Five Ways the Martial Arts Became Degraded

Newsletter 949

Five Steps of How the Martial Arts Failed!

I’ve spoken before of this,
some of my advertising is aimed at this,
so let me detail some of the exact steps
of how the martial arts degraded.

FIRST,
PROTECTIVE GEAR
One day the head instructor walked in
had a box of protective gear.
So we geared up,
and started hurting each other.
But we hadn’t been injuring each other
before!
Simply,
putting on the gear made us think
that we had to hit harder to have effect,
and,
we thought,
‘oh, we can hit harder,
they have protective gear on,
so it won’t hurt.’
But it did hurt,
and we started getting sprains and deep bruises,
even breaks,
so the protective gear didn’t work,
but the head instructor kept demanding we wear it.
Protective gear meant more money for him.
Interestingly,
protective gear works now,
but that’s because people aren’t teaching the real art,
which you will understand
as you continue with this little essay.

SECOND
EXPANSION
When I started martial arts,
there were maybe a dozen schools.
As the number of schools multiplied,
hard core martial artists stopped coming together
in the few schools,
and were spread out in the many schools.
in the whole SF bay area.

THIRD
KIDS
As the number of schools grew
instructors couldn’t pull in enough people,
but parents were willing to enroll their kids
at an astounding rate.
The art was quickly watered down,
drills were changed,
and protective gear was sold.

FOURTH
TOURNAMENTS
Tournaments were a wonderful way
to enroll people and keep them enrolled.
Unfortunately,
a technique that wins in a tournament
bears little resistance to a real technique.
Also,
there was grown a false sense of ‘penetration’
when it came to striking people.
My own instructor took the to a tournament
this was back in the late sixties,
and walked out mid-tournament.
The techniques were simply so degraded
he couldn’t encourage his students to learn them.

FIFTH
POLITICS
Back in the very early 70s
my instructor was sitting at his desk,
and two Koreans walked in.
They told him that
The Korean Martial Arts Association was being disbanded,
and if he joined the new Taekwondo association
he would be promoted two belts
(he was sixth black at the time)
and every black belt in his school would be promoted one belt,
and they would all get to learn brand new forms!
Forms that would replace the old ones,
which, according to these two Koreans,
were old and didn’t work.
Interestingly enough, this same association,
since that time,
has gone through two or three new sets of forms,
and there are even people who have returned
to those bad old forms
taught at schools
such as the Kang Duk Won.
This was politics,
TKD, sad to say,
was an invention by a military general
so Korea could have its own
more national art.
And so what if it didn’t work.

SUMMARY
So,
that’s the truth.
If I have stepped on toes,
sorry,
but I was there.
I saw this stuff first hand,
I experienced this stuff first hand.
It really happened.
And if you don’t like what I have said,
do some research,
if you can find histories that weren’t written
by some school for advertising,
you will come to the conclusion
that I am not kidding.

Now,
does that make the martial art bad?
No.
People have overcome bad training,
politics,
tournaments,
and other misfortunes.
The art is about people,
and the deeper a person delves into an art,
the more sure it is
that they will find the truth of the martial arts.

But there are systems which are ALL messed up.
and which are being sold as the next great thing.
And they CAN be fixed.
But you need a bit of matrixing.

But,
I don’t want to push matrixing here,
I want to push history,
I want to push actual,
physical martial arts.

I wrote five books,

Pan Gai Noon
Kang Duk Won
Kwon Bup
Outlaw Karate
Buddha Crane Karate

You can find them on Amazon.
Or,
better,
if you go through the website
you can find video courses in which I show these arts.
These courses often have the books (in PDF)
bundled in with the videos.
That’s your best deal.

Now,
I am not pushing remembering dates,
who taught who and why it matters.
I am pushing an actual progression through history,
China to Okinawa to Japan to America…
…to matrixing.
You can actually do the very techniques of which I speak,
you can see how they evolved from art to art,
country to country,
concept to concept.
Kung Fu to Karate to Matrixing.
And that is better than reading a thousand encyclopedias.
This is a PHYSICAL history of the martial arts.
This is the martial arts being written on your bones,
not a bunch of significant words on paper,
which may or may not be important,
but are definitely slanted to whoever writes them.
Better to do than talk about.

Okay,
end of push,
thanks for listening.

Here’s a list of some of my books,
including the ‘historical’ encyclopedia.

http://learnkarateonline.net/karate-books/

Have a great work out!
Al

http://learnkarateonline.net/karate-books/

Here’s a great win…

A WIN!

Al,

I have gone through many of your courses and am currently going through blinding steel and eventually on my way to forty monkeys. I recently went through your book Matrixing Tong Bei. Several things clicked and the martial arts universe opened up after finishing that book.

Respectfully,
Tyler K

Four Steps to Winning a Karate Fight

Four Simple Martial Arts Fighting Steps

To be victorious 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 win. Thus, you have to practice making the decision, and then implement a plan so that the decision becomes reality.

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 Author has nearly a half century of Martial Arts Fighting Experience. Here is a page on How to Fight Using Kumite, Chi Sau, Pushing Hands, and other martial methods.

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