Just wrote a short piece concerning what one looks for in the various belt levels to Black Belt. Full data is available in the book ‘Outlaw Karate: The Secret of the One Year Black Belt,’ but this is a good summary. Here’s the link…
https://www.academia.edu/31419612/What_to_Look_for_during_Black_Belt_Testing
Have a great work out.
Newsletter 815 ~ Sign up now on the Free Books page!
Good morning!
Wonderful morning.
I just did a whole bunch of forms,
I feel like a million.
The most important Martial Arts book ever written.
Hey,
there’s lots of stuff happening,
so let me start with…
CONGRATS!
to Peter Carmody
Peter passed his Matrix Karate Black Belt test.
The test was done on video,
and Peter went through having to repeat the test,
doing all the corrections,
and making all the matrix karate material work.
And he made it look good!
Video testing is interesting.
You could probably film yourself on an iPhone,
don’t wear black against a black wall,
white against white,
and so on.
Have some sunlight,
or a few bulbs glowing.
You don’t need lots of space
as long as I can see your whole body.
Have a partner.
Be willing to fail once or twice,
at least.
And here’s the thing,
Matrix Karate is pretty darn unique.
You see,
most karate systems were developed for specific reasons,
bodyguarding,
the element of being grabbed,
having to deal with weapons,
etc.
Not saying you won’t encounter these things today,
you need some awareness of these things,
but the real factor is that we are a fist culture.
If you are in a fight
the usual weapons will be fists.
Then something that can be used as a cub,
then a knife,
etc.
But fists are the base of it all.
And,
if you can handle a fist,
it is just a short step to a knife,
if you have enough brains to adapt.
Anyway,
Matrix Karate is designed around the structure of the body,
it is a complete art,
taking into account all angles of attack and defense.
But it is SIMPLE!
Because the posing and the unnecessary techniques
have all been weeded out.
You have to learn about mistakes,
but the essence is in the logic
where one move leads to the next,
with no circus moves.
It’s funny,
I remember one of the first wins
I ever received,
this was about ten years ago.
The guy wrote that he had gone to a martial arts school,
and the first technique they taught him
was a cartwheel into a jump kick.
Not how to block and punch.
Not even the basic kicks,
but a jumping kick off a whole body contortion.
Can you see why matrixing was so desperately needed?
A little common sense?
And every system,
no matter how classical or developed,
benefits from the direct infusion of logic that matrixing provides.
Anyway,
well done to Peter,
and I recommend Matrix Karate and the Master Instructor Course
(you need both of them to test).
Whether you are accomplished and have a black belt,
whether you are a raw beginner,
whether you are just in the middle and need to get going,
Matrix Karate is the easiest,
the best,
the most efficient and completely rounded karate
on the planet.
Period.
Here’s a link to how to video test…
https://alcase.wordpress.com/martial-arts-video-testing/
Have a great work out!
Al
https://alcase.wordpress.com/martial-arts-video-testing/
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Kicks are one of the best and most powerful martial arts weapons you can ever develop. Not only are kicks extremely good for the cardio, giving an instant sweat during a work out, but they are one of the most powerful weapons you can have if you are ever in a fight. After all, most people in the world don’t don’t have the faintest idea as to how to use their legs, and if you do have an idea…you’ve got an instant advantage.
Streamline your Kenpo, make it work ten times better, make it work the way it was supposed to work!
Of course, kicks take a little extra hard work if they are going to develop into something you can be proud of. But if you take your time, train properly and regularly, and do learn the types of kicks in a certain pattern…you can have power busting kicks of the most magnificent order. That said, let’s go over the proper order of how to develop these kicks.
The first kick is to merely stand in one place and do the kick. You don’t have to have a stance, you can do them at a moderate and easy on the body speed, and you can even put your hand on the wall. The idea here is to look at your body andlearn how to make it move to generate efficient and effective and totally destructive kicks.
The second kick is going to be done from stationary stances. Take a kick like a simple front snap kick, low level to begin, higher as you get better, and learn how to apply it from the rear leg while standing in a front stance. Go through all the stances you know, one by one, kicking with the foot you are not standing on.
The third kick is to use the leg which holds the most weight in your stance. This means you kick with the leg supporting the most weight. Again, go through your stances, do them one at a time, but this time figure out how to hop so that the leg you are standing on executes the kick, and the leg you do not have weight on replaces the leg you are standing on.
The fourth kick is to go through and analyze the various directions you can kick in. This is going to require some quick weight shifts and turns of the body, and the ability to think of your body as very light. Simply do the third kick, as described in the last paragraph, but this time execute the kick first to the south, then go back to your stance and do the kick to the east, then the west, then the north.
Now, there are a few things you should remember as you develop your kicks through these four stages. Don’t be one of these people who do a few kicks per side and then quit. Do a couple of hundred kicks, three hundred, maybe even five hundred kicks per kick per leg.
The idea is to develop your legs so that they are as light and easy to use as your hands. So concentrate on learning how to relax while you do your kicks. Soon your kicks will be second nature, light and easy, marvelous little things of quick flick, and yet able to instantly end any fight.
Check out Matrix Karate, you get a free kicking course, complete with form and techniques and drills, with it.
Interesting question, eh?
To explain this let me make a statement, and then explain how that statement works.
The statement is that a real black belt does less to create more.
Now, back in China, there were people who could do less to make more. They learned this over millennium, and it became a part of their cultural teachings in many of the martial arts.
The art trailed to Okinawa, and the concept tried to hang on. In some respects it did, in others it didn’t.
Then the Japanese (among others, they weren’t alone in this, just more efficient) came along and they said, ‘We want power!’ So they made the work outs brutal, putting force above intelligence, or awareness, and they succeeded in deep sixing the already dying concept of ‘doing less to create more.’
And, they are not the only ones who did this. Americans are guilty of going along with this, not just as students, but as ‘power seekers’ on their own.
Now, power is fine, for a beginner. But when you train in the martial arts you progress to a point where you get tired – that’s as good a way of putting it as any – of working so durned hard.
Part of this realization may come from finally seeing through the blinders of power to the fact that a little bit wisely and judiciously applied accomplishes just as much, and more, than a lot blindly applied.
But you finally realize the truth, that it is not how much power you can create, but how smartly you focus your awareness to create and apply that power. Thus, the more you become empty, before and after the focus, relaxing to do the technique, the less power you actually have to summon up.
You do less, and create larger effects. You punch lightly, and it hurts more. You relax and throw more efficiently.
You are not building muscles now, but rather awareness; you are learning to focus, to use, awareness as a power. Call it chi, if you wish.
This concept had millennium to take root and develop in China, and teachers would teach it from the get go (before the Great Cultural Revolution). Now people only attain it rarely, and not if they stick to the power seeking commercial schools that have come to reign.
Here’s the interesting thing: you measure force, the power of a beginner, with physics. But you cannot measure chi with physics.
For you cannot measure awareness, especially when used in this manner.
Now, the hallmark of the real black belt is not how much power he has, but how light and liquid he is; how empty he is; how measured and sure he is of his position in space. How aware he is.
Learn to do more by using less (force, impact, energy, whatever) and you will be a real Black Belt.
You can subscribe by going to the top of the sidebar…
A god example of physics and real martial arts is my Pan Gai Noon book, available in paper or kindle on Amazon.
For a Karate Black Belt, or a Kung Fu Black Belt or some other type of martial artist, the first moments of an attempted mugging are not overwhelming. They don’t experience the shortness of breath, the debilitating fear, or the desire to flee. Instead, the opposite occurs.
There are those that don't...and there are those that do!
The karate trained mind gets calmer and more focused, decisions are quick and clear, and it is quickly the gangster that is in trouble. This is because the Karate black belt has trained himself to act this way. Fight or flight are meaningless, and the Karate expert just takes it in stride and goes to work.
In a karate class, or any martial arts training hall, you learn how to look at the incoming fist, really look at it. Most people don’t want to face it, so they close their eyes, shrink back, and they are in a fantasy of denial. Gee, I wish that wasn’t happening to me…WHAM!
But to learn anything a person has to look at it, and in a martial arts class the student is forced to look at it so much that something strange happens. He actually ENJOYS looking at the fist coming towards his face. The mugger thinks he’s got a victim, but, instead, he’s got a rhino by the horn, and that rhino is just starting to focus on him!
Looking at a hard punch coming towards the face is just the first step in the martial arts training procedure. Once the initial fear is overcome, and the student is able to watch a hard fist coming towards him without experiencing the fear, he learns how to judge that fist. He becomes able to make decisions right in the middle of a fight.
This is the reason that there are so many techniques to memorize in most martial arts. Kenpo has some 500 techniques, and karate and Taekwondo have 20 to 50 fighting patterns (forms, or kata) to memorize. Of course, this unfortunately lengthens the amount of time necessary to get a person to black belt, but that is easily surmounted.
To make training quicker one needs to learn how to deal with the martial arts in a more conceptual manner. Not the memorizing of techniques, but the understanding of the various but simple concepts behind a karate punch, a taekwondo kick, or a kung fu drill. Once the concept is understood, training becomes incredibly fast.
The problem with concepts is not understanding them, but isolating them. The martial arts have become so inbred, so twisted together, that it is near impossible to separate and make understandable these simple concepts. Thus, the karate black belt, or the kung fu expert, or other martial artists, often take too long in their training.
The only solution to this too lengthy time in training is in Matrix Martial Arts. Matrixing is a logic that simplifies the various arts, and makes them ten times easier to learn. Thus, to become a karate black belt, or a Kung Fu black belt, or an expert in any field of martial arts is now much quicker.
People hold a black belt to high regard, and it is a fair question to ask what is the real value of the thing. After all, the time and energy invested in the thing, a black belt can be a very costly item to earn. So what is the real–actual and intrinsic–value of earning expert status in the martial arts?
To answer this question I must relate three tales. These three anecdotes will illuminate the points of this bit of writing, and provide some rather enlightening ideas regarding value and expert status in the martial arts. They should give insight as to what a black belt is worth.
One day I was doing kumite with my instructor, and he suddenly leaped in, grabbed my belt, pulled, and elbowed. My balance went out the door, I ate the elbow, but what was worse was in my mind. He had actually touched my precious belt!
My instructor just grinned a quirky grin. He had used my belt, but, in teaching me a lesson, and therefore there was no abuse. He could treat that bit of dyed yarn like a mop, and it would always hold his respect.
The second anecdote concerns a young man I met where I was working. He was a black belt, supposedly higher ranking than me, though he had never received instruction at a a training hall. He was awarded a taekwondo black belt from a friend solely because he was a good fighter.
This guy ran up and down the street using his black belt for a jump rope. Scuffing it off the blacktop so he could do mindless exercises and grow his body stronger. There wasn’t one bit of respect in his entire, puny, little soul for the belt he was swinging.
The third tale regards this humble writer: I use my black belt to help myself stretch when doing yoga. I loop it over my feet, brace the legs straight, and relax into whatever pose. I am using that belt to help myself become a better human being and better at martial arts.
Now, I respect the belt, even as I stretch it and wear it out. And when I wear it out, and it snaps from use, I will bow to it as I place it in the trash, and then I will get another one from a store and try to wear that one out. I do this with love and reverence, for the knowledge, for the masters who have gone before, for the insight that makes me want to do more than mindless exercise, that impels me along the way that earning a black belt has opened up so gloriously for me.
Karate, Taekwondo and Kenpo are specific to the difference between a Black Belt and Master, so I thought I’d mention all three.
Here’s the trick. Put a thumbtack in your fist, and break two hanging one inch pine boards with a punch. Don’t lay the thumbtack sideways, put it in the direction you are punching.
If you end up with a hole in your hand you aren’t a master, and probably aren’t even a black belt.
Now, I could leave you with this, and a lot of people would be confused and angry, but let me tell you the trick.
You relax the fist and hit with the bone.
You don’t smash the fist, you stick the bones through the boards.
This is going to require you to adapt your techniques, change things a bit, maybe a lot.
But, that’s okay.
It’s time people learned that martial arts such as Karate, Taekwondo, or Kenpo are not bash and trash arts, but gentle things requiring balance and sensitivity, the correct knowledge of how to do things the easy way, and this is the essence of the difference between a Black Belt and a Master. Check out my website, Monster Martial Arts, Matrixing Chi might be of interest to you, as it explains a lot of things about Chi that people don’t understand. There’s a FREE book available on the front page.
Matrix Martial Arts 