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.

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 #311–From Insanity To…!

Wow!
Another day in paradise!
Another day so darn glorious
it just stops the senses.
And if your senses haven’t stopped today…
better work out.

My wife hid my teacups,
so I’m not doing Pa Kua this week.
Back to good old bash ‘em in the face Karate.
I work out at about 11 or 12 at night.
The world is asleep,
no distractions,
and I concentrate on loose-tight.

Now loose-tight is a fantastic concept.
Commonly,
it is referred to as focus.
But that is merely a bunch of words.
The reality is what happens in your mind.
You see,
you can’t relax your muscles sufficiently
unless you first give those muscles a command
from a thoroughly relaxed mind.

How do you get a thoroughly relaxed mind?
Hmmm.
This is sort of a…
uncomplex question,
gonna take a story,
not just physics.
Got to have the story,
got to have the context
to understand what I am going to say.

When I was 19
before I discovered karate,
I was insane.
My friend had a convertible 62 Olds,
big old Detroit motor,
and we used to go to the bowling alley
steal a couple of bowling balls
and then go bowling.

We would get up to a 120 MPH
he’d hit the brakes
and I’d throw the ball.
Then we would watch it bounce down the street
and across El Camino Real.

El Camino Real,
for those of you who don’t know
even at midnight,
can be a busy street.
And what we were doing,
essentially,
was shooting a cannonball across it.
Now,
if we had hit a car
it would have totaled the car.
The energy behind 15 pounds
traveling over 100 MPH…
I’m not a physicist,
but,
1500 pounds?
If it had struck a car by the front tire,
it would have shattered and bounced that front end,
the car would have shot off the road
people would have died.
If the bowling ball had struck over the rear tire
it would have fishtailed,
out of control,
and people would have died.
Or,
if it had struck the door…
it would have gone right through the door
killed the driver and passenger.

Do you understand?
I was crazy.
To do such a thing
absolutely insane.
I should have been locked up.

One night,
it bounced right over the hood of a cop car,
inches from the glass.
The cops didn’t even see it.
It was traveling that fast.

So,
why wasn’t I caught?
Why didn’t one of those bowling balls connect?
Why?

I know why.
Because I would have been locked up
and never learned karate.
and I was put on this planet to learn the martial arts.
That’s my purpose.

Oh,
this is a crazy planet,
when you observe the insanity on this planet
you almost can’t blame me for being insane.
People going to war.
Hitler and gas ovens.
Mao and over fifty million dead.
Stalin.
Diseases created in laboratories and set loose on the public.
The logic of schools that program and don’t teach.
Newspapers that deliberately lie.
Religions that bless soldiers on their way to the murder fields.
Drugs advertised on every corner
and on every TV.
A justice system that is diametrically opposed to justice.

In short…
don’t get me started.

But
there was no excuse for my particular insanity,
because insanity is a personal choice.
And,
in coming to this planet
I had made my choice.
Study the martial arts
and go sane.

I discovered first kenpo,
then classical,
then other stuff,
and each step into the martial arts
was a step towards sanity.

In the world I was a victim
of corporations and doomsayers
and people who wanted to kill me for a belief.

In the dojo I was give data.
Here is a fist,
handle it.

The fist,
a symbol of anger and energy and hitting,
and I had to handle that
anger and energy and hitting.
I had to handle that insanity.

For the first time in my life
I wasn’t victim to papa figures
lying school marms,
and all the drunken and drugged randomity
that society is.

In the dojo there is order,
a lesson,
a reason for doing thing.
Life resolves to the simple problem of incoming attack,
handle it,
and,
you walk out of the dojo,
able to handle that,
even when that becomes a drug
or a wild eyed radical.

Eventually,
you make the final stop,
compassion for people,
yes,
they are insane,
but they are the stock from which I come…
who can I help to make the journey.

Who can I wake up.

Who can I rescue from the sadness of earth
and its robotic, murdering governments,
it’s corner drug pushers,
its sloth and violence,
its video game personality.

Now,
let’s get back to what started this rant…
how do you have a calm mind?
You work out.
Day after day.
You give yourself over to a method,
a method that works,
you simply stop believing in the slavemasters,
and start believing in yourself.
That is the karate way,
and that is the way of the martial arts.

You commit yourself to the journey,
and you will find a calm mind.

Okey dokey,
pretty well covered it,

I should be in IKF
in the next issue or two,
you guys make sure that issue sells out.
Heck,
if it sells out because of me,
then they’ll want to do another.
Heh!

Well,
I wish you the best workout of your life,
and here’s a link to help out,
it’s the Kang Duk Won,
which was my personal path to sanity.

Kang Duk Won Korean Karate

Thanks to all,
and I’ll talk to you next time.

Al

:o)

BTW–Monkeyland is up, but it’s an old version, it’ll be a while before I can get the thing all fixed.

Man, I just googled this one, and it looks like it’s going a little viral!
He Was Crazy…And He Studied Korean Karate With Me.

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

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. Scratch where it itches.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth

New Technology Destroys the Martial Arts!

I saw the beginning of this some forty years ago while studying Chinese Kenpo Karate, and it is still going on. In fact, it is worse than ever, and infects the majority of arts. I will give you a couple of examples, and hopefully you can fix your martial art.

I was studying Ed Parker Kenpo Karate, and we began using pads. At first, the pads were only used to help fellows with knee problems, or that sort of thing, but the assortment of pads quickly grew. Soon pads were used on the shins for bruises, on the feet, on the shins, on the elbows and wrists, and so on.

Suddenly, somebody figured out that there was money to be made. School owners realized that selling pads increased the income, and began pushing them to every student for every class. The selling of padding became a million dollar business that infected every school.

Now, you might be wondering why this is so bad. We’re just protecting little Johnny, right? But this is part of the school owner propaganda, and part of the selling gimmick.

When you wear pads you think your punches don’t hurt as much, and so you begin punching harder. Thus, the protective gear actually encourages more violence, and less control. When you think about it, if you have to be aware and responsible so that you don’t get hurt, you start to learn the true art.

The true martial art has to do with control, you see. If you learn how to control yourself, then you start learning about yourself, and this makes you a better person, in and out of the ring. If you think you have to hit harder to be more effective, then the people you fight are going to be more at risk when they fight with you.

Now, I saw this type of thought spread throughout the martial arts world in tournaments. I also saw the introduction of softer (plastic) weapons, so that people wouldn’t get hurt, which also decreases the need for control, and for the true appreciation of one’s own potential. And, now people must wear cups, chest protectors, mouthpieces, and whatever else they can be scared or forced into buying.

The people who invented the martial arts, who passed them down for millennium, did not use such devices, and I suspect they would have laughed at them. Bear in mind that I am not asking people to get hurt, I am asking that people study martial arts with no accoutrements, so that they can take responsibility for what they do, and not be cushioned against learning about themselves. Whether you study Ed Parker Kenpo, Hapkido, classical Karate, or whatever, you should follow Ed Parker’s advice…’I come to you with empty hands.’

Want to learn more about the true martial arts? Drop by Monster Martial Arts. Pick up a free ebook while you’re there.

Monster Newsletter #306–Happy Memory Day!

Happy Memorial Day!
It’s gonna be a good one,
you know?
A day off means more chances to work out…
and that means
more chances to makes the world right.

And,
speaking of making the world right…
this last week
Inside Kung Fu did a photo shoot with me.
That’s right,
gonna get an article on me.
Yippee!

Now,
they wanted to do it on Five Army Tai Chi.
Isn’t that interesting?
All the arts I’ve studied,
the matrixing I’ve done,
the Neutronics I’ve developed,
and they wanted to specialize on one art.

Well,
that’s okay.
Fame happens one step at a time,
and even if the article only looks at one area,
a lot of people will be exposed to Matrixing.
Enlightenment happens one step at a time.

But,
that all said,
I thought it would be interesting to turn back the pages a bit.
I’m always pushing Matrixing,
and I talk about the whole picture,
but I don’t usually go into the whole picture.
So let me do that.

One of my first matrixing realizations
had to do with the potentials of four different arts.
A block from karate could be slanted
to become a block in kung.
And the block in kung fu,
if worked a bit with footwork,
could become an aikido move,
and that cold become a tai chi move.

Now,
you’ve all seen the commonality.
Many people write to me about that concept
and how matrixing takes it and finally explores it
and shows the truth of it.
But the original concept for me,
came from aligning the following four arts,
karate,
wing chun
aikido
tai chi.

Weird mix,
eh?
And,
I did pretty good with it.
Lot of mistakes,
but a lot of doors opened,
doors of perception,
and I explored an amazing variety of potentials.
Mixing this art with that,
that art with this,
and nothing seemed to work,
and,
finally,
I laid out thousands of cards on my living room floor,
all the techniques I knew,
and,
somehow,
I made the F’er work.

That weekend,
that headache,
enough techniques from enough arts,
and it all resolved.
I finally saw the whole picture.
And I immediately went to bed.
My head hurt that much.
Figuring it out had blown so many brain cells,
had blown out so many mental circuits,
there wasn’t much I could do
but pass out.

And I think I fell into a slot of time.
I don’t think anybody else will figure Matrixing out.
The changes in communications,
from reading to movies to VHS to computers…
but I might be wrong.
In a way,
I actually hope I would be wrong.
I mean,
some enterprising fellow,
who actually stumbled across the exact right question,
and all the data available on the internet,
youtube examples of forms and techniques..
heck,
maybe the next guy will far surpass me.
I would hope so.

But,
regardless,
the martial arts are a geometry.
Karate tries for a straight line.
Kung Fu tries for an arc.
Aikido tries for a full circle.
Tai Chi tries for a full circle, but compresses it.

And,
though I have described the geometry adequately,
it is so inadequate.
My words are so inadequate.
There is just so much to the martial arts…

Anyway,
the reason I offer the core package
is because it represents matrixing
for the whole martial arts.
Hard (karate)
to soft (Aikido)
with the in between arcs of Kung Fu
and the overview of the exact and accurate physics of the martial arts
(the master instructor course)

And,
if you don’t like those arts,
the kung fu package
does the same thing,
but from an entirely different viewpoint.

And,
the funny thing is,
I’ve done the same exact things
for the weapons package.

There’s lots of ways to teach matrixing,
to lay out the geometry and physics
of the entire martial arts.
But,
though you become matrixed from the get go,
you really need all the courses.
You need the whole picture.

I don’t usually push it,
or explain it,
though,
because I don’t want to scare people off.

Yeah,
some people look at the whole thing
and get freaked.
There’s too much.

But,
I always have a few people
who simply get one course a month.
Go right through the whole thing,
and that is a great way to do it.

The money doesn’t become too much,
you have time to work on the material
of each course,
works out pretty good.

Huh,
I was just thinking…
does anybody remember my first selling gimmick?
I actually advertised the courses for a dollar a disk,
and then,
when people came to the website,
I explained that there would be ten dollars S & H,
Hah!
Funny thing is,
nobody ever got upset.
They just grinned,
thought it was pretty funny,
even got a lot of orders.

I mean,
a dollar a disk,
that was just too good to be true,
and they didn’t mind the joke.

Anyway,
ten bucks a disk
ain’t too bad.
But that old selling gimmick I came up with,
it makes me laugh.
All my mistakes aren’t criers,
some of them are laughers.

Anyway,
Here’s the link,
get you started,
two DVDs
164 page book on CD,
and you can take any art you study,
and plug it into the template
that I offer.

Monster Martial Arts

Even if you study kung fu,
or wudan,
or that esoteric and rare almost forgotten but not quite lost version
of the Shaolin Golden Duck…
it will make a different and totally logical sense
once you plug it into the Matrixing.

You guys and gals have a great weekend,
and don’t forget to hoist an adult beverage to me and mine,
and I will do the same for you.
And,
if you’re kid…make it a soft drink.
Heh.

Have a great work out!
Al

:o)

This is one of my favorite techniques, took it rom Pinan Five.
The Deadly Power Punch Technique From Korean Karate!
Leave a comment if you can, it helps my statistics.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
Mohandas Gandhi

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.

Using Karate Techniques To Break Bricks Without Breaking Your Hands!

Using Karate Techniques, which are the same as Hapkido techniques or gung fu techniques, it is incredibly easy to break bricks. I’m not going to say that your grandma could do it, or a child, but you could. Heck, a little work and practice, the ability to decipher the sacred words I am about to impart, and you could be smashing the holy heck out of sun dried rectangular blocks.

Now, there was a fellow went to the orient, and he knew martial arts, and orientals loving their back yard barques, and even a few beers (pretty American, those orientals) everybody laughing and joking, and they asked this American to break a few bricks for them. You breakee bricks! We have good time!

So the American chopped a brick and the brick sat and stared at him and he near broke his hand. Those wacky tailgate orientals, you see, had baked an iron rod into the brick. Oh, ha ha ha…isn’t that funny?

Well, actually, it is pretty funny. I tell ya, those orientals keep it up and they’ll be downright American! The point here is…don’t break what you don’t know about, select your material to be smashed with care.

This subject of picking your material is pretty important. People who break big stacks of ice, for instance, neglect to tell you that the ice has been pre-broken and stuck back together, which makes the ice easy to break. That tends to bend the game.

And, the people who break stacks of bricks or boards often do so by placing spacers between the bricks or boards, which, again, makes the bricks or boards pretty easy to break. Have them break the bricks and boards without spacers, and you are seeing a real power break. And, yes, your humble author can break five one inch pine boards, that’s five inches of wood, with no stinkin’ sissy spacers.

When you pick a brick to break, pick a dry one, dry ones are easier to break. If you want your ten year old cousin, or your grandma to break a brick, cook it in an oven for an hour or two. And, it helps it you set the brick with one end on the ground and the other end on another brick, and drop the end of the brick as your hand hits the brick, this increases the sharpness of impact and makes the break that much easier. Now, those are the tricks, except for the specificsthemselves.

When you break a brick have your hand loosey goosey, and slam it down, and tighten it upon impact. This will focus your energy and protect your hands, and I have seen these principles in virtually all martial arts. Korean Karate techniques, Shaolin techniques, Kwon Bup techniques, Kenpo techniques, they are all based on the same principles, and these principles define how easy it can be to break bricks.

If you want to learn more tricks and technqiues, come on by Punch Em Out. We have the most powerful punches and the strongest kicks in the world. Period.