make a tight fist.

And,

I learned how to stick that fist out

and tighten it

an inch or two

inside the other person’s body.

Almost like grabbing something

rib deep.

Really worked.

Then,

having the power,

I could go for the softer,

less powerful

but more intense

methods.

So I practiced simple things like push ups

on non tight fists.

Just balancing on the foreknuckles,

trying to use no energy in the hands.

I got mixed results.

Try it.

you’ll see.

And,

I tried to break things

while holding thumbtacks.

Good results.

BUT,

you need to break with a hard fist

before you try with a soft fist,

or you’ll break your hand.

I finally found that my soft fist,

or my empty fist

came about

more from learning finer control

than anything else.

So you put a thumbtack on a piece of soft material.

plasterboard is good.

And you punch it in with your fist,

without denting the board.

Actually,

sort of hard.

You keep denting.

But,

a thousand times,

and you will appreciate a finer distance

with your fist.

Now,

here’s the funny thing,

control leads to power.

Power doesn’t lead to control

But control leads to power.

And I found I was able to stick my soft and untightened fist

into other bodies

with ease.

And,

here is where it gets interesting,

it hurts more!

When you see me punch somebody

on one of the training videos

and they suddenly wince in pain,

it is not because I punched them harder,

it is because I punched them softer.

Which is to say,

I used a soft fist.

Now,

to this day,

I still practice the tight fist,

because it leads me to the soft fist,

but I practice control,

and thus get more power.

The only time I ever really hurt somebody

I punched them with a soft fist.

This was right after I started figuring this stuff out.

It was back in Santa Rosa,

and I broke a student’s rib.

I was sorry,

felt bad,

and realized that I had reached a point

where the softer I hit

the more careful I had to be.

Anyway,

I hope this tells you something

about the fist

and how to empty it.

The principles are true for any art,

and,

if you want the whole line up

so you don’t have any missing pieces

Try

‘The Punch.’

The thing is,

if you do what I have told you here,

you should have a good, soft punch.

But,

if you don’t,

then you are simply missing pieces,

and all the pieces of the punch

are in

‘The Punch.’

Oinky Donkey,

time to see a man about a work out.

You guys and gals,

have yourself a most glorious week end,

filled with nothing but the glory of you

made pure by the work out.

Al

Check out THE PUNCH!

Making the Perfect Karate Fist

Punch Harder with a Perfect Karate Fist!

Had a guy write me the other day, a Master Instructor, so I knew he had his smarts on, and he pointed out that I never actually talked about how to make a fist.

He was right, and this is a terrible outpoint on my part. There is a zen simplicity to making a fist, and I should have covered this in some of my courses. So let me blog it, then write some articles later, and correct this outpoint.

For a beginner, one should roll the four fingers, then cross them with the thumb. This is like barrel staves held together with a band of iron. Get that picture in your mind when you make a fist, it helps.

The trick is to have a loose fist, then tighten on impact, then loose again. When you tighten that fist you should get the picture of squeezing all ‘space’ out of the fist, condense the muscle and bone to make it heavier when you decide to throw it for real.

For the intermediate student making the fist tight is not as important as aligning all parts of the body behind the fist.

For the advanced student you don’t tighten the fist at all. You leave it loose, and touch your opponent with the ‘stick of your bones.’ This is the ultimate in correct body alignment, and the achievement of putting your whole body into the strike.

Now, there is more to this, but it is all pretty much based on this, so if you follow these instructions you should be off to a good start. Just take your time, practice making the fist, aligning the body, and achieving an effortless strike.

This has been about the making of the Perfect Karate Fist.