Make a Hard Punch with Old Time Training Method

Old Muscle Building Method Makes for a Super Hard Punch!

I mean that literally, you can have a hard punch in days. The old body building method is called Dynamic Tension, and it was used by the old comic book guys like Charles Atlas and Joe Weider. It is actually still sold today.

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Interestingly, Chuck Atlas made his millions in the pages of comic books. He had ads that ran for years, and he even beat the Great Depression. His most famous ad, a bully kicking sand in a lads face at the beach, actually happened to him when he was a youth, and inspired him to create his world famous method for building muscles.

I was acutely aware of the comic book ads, liking comics and being a skinny weakling when I was young. I suppose, in some way, I answered the comic book ad when I took up the study of the martial arts. And, serendipity, amongst the forms I learned was one which dealt with Mr. Atlas’ form of shaping the body.

The pattern was supposedly a variation of a Wing Chun form. I don’t recall what we called it, but I do recall the hours spent on one specific movement in the form. That one movement made my punch get stronger and stronger and stronger.

When you do the move, take a back stance and cross the wrists in front of you. Press wrist against wrist, and slowly slide the wrists past each other. Let the power build, then let the hands snap off each other and execute a punch.

It’s best to punch with the rear hand, and let the front hand come back across the chest. It is also good to simultaneously press your feet against one another in the back stance. Then, when you release the hands, you can release the stance and really cover ground.

The muscles tend to build fast, and you’ll notice an increase in strength I would say within seven days. Over time you will notice the working parts of your arms and legs are getting denser and better shaped. And, in conjunction with the thrusting forward of the whole body, you are going to have some kind of powerful strike.

Obviously, you can tailor this exercise for other body parts, other types of strikes and blocks, and your body should get in fantastic shape. I’ll tell you this, one look at your chiseled physique and nobody is going to try to kick sand in your face. And that is how an old body building method can give you a hard punch in literally days.

About the Author: Al Case began martial arts in 1967. He studied such arts as Kenpo, Karate, Wing Chun, Aikido, Norther Shaolin Kung Fu, Southern Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi Chuan, Pa Ku Chang and various weapons. He became a writer for the martial arts magazines in 1981, and had his own column in Inside Karate. Check out his course on increasing Chi Power.

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Karate Kicks that will Knock an Elephant Down!

Four Steps to Strong Karate Kicks!

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.

 

Jack up your kenpo now!

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.

Knife Fighting: the Wrong Way and the Right Way

A Knife Fight Goes Bad…

Billy Jack, stoic Indian with Green Beret Martial Arts training, was one of the first movie heroes to beat up bad guys with karate/kung fu/taekwondo/whatever.

Interestingly, I met a real Indian war hero who told me what it was really like. He was a chubby fellow from Northern California, and he had been a Navy SEAL. At least so he said.

Can you handle ANY weapon? Click on the image…

He told me that the Navy had been looking for people who were extra sneaky and mean, and they tried him and a few other Indians.

He told me they would sneak around the bush, sneak up on the VC, and kill everybody they could.

He said that one night a couple of his friends came back from a mission laughing. They had apparently snuck into a VC barracks and sliced the throat of every other man. They thought it was going to be a great joke when the survivors woke up and found that the men on each side of them had been killed.

And, he told me of a knife fight he had had when he was a teenager.

He got into it with some other good, old boy, and they were rasslin’ and stabbin’ each other when the cops pulled them apart and arrested them.

The other guy went to the hospital, where he might not make it through the night.

My friend sat there, waiting to see if he was going to be charged with fighting or with murder. And he wiped some blood off his shirt. Talk to the cops. Wiped some more blood off. Talked the cops. Wiped some more…”Hey! I’m bleeding!”

Apparently the other fellow had managed to stick him in the gut, and the fold of skin had compressed while sitting and the blood only seeped out, which made it look like he wasn’t really injured.

So he went to the hospital, the other guy lived, and he joined the Navy to avoid charges for assault and battery, which was the way they did things back then.

Anyway, I don’t know the truth of his story, he could have been telling me a big windy, but I do know something about knife fighting.

You can stab, or you can slice. Bad idea to throw, ‘cause there’s no smarts in throwing away your weapon. How you hold the knife depends on what you want to do, unless you go in without a plan. not a good idea. Everybody should be trained, and that training should have an idea for every possible situation.

Anyway, I’ve written a complete course, with a few hours of in depth video instruction, on how to handle knives and other bladed weapons. The course is called Blinding Steel, and it is available at Monster Martial Arts.

But the thing about knives is this: it is the most common weapon you will meet in a fight. After all, knives, for the most part, are legal.

You can carry a Bowie knife, or any large knife, even a machete.
You can carry knives openly, or even concealed.
The only knives you can’t carry are things like dirks and ballistic knives and daggers and stilettos.
You can’t carry knives that look like something else, like a tube of lipstick or a pen or something like that.

But you can carry a knife, and bad guys will resort to a knife as their weapon of first choice. After all, past a gun, which is illegal for the most part, in spite of all constitutional guarantees, a knife is easy, quick, and visually frightening.

But, if you study a real martial arts course on knives, like Blinding Steel, then you won’t have much to worry about. With Blinding Steel knife course you learn how to use anything for a weapon, and you can even take a knife away from some idiot and insert it where there isn’t much chance of getting a sunburn.

That’s Blinding Steel, at MonsterMartialArts.com.

How Kenpo Karate Pioneer was Killed

The Sad Death of a Kenpo Founder

James Mitose was the fellow who brought Kenpo Karate from Japan to Hawaii, and thence to the rest of the world.

And, who, you might ask, could ‘kill’ a fellow who had studied martial arts for decades? Who introduced Kenpo Karate to the world?

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The story is right below, and it is a corker, with one of the most bizarre endings you will EVER read.

James Mitose ~ The Founder of Kenpo Karate

James Mitose was born in Hawaii in 1916. At the age of four years old his family returned to Japan that he might receive a good eduction.

One of the important elements of his education was the study of the martial arts.

The martial arts he studied included Okinawan Karate and Japanese Jujitsu. The training was done at the Mt. Akenkai Shaka-In temple.

In 1935, at the age of 21, James returned to Hawaii, and it wasn’t long before he began teaching Martial Arts. He called his art by the traditional names of Shorinji Kempo, and Kempo Jujitsu. Eventually, he settled on the name Kosho Shorei-ryu Kenpo.

Sensei Mitose taught martial arts for over ten years, but eventually stopped teaching and moved to Southern California, and here is where he met the man who would later ‘kill’ him.

Terry Lee (Nimr Hassan) ~ The Man Who Killed James Mitose

In Southern California James Mitose would teach only a few students, and one of these was a young man named Terry Lee. Mr. Lee changed his name to Nimr Hassan.

In the 70s Nimr Hassan was arrested for the murder of a Mr. Namimatsu. Mr. Namimatsu was stabbed multiple times, had a completely collapsed eye, and was strangled.

The evidence was clear cut. Not only was a footprint of Nimr Hassan on the victim’s chest, but he admitted his guilt in court by saying that he had done the stabbing and strangling, but he wasn’t guilty because when he left Mr. Namimatsu was still breathing.

At this point, the story takes a vicious turn: Terry Lee claimed that James Mitose gave him the weapons, which included a rope and an ice pick, and told him how to commit the crime.

James Mitose was arrested and taken to trial, and the result of that trial was a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Japanese translators were used, and even the court would admit, at a later date, that the translations were inadequate.

James denied inciting Terry Lee to murder, but stated that as his martial arts instructor he was responsible for the crime. On that flimsy ‘evidence,’ nothing more than a pointing finger and ‘he said,’ James Mitose was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

And Terry Lee? Nimr Hassan? For turning state evidence, for accusing the man who had taught him martial arts, he spent three years in prison.

After he was released from prison Terry would claim to be the legitimate inheritor of James Mitose’s martial arts system; he claimed to be the Hanshi of the Mitose family martial arts.

James Mitose would die in prison, while the man who effectively killed him would continue teaching martial arts for many years.

About the Author: Al Case began Kenpo in 1967. Check out his three book series on ‘How to Create Kenpo Karate.’

Using the body as one unit in karate and other martial arts

Newsletter 706
Ligaments and how I figured out CBM

Good morning from Monkeyland!
Anther perfect day for working out!
What?
Working out seven days after surgery?
How can that be?
You simply use visualization,
do your forms in your mind,
and you still get 80% of the benefit!

And, the surgery…
The exact procedure involved a four inch slit in my shoulder
and some very delicate handiwork.
Two screws to hold the shoulder bone down,
a coil around the bones to help keep everything in place,
and a brand new ligament.

My new ligament is VERY happy to have joined my body.
Instead of the fade to black of death
which usually happens to the parts of a cadaver,
it is now part of CBM machine,
where every muscle and cell is expected to
contribute to the work of the whole organism.
Not one muscle doing everything,
but all muscles doing something.

this was the original concept of CBM depressed, incidentally.
I don’t think I’ve talked about this before, So let me explain right now.
The original concept of Coordinated body motion was
One muscle doesn’t do all the work,
All muscles do a little work.
One arm doesn’t do all the work,
all the parts of the body do a little work

This thought was a drastic departure from how I was being trained.
I was being trained to use force, even in the kang duk won.
Eventually, as you get older, you get tired of doing all the work
And you start looking for easier ways to get the work done.
But this doesn’t lead to CBM.
It leads to chi power, it leads to better martial arts,
but inefficiently.
And it doesn’t lead to coordinated body motion.
And, to tell you the truth, I was going outside my art,
And I was coming across concepts where people talked about
Using the body as one unit.
But what I couldn’t find was a way to describe this method
Of using the body is one unit,
And still be true to the concept
Of one muscle doesn’t do all the work.

So I thunk it up in my head,
Move the hand at the same speed you move the foot.
Then, instead of stepping forward and punching
I was stepping forward while punching.
And the whole ‘use the body is one unit’ thing resolved,
And coordinated body motion was born.
Yeah, just thunk it up.
Figured it out.
Made it up.
But it worked.

And I got into all sorts of computations
The weight of the leg over the arc of the foot times the speed of the kick,
The muscle of the arm Times the speed of the fist from point a to point B,
The mass of the hips rotated between the distance of the legs times the speed of…
And so on and so on.
But I gave up the computations because the world is simple
And it has to be solved simple, And kept simple, if it is going to work.
So you can take my description of CBM, and you can run with it.
You can use it and tweak your art, And fix your forms,
And make your techniques work.
Not complex.
It’s simple.

So I explain this to my ligament and it was happy,
But I didn’t have to explain it,
I just had to use CBM,
To walk with the body as one unit,
and the ligament loved it.
And the whole body Loved it.
The body Loves to work,
But the body love to work simple more.

Anyway, that is the story of CBM,
Done right, keep it simple,
And your art becomes simple,
And everything changes.

oinkey Doggie
If you want to see what goes on after CBM,
If you want to check into the real truth of such things as
Correct body alignment,
Perfect body structure,
How to make any technique perfect,
And so on,
Check out this page…

1d Master Instructor Course

Now have yourself a great workout,
And I’ll talk to you later.
Al

Three Kenpo Books!

I’ve finally put Matrixing to Kenpo Karate!

And, speaking of which, here is a new website…

Home

I know you all know of my problems with the copyright infringement thing on the Matrixing Kenpo books.

I’ve just about got it fixed, people are happy, and it’s time to start getting the revamped books out.

The purpose of this new website is to give you an offer, all three books, in instant download, for only $15.

Normally the books are $15 a piece! So this is a REAL deal.

Doing this enables me to make sure things work, to get feedback, and to start the publishing process anew.

BUT, this will only last a short while. I hope to have the books up on the market within a few days. And if I don’t take this offer down then, it will be down shortly after, because when I publish on Kindle they won’t allow me to sell books that they are carrying in this format.

So you might have as little as a week to take advantage of this offer.

So head for the website…

Home

and check it out.

Let me know if there are any problems.

And if you want to wait for the physical books, it won’t be long, but this offer is here for right now…

have a great work out!

Al

How to Do a Shoulder Roll the Right Way

Aikido Rolling Done the Right Way

I was following a martial arts forum the other day, and the subject was ‘Aikido Rolling.’
Call it Aikido, but these same rolls are found in Karate, kenpo, even the kicking art of Taekwondo.

Learn to fall, grasshopper!

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// The forum in question was attempting to solicit advice on how to teach these particular martial arts moves.
And, there was good advice, and some bad advice.
I learned how to roll, forward and backward, and break fall, and other sorts of these moves, in Kenpo Karate.
It wasn’t done much, actually presented as a technique, and not given any serious drilling.
When I began Kang Duk Won we did no rolls or breakfalls. The message was clear: don’t go to the ground. And, to those who disagree with such advice, if you learn to ground your weight properly, you cannot be taken to the ground.
But, that fact aside, it is useful to learn to do shoulder rolls aikido style. You learn to appreciate what another body might do, and there may come a time when a roll is the best defense.
I am reminded, in this latter point, of the time I was in Oakland and witnessed a motorcycle accident. The motorcyclist was cut off, struck the other car, and the rider catapulted through the air and did a perfect shoulder roll to a standing position.
So, that said, there is one theory you must understand and implement no matter what the method being used to teach you. And, there is one superior method for teaching how to roll.
The theory is this: a perfect circle has no corner. Whenever you roll and hear a sound, or feel a pain, that is an example of a corner. You must do the roll again, looking for the source of that sound or pain, and smooth it out until the roll becomes true.
For instance, the you hear the foot flop at the end of the move. Figure out how not to flop the foot.
Or, you get a sore head after rolling, so look for the point at which your head is hitting something.
Those are the corners, figure out how to smooth them out.
As for the one method, you simple give a person a basketball, show him how to wrap his body around it, then tell him to roll the ball.
You will be surprised at how easy this device, this real visualization works. people doing it suddenly have an example of a circle to adhere to. I use to curve a coat hanger in a circle and hand it to people. And you can use other things.
And that is the secret, and that’s all there is, to ‘aikido rolling’ in the martial arts.

There is a great course which shows you how to do Aikido quickly and effortlessly. it is called Matrix Aikido, and it is available at monsterMartialArts.com.

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The Three Secrets of Pan Gai Noon Karate/Kung Fu

How Karate was Born, Destroyed, and Can Be Resurrected

I had no idea what Pan Gai Noon was when I began my studies of karate.
I had begun with Kenpo karate, and then moved onto classical karate such as presented by okinawan or Japanese systems.
As the years and then decades rolled past, I delved deeper and deeper into the martial arts, and always in the back of my mind was a question where did it all come from.
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The Japanese karate system comes from Okinawa, and Okinawan karate is derived from a broad variety of martial arts and Asia.
One of the most important influences in the matter karate comes from Pan Gai Noon.
PGN was talking the Fukien province of China. It was taught by a street seller name Shu Shi Wa who may have learned it as a style of Temple boxing taught by Shaolin monks.
Mind you, there are no real hard facts here, so you will have to make up your own mind as to the originals of karate and even kung fu.
That said, If you analyze PGN using matrixing, you will find a wealth of specific self-defense structures in the first three forms of this martial arts system.
In the first form, Sanchin, you will find straight thrusts that will override incoming punches. You will also find very useful and street applicable basic blocks. You will learn this in conjunction with learning how to fasten the body to the ground.
Fastening the body to the ground, or grounding, is the secret of making PGN work. It is also the secret of making all martial arts work. It is the secret of the art.
Most important, at the end of first form you will find a block called wa-uke. This is a circular block, not talking other martial arts, but possibly the most useful block ever talking karate.
The essence of wa-uke is to slap with the first hand, then grab with the second hand.
Thus, using grounding, you train yourself to stand and face. You slapping grab any strike coming in, and counter.
This concept of stand face is found in no other martial art in existence.
Other arts teach you to fight, PGN teaches you to stand and face. As simple as this concept is, the whole system is based upon it, And students would spend literally decades learning it.
The second form of pan gai noon takes this concept of stand and face using only the block of wa-uke and expands it through a variety of strikes.
Matrixing, at this point, can speed up your study of the art. By using a simple matrix graph, one can understand all of the possible permutations of motion inherent in wa-uke.
Without matrixing it can take decades to learn the art; with matrixing one can learn to stand and face in a matter of months.
The third form, Sanseirui, expands upon the theory of fighting and presents whole methods of combat.
The last one is not limited to the method of wa-uke, but is able to expand his fighting concepts in many other directions.
These three secrets of pan gai noon are inside the three basic forms. Unfortunately, they have not been passed down, but rather altered to fit Okinawan and Japanese martial arts concepts.
That’s the real truth of PGN has been obscured by people who didn’t understand them, And who translated the art into such concepts as dynamic tension, excessive breathing patterns, and basic techniques that are not tied together and any cohesive theory or concept.

If you wish to see the truth of the matter, I recommend the pan gai noon book available at Amazon. With this course you will see the truth of the beginning of karate, how it was corrupted, and how it can be made great again. An extra bonus, there are three complete systems on this book and video course.

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The Problem with Bruce Lee

The Mistake of the Little Dragon

I remember when Bruce Lee Died. It was a shock that went through the soul. Here was an icon,the best martial artist in the world, in perfect physical condition…dead.

How? Why? What happened?

Final volume of Matrixing Kenpo! Click not he cover!

Interestingly, one of the first theories I heard as to the cause of his death came from a friend who was studying Tai Chi Chuan. The one word summation was: balance. And, the one sentence explanation was Bruce Lee was lacking balance.

I tucked this opinion away, collected facts, but it was literally decades before I matured enough as a martial artist to understand, and to accept, this opinion over the facts.

Let me say, before I continue, that I like facts. It could be said that only fools deal in opinions, and in most cases, this would be correct.

The person offering this opinion, however, was basing his opinion not on the facts of Bruce’s death, but upon the facts of the martial arts. It wasn’t until I was firmly matrixed in my approach to the martial arts that I understood this.

One of the facts that I continuously came across was that Bruce had an allergic reaction to marijuana, which was in tea he had drunk.

This is interesting, I have never read a study on this, is there marijuana in Chinese tea?

Another fact I came across is that Bruce had, again, an allergic reaction, this time to aspirin. But I think that the aspirin was given to him after he complained of a headache. And, I know it’s possible, but I just don’t hear of a lot of people, or any people, dying of allergic reactions to aspirin. Doesn’t mean it’s not possible, but…hmmm.

And, the third of these ‘facts,’ Bruce had a reduced fat content in his body. Now this is dangerous. And this could result in death. And this has much more substantiation in fact than the previous two theories.

Mind you, in saying this I realize that it is still opinion, and the only real fact we have is that we will never know. But this one fact, considered in light of the theory of ‘balance,’ really resonates with me. What was Bruce Lee doing that would result in a loss of balance, and which could possibly result in death? For the answer to that let’s consider how the martial arts are accumulated.

In matrixing one isolates the specific arts, and simplifies them to workable levels, and does not mix martial arts. In matrixing one studies the smaller pieces of the individual martial arts until they (eventually) blend into a larger and comprehensive whole.

Bruce, on the other hand, was doing a hybrid of the martial arts; he was doing, for one specific example, Wing Chun and Boxing.

I know, there was a lot more, he had 26 different arts at one count.

But consider the differences between just those two martial arts. Wing Chun controls the centerline and works on straight punches. Boxing moves laterally and has roundish punches.

Yes, a simplification, but bear with, for there are different concepts of chi power here.

In boxing, there is no focus on chi power, everything has to do with muscles.
In Wing Chun, hoever, the focus is on chi power, and there is major emphasis on generating energy from the tan tien.

Could this mix of martial training, taken to the extremes that Bruce took them, result in an imbalance in the body? Could this have resulted in Bruce’s death?

Unfortunately, as with the other theories, there is no proof, and likely never will be, and we all never know. But it is something to consider.

The mix of the martial arts you study is definitely worth considering. Not because of the risk of death (Bruce was a singular and extreme case), but because mixing the various martial arts, and especially without simplifying them through the matrixing process, causes confusion, and results in a slower learned and less effective martial arts.

In closing, the point of this article has been to ask, not to state definitively, and that in an attempt to understand Bruce Lee. It is only through understanding, not through mindless worshipping, that we are going to reap the true benefits of this incredible person’s martial arts and existence.

Take the first step in learning how to Matrix with Matrix Karate. For information that might be more specific to the theories presented in this article examine The Master Instructor Course. Both courses are available at MonsterMartialArts.com

Achieving the supernatural in kung fu

How to Have Supernatural Powers in the Martial Arts…

Supernatural in kung fu, refers to such things as reading minds, intuition, seeing when things are going to happen before they happen, And so on.

The reason people have such trouble in gaming this high level of martial arts is because of a basic misunderstanding of who and what they are.

Great book to start developing your kung fu super powers! Click on the cover!

The body is an envelope for the spirit.

The mind is just a bunch of memory.

The spirit is the source of all supernatural ability in the martial arts.

The misunderstanding comes when people attribute their abilities to mental powers.

Memory has no powers, memory obscures he human being, which obscures a being’s natural power. Natural ability, what a human being can do once memories are put aside is actually what we call supernatural kung fu.

Thus to say Power comes from mental abilities is completely the opposite of what they should be thinking.

Think of it this way, A person trains his body and this creates discipline in the soul. In effect it bypasses the mind, which is to say the memories, which come between a person and his true power and ability.

Understanding this one must apply this to the martial arts.

One memorizes movements, Which creates a short-term memory. One practices the movements until the memory disappears and intuition remains. The bonus is at the long-term memory tends to disappear to, Or at least to get out-of-the-way of the martial artist.

So you memorize to give up memory and what is left is the awareness, the Spirit, the human being, the ‘I am.’

When you give up memory, your own abilities come to the fore. These abilities, Based in such things as intuition, actually frighten normal people. That is why so many people give up the martial arts at the brown belt level, for that is the level at which a person breaks through to intuition.

Unfortunately, most systems no longer bring a person to the edge of intuition, or push him through to intuition.

This is why I created matrixing. It makes the martial arts faster, it makes the jump to intuition easier.

Instead of spending years trying to figure out the confusion created by a laborious memorization procedure, the student learns logical moves, builds up no internal resistance to the memorization procedure, and slides smoothly into intuition.

Check out monstermartialarts.com, and especially matrix karate. Even if you have done martial arts for years, even if you know dozens of martial arts systems, once you experience the logic of matrixing, all those systems Will start to make sense and come together in a manner which you didn’t envision.