What Happened to Kill the Martial Arts

How the Martial Arts were destroyed!

That the martial arts were destroyed is all too obvious. The good news is that it is easy to fix them.

For thousands of years the martial arts were passed on from instructor to student. There were high standards, and any who didn’t adhere to these high standards would simply be beaten up. Challenged. So only the best passed on the best art.

Do you just do a bunch of air punches and kicks?

Or do you receive actual instruction as above?

Find out more at MonsterMartialArts.com

Immediately after world war two American servicemen went to the orient and began studying the martial arts. Because of the length of tours of duty, the servicemen were enrolled in schools for maybe two years, often only one year. Yet, they came home as black belts. Or, they didn’t even make black belt until they were on the plane and awarded themselves.

This resulted in a huge degradation of art. Instead of teachers having ten years experience, they had a year or two of experience, and they were, even if only a brown belt, promoted as black belts…and as masters.

Now, there is a complete write up on this phenomenon at Monster Martial Arts. Read the Matrix Karate page and you will fully understand exactly how it all happened, and not just from Japan to the United States, but all through the history of the martial arts.

And, this leads us to the cure for this ‘disease.’ Knowledge.

You see, there is an exact science to the martial arts, and to teaching the martial arts. This science is called Matrixing, and it is designed to show the student what the weak points of his martial art are, and how to fix them.

This is the first time in the history of the martial arts that an actual science has been figured out and used. Furthermore, since it is a science, and not just an art, you actually learn faster…a lot faster. Not slow, like in ten years of paying dues, but as fast as you can understand knowledge.

If you want to know about this science, if you want to fix what has been done to your martial art, simply head over to Monster Martial Arts and read about Matrixing. The whole site is devoted to Matrixing, and so is the Monster Newsletter.

How Long Does It Take To Become a Black Belt?

Students Ask, How Long Does it Take to Become a Black Belt?

The question, “How long does it take to become a black belt,’ is a good one. It is a valid question in any martial art, be it karate or aikido or taekwondo, or whatever. Here are some interesting facts I put together in answer to this question.

The United States army takes Joe Ordinary and makes him a soldier within two months. Two more months and Joe can be trained to be a technically trained specialist in a vast variety of fields. In addition to basic and rudimentary hand to hand combat training, the US military has extensive programs, applicable to the battlefield, and they don’t take decades to do.

The question of how long does it take to become a black belt apparently didn’t occur to Chuck Norris, and didn’t bother Korean Martial Arts Masters. While in the army he took Tang Soo Do classes in Korea. He earned his black belt in a year and a half.

One of the best tournament fighters ever, a fellow name of Mike Stone, didn’t bother asking this question either. He trained hard and long. He earned his black belt in six months.

One of my favorites for ignoring the question of how long does it take to become a black belt is Joe Lewis. Joe Lewis made black belt in a year. Actually, he earned black belts in three different styles in under a year.

The idea of taking four years or more to earn a black belt actually came to us within the last few decades. It was begun by Chinese Kenpo instructors who structured the art around automobile sales contracts. Before then it took a couple of years at most.

The whole idea of a belt system actually is relatively new to the martial arts. Belt systems were started by Jigaro Kano, the founder of Judo. He lifted the idea from a classification system for swimmers.

The above all being said, when you ask the Martial Arts instructor you are thinking about taking lessons from how long it takes, don’t think less of him if he has bought into this idea. Just throw yourself into your studies and get where you are going faster because you try harder. Education, hard work, a dedicated attitude, that is the real answer to how long it takes to become a black belt.

Belief Systems in the Martial Arts

Wow!
Life!
Another Day!
A work out!
Ahhh…

I saw my breath in the air today,
and it reminded me of the Kang Duk Won.
During the winter we could see our breath in class,
we were expected to warm the building with our hard work.
During the summer
the temperature would soar over a hundred and twenty.
We didn’t bother to complain.
The complaint department wasn’t open.
That was the school of Hard Knocks and Tough Stuff.

Look,
I want to go a little Neutronic this time,
got something I want to talk about,
something that’ll make the world easier to mess around with.
Oh,
and BTW,
a welcome to all you newbies
who are new to the newsletter.
As the people say in Avatar…
I see you.
And,
just to warn you,
while the newsletter is mostly about technique and anecdote,
sometimes I go Neutronic,
and things get a bit weird.
If it gets too weird,
just stick your fingers in your ears
and go la la la
and things will be back to normal next newsletter.

Now,
everybody having been warned…

Belief Systems.
What I normally call BS.
Belief systems are a structure
one surrounds a mind with.
‘I believe this or that.’
Thus,
what a belief system does
is keep out the good stuff.
It enables the mind to remain structured,
but at the cost of curiosity and imagination.

Let me example that…
you believe in the sacred cow.
If somebody says sacred cows don’t exist,
you push them back with your belief system.
But,
what if sacred cows don’t exist?
How will you ever learn?
You can’t learn,
you see,
because your mind has corraled you,
and there is no way out of the corral.
Talk about a mind trap,
but that’s what a Belief System is.
and they infect the martial arts…

Somebody says his art is the only art.
And he’s willing,
and by willing I mean compelled,
to push against anybody who says otherwise,
and that means he has stopped the inflow of data,
and that means he can’t learn.

Most of the mucky mucks in the martial arts world
hold to their position,
by not letting anybody learn.
By not letting them go outside the belief system.

I went outside the belief system,
and that’s where I found the true art.
I found it in the art that was protected by belief systems.
The thing that I had been studying
but had never seen.
I wouldn’t have found out the true art
if I hadn’t gone outside the art
and really looked at what I had.

Sit in your yard and say,
these are the trees,
this is the grass,
and never see the fact
that your yard is a yard.
You were never able to get outside the belief system
of bushes and twigs,
and see the whole picture.

That is the point of it all,
you know.
that is why you study the martial arts,
to see the whole picture.
To get outside Belief Systems
and see the whole picture.
The whole art.
The True Art.

Now,
the last thing I want to say is this…
the most difficult thing in the world
is a fellow who won’t learn.
A fellow who reads something and says,
‘We have that,’
and never really looks.
Sure,
his system had it,
but he had never seen it,
he is just using his belief system
to protect himself against the inflow of data.

This is actually my biggest problem in spreading Matrixing,
People who adjust what I’ve said to their belief systems,
instead of going outside them.

So change.
Take down the fences.
You don’t have to take them down for everything,
just the Martial Arts.

Do you really know what Matrixing is?
Have you ordered a course and actually examined
all this data that I claim
nobody has ever seen before?

Here’s the link to Undoing Belief Systems.
It’ll take apart your system, no matter what it is,
and enable you to catch a glimpse of the whole picture.

Okay,
that’s it for now.
I hope I have inspired somebody
to punch a hole in the fence,
peer through
and see what’s on the other side.

Back to kicks and punches next time.

Have a great work out.

Al
:o)

He who is born a fool is never cured.  ~Proverb

He who is born a fool is never cured unless he practices his kata every day without fail.~Al Case

What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.  ~Ezra Pound

What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it–and a man’s depth can be increased by the amount of martial arts he drills into his bones.  ~Al Case

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.  ~Bertrand Russell

Yeah ~Al Case

Send me your wins!