A Summer of Martial Arts!

Yeah, baby.

Set your work out up,

do it every day,

see if you can learn a whole art in one summer.

That’s the game!

And,

I came across a VERY interesting fact the other day.

And I could kick myself for not having the link for you.

But the essence of the article was this:

If you turn your wrist when punching you break bones in your hand.

If you keep the punch stable, 

for instance use a vertical punch, 

the bones don’t break in the hands.

Now this guy had done a job of research,

went back through boxing and martial arts

and really backed the idea up.

About twenty or thirty years ago

I made the point with my students,

practice the twisting punch to learn to snap,

then forget it,

don’t do it again,

go to a vertical punch

and use the snapping closure of the hand for your snap.

The reason i said this wasn’t because I noticed broken hands,

it was because logically speaking

if you twist the hand on impact it is unstable

and weight can’t be properly transmitted it.

There are a few twisting punches,

but they are really rare and mystical.

And I hold that mysticism can be cured by understanding the basics.

Just saying.

So,

that’s my two cents for the week.

And,

the book is getting closer,

It’s getting edited,

about 3/4s done,

and I’m really glad I decided to get edited.

I’m learning a lot,

and the book is going to be a LOT cleaner when it is done.

So,

Let’s repeat the obligatory ad from last week…

Blinding Steel!

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

Because your opponent will probably have a weapon!

Okay, everybody,

summer is around the corner, so start now!

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…

Karate ‘punch’ lines, and a hard truth about the Martial Arts

Newsletter 888

Martial Arts Punch Lines (get it?)

Happy Labor Day!
I think I’ll labor at the martial arts today.

A quick word,
I had inadvertently taken my list of courses off the site.
This is the full list,
so examine the left sidebar on the Monster,
everything is there.

Now,
came across these little gems,
thought I would share…

You’re not outnumbered,
you’re target rich.

When people ask me what I do for a living:
‘I teach people how to maim and kill.’

Bruises are really just temporary tattoos.

Kung Fu has been curing ADHD
since 500 AD

For my birthday
I want pound cake and punch.

violence isn’t always the answer,
but it sure is an option

the best part of a joke is the punch line.

Okay.
Nuff frivolity.
Let’s get serious.

It is true,
a picture is worth a thousand words.
and,
that being true,
a video is worth a thousand thousand words.
But,
here’s the cruel truth…
you still have to understand what the words mean.

I remember when Karate first hit the shores,
the Japanese said:
‘it will take an American three lifetimes to understand the martial arts.’
And,
that’s true,
if you don’t understand the words.

For me,
chi was the big mysterious.
Thought about it,
tried to figure it out,
made no sense.
Then I started looking up words like:
energy,
force,
spirit,
intention,
will power,
and so on.
And,
suddenly,
it all made sense.

https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=uM1ubDwUxa4

Tell me I don’t understand chi.
Heck,
I can project it outside my body.
You know the funny thing?
I wish somebody had told me
the power of understanding words
back when I was 19.
I would be moving cars,
not just putting out candles.
All my training would have changed,
gone in a different direction.

The power of words.

So,
here’s the whole story…

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/2f-matrixing-the-master-text/

How I came up with matrixing,
the evolution,
arts studied,
and so on.
All you have to do is understand the words.
But don’t worry,
I’ve included a few pictures to help you out.
Grin.

Okay,
have a great bunch of work outs this labor day.

And,
BTW
GO TEXAS!
To the degree that people rally round,
to the degree that government sits on the sidelines,
to that degree Texas comes back.

have a GREAT work out!

Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/2f-matrixing-the-master-text/

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

Not Punching, like in Buddha Punching

Newsletter 852

‘Not’ punching as a Way of Life

Did you know….
you will be happy every day
if you work out every day?
It’s true!

You can find the latest old journal here…
http://www.monstermartialarts.com/MonsterJournal3.html

Remember,
no guarantees on the links here,
I don’t know where they lead,
but if you find a working link to a deal
I’ll honor it.
Not working links….too bad.

How many Martial Artists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Just one.
The others sit around and say,
“We have that in our system.”

Awright,
it’s a terrible joke.

I actually prefer this joke:

How many buddhas does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Two.
One to screw in the light bulb,
and one to not-screw in the light bulb.

I often wonder how many people actually understand that.
I mean,
how do you ‘not-screw’ something?
how do you ‘not-do?’

It took me about 20 years to figure out how to not-do something,
and this in spite of the fact that I actually understood it.

But knowing about something
is not the same as knowing something.

So when you are beginning,
you punch,
really hard.
This has the benefit of making muscles,
creating speed,
and impressing the girls.

After a couple of decades
you realize that you aren’t getting stronger.
In fact,
you realize that the harder you go,
sometimes…
the more it hurts.

For me,
I started getting headaches from punching.
Whiplash, you know.

So I started changing things.
I didn’t want to give up the martial arts,
and I realized that if they were hurting,
there was something wrong.

I was doing something wrong.

One thing I did was read all the old texts.
Old books on zen,
Chinese concepts,
that sort of thing.

I mean,
if I was hurting,
and I was doing what everyone else was doing
then somebody else must have hurt, too.
Right?

And it was in the ‘not-do’ concept of Buddhism.
Oddly,
now I didn’t understand it.
But I understood it when I was 20!
But at 40,
I didn’t get it.

The solution to understanding this concept
came from The Tao.
There is a line in it…
a very neutronic line…

‘Do nothing until nothing is left undone.’

Lights came on in my dusty cranium.
Synapses clicked in my neural patterns.
Even the zombie circuits came alive!

I started hitting softer.
I stopped seeing how much impact I could create,
which was the result of hitting harder,
and began looking for
how soft I could hit,
or,
here it comes…
how much weight I could deliver
without hitting.

Man,
that was a real ‘not-doing.’
It was zen, baby,
right from the root.

Now,
to be honest,
it probably wouldn’t have worked
if I hadn’t spent all those years trying to hit hard.
I had to have a certain amount of yang
before I could have a certain amount of yin.

It’s sort of interesting,
the universe is built of yang,
but there is more yin.
Yang is things.
Yin is not-things.
Not things include the space of things,
but also…
all the rest of space.
Here is the key to understanding.

It’s not how hard you hit,
it’s how much weight is transferred,
but then you have to go backwards again,
and take even the weight out of the strike.
once you go through these steps
something interesting happens.

In the old Chinese texts
There was reference to hitting something
and invalidating the atoms.
Making the molecules hurt.
Hmmm.

And I found that the softer I hit,
and the less weight I put into the the strike,
the more I could feel…atoms.

Well,
not atoms,
not exactly,
but hitting softly,
with more yin,
putting space into an object (body)
and the body didn’t like it.
It was like the atoms got invalidated.

So if you hit with yang,
impact,
force on force,
then things simply break.
They just reach a point of breaking
and the object doesn’t mind that.

But if you hit with yin,
understanding what force is,
and isn’t…
then the object that you are striking wants to go away.

I guess the only way to think about it is like this…
something in the universe (a body, for instance)
doesn’t mind being broken,
for that doesn’t change it’s ‘somethingness.’
but when you hit ‘something’ with less force,
to the point of hitting it with emptiness,
so that the idea of emptiness goes into the somethingness,
then that something is in threat of being changed,
it doesn’t like it,
it wants to run away.
It is invalidated,
made more wrong than it understands wrong to be.

Weird,
eh?

Anyway,
you can see the video of me hitting something with yin
on the Matrixing Chi page on the monster.

Unfortunately,
unless you have developed enough force to understand force,
and then gone the other way to understand ‘not-force,’
or yin,
or the opposite of something (nothing…to the extreme),
you won’t understand it.
But that’s okay,
you just read the words,
have a little faith,
and do a lot of practice,
and what I say is going to make PERFECT sense.

Have an awesome work out!
Al

PS,
any trouble with courses,
any questions about anything,
drop me an email at:

aganzul@gmail.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:
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

Karate Blocking Transforms Martial Artist

Newsletter 807

How Karate Blocks Make You Better

May you have the best work out of your life.
Really.

Cover of volume 1 of Kindle version of Matrix Karate ~ click on cover to find out more

Speaking of blocks…
When I was in my teens I was studying Kenpo.
I learned all these neat tricks,
was excited about fighting,
and I kept having these weird ideas about strategy
and how the martial arts were shaped.
Oddly,
I couldn’t make these strategies work.
I could fight well,
but these things I was thinking about,
they just eluded me in combat.
And it was because there wasn’t much
in the way of blocking,
in Kenpo.

In my twenties I joined the Kang Duk Won,
I bashed my arms for years,
and I learned about pain.
I learned that pain is a warning device.
And it was all because of blocks.

Funny.
Most people won’t use a real block in freestyle.
I can,
and do if I am teaching somebody
and there is a lesson in it.
But it’s easier to just hit the other fellow
than it is to block.

But I never would have learned
how to slide in and hit somebody
if I hadn’t learned how to block.

I always remember the specific technique
where it all came home.
It was the technique
from the first move of Batsai.
Batsai is spelled a few different ways,
but it means
‘defending a fortress.’

In that technique I had to do three blocks.
And I had to do these three blocks with hips twists,
I had to twist the hips
to align the body
so it could support the impact
without collapsing.
And I had to do it faster
than somebody could throw three punches at me.

For months I tried to get that technique.
I would practice it and practice it,
get guys to give me that attack,
but I just couldn’t move my body fast enough.

One day,
I did.
Just like that.
One second I couldn’t,
and the next second I could.
Like a switch had been thrown.
But here’s the interesting thing:
I felt like I was behind my head.
I felt like I was out of my body,
just a little bit,
and watching my body move without me.

Well,
it was moving because I had mastered
the thought pattern behind the blocks.
I had practiced that mental circuit
until it broke,
and what was left was me.

From there I moved into other things,
hitting without blocks because,
darn it,
I had gotten so good at them I didn’t need them.
And I moved into concepts
of how to move the energy in my body
just by thinking about it.
Which is understandable if you realize
that learning how to block
had taught me how to influence my body
with just thought.

I began to be able to accomplish
all those odd ideas I had had
way back in Kenpo.
Which led to Matrixing.

Nowadays people don’t practice the blocks.
And if they do,
they don’t practice them with the proper hip movement,
the proper alignment,
the proper breathing and thought.

I know this because when people
come to me for lessons,
they show a complete lack of understanding,
no knowledge of the drills,
of how blocking works.

The thing is
there is a whole realm of thought
that goes with learning how to block.
You learn all sorts of things,
and it builds a springboard
for moving into other concepts.

Think about it,
you can box,
and learn how to take a punch,
but that doesn’t teach you
how to run energy through your body.

Nothing wrong with boxing,
it’s actually pretty good stuff,
fills in a few gaps
that are in the martial arts,
but it just doesn’t have the energy theory
that goes along with the martial arts.

Anyway,
I’m working on the Matrix Karate
for a Kindle version.
Kindle is very unfriendly to photos,
so I have to take some out,
and rewrite the thing.
It’s be good,
but not as good as a book,
or a video.
Heck,
even the other electronic readers are better,
because they take PDFs easily.

But one of the things I focus on
to make up for that lack,
is the specific blocking in the forms.
Not the matrix of blocking,
which provides a logic
which blasts one to intuition,
but the old way,
learning the blocks,
making them work,
until the art does you,
and you become the art.

You guys are lucky.
You understand something the Kindle readers
may never understand.
You get everything on these courses.
On the other hand,
the kindle readers may understand something you don’t
because they will be seeing the art
in a more bare bones viewpoint,
that will let their mind fill in the blanks,
which is very healthy for a student.
Well,
who’s to say.
The real lesson is in the work out.
Getting the material and doing it,
thousands and thousands and thousands of times,
until it becomes you,
and you become it.
That will teach you the art,
no matter which of my books or courses you get.

Here’s the full Matrix Karate course.

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

Have a great work out!

Al

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

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 Power of the Martial Arts Punch

Newsletter 792
The Power of the Punch

Work out quick!

Rain is coming in So Cal!
Of course, I can always work out in the house.
Simply draw a shoulder width square on the floor
and do your forms on the square.
Easy squeezy.
Teach you all sorts of things about motion in a closed space.

I am fond of telling people
that martial arts happen in a phone booth.
This is because you don’t need big, swinging punches.
You need short, little effective punches.
Consider the following facts.

If one punch comes from six feet away,
and the other comes from six inches away,
they will have the same power
if they have equal weight upon impact.
Of course,
you can see the one that is six feet away,
and it is easier to block.
The one that is six inches away,
that one is hard to block.

The power of a punch is measured not by speed or weight of arm,
but by how much weight is transferred
to the other body upon impact.
Understand this,
and you will have to drastically rethink
the value of muscles,
the angles inherent in the arm/body/etc.,
the value of speed,
and so on.

This last point was amply illustrated
by a fellow name of Matt Hamill.
Matt was a fighter in the UFC.
He was deaf,
and he wasn’t fast.
In fact,
he was slow.
But his punches were devastating,
they contained more weight than faster fighters.
Faster fighters would hit him,
but eventually he would land one of those hands of his,
and the other fighter would fold.

People think it is how hard you hit.
No.
It is how much weight goes into the target.
Weight is not dependent upon speed.
Yes,
you can increase weight by increasing speed.
But speed as the sole factor doesn’t equate.
So there is something more than speed.
What?
Intention to travel through a target.
Intention to deliver weight to the target.

What is Intention?
What you desire,
especially as evidenced, proven,
by a plan.

So when you train,
and especially when you do your forms,
pay a lot of intention to the plan of the form:
to increase body weight
by grounding your weight,
by aligning all body parts,
and so on.

And,
it goes without saying,
but I’ll say it anyway,
one of the goals of matrixing,
one of the plans of matrixing,
is to educate you as to the construction of your body
so that you can use it as one unit.

Man,
this will really build your intention,
and really increase the weight of your punch.

Remember,
it’s not power you seek,
but efficiency in transferring weight.
Odd concept,
but if you think it through
you’ll find the truth of the martial arts.

Here’s the course for the week.

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

Check it out and remember:
knowledge is power!

Have a great work out!
Al

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

Which is Better, Jujitsu Throwing or Karate Punching

Striking v Grappling

When it comes to Jujitsu throwing or Karate punching I will always take karate punching.

I know this is going to ruffle a few feathers, but let me state my case.

Back in the sixties and seventies there weren’t many organizations, no protective gear, no mommies worrying as they watched their seven year old learn Karate. There were so few schools that I had to travel fifty miles to class, and the only people I trained with were VERY dedicated.

Dedicated people who didn’t sign up because they had seen a Bruce Lee movie (Bruce Lee wasn’t around when I began Karate, he was yet to come), but because something inside them was driving them.

Over the next few years protective gear was introduced, chain stores started up, people who had studied for a couple of years were promoted and went off to start their own schools, and the worth of Karate sank.

But before that happened I saw people do things that people today simply cannot do.

Can you break a standing brick with a half fist? How about sticking a hole in a board with a single finger? How about taking a full power kick to the groin?

Such things are virtually unheard of these days.

And I am not just an old fuddy duddy hearkening back to the ‘good, old days.’ The things I speak of happened, were verifiable, and the level of Karate was much higher.

Here’s the interesting thing: people can do more back flips and fancy kicks today. People can do more difficult forms.

But they are showing the fat, and the real meat hasn’t even been cooked.

Flash forward…the Ultimate Fighting Championship is the most popular arena in the world. People crowd into MMA schools so they can ground and pound, and classical karate, and Kung Fu and many other arts, are fairly well ignored, or taught to children in large chains, which merely exacerbates the problem.

Yet I have never seen anybody step into the ring and do the type of Karate punch I was trained in. I have never seen anybody who could punch an arm and break a bone with perfect focus and a calm mind.

MMA, you see, is using boxing.

Many claim that Karate punches are too stylistic, won’t work. But none of the people who say such thing trained back when these Karate did work, when students were trained until they could make Karate work, and only the dedicated survived.

About the Author: Al Case began martial arts in 1967. Check out his Outlaw Karate course. There is also an Outlaw Karate book (same material but no video) available on Amazon.

How I Got the Ultimate Karate Punch in the Face

It’s the wind up, it’s the karate punch, it’s the…oops!

Good Lard is it a beeootifull day, especially for the ultimate karate punch..

Good day to work out, limber up the muskles, knock the fat off yer frame. Get healthy. Ya know? Are ya ready to talk martial arts?

Click on this guy to get the ultimate karate punch.

Click on the book to find out about the man who killed Kenpo Karate.

One of the drills I hated the most, but got the most out of, was the simple horse stance. We would spread the legs, get the thighs down to where they were almost parallel to the floor, and put up one high block, and extend the other hand to the side in a chicken beak, and look at our finger tips. We called this position Kima Chasie. Horse Meditation.

And we meditated on the pain it would cause us.

Now, forget the pain, forget the stronger legs, forget everything but the real purpose of it. Get out of your body.

After a couple of years of dabbling with horse Meditation I decided to do it right. I decided that pain wouldn’t cause death (in this instance) and that I should just do the exercise until I got what it was all about.

So, I hit the stance, looked at my fingers, and concentrated on breathing. Time passed. Minutes seemed like hours. My mind began to still, the world slowed down. Seconds seemed like hours.

And, suddenly it all stopped hurting. No pain at all. The whole universe was one peaceful concept that i could live with forever.

How long did it take me to get there?

Five minutes.

That’s all.

Zingo bingo, instant enlightenment.

Doing the Horse Stance Form and techniques at 61.

Now came the problem. When I tried to move, I couldn’t. My whole body had locked up. Man, I was freaked. Tried to wiggle backwards, couldn’t move, couldn’t even rock. Tried forwards, ah, there we go, I could fall for…oh shit…ah! Landed on my face.

So, enlightenment is possible through the old training methods, but sometimes it can be weird, freaky, and even as significant as a karate punch on the nose.

Hey, any of youse guys feel like coming over to see me, I live on good old Monster Martial Arts. Brings your friends, the doors are open, leave your old life outside.

See ya.

Al

Here’s a great article on how to be Karate tough. If you can take it. Grrr.

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/

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.