Making the Four Decisions of Martial Arts Freestyle!

Winning at Martial Arts Freestyle

To be victorious while using martial arts in a fight it is necessary to make the decision to win the fight. Without that decision, simply, there is no way you are going to become victorious in freestyle, or kumite. Thus, you have to practice making the decision, and then implement a plan so that the decision becomes reality in your martial arts freestyle.

Amazing new book! click on the cover!

There are five decisions you must make to back up the decision to win a fight. This combat strategy is found in every fight. This is the strategy you must understand and master if you are going to be able to deliver the original decision.

The first decision, and the most important, is that there is going to be a fight. Interestingly, you don’t have to get in a fight if you refuse to make the decision to be in a fight. Even if the other person has made a decision, unless you agree with his decision, you don’t have to fight.

The second decision involves distances involved in the fight. You should understand , at this point, that a fight is going to collapse in distance. And, you must understand that if you can control this distance, and even change collapsation into expansion at will, you can control and win a fight.

The third decision has to do with which side of the bodies the fight is going to occur on. One out of eight people being left handed, a fight will usually occur with right hand, and the bodies will turn to fit the hands, and the fight will be on that side. If you can control that decision, as to which side the fight will be on, then you are going to win that fight.

The fourth decision is going to be whether you are on the inside or the outside. What this means is that if he punches with a right hand, you must block/push/whatever so that his right hand misses you on the outside, and you see the inside of his wrist. And, if he punches with the right, you must block/push/whatever so that his right hand misses you on the inside, and you see the outside of his wrist.

There are other decisions in a fight, there can be millions of decisions, literally. Do you wish the fight to be conducted at a specific distance, such as foot, or fist, or elbow, or whatever. Or, do you wish to control the decisions so that the fight collapses or expands in distance as you wish, from foot to elbow to knee to throw to fist to foot to whatever, your choice, and so on.

The point, however, is that to control all the other decisions, you must control the first four decisions. If you can understand and create drills to back up these decisions, then you can win any fight. Of course, as I said in the beginning, the first decision, that you are going to win that fight, is the most important.

The Matrix Karate course will enable you to figure out ALL the decisions one has to know how to make in a fight.

How to Create a Motor in the Martial Arts

Here an old post that deserves a new read…

One of the more profound mysteries in the martial arts is the concept of Chi. Chi is a mystical energy that pervades the universe in mysterious ways. And, chi is supposed to be a mystical energy that after a lifetime, you can use to do superhuman things. Unfortunately, proof seems to be sadly lacking for these claims concerning Chi. Maybe there are a few people who can do things, but most people can’t, and just a few exceptions here and there don’t prove the truth of certain theories concerning the subject of Chi. Fortunately, there is a theory that will result in Chi, that is not mystical, and that will work. A motor is two terminals which result in tension. Everything in the universe can be defined as a motor. Every tension in the universe is the result of a motor. An atom has a proton and electron interchanging to create energy. A cell has sodium and potassium interacting to create energy. Everywhere in the universe that you find two terminals opposing, you will find energy, and you will find a motor. And, when you take a martial arts stance with the human body, you have increased your weight, and this causes energy to move between the body and the planet. When you shift the weight from leg to leg, from stance to stance, the weight moves up and down the legs, and this excites the tan tien, a spot two inches below the navel which generates energy for the body. Thus, there is energy, and the body is a motor, and you can call this energy chi. Here’s the problem: everybody concentrates on making the body strong, and so creates only the low level chi required to operate the body. What people should be doing is focusing awareness on the procedure. If you build the awareness it takes to create the energy, you will build the energy that will result in the ‘superhuman’ potential that people look to Chi for. Thus, do your form, build awareness, and concentrate not on the violence of action, not on building the body, but on becoming aware of what you are doing. Feel the energy going down and up your legs, feel the energy building in the tan tien, and feel your connection with the planet. Do this and you will shortly become aware of energy building in your body in a surprising way. Energy that tingles a body part just by thinking of it, energy that warms the palms upon mere thought. Energy that can be channeled throughout your body and into the various body parts, and can even be felt outside your body. Once you have started building energy in this manner, then you can start searching for more spectacular ways to use it.

Why Does It Take So Long to Learn the Martial Arts?

The bully charges out of the alley and tosses a whole, darned trash can at you! Do you ask him to take that garbage can back because you’re only on your ninth Karate lesson and haven’t reached the deflecting the garbage can lesson? Or do you ask him go away because, here it comes, you forgot to pay your dues at the local dojo?

There is a point to all this silliness, why do the martial arts take so long to learn? You can teach a guy to fly a jet, get in a dogfight and get shot down, spend time in a concentration camp, get released and run for political office, and become a senator, and retire, in the time it takes to learn some systems of the martial arts. I heard of one system that it takes seventeen years to get to Black Belt in!

Some people will make the excuse that you’re learning more than self defense. You’re solving martial mysteries and its all about the lifestyle and you need to invest in your old age, you know? But you’re still lying under that trash can and the guy is pulling out a knife, and no matter how many lessons you’ve taken, you have to do something!

One of the old sayings that I heard, long time ago, is garbage in, garbage out. The sad fact of the matter is that if something is hard to put into your head, then it might not be easily accessed and used. Maybe it would be appropriate to find an art that is as easily absorbed as track, or boxing.

It is true that the Martial Arts are not a sport, they are an art, but they can still be learned easily and quickly. They just have to be taught not by one mystical technique after another, but rather by understanding concepts behind them. Those endless techniques that you memorize, to be truthful, are random data, and, often as not, they don’t really relate to one another.

That is a problem, to be sure, even if you learn a thousand techniques, you might not have enough data to be able to make sense out of the whole thing until you reach one thousand and one. And, let’s face it, a hundred years is to long to become competent. And then go to heaven.

The solution is that the martial arts must be taught on a conceptual basis. Instead of having a fellow memorize endless strings of tricks, have him learn the rather simple principles behind those tricks. Have him learn conceptually and he’s suddenly going to be able to figure out those thousand techniques without any need for endless memorization.

Give him an acorn and throw in the watering pot, that’s what I believe, and then watch the oak shoot upwards. Most martial artists, and I don’t mean to be mean in this observation, are lost in the limbs of the trees. The real way to teach, however, is to show the guy the principles, then have use those principles, and, faster than a rabbit on steroids, you’ve got yourself a fast and competent martial artist.

How to Create a Motor in the Martial Arts

One of the more profound mysteries in the martial arts is the concept of Chi. Chi is a mystical energy that pervades the universe in mysterious ways. And, chi is supposed to be a mystical energy that after a lifetime, you can use to do superhuman things. Unfortunately, proof seems to be sadly lacking for these claims concerning Chi. Maybe there are a few people who can do things, but most people can’t, and just a few exceptions here and there don’t prove the truth of certain theories concerning the subject of Chi. Fortunately, there is a theory that will result in Chi, that is not mystical, and that will work. A motor is two terminals which result in tension. Everything in the universe can be defined as a motor. Every tension in the universe is the result of a motor. An atom has a proton and electron interchanging to create energy. A cell has sodium and potassium interacting to create energy. Everywhere in the universe that you find two terminals opposing, you will find energy, and you will find a motor. And, when you take a martial arts stance with the human body, you have increased your weight, and this causes energy to move between the body and the planet. When you shift the weight from leg to leg, from stance to stance, the weight moves up and down the legs, and this excites the tan tien, a spot two inches below the navel which generates energy for the body. Thus, there is energy, and the body is a motor, and you can call this energy chi. Here’s the problem: everybody concentrates on making the body strong, and so creates only the low level chi required to operate the body. What people should be doing is focusing awareness on the procedure. If you build the awareness it takes to create the energy, you will build the energy that will result in the ‘superhuman’ potential that people look to Chi for. Thus, do your form, build awareness, and concentrate not on the violence of action, not on building the body, but on becoming aware of what you are doing. Feel the energy going down and up your legs, feel the energy building in the tan tien, and feel your connection with the planet. Do this and you will shortly become aware of energy building in your body in a surprising way. Energy that tingles a body part just by thinking of it, energy that warms the palms upon mere thought. Energy that can be channeled throughout your body and into the various body parts, and can even be felt outside your body. Once you have started building energy in this manner, then you can start searching for more spectacular ways to use it.

Karate, Dark Alleys, and Gloopy Aliens!

Good Morning USA, and world, and, uh, guess I’ll throw in the universe. Never can tell, some gloopy alien with three eyes might be keeping track of those strange critters on earth. Might be reading this article right now making sure we’re not being contentious and guilty of sedition to the alien galactic empire. Hello, Gloopy Alien. I wonder if he knows what this here finger of mine is for? Hah. Speaking of weird and Gloopy Aliens, the founder of modern Karate, Gichin Funakoshi, was about 80 years old, and was out for his nightly walk. The night was ominous, Japan was in an unsettled state, and he saw a mugger waiting on a street corner. Gichin knew, deep in his heart, that that mugger was going to try to mug him. Hey, you think a mugger’s going to risk picking on somebody who is big? Nope, muggers want to get on with their work with the least amount of personal risk, you know? Smart guys, these muggers are. Anyway, Gichin keeps on walking makes sure he looks feeble, and as he passes the mugger and the mugger leaps at him he whirls and grabs the mugger. Now, you might be wondering where he grabbed the mugger. A death lock on the carotid–a specialized nerve center that immobilizes totally? Well, uh, he didn’t do any of those things. He grabbed him by the, um, cajones. The apples, you know..the coconuts. He grabbed him by the children he might sire some day, by the future, by his only source of fun on those long, lonely nights that frustrate a mugger when he is all by himself and can’t find anybody who even remotely likes him. Now the founder of modern Karate has a mugger by the embarrassment, and what is he going to do next? Does he flick a set of knuckles to the throat and crunch the Adam’s apple…cause it to swell up and stop the mugger from breathing? Does he launch a spear hand thrust to the chest and yank the mugger’s very heart out and take a big bite while the terrified mugger watches in terror? Or does he just start to close his hand. Close his hand slowly, and watch the life blood drain out of the mugger’s face, and the very life right out of his quaking and pain infested body, and the happiness out of his future? Squeeze, until the nutty pulp runs out from between his gnarly, old fingers. Squeeze, until a loud popping sound fills the night air. Squeeze, until the mugger screams like a little girl and falls to the pavement, never to enjoy the feel of loving again. Gichin called for the cops. Yep, he stood on that corner and held that man and called for help. And the mugger was totted away to think about his crimes, and the terror of having his manhood held by another man. An interesting lesson for a mugger, eh? Another interesting lesson would be if you looked up the real meaning of the word testament and where it comes from and all that. Anyway, the point of all this is this don’t walk down that dark alley. Yep. My students have heard me say this, and they know what I mean. When you have a choice of a long walk down a lit street, or a short trip through a dark alley, take the long way. You can tell you’ve made it, that you do understand what the martial arts are all about when you can see a dark alley before you reach it. Hey, a sunny street in the heart of town might be a dark alley if there’s some idiot waiting for you. And you should have developed the extra perception, through those endless hours of practice, to know the difference between a dark alley and a well lit street.

The Secret Behind Butterfly Gung Fu!

I’m addicted to the martial arts. I’ve studied Southern Shaolin and Northern Shaolin and Wing Chun and Tai Chi and Pa Kua and…I can’t stop. This is not bad, of course, for the health benefits and the clarity of mind are absolutely phenomenal. There is one problem, however, that I wish to address here, concerning the martial arts. It can take several years to become expert in a system of Gung Fu. It can take more than a dozen years to master a system of Gung Fu. This is much, much too long. My solution to this problem was to concentrate on isolating the main concept–and motion–behind a system of kung fu, and concentrate upon just that concept. I didn’t want to learn by memorizing series of tricks, you see, I wanted to go for the gold. I wanted to find out the real secrets behind any system I studied. Every system I studied, however, was based on a different concept. Wing Chun slipped and angled , and the Mantis pulled with a hook. Pa kua made circles and deflected, and Tai Chi guided by absorbing. None of the systems seemed related! But, I reasoned, fighting is, at heart, fighting! There had to be a simple concept that tied them all together. There had to be some simple thing that was common to each fighting system, no matter how different the fighting system seemed to be! There had to be an underlying principle that I was missing. And, in the end, I found it. No matter what type of Kung Fu you are studying, the body is the common denominator. Kung fu, flower arranging, dance, taking a walk…they all need a body. And the body is constructed the same, for the most part, from person to person. Thus, I dissected and analyzed all the arts, and found that there is a principle of body motion, relating to and coming from the body, that is the same for virtually all arts. And the arts I was studying suddenly made sense, and I could see the connections. I had found the source of it all! Eventually, I formed my own system, and it is based on this common principle of body structure, and the only potentials of motion that a body is capable of. I call this system the Shaolin Butterfly, and the true glory of it is that is includes virtually all potentials of motion from all other systems of Kung Fu. Oh, and one other thing about this system that is great–it can be learned in a couple of months.

Monster Newsletter #307–Make Me One with Everything!

Hey Guys and Gals!
Happy Day to Ya!
I’ve been workin’ on the Pa Kua lately,
whole body is buzzin’ and awake,
man,
the glory of a work out.
Whoot!

You know,
I watch the news
(as little as possible)
and the martial arts are a cure.

If the government studied some martial arts,
they would respect their opponent,
and maybe not even pick a fight with us.

If Al Gore studied martial arts
he might not ‘grow apart’ from Tipper.

If every citizen in Arizona knew martial arts,
there would be no illegal immigrant problem.

If every citizen of California studied the martial arts,
they wouldn’t be picking a fight with Arizona over immigration.

You know?

Wouldn’t it be great to demand
that our politicians had a black belt
before running for office?

Problem is,
they’d start training for trophies,
instead of what the martial arts offer the spirit.
Sigh.

Anyway,
the heck with those bozos,
the things you get from the martial arts
are what is important.
After all,
you see the light…
and they don’t.

Remember the workout where you were so beat
you thought you couldn’t do one more kick,
so you did another one?

Or,
how about that time you got socked in the belly,
went down to your knees gasping for breath.

That’s the martial arts.
Overcoming pain.
Finding the correct solution,
which,
often as not,
means thinking things through,
and then training in the correct manner.

Ah,
the things the politicians could learn.

But,
like I say,
it’s not about them.

Think about it this way.
Every form of government on earth has eventually failed,
or,
even our great country,
will fail.
Times will change,
new problems to be solved,
and a better government needed.

But the martial arts always remain.

Every child needs to learn how to fight
with politeness and vigor.
Every woman needs to learn to defend themselves.

Or,
not to beat those ragged politicians with a rotten skunks tail,
but every politician needs to find self worth,
that they will be of some value,
able to resist the corruption,
maybe find their way back home to us.

That’s why we do martial arts.
A better world.
That’s why I write this newsletter,
and that’s why I push the matrixing method.

A better world.

You know,
economy is down,
everything’s a fruit cake,
and I want to tell you one thing…
thanks.
you’re the one that matters.
You’re the one who is going to make things right.
Not the idiot politicians,
not the taxers and regulators,
but you,
martial strong you.

Well,
that’s about all.
Pretty busy today,
got to see a man about a horse…
and you go see a man about a horse, too.
Have fun.
Grin at odd times and make your enemies uneasy.
Hunh!
I said something right.
Laugh…and make your enemies uneasy.
Well,
it just goes to show,
if you put a hundred monkeys in a room
with 100 typewriters for 100 years,
you never know what you’re going to get.

Here’s the pa kua link,
just in case you want to make your body buzz.

Butterfly Pa Kua Chang

Have a great work out!
Al

:o)

This is one of the best articles I have written, really changes the way you do things.
What is Going to Happen When You Have No Reaction Time!

Leave a comment if you can, it helps my statistics.

Did you hear about the Zen Master who ordered a hot dog? He said…’Make me one with everything.’
HAH!

After 30 Years in the Martial Arts What It Feels Like To Hit Somebody!

What happened when I finally used my fists somebody, after 30 years studying the martial arts, studying Kenpo and Kang Duk Won and Aikido and Wing Chun, and all sorts of other stuff, and what it felt like, was a crack up…and it was a wake up call. I tell you this little tale not to put forth bashing gays, or to encourage you to get in fights. Hitting people, after all, though nothing happened to me on this occasion, could have ended up with me being sued, or at least thrown in the hoosegow.

I was manager of an apartment house in Southern California, and it was on a bad side of town. One day a fellow came by with a dog on a rope, and I told him (in a polite manner) that dogs weren’t allowed in the apartments. He just looked at me and grinned, “Why don’t you tell him,” and he nodded to his canine companion.

I went to the tenant he had visited and told him that he would have to tell dog owner not to visit again, and I was met with a rude attitude. I started taking note of the type of people that were coming to see this tenant, and I realized that the guy was selling dope. This is where the story gets nasty.

I knocked on the door to his apartment and was let in, and I told the fellow that drugs weren’t allowed, and that he would have to move. He just laughed at me and announced, “I’m not even going to pay rent from now on, and you can’t do anything about it!” So I punched him.

Now, I merely dropped my weight into the sanchin stance, and I punched him with both fists on the chest. Man, he flew over the bed and struck the wall. But it was a stunning wake up to me. I hadn’t really damaged him, and I couldn’t believe the feeling of actually hitting somebody.

The shock jarred my arms and shook my shoulders, and my strike was not effective. I had knocked the stuffings out of bags for years, but the feeling of 175 pounds of human flesh was entirely different. I realized than that I had to change my training methods. If this had been a real fight, with somebody willing to stand up to me, I’d have a knock down drag out on my hands.

Anyway, the tenant jumps up, and he’s sobbing, an adult and he’s actually crying, and he says, “You can’t hit me!” Well, I wasn’t going to punch him again, I had suddenly realized how incredibly idiotic I was to lose it like that, but there was a ring of truth to his words. So I growled, “Why not?”

“Because my friend is in the closet!” I was frozen for a moment, then I crossed the room and opened the door to his closet, and his naked, gay lover was standing there, trembling in fear and with a really sickly grin on his face. Well, I learned something, I was going to stick to regular training in classical martial arts like Aikido and Tai Chi, and figure out a way to make my strikes really real, and I was going to avoid fighting.

The Secret Of Achieving Sixth Sense Abilities In The Martial Arts

All of my life I wanted to achieve fantastical sixth sense abilities. I wanted to be able to see inside minds, always be in the right spot at the right time, know what was going to happen before it happened. I discovered that the martial arts are the perfect way to develop these abilities.

Unfortunately, not all martial arts work in this manner. There are some arts that are incredible, and they open the spirit up and enhance abilities like nobody’s business. But then there are arts that are just thuggish cockfights, backroom brawls so low they make animals look high.

This difference, the difference between low and high martial arts, can easily be understood. It is very simple to discern why some arts excel when it comes to creating magnitude and finery in the human soul, and some don’t. This is actually not just a matter of philosophy, but a mechanistic condition relating to the nature of a human being.

Imagine the human spirit as a light bulb. There is the grungy, dingy one, maybe made of red glass, that hangs in some dungeon. Then there is the light that is sharp and shiny, a laser, able to illuminate anything it is shined upon.

A dirty light bulb stops the light, and we are talking about dirt as in anger and rage and the desire to hurt people. A laser light is not covered with filth, and the very waves of light have been aligned to make that light brilliant and infinite. So the first thing in this matter of gaining heightened sixth senses is to clean off the light bulb that you are, get rid of the rage and anger, and make all the parts of the body work together.

To coordinate the parts of the body so they work together, and are not possessed and filtered by anger, is something the human being does. The spirit, the real person, the actual being, must endeavor to accomplish this. Thus, to be a spirit, to ‘use’ the soul, in the simple act of coordinating the body parts, will cause the human being to shine brightly and put him on the road of increased abilities.

The second thing is to matrix the martial arts one is learning. This, again, is the act of alignment, but now one coordinates the pieces of the arts, and makes the arts into one functioning unit. Again, the spirit must be clean, unfettered, and diligent in creating this alignment of art.

Interestingly, alignment is nothing more than the fact of organizing, and it cleans the soul. In aligning body and art, one organizes the very spirit that one is, and when the soul is coordinated the sixth sense abilities will blossom. Coordination of body and alignment of art, this is how you Matrix Martial Arts and achieve greatness and magnitude and abilities of the sixth sense.

Monster Newsletter #295–Tales of the Kang Duk Won!

Monster Newsletter #295–Tales of the Kang Duk Won!

Good morning and Good Work Out to you!
The very best work out, you know?

Let’s talk about work outs.
Let’s talk about the Kang Duk Won.

I had a fellow wrote me an email
that he really enjoyed those classical forms,

I train in it every day and I like it a lot, I like the way you break it down, it has really made it simple for me to learn

and it made me think.
Memory lane,
you know?

In the following description of the Kang Duk Won
I want you to remember
that I was a white boy from suburbia,
didn’t even see a black person until I was 17,
was very protected,
not very intelligent,
and really ready to meet something of the real world.
Also remember that before I went to the Kang Duk Won,
I spent two years
in a classy dojo.
Full length wall mirrors,
the best in matting,
rows of kicking bags,
the shelves lined with trophies…
and I gave it up for the Kang Duk Won

The Kang Duk Won was born in Korea,
and had a unique lineage line to the founders of karate.
I wrote a bit about the lineage on the Monster Martial Arts site.

The San Jose Kang Duk Won was located on The Alameda,
right next to the Towne Theater,
which was a filthy theater,
physically and morally.
It showed a movie starring some gal
name of Linda Lovelace
for a couple of years.
Men in grey overcoats came and went.

To the left of the Towne Theater was the Kang Duk Won.
The big front window was cracked and duc taped.
There was a box office that had been covered up on the left.
Walk through the door onto indoor outdoor carpeting
that was, you guessed it, duc taped.
Bob’s office was on the left.
A beat to crap desk
a few business cards.
A lamp.
A radio that was always kept so low you couldn’t hear it.
When I started my own school I found out why the radio was so low.
Sitting in that office with nothing going on,
you get hypersensitive to sound.
The lowest volume tended to blare and irritate.

He had a pic on the wall,
don’t recall exactly what it was.
At one time I think it was a blow up
of the artwork on a version of
the book of five rings.
I think there was a calender on one of the walls.
The office was small, cramped,
and there was barely room for two chairs.
If you didn’t unfold them.
I always remember standing around before class
with six or seven very large bikers,
laughing and joking.
Really golden moments.

Visitors sat on a picnic bench under the front window.
The mat was actually made from sailboat canvas.
It was filthy,
and there was a wicked stitch up the side of the thing,
and where forms turned
the mat had ripped and been duc taped together.
There was a small mirror in the front of the room,
you could do one pose,
and if you stepped to the side
the mirror lost you.
Above the mirror was a pic of Norman Rha,
who taught Bob KDW.
To the sides of Norman
were mismatched Korean and American flags.
To the sides of the mirror were planter boxes,
one with sand,
one with pebbles.
Before class people lined up and thrust their fingers
into the sand and into the pebbles.

Waiting to pound sand,
other students would do their forms,
or do their hundreds.
Doing hundreds meant
doing hundreds of kicks before class.
Not ten or twenty,
but usually around two hundred kicks
each kick you knew,
right and left,
was considered a good warm up.
While we did forms and hundreds
the building would shake rhythmically.
and a dull pounding sound
came from the back room.

The back room was the changing room.
The kicking bag hung there.
Bob packed it himself,
and he was always taking it down
and getting it restitched.
The thing looked like Frankenstein’s manhood.

There was a bag of sand on a ledge
against one wall.
Somebody was always pounding on that.

To the left and rear was the water heater.
It had fallen over and was propped up.
When it fell it apparently ripped some piping loose,
and you could see sky.
The amount of sky you could see
became larger
with every rain.

To the right was the bathroom.
The toilet was the first toilet ever built,
and the floor under it had broken,
and it was slanted so bad
you had to do a one legged squat to, uh, squat.

Back out in the front,
I have to tell you
about the physical dimensions.
If I stood in the middle of the mat
and did long stances in pinan one
I could take up almost the whole room.
Serious.
It was maybe 15 wide
maybe 22 or 23 long.
And the people crowded on.

Classes were usually 15 to 20 people.
I remember one class
over 30 people.
You’d think there was no room to stand,
but,
we all did our forms.
And,
as the class progressed
we did different forms,
beginners beginning forms,
and up through twenty different forms.

I learned how to navigate
by doing forms in such crowded conditions.
You just learned how to move
and where to place your feet
and nobody ever tripped or stumbled.
We just didn’t.

Now,
you’d think,
from my description…
well,
who knows what you think.
Dirty.
Beat to crap.
And filled with joy.
Dirt can’t suppress a spirit.
And we would have a machine of twenty people
moving in unison,
working together,
feeding their energy
in a way that no other school had.

Now,
I know every school is unique,
and there had to be energy like this somewhere,
but I couldn’t find it.
I went to various schools and watched,
and nowhere was there this energy.

That filthy,
dirty room
glowed.

It got warm.

In the summer,
San Jose being a bottleneck,
the temp would hit 130 in that room.
In the winter
we would not suit up
until just before class,
then we would run out there
and do our forms maniacally,
just to get the blood going in our freezing feet.

Now,
the most important part.
The people.
There were so many people over the years,
College students,
the glass blower,
a couple of grave diggers,
the Ames Research Center Scientist,
the gas station owner
the reserve cop
and all the bikers.
Lots of bikers.

I should probably write a single newsletter
about these guys,
they really made my art real.

If you did your technique weak,
they frowned,
and you suddenly got a little worried and tried to hit harder,
and yet were terrified to hit harder.
Only after a couple of years
and finally learning how to put some oomph in my strikes,
did they stop frowning.
And,
a few times,
I really remember the first time,
I hit too hard,
knocked this big Hells Angel to the floor,
and he got up grinning and shook my hand.
He just said,
‘Yeah, man. Yeah!’

Anyway,
I survived.
In fact,
I flourished.
People would come to class
and leave.
Nobody hit them too hard,
we all had good control,
but there was just this dedicated feeling
that frightened people.

You have to be a zealot
if you want to learn the true art.

You have to be willing to experience
a controlled craziness,
be willing to learn how to hurt people
so that you never hurt people.

Anyway,
here  a link.

Kang Duk Won

I always think this is the best deal I have.
Get it as part of the Evolution of an Art,
a monstrous amount of sheer, pure
right from the ancients information,
and you have the heart and soul of me.

No matter where I go,
no matter what I do,
my bones have been imprinted
with the fists of the kang duk won
and the wonderful people
who gave me their best.

I know you all have your own stories,
your own experiences as to how you learned the art,
write me a good one,
maybe I can use it for the newsletter.

You guys have a great work out.

Al

:o)

Google Sewing the Legs of Calves on in Kung Fu
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History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
Lord Acton