Newsletter 860
Gordon Liu, Cal Worthington, and the Most Powerful Punch in ALL the Martial Arts
Let’s talk about perfection in your work outs.
I’m pretty lucky.
I grew up through the so called
golden age of martial arts.
Though,
truth,
I think the golden age is just over the hill,
we’re on the cusp of great things,
things that the ancient masters would eat their hearts out for.
So,
in this golden age of martial arts
were some wild ass chop sockies.
Chop sockies are the name we’ve given kung movies
of the seventies and eighties.
Special effects consisted of trampoline kicks,
and the most terrible acting imaginable.
But for a country that had no martial arts
this was the holy grail.
Gordon Liu was the ringleader
of this massive influx of kung fu.
‘Thirty-six Chambers of Death,’
you know?
And,
one night I was watching late TV.
During the eighties
late night was supported by Cal Worthington.
Stick with me now,
I’m going to take a little trip…
Cal Worthington sold cars on late night TV.
He would put a tiger on the hood of a car
and call it his dog ‘spot.’
One day I needed to buy a car,
so I headed over to Cal Worthington’s place,
kids and wife in tow.
Now Cal had a song that played on TV.
The song went…
‘Go see Cal, Go see Cal, Go see Cal!’
And I didn’t know that my two boys couldn’t understand the song,
and had replaced Cal’s lyrics with their own.
So we hoped out of the car
a bunch of sales men were leaning against a nearby car,
and one of my boys went up to them
and asked if this was really where Cal Worthington lived.
The salesman smiled and said yes.
My boys immediately launched into their own version of the Cal song.
‘Pussy Cal, Pussy Cal, Pussy Cal!
Needless to say,
the salesman were lying on the ground and holding their guts.
They couldn’t stop laughing.
I tried to get one to stop laughing.
I said, ‘We need a car.’
Between laughs he said, ‘I don’t care!’
And the laughter started up again.
Okay,
that was a long way to go,
but here’s the thing,
amongst those bad, old movies that Cal supported
was a little gem called, ‘Mad Monkey Kung Fu.’
At three in the morning,
one summer night,
I was watching that thing,
and the hero gets his ass kicked,
and he is training in this weird stuff called Monkey Kung Fu,
and suddenly I see the training gimmick.
He hits with his outstretched fingers,
then, without retracting his hand,
he goes forward with his knuckles,
then, without retracting his hand,
he goes forward with his fist.
I looked at that.
I started going around the house,
hitting walls, doors, anything that was a surface.
Fingers, knuckles, fist…
Fingers, knuckles, fist…
Fingers, knuckles, fist…
And,
I knew it was a movie gimmick.
I knew it was bogus,
but I couldn’t stop practicing it.
Fingers, knuckles, fist…
And,
over the course of months
I tweaked that sucker into different forms,
explored different timings,
and things started to happen.
When I began kenpo,
back in 1967,
I used to hang a piece of cardboard,
and strike it with a backfist.
Eventually,
I was able to make hole on the cardboard,
but I stopped because there was no place to go.
I make a hole and…so what?
What was the next step?
Then,
years later,
I found the Mad Monkey Punch,
and this obsession gripped me again,
‘and over the months I began to put holes in things.
cardboard,
pieces of drywall,
whatever.
Now,
everything is connected in this universe.
somebody touches your little toe,
and even the hairs on your head feel it.
When I started practicing the Mad Monkey Punch
I was already at the point
where I could make holes in cardboard with a backlist,
and I could do push ups on two straight fingers.
And, I had done a ton of Tai Chi,
Tai where I shifted the body back and forth,
causing weight to go back and forth,
causing a feeling of energy going back and forth,
like water in a bathtub,
as it were,
and I suddenly began putting that into a fist.
Here is the equation:
Kenpo snapping backfist.
Push ups on two perfectly straight fingers.
The Mad Monkey Punch.
Tai Chi sloshing around inside my karate body.
equals
a fist that can penetrate the body.
There are three depths when striking,
strike the skin,
hitting as hard as you can,
but leaving no pain.
strike the muscle,
causing bruise.
strike the bone
causing the bones to shiver and break.
I sometimes am teaching people,
and when I want to make a point,
I strike for the bone.
The students INSTANTLY crumple up.
They jump back and rub their shoulder,
and wonder how the heck an old man can hit so hard.
I don’t hit so that the body is flung back,
in fact,
I hit and the body doesn’t go anywhere,
it is just revulsed from the introduction of total body invalidation,
invalidation that the student can feel
from the little toe
to the hairs on his head..
Sometimes you can see me do this kind of punch on videos,
but not often.
I’ll have to shoot a video on it,
showcase it for you.
it really is easy,
but it took a long time to develop,
especially since I didn’t know what I was doing.
And I really didn’t know what I was doing,
but it was like I was caught in a current,
and bouncing off significant rocks,
until an idea or two formed in my head.
Connections.
Everything in the universe is totally connected,
but it takes awareness to see it.
The martial arts grow that awareness,
but you have to have patience,
and a wee bit of faith.
Anyway,
I hope I have inspired a few of you
to explore some of these things,
snapping backfists
totally straight two finger push ups,
mad monkey punches
tai chi until you are sloshing bathtub of energy.
Or maybe something I’ve said
has connected with something you already know,
or caused a spark to happen,
or something.
You know,
if you wish to know what I know,
to tap into my 50 years of martial arts obsessing,
it’s all in the videos and books.
Try this one…
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/hard-punch/
That’s a book written on punching.
A whole book,
listing ALL the exact methods I used,
how I figured out the sequence of energies,
to make a perfect punch,
and the exact drills I did.
Actually,
there’s three books bundled here,
read about the other two at the bottom of this page.
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/hard-punch/
Thanks for being martial artists,
and have a great work out!
Al
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/hard-punch/
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