To my knowledge, no one in the history of the martial arts has asked this question. No one has ever considered the Martial arts as one big puzzle. No one has ever taken the time to assemble the puzzle and see what the martial arts really are.
When I asked the question and, eventually, solved the puzzle, I was left with a rather astounding concept. I discovered that fabulous True Art that people talk about but never realize. I also found out why people never discover the True Art.
Interestingly, the True Art depends on hard core physics. Physics is at the heart of understanding all motion in this universe. Physics is the single thing that one must understand if they are to realize the True Art.
The first thing I did, when solving the puzzle of the martial arts, was to study as many arts as I could. I grew up in the Golden Age of the martial arts, and I saw movies, read books, studied video tapes, visited every school I could and talked to everybody I could. Eventually, I entered the digital age, and this brought a whole new wealth of information to my fingertips. With a simple computer I could access martial arts across the planet.
The second thing I did was write down every single technique I knew. I wrote these on the backs of business cards and spread them out across my living room. There were thousands of cards with the techniques of hundreds of styles.
The last thing I did was sort through them and put them in groups. I tried sorting them by specific attacks, by kick or fist or weapon or whatever. I tried sorting them by art, soft or hard, which country they came from, and whatever other grouping I could figure out.
Slowly, I began to filter out the duplicate techniques. I threw away all the poser techniques; those techniques in which the attacker has to wait for the defender to do the technique. Eventually, the number of cards grew smaller and became more manageable. In the end I was left with 40 techniques.
That’s all the martial arts are, you know, forty techniques. Every other technique in every other art is, in some manner or other, nothing more than a copycat of one of the forty techniques. But the real blessing wasn’t just that I came up with the source forty techniques of the Martial Arts, the real blessing was that I began to see threads of commonality that no one else had ever seen.
Yes, I have solved the martial arts, and they are a big puzzle. But that puzzle, once viewed in complete is so astoundingly magnificent that it takes the breath away. With the forty techniques the future of the martial arts is golden, and it is starting now.
About the Author: Al Case has been practicing the martial arts for 60 years. The original course on matrixing, Matrix Karate, can be found at:
This is a complete system, two videos and and a book. Click on the link and find out about it.
