Newsletter 984
The Easy Way to Punch Hard in the Martial Arts
Most people don’t understand how easy the martial arts are.
Take, for instance, a good karate punch.
It will generate more power than any other punch in the world.
And takes less energy.
Don’t believe me?
I was watching a fellow punch the bag the other day.
The guy was maybe 25,
much experience in boxing and other arts.
The bag jumped and bent a little,
and that was it.
I stepped up to the bag.
I’m old…71.
I put my fingers to the bag,
then,
without retracting the arm,
I closed my fingers and thrust my arm out.
Freakin’ bag went to the roof.
You could feel it say ‘OW!’
So why was my ‘old’ punch stronger than some young turks?
Because I used less energy.
What is energy?
Go ahead,
give it your best shot.
Nope,
it’s not that.
Energy is the capacity for work.
Go on,
look in the dictionary.
That is the physics definition.
Physics,
if you don’t know it,
is the stuff we made up
to measure the universe.
So how do you measure work?
Here’s where it gets tricky.
You can measure work with…
watts, ohms, pounds, gallons per minute,
and so on and so on.
How you measure work depends
on what you are measuring.
So how do you measure work in the martial arts?
Here’s what nobody knows,
and why punches are so spectacularly lacking in horsepower.
You measure work by weight.
When that young Turk was punching the bag he was punching with his arm.
Twenty pounds of weight.
When I punched the bag
I moved my 71 year old body into it…
200 pounds of weight.
20 pounds versus 200 pounds.
I was literally punching ten times as hard as he was.
And,
I’ll tell you this,
it was easier for me to move my 200 pounds an inch or two
than it was for him to try to punch as hard as me
using his 20 pound arm.
Now,
I’ve given you all the clues,
how you going to put them together?
How are you going to make your body work ten times easier
than some guy nearly 50 years younger than you?
Well,
I’ll tell you,
it took me a while.
Fortunately,
I wrote it all down.
The totally scientific martial art
that opens eyes everywhere
and makes all martial arts quick and simple to learn.
Here’s the obligatory ad…
But I’d be careful before I go there.
Sometimes it hurts to learn something,
you have to give up what you thought you knew.
Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Have a great work out!
Al
