World Of Swords

While MMA is one of the most popular sports in the world, there are problems with it. Let's be honest, while some fellow is using that Gracie Jujitsu to apply a lock or hold, he is rolling around and vulnerable to an attack from his opponents friends. Not to mention that it is not always the most intelligent thing to roll around on the ground while some fellow is trying to penetrate your body with a knife or broken bottle.

I know I have offended some MMA stylists out there, but these are questions that people should not hide from. After all, the ring looks like the final statement on fighting, but biting is a problem in a real fight. And getting your fingers broken or your eyes gouged is always a possibility when you fall on the ground and wrestle around.

No, it is better to keep a distance, be able to evade, manipulate, and even, in the extreme, run. Yes, you have to watch what kind of a surface you are on, but mobility in warfare is a crucial matter. And talking about the ability to move around, we are talking something like Shotokan, or Shorin Ryu, or Kenpo.

The problem is that people have bought into the idea that it takes decades, a life time, to learn good Kung Fu, like Shaolin or Mantis. But it doesn't. All you have to do is find a system which understands the most important principles and concentrates on those principles.

We are not talking Jeet Kune Do here, because we don't want a grab bag of sample all and take what you need. What we want are the actual core concepts of the art. We want the truth of such arts as Hung Gar or Choy Li Fut.

The best way to do this is to learn how to apply the concepts of matrixing to what you are studying. When you matrix your martial art, be it classical karate like Wado or Israeli survival like Krav Maga, it will suddenly become logical and easy to understand. And, being logical, a martial art will suddenly be ten times easier to understand.

And here's something most people have not really come to grips with, logic leads to prediction to intuition. Those sixth sense abilities of the martial arts are sometimes difficult to grasp, but they don't need to be. Once you start matrixing your martial arts, and I don't care if it is tae kwon do or one of the Korean Kwans, your sixth sense abilities, your ability to understand and generate chi kung, sometimes called gi gong, will start to come to the fore.

Really, what we are talking about here is dragging the martial arts into modern times. We are talking about evolution when we are talking about learning how to Matrix. So, you walk behind that ox, or you can ride the race horse by learning the fundamentals of Matrix Martial Arts.

Al Case has studied martial arts for 4O years. He began developing Matrixing in the 1970s, and he began writing for the magazines in the 1980s. He has written a manual on Matrixing, which is available for free at Monster Martial Arts.

My first introduction to the importance of strength was through the old comic book ads. Charles Atlas, the bully kicking sand in your face, and the need to lift big hunks of iron. Why, lift enough iron and you suddenly could do the bully to the bad guy, win the girl, and life would be grand.

Then, as life proceeded, I found out that people who lifted weights were considered a bit empty in the head. They were the new bullies of the world, they were the ones doing the sand kicking. And, heck, they even started taking drugs to make themselves bigger and badder.

The truth behind lifting weights is, of course, not entirely as I have portrayed it here through my youthful and naive observations of life. It is true that you have to lift weight; you have use muscles if you are going to gain the benefit of muscles. But, there are alternatives to lifting bars weighted with immense plates of iron that are much more efficient, much less dangerous, and, in this writers opinion, a heck of a lot more fun.

I began my practice of the martial arts in the sixties, and I was unaware that I was lifting weights. I was was, in truth, lifting the weight of my body, and throwing it around in a manner that simple weight lifting could never duplicate. The ranges of motion, the competence of motion, it was something that in my few brushes with weight lifting I had never experienced.

A few decades into my practice, already realizing an enduring health and physical conditioning that was far beyond my oxygen tank toting, walker using compatriots, I heard of body calisthenics. These were simple exercises that brought home the theories I had been practicing without realizing it through the martial arts. Furthermore, I wasn't experiencing health problems, the muscle to flab syndrome, injuries to muscles and joints that unreal stress can achieve.

Interestingly enough, I had started doing Tai Chi some years previous, and had discovered what I called Suspended Strength. When you hold a limb up for a while, moving it slowly, this is suspended weight, and increases strength without increasing bulk, which is good if you want to develop health and speed and other things specific to the martial arts. So I was doing Extreme Suspended Weight Body Calisthenics, to make up a rather nifty sounding phrase.

The truth of this whole matter of weight lifting and body motion, however, eluded me until I injured myself. I suffered a separated shoulder, and I was reduced to rehabilitation, and I started doing light Yoga postures. Here was something slower than Tai Chi, in which I suspended strength even longer, and I began doing something that moved me into ever higher realms of fitness and martial arts ability. I realized that true strength is increased more by the channeling of awareness through the body than anything else.

This is the key to the whole mess, you know, for the body is a device in which, in most people, energy is stopped, blocked, not flowing, even no matter how much weight they lift. By doing yoga, and realizing that the increase of awareness was unblocking energy flows, I began to experience the wellness and true strength that the body is capable of. Karate and Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi and Yoga, life is made whole by the increase of awareness, and I recommend this sequence of practice to all who wish to find true strength through the martial arts disciplines.

Al Case has learned martial arts for 4O years. If you want to sample a little of his strength through a free ebook, go to Monster Martial Arts.

It was Gichin Funakoshi who said: the way, straight and true, who will pass it on? Actually, The Way is now easily mastered, and it is easily passed on. The key to this statement lies in good, old, hard core physics.

When karate was given to the world by Japan, it was taught in the old way, memorizing random techniques, and eventually bringing the student to intuition. Though this method works, it is an amazingly inadequate way to teach. The best way to impart the knowledge of the martial arts is through giving the student a solid base in physics.

Physics is the method of measuring the universe. It is not a mystical practice, yet, when understood, physics can actually lead to the understanding of such things as Chi. I should expound upon that, however, by saying that the subject of Chi is representative of a second set of physics, physics of the mind and spirit, which are above the physics of the physical universe.

The secret of physics is that the universe can be described accurately. With physics there can be no junk science in the martial arts, such as the kind you will see in TV infomercials. Junk science is actually the beginning of mysticism...how big is that pill going to make you?

The key to this can be seen when one does as simple an act as aligning a tire. When an out of alignment tire is spun, it will wobble, and this is out of true. When an aligned tire is spun it will not wobble, and this is in true.

Now you have to ask yourself...what is it about your martial art form that wobbles? An obvious wobble would be the wrist breaking when punching. Another obvious wobble is when a student's buttocks wiggle when he punches, which is just out of alignment and a waste of energy, no matter how good it feels.

The trick of finding out what wobbles in the martial arts can occupy one for a lifetime. One must watch the body, see it in pictures, examine it in a mirror, observe it in technique, have others see it, and make sufficient sense out of the input to de-wobble it. You must do your techniques slowly, plant and push style, searching for the most efficient paths and means of resistance within the body.

Ultimately, the fact of physics will bring one to the true art. And the study of physics on the body level will lead one to a higher level of physics. On this higher level of physics you will find The Path of The True Martial Art.