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…
Matrix Martial Arts 