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.

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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 Toughest Karate: The Toughest Karate Master

There’s going to be a lot of opinions on who was the toughest Master of Karate, but Motobu Chōki certainly deserves consideration. He was one of the first instructors to teach Karate outside of Okinawa, and he is responsible for the fame and notoriety that resulted in the spread of Karate through Japan. Interestingly, this ‘George Washington’ of Karate is not a commonly known figure.

Motobu was born in 1870, and descended from the royal lineage of Okinawa. As the third son, he was actually not supposed to study Karate, but that seemed to make him want to study all the more. He spent much time hitting the makiwara, lifting heavy objects, and training however he could.

Eventually, because of his tremendous agility, people called him Motobu the Monkey. He also was looked on as a fierce, though unschooled (brutal?) street fighter. Though he was held in low esteem for his street fighting, instructors took him on as a student, presumably because of lineage.

His instructors read like a Who’s Who of early Okinawa. Among the masters who taught him were Ankō Itosu, Sōkon Matsumura, Sakuma Pechin, Kōsaku Matsumora, and Tokumine Pechin. This would be like somebody who studied under Morihei Uyeshiba, Bruce Lee, Gichin Funakoshi, and Ed Parker.

Motobu eventually made his way to Japan, where some Karate instructors were earning a living teaching the art to the Japanese. Motobu being a rough character, and not succeeding at business, was talked into signing up for a fight in a ‘Judo v Boxing’ match. He was fifty-two years old the night he entered that contest, and he was about to change Karate for all time.

His opponent is said to have been a strongman from some western country. Strong or not, Motobu is said to have moved forward with a single punch to put the fellow down for the count. People were astonished at this incredible win, and newspapers gave the story coverage, and here is where the tale takes an odd twist.

The newspapers didn’t have a picture of Motobu, so they published the only image they did have, which was of a young fellow name of Gichin Funokoshi. That’s right, Motobu knocked the strongman out, but his fellow countryman, and competitor, Gichin Funokoshi, got the credit. Thus, Shotokan was spread around the world, and Motobu went home.

Motobu Chōki, brawler and roughneck, is as responsible for the spread of Karate as anyone, and he was a true master. He was a karate technician of tremendous punching power, and he founded the Motobu Ryu Karate school. People may not know much about him, but he is definitely in the running for toughest Karate Master of all time.

If you would like to know more about Karate, and a revolutionary way of teaching it, visit Monster Martial Arts

The Toughest Karate Master In The World!

While there have been many fantastic karate masters, only Mas Oyama can honestly lay claim to being the toughest karate master of all time. This is most interesting, because Karate came from China, was born on Okinawa, and migrated to Japan, which became the ‘Land of Karate.’ Mas Oyama, (birth name–Choi Yeong-eui), however, was not from any of those countries, but was born Korean.

Mas was born into Japanese occupied Korea in 1923. He took his first lesson from a Chinese migrant worker named Lee when he was 9 years old, he was told to plant a seed, and to practice jumping over it as it sprouted. It is said he could jump fantastic heights because of this.

After World War II Mas lived in Japan, where he was ostracized for being Korean. In 1946 he enrolled in Waseda University and took instruction from the second son of Gichin Funakoshi in Karate. Because of his Korean status he trained in solitude, and many would claim this solitary lifestyle would keep him dedicated and free of distractions, and enable him to achieve a very pure and high level of Karate.

From Waseda University he went to Takushoku University, and from the son he went to the father, for at Takushoku he studied with the father of modern day karate, Gichin Funakoshi. After shotokan he moved to Goju Ryu, studying with Chojun Miyagi. He was eventually promoted to 8th dan in that system by Gogen Yamaguchi.

During this time Mas Oyama picked fights with anybody and everybody, specializing in fighting the US military police. He was in so many fights that his picture was on virtually every police station wall. Eventually, and probably because of his notoriety, he was advised by a friend, Mr. Neichu So, to retreat to the mountains and live a life of seclusion and hard training.

Mas Oyama spent 14 months in hard training on Mt. Minobu, then, later, another 18 months. He returned to Tokyo a polished and fierce fighter, and became quite famous for being unbeatable. During this time he took to fighting bulls, knocking the horns off them, or killing them outright, with nothing but his bare hands.

Eventually, Mas established the Kyokushinkai, which became renowned for its brutal and tough training. One of the hallmarks of this type of training is the 100 man kumite, in which a fighter faces one hundred opponents in the roughest type of freestyle imaginable. The schools of this toughest Karate master are now spread throughout the world.

Monster Newsletter #303–The Fence of My Skin and the True Spiritual You!

Hey! Hey! Good morning!
It’s drizzly and misty here in LA,
and that leads to the obvious conclusion…
the sun won’t come out
until I work out.

It’s true.
I control the sun,
and the moon and the stars
merely by the strength of my work out.

Don’t believe it?
Take my attitude
and clean up your own weather.
You’ll find out.

Let me tell you something loopy about this,
and then offer an example of proof
about this work out thing.

Consider your body,
your skin is the fence.
Your awareness sits inside the fence,
And your eyes and ears are like searchlights
watching beyond the fence.

Now,
the real key is awareness.

You watch outside the fence of your skin
to feed your awareness.
Do you know how little awareness you are using?

Now,
one day you take up martial arts
and you realize that there is more to this awareness thing.
So you work out,
run some energy around the area
inside the fence,
through the arms and legs,
around the organs, and so on.
You punch and kick and throw,
and energy moves around inside your fence
more efficiently
and,
the odd thing,
you become more aware.
Pushing that energy,
you watch the energy,
and you become more aware.
Anybody who has done martial arts
knows this is true.

And you reach the point where
you start to realize
that there is more than
eyes and ears and blood and bone.

There is this awareness coursing through your body,
and you start to ‘sense’ things,
which means you are aware of things
without using the eyes and ears.

And,
you work out long enough
and
you suddenly are aware of something outside the fence,
beyond your skin,
without using the ears and eyes.
Thus,
you are breaking the fence of your skin,
opening the doors of perception
realizing that there is more to life
than just a body.
There is you.
And you are awareness.
The big ’I am.’

Now,
one day I was working,
I haven’t spoken of this for probably a hundred or so newsletters,
so most of you haven’t heard it,
but I was working,
big door factory,
and during the lunch hour
one of the guys asked me about the martial arts.
So we went into the back room.
The light was very dim,
there was a lot of noise,
and we had to really concentrate on each other
to hear and be heard.

I was showing him suburito,
which is a basic sword strike exercise
from Aikido.
And I was showing him how to hold the sword upright,
preparatory to the strike,
and suddenly,
this huge force,
like the hand of a 100 foot giant
grabbed my body
and made the sword slash downwards behind me.
I was virtually helpless,
couldn’t stop the force,
but I had just enough awareness
to know that I had to do something,
and I pushed,
with every single ounce of my fiber,
to make the sword leave its path.
I pushed,
and it felt like I was lifting a thousand pounds.
My very bones made cracking noises.
The ‘sword’ did leaves its path
made a slight little blip
in an otherwise perfect
downward arc.

There was a guy behind me,
name of Eddie,
who had seen us working out
and decided to jump me.
He was only going to grab me,
but he was one of these fellows
with a little extra bit of nasty in his soul.

The sword
it was a actually a piece of track
used for closet doors,
cut down and slashed open his chest.
It was a mean,
nasty cut,
blood all over the place.
He staggers back
against a stack of pallets,
and he’s messed up.

So we got the first aid going,
he was going to have to go to the hospital
and get his chest sewed back together,
and,
here’s the odd thing,
he wasn’t mad at me.
He was too messed up to be mad,
he was looking at his own mortal blood,
he was beyond anger and into surviving.
And I took advantage of the moment
and asked him what he had been doing.

He told me he was going to get me,
grab me for a joke,
have some fun with me.
Picking up on his words,
and some of the underlying meanings,
I asked him what he had been thinking
right before I cut him open.
I remember his exact words.
He looked up at me,
one hand clamped over the wound,
blood seeping through the fingers,
and he said,
“It’s funny,
I was right behind you,
just starting to jump,
and I thought,
‘Aha, got him!’
Then you cut me!”

Now,
the skin is a fence,
and there is a world outside the fence
that the martial arts illuminate,
and it doesn’t always use the eyes and the ears,
and it builds up the senses
of more than the eyes and ears.
And,
it can take a lifetime,
or,
if you matrix your martial art
then it becomes efficient
and you get those abilities a lot faster.
Get me,
it’s not matrixing that gives you the abilities,
it is your art that gives you those abilities,
matrixing just makes the process faster,
more efficient,
gets you there faster.
Without matrixing you go slow,
maybe don’t even get there.
With matrixing,
zingo bingo,
you’re there.

Now,
one last thing,
you remember how I said
I felt a huge force controlling my body?
Pulling my sword?
That was the real me,
and there is a similar force controlling you,
the real you.
Your body is a mere sliver of the real you.
Martial arts,
good martial arts,
especially if matrixed,
makes you aware of the real you.
The monstrous, huge, gigantic essence
that is the spiritual you
that controls that little thing
you call a body.

And when I pushed against my true spiritual force,
made the sword change its arc ever so slightly,
I saved Eddie’s face.
The cut would have gone right through his right temple,
taken out the eye,
and laid his skin to the bone.
Would have cut through the actual bone.

I had enough martial arts
that the true me could act,
and,
because of the martial arts
I had enough presence of mind
to effect the true me,
and save somebody’s life.

Look,
I don’t know how good a guy I am,
I make a lot of mistakes,
I don’t always say or do the right thing,
no matter how hard I try.
But I’ve got a method that makes sense,
and it works,
and it works for everybody
and is even logical.
But it is going to take some sweat,
it’s going to take some work,
and it’s going to take a dedication of work outs,
even fully matrixed work outs,
but it is there,
and the proof is in you.
Can you work out hard enough,
efficiently enough
to bring out the truth of you?

I think so.
Here’s the link to help.

Monster Martial Arts

If you don’t feel like Karate,
look around for the art
that is closest to what you really want,
what will really help you find
the true spiritual giant
that you are.

Have a great work out.

Al

:o)

Here’s something about the beginnings of my base art, the Kang Duk Won.
How A One Armed Student Studies Martial Arts
Leave a comment if you can, it helps my statistics.

It is the creative potential itself in human beings that is the image of God.
Mary Daly

How Speed Relates to the Overall Picture of Good and Rare Martial Arts

Whether you study Karate, Kung Fu, or that rare martial art from Faroutistan, speed is vitally important to the martial arts. If you are going to be successful in freestyle, you must be faster than your opponent. Even in the doing of your forms, speed gives a certain efficiency that is necessary to the successful martial artist.

That said, there is another side to speed, a side which embraces the entire martial arts and is the mark of your progress over the decades. This is a side which relates to the speed of the art you are practicing, and the speed of what is happening inside your head and in your life. I am talking about the speed at which you do your art.

The beginner is blown out by the fun of the martial arts, and he races breakneck through his forms. He spends hours tweaking his form, studying the angles of his limb so as to maximize speed of launch. Usually, this process takes about three years, but it can take longer, or lesser, depending on the individual and the art he is studying.

Remember what I remarked about spending hours going over your form? This is the start of the intermediate student, this is where he first starts to learn that the art is more than just exuberance and gotcha, but a real live window into the soul and potentials of humanity that were hitherto undreamed of. This is the start of growing awareness, and this is where the student first starts slowing himself down and starts looking at what he is actually doing.

This intermediate stage is practiced by all of the hard artists, they spend hours doing their forms and studying how to be efficient in motion, and it eventually slows down to a study of Tai Chi Chuan. Whether the student engages in actual Tai Chi, or just slows his forms down so he can best examine, analyze and correct them, is moot. What is important is that the student is looking, not just doing mindlessly and blindly.

Awareness you see is an oddity. One can become aware through the simple act of looking. Thus, looking is free, and awareness is free, and it is the point to all life.

Without awareness there would be no life. Or, one could say that life is according to the degree of awareness that the looker develops. Thus, the value of the martial arts, as they proceed slower and slower and thus create more and more opportunity for looking, is incalculable.

That all said, I do not wish you to curtail your studies of speed until you, personally, have reached a point which is satisfactory and obvious to you. Live, go fast, exuberate luxuriously, for you should give full throttle to all stages of learning to fight, even and not matter if you are studying a rare martial art. One should not sacrifice youth to old age.

How A One Armed Student Studies Martial Arts

Bobby lost his left arm because of a childhood infection, but it didn’t slow him down. He rode bikes, climbed trees, and did everything a child is supposed to do, except for one. He never did the martial arts, he figured he had finally found the one thing he would never do.

When a martial arts dojo opened up in his neighborhood, however, he could not stop thinking about it. He would pass by slowly, staring at the kids working out inside. He would ask his friends who studied martial arts endless questions, but he never went inside the dojo because he knew that there was no way he could do that physical discipline.

One day a friend of his invited him to the dojo to witness a promotion. Bobby went, and watched, and sadness ate at his heart like a chainsaw chews trees. After the demonstration and promotion, Bobby was introduced to the instructor, who invited him to study the martial arts.

“I don’t see how I could,” said Bobbie, “since I only have one arm.” The instructor smiled and merely said that having one arm wasn’t a problem. He held that all things are possible to a man with a whole heart.

So Bobbie began learning martial arts. He threw himself into the practice like a starving man attacked a plate of food, and he made good progress. Unfortunately, the instructor, while he would show Bobby all the techniques, would only let him work on one specific technique.

Day after day, week after week, Bobbie worked on this one technique. Dutifully, he worked out the problems with his execution until he could do the technique in his sleep. Still, the instructor would not let him move on.

One day, the instructor came up to Bobbie after class and said, “I’ve entered you in a tournament.” Bobbie was aghast, he just knew he was going to be pummeled like a dirty rug and tossed like a rag doll. Still, he trusted his instructor, so he went to the tournament.

He faced his first opponent, and when the attack came, he used the one technique and won the match. And he used that one technique to defeat the second opponent, and the third. When the end of day came, Bobbie had won the tournament!

The next day Bobbie went to class and thanked his instructor. “The thing I don’t understand,” remarked Bobby, “is why that technique always worked!” His instructor grinned and said, “The only defense for that technique, in all the martial arts, is for your opponent to grab your left arm.”