Find the Real You!
Speaking of Martial Arts, I just read an ad, one of those cheesy internet ads, about unlocking the inner you.
You’re only using 10% of your brain, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could unlock the other 90%? Continue reading
Posted in aikido, chi power, kenpo, kung fu, shaolin, tai chi chuan, wing chun
Tagged aikido, karate, kenpo, kung fu, martial art, shaolin, taekwondo, tai chi chuan
Happy first day of the week!
Happy first workout of the week!
Make it a good one,
lose yourself in it,
and your whole week will glow.
True.
Okey doke,
thanks to all who are on the Kang Duk Won course,
don’t forget to set aside time each day,
whittle away at the art,
make it your own.
And,
congrats to Master Instructor Wilhem Stockinger!
Here’s his win…
I had a breakthru in the master instructor course yesterday, man the pieces finally came together…I was…screaming in ecstasy and joy…you are a genius master Al! I am so much more grounded and aligned in movement, it’s fantastic.
I finally got the missing pieces to what was once 6 years of Iu ryu jujutsu, 2 years of Gracie jujutsu,a few years of Muay thai kickboxing, and some Krav Maga and so on…I know I never mentioned my background since it fades away against yours and I was not enrolling into your course to talk about my past but to learn. And I did learn a tremendous amount, which not only corrected my faulty basics in form and execution, but also gave me understanding of form. Sensei, the 6 secrets, man, this is all Jujutsu theory I’ve been trained in for years, but nobody ever explained the principles, unless by practical example, but never the principles behind it. The why and how, not just the what. It was so enlightening. I am starting all over, but now the proper way. Thank you so much. I finally got the crack of technique over strength, of body mechanics over brute force. I am excited to be in the martial arts again. You are the real deal Shihan Alton Case. God bless you!
No,
thanks to you, Will.
Breaking through,
sharing your win,
somebody else is going to be
encouraged to make it, too.
And,
for everybody,
it’s easy,
it’s just how to fix your thinking.
Which makes it the hardest thing you’ll ever do.
Like Will says,
everybody talks about it,
without ever talking about it.
They talk about the surface
and never go into the depths.
They never go into why things work.
Endless drills,
endless techniques,
without ever telling you why.
So,
thanks again Will.
Persistence and tenacity in the martial arts,
that’s what you represent,
which are characteristics of good martial arts.
Okay!
I’m going to write an article on this,
it follows along with what WIll says above,
but I thought I’d mention it here, first.
I like to talk to the intelligent first,
then the masses.
Grin.
Do you know why I teach so many Martial Arts?
Why I am always open to new arts?
Why I listen avidly
when my fellow martial artists talk,
instead of opening my own yap?
It’s true,
like as not,
when the talk starts
I find it much more educational
to listen.
Well,
the reason is this.
If you were drilling a well,
you would need a stable base,
so you could build a high drill,
so you could drill deeper.
When you learn more martial arts,
when you toss the techniques around in your head,
compare and contrast,
fit them into the matrix of all techniques,
then you are building a wide database,
and you can then build a high drill,
and drill deep into your soul.
Data holds you together.
The more data you have,
the more held together you are.
Or,
think about it this way.
If you were going to build a telescope
to see to the furthest star,
then you would need a solid base,
so the telescope wouldn’t be shaken by wind or rain,
or any other force.
Then your sight would be solid and true,
and you could see to those far stars,
without them shimmying and shaking
and being a blur to your sight.
Do you understand?
The more you know,
the deeper you can dig into yourself,
the more of yourself
you can understand.
Simple,
eh?
Yet,
the work to make a wide database
especially in the martial arts,
with all the technique and styles and opinions and…
it can get pretty tough.
And,
it can get tough to keep it all in order,
which is one of the blessings of Matrixing.
Look,
people study,
they get a thousand techniques,
and it can take twenty years to sort it all out,
to learn to think about things in a way
that it all makes sense,
so that all of the data is at your fingertips,
instead of buried in the mass of
thousands of techniques.
So,
instead of lumping everything together,
and training like crazy.
You just put your techniques into a matrix,
fit that matrix to a larger matrix of all martial arts,
and the procedure gets REAL fast.
Oh,
like Will said above,
it can take time,
but not as much,
but,
the rewards once it all clicks,
there’s nothing like it.
It’s not just studying hard forever,
that is taken for granted…
it is making sense out of it quickly,
as fast as you input data and techniques,
that’s how fast you have to make sense out of it all.
Oinky Doinkey!
That‘s about it,
got nothing left to say,
and,
besides,
I’d rather work out than talk.
I’d rather dig deep
than open my yap.
My time of day…
workout time of day!
Don’t forget to straighten out your art…
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/4-master-instructor-course/
Believe me,
it’s nothing but fun
when everything works
the way it is supposed to work.
Have a Great Work Out!
Al
There are three things you need if you are going to teach yourself Martial Arts, and a couple of secondary things you should know.
The three main things you need to teach yourself Martial Arts is a good Martial Art, a good teacher, and a good student.
We can assume that you are going to be a good student, set aside time every day, and stick to the program you come up with. In this case, if you are a good student, then you are a good teacher.
So we have to select a high grade martial art, and here is where we come into the secondary considerations you should think about when undertaking how to teach yourself Martial Arts.
To teach yourself Martial Arts you have to ask yourself why you want to learn.
Do you want to be strong and flexible? Excellent. Do you want to be tough? Not so good. Do you want to bully people? Uh oh.
The best martial Art to teach yourself, to be honest, is probably Karate.
If you want to learn Aikido you need a partner all the time.
If you want to learn Kung Fu there’s too much mysticism, meaningless chi exercises, abstract concepts that you might actually need a teacher to help you with.
Some arts are unbalanced. Taekwondo, for example, has too many kicks, and doesn’t give enough weight to punches and throws. Jujitsu has too many throws and not enough punches and kicks.
Mixed Martial Arts isn’t bad, but most MMA fighters got their start by learning a classical martial art first.
Karate, on the other hand, is based around self defense, so their isn’t a bunch of mystical concepts to mess up your mind.
And, it is well rounded, with a balance of throws, kicks, and punches.
Having selected the type of Karate you wish to learn, you now have to find the best courses and information in order to teach yourself Martial Arts.
Serious about learning How to Teach yourself Martial Arts? Check out KangDukWon.com.
For part two of this article, go to How to Find the Best Online Martial Arts Instruction at MonsterMartialArts.com.
Posted in karate, kenpo, kung fu, martial arts, tai chi chuan, weapons
Tagged karate, kenpo, kung fu, shaolin, teach yourself martial arts
A Paper Tiger is a person who has a certificate and no real knowledge.
To be precise, it is a person who has bought a certificate, or otherwise convinced some fellow to give him one, and he can’t really do the things listed on the certificate.
We used to call this idea, of bought certificates instead of earned, as ‘Paper mills.’ Some guy would just charge money and send paper, and it was just a money making scheme.
A Paper tiger is something that seems as threatening as a tiger, but does not withstand challenge.
And, it was pretty cruel, because it misrepresented the martial arts, and it misrepresented the individual with the cert in hand.
Now, I don’t particularly like the notion of Paper Tigers. So let me define what is happening here, and what I decided to do about it.
Some fellow goes to a martial arts school, then stops. Maybe he should stop, maybe he shouldn’t, but he is still left halfway through the ranks, he still wants what he was working for, he still wants to earn his black belt.
Or, even worse, a fellow that never went to a martial art school, but still wants the diploma.
Sometimes these fellows look for the short cut.
Sometimes the head rationalization is massive.
‘Oh, I knew what he (the instructor) was talking about.’ Or, ‘I can fight good, I deserve it.’ Or, ‘well, I’ve been practicing, sort of, so I’m at that rank.’
Do you see all the potential variations here?
But the fellow hasn’t done the work!
Now, I’ll be honest, there will always be people who manage to get away with this. Sometimes they’ll just print up their own certificates.
But I want my signature to mean something when I put it on a certificate. So I did several things.
One thing I did was eliminate ‘poser’ techniques from my courses. These are techniques where the attacker has to wait, to pose, while the defender makes the technique work.
Another is to align the techniques so they are more logical. This makes them easier to learn and make work.
And, then there is video. I can tell when a person is faking it. I can spot even a mental hesitation and ‘think’ in the middle of the form.
And it is easy to see when a technique isn’t working.
And, because of The Master Instructor Course, I can give a person spot on instruction that will help him make it work.
I don’t care if a person comes to me and isn’t quite competent, I only care if I can’t make him competent. I just want to make him into a real tiger!
So by the structure of my courses, and video testing, and the VERY high worth of the art I am teaching, I’ve had good results, and, as far as I know, no Paper Tigers.
See, the thing is this, let’s say a guy comes to me with head rationalizations, and he wants a certificate…when he sees the logic, when the error is pointed out without making him feel bad, then the Paper Tiger becomes…a Tiger.
That’s what I want, martial artists who are real tigers, and, truth, that’s what the people who sign up for courses want. They WANT to be real martial artists. And it is my duty to get them there.
The reason I tell you this is so that when you sign up for the Kang Duk Won Karate Course, the Best Online Karate Course in the World, you will know that you are in good hands.
This has been a page about making a real tiger out of a paper tiger.
Posted in aikido, bruce lee, kung fu, martial arts, taekwondo, tai chi chuan
Tagged karate, kenpo, kung fu, paper tiger, shaolin
It’s true, Light Gung Fu can be made out of any martial art you study, and that includes Karate, Silat, Aikido, whatever! In fact, it is incredibly easy!
All you have to do is go get some cinderblocks, set them on end, and do your forms (kata) on them! Instant Light Gung Fu!
But whatever you believe…chi energy power exists!
Here are some key items to help you out in this search for light body Gung fu.
You don’t need a lot of cinderblocks. As little as four, but you can use as many as you want.
It is best to lay them sideways the first few times you do this. After you are comfortable (won’t take but a day or two), you stand them on end. After a week or two, you can lay two on the side. Then you can go to one on end on top of one on end, and then two on end, and so on.
You want to pick a good surface to eliminate brick wobble. And when you purchase the cinder blocks, set them on end and pick out the ones with the most stability.
IMPORTANT: when you fall, learn to pick up your legs and search for a place to land. You don’t want to break a leg by stepping on the falling cinderblock.
Now, this method of light Gung fu has been around for years. It is called sunken post, or sunken pillar training. Usually you dig holes and sink them, and climb the poles until you are six or eight feet off the ground, striking Gung fu postures and dancing around like a kung fu crane.
But, that’s a lot of digging, so my method is simpler and quicker, and saves a lot of digging and measuring and leveling and basic construction work.
Nothing wrong with the ancient sunken pole tricks, especially if you are an official Gung fu school, but, my method of light kung fu is much simpler.
Now, the main area where you grow is going to be in balance.
Everything is balance. From being able to stop yourself in an aggressive karate move without falling forward, to the delicate hourlong meditation of holding the bowl. Everything is balance.
So standing on a couple of cinderblocks on end is going to give you tremendous balance.
First, you will feel awkward, the body will shift back and forth in attempts to keep your balance.
After a while your kung fu maneuvering will become easy as pie, and it will be as natural as walking, and you will likely feel a nice, little glow developing in your tan tien.
The muscles on both sides of the leg, you see, are going to fire up, work back and forth, and that will start up the body energy generator, which is what the tan tien actually is.
And that is how you create light Gung fu out of Karate, or taekwondo, or pa kua, or…ANY…Martial Art you might happen to study.
Here’s a great article in which the author demonstrates light gung fu. And here’s a great article on how to learn Shaolin Kung Fu.
Posted in bagua zhang, chi power, karate, kenpo, kung fu, martial arts, ninja, pa kua chang, tai chi chuan, wing chun
Tagged aikido, karate, light gung fu, shaolin, silat, white crane hung
Ki Energy in the Martial Arts is always considered one of those mysterious magician’s gimmicks. Nobody knows how to do it, let alone explain it, yet ki Energy, or chi power or qigong or whatever you want to call it, has grabbed the public imagination.
What is fascinating is that using the body martial arts style, there is an automatic input of energy. Unfortunately, most people never understand it, and thus the effects are unappreciated.
Martial Arts Ki Energy!
In this piece of writing I’m going to set forth a couple of rules which should help you generate more ki energy. You’ll find that understanding what you are doing is going to really help your martial arts practice.
When you sink into a martial arts stance you are attaching your body to the earth. To hold the ground or to launch the body through space matters not, there is an attachment of the body to the planet, and from this you build your martial arts power.
When you sink into stance you need to analyze the geometry of the body. The geometry should be based upon a simple triangle. The tan tien (the ‘one point’ located a couple of inches below the belly button) is the top of the triangle, the line between the feet provide the base.
Doesn’t matter what martial arts stance you take – horse stance, back stance, whatever – just examine the triangle and make sure the angles of the triangle are functioning.
Functioning means that you are doing two things.
First, breath to the tan tien.
Second, lower the stance, so that you feel more weight, and thus create more energy.
Do these two things for a while, breathing and grounding, and you will find the function in your stance, and ki energy will start to build in your body and manifest in your martial art.
Karate vs Kung Fu vs Aikido…or whatever the fighting discipline…it doesn’t matter. The stance is the item. The art is a stylistic build upon the stance…and the techniques you do will all be mounted upon the stances.
Now, a couple of things to be wary of.
Don’t turn the feet too far to the sides, or turn them too far inwards, seek an alignment of the feet that supports the intention (direction) of the stance, and therefore the technique. This can be confusing until you realize the simplicity of how everything works.
Keep the tan then inside the base of the feet, lest your triangle topple.
Relax.
Breath rhythmically with your motion. Breath in when the body contracts, breath out when the body expands.
Do you see how basic these martial arts instructions for generating ki energy are? The difficulty lies only in thinking that the stances, which is to say the various postures, are complex, and then having to resolve them by inspection until they are simple and make sense.
Read that last sentence again, it is important, it tells you one of the reasons people make the martial arts such a lo-o-ong subject to study.
The truth of the matter is that the body can be rebuilt in as little as three months, and this includes making real and usable ki power. Watch the US army boot camp, or even one of the PX 90 infomercial ads on late night television.
Whether you change the body, and start manufacturing ki power depends not on years of rare exercises and drills that you don’t understand, but simply resolving the simple stances and techniques and martial arts kata to the principles explained here.
For more data, check out this bit of writing on Martial Arts Chi Power. Or, if you want, all the principles that I’ve hinted at in this article on ki power are actually given in the Master Instructor Online Course at Monster Martial Arts.
Dragon Gung Fu refers to internal martial arts training, and tiger Gung fu refers to external martial arts systems.
Dragon Gung Fu would include such Chinese martial arts as Pa Kua Chang, Tai Chi Chuan, and so on.
Official Symbol of Gung Fu at Monster Martial Arts
Tiger Gung Fu would include such systems as Hung Gar, but would go outside the Chinese to such systems as Shotakan Karate (Tiger Emblem), Kyukoshinkai, and so on.
The main difference between the hard and the soft, or the external and internal martial arts systems, is emphasis on muscles in the hard, and emphasis on the growth of Chi from the Tan Tien in the hard.
Though, to be honest, do the Tiger Gung Fu styles long enough, and you will morph into the harder Tiger systems.
Now, most people consider that all you have to do is gear your training to development of tan tien based martial arts, and that will transform you into a dragon gung fu stylist. And this is true. But, there is an easier way, one that works more in conjunction with Tiger Gung Fu styles.
This means that if you do what I am about to tell you, you can easily transform your hard style into a soft style with just a little shift in your training.
To make the transformation from tiger Gung fu methods to dragon, first learn how to make grab arts out of the self defense techniques you practice in the forms.
This can be easily done, and probably the best example of this is the Matrix Aikido method.
Now, here is where the change really starts. You must learn how to use less and less force when doing those grab arts.
Instead of slamming with the hips, learn how to nudge and unbalance, and let the unbalancing technique take its course.
Now, I could tell you dozens of things, but I shant. It would turn into a complex discussion, instead of a conceptual principle.
Heck, take apart those techniques by the thousands, get complex, but always refer back to this principle of using less and less effort.
And that is the way you transform Tiger Gung Fu into Dragon Gung Fu.
Here’s a great article on how to make Dragon Gung Fu out of Tiger Gung Fu, and here’s an interesting online martial arts course on the subject.
Secret Gung Fu refers to martial arts principles hidden for millennium. Here is the data you’ve been seeking.
I’ve always wanted to know secret gung fu techniques. 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, and this secret gung fu thing.
Secret Gung Fu shouldn’t be secret, and that is the heart of the Shaolin Butterfly
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 gung 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 secret gung fu 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, and this made finding a secret gung fu difficult, to say the least!
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 gung Fu you are studying, the body is the common denominator.
Gung 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 my secret gung fu.
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 Gung Fu. Oh, and one other thing about this secret gung fu system that is great–it can be learned in a couple of months.
This blog on secret gung fu was originally published 2009/06/03 on the Matrix Martial arts blog.
Posted in bagua zhang, karate, kenpo, kung fu, shaolin, tai chi chuan, wing chun
Tagged choy li fut, gung fu, hung gar, karate, kung fu, shaolin, wing chun
Bagua Zhang Technique is an easy thing to learn and simple to apply. The problem is that they might actually be to simple.
Too simple to learn because most people don’t have the discipline of mind, the mental ability, to make Bagua Zhang Martial Arts work. They get lost in the endless possibilities of intricacy, and lose sight of the simplicity.
Come on! All of you! At once! I know the best martial art!
When you walk the circle you must do so with an eye to developing Martial Arts Bagua Zhang Technique. These martial arts gems rely on one simple principle: the opponent must extend his arm, and the person doing the circle walking self defense must use the extended limb like a captain’s wheel. That is, he must turn the spoke, that the hub of the body would revolve.
If the punch is fast and hard, this is difficult to do, and what punch is not going to be fast?
The solution is to practice until you see the energy forming, until you see the punch generating, and then be willing and able to use whatever part of the arm you get.
For instance, the attacker launches a strike, and it is a short, circular type of jab. To make a bagua zhang technique work the student must go with the punch, let it pass, and push on the elbow, or even the shoulder.
This means you have to not only walk sideways, but you have to fine tune your distance, so that the opponent misses, passes, and is the right range for your push.
When you push you must not do so faster than the strike, nor slower. The best bagua zhang techniques are going to be the ones in which you harmonize with the motion, and therefore with the attacker.
Think: if he feels you touch him, he will resist, so if you use too much force he will change. But you don’t want him to change…you just want him to be slightly out of kilter, unable to follow up, at a slight disadvantage.
Now, what do you want to do? Continue your circle walking and tie him in knots? Spin him to the earth, circle the arm and reverse direction into a lock or takedown? These are all potential bagua fighting techniques, but the one you choose will depend on one thing: what is the most simple.
What is simple, that is what is difficult. You see, most people train to do something, but when you reach the point where you do nothing, then you can let the attacker guide you to his self destruction.
There is a phrase in The Tao: ‘Do nothing until nothing is left undone.’
Do you understand how this works with a bagua zhang techniques?
The point is that you must practice not the technique, but the concept behind the technique, then your kung fu will work, and then you will have the effortless Bagua Zhang technique that is easy and simple to do.
There is a great piece of writing on how to learn kung fu fast at Monster Martial Arts. Or you could just go to the ultimate bible on Bagua Zhang techniques.
Posted in aikido, bagua zhang, chi power, kung fu, pa kua chang, tai chi chuan
Tagged aikido, ba gua zhang, karate, kenpo, kung fu, shaolin, tai chi chuan
Shaolin Kung Fu, the popular myth states, takes lifetimes to learn. You have to go spend three days sitting in front of the temple to be accepted for teaching. You have to undergo bizarre training rituals that will enable you to do handstands on one finger, rip the bark off of trees, break tones of concrete with your head, and…and that’s not the truth.
Those are myths spread by people who want to impress people; by TV programming like the Kung Fu series starring David Carradine.
You don’t have to go to the Shaolin Temple to learn Kung Fu…you can learn this ancient martial art online!
The truth is actually quite a it more simple, yet even more powerful.
The first Shaolin Kung Fu book to hit the shores was ‘Secrets of Shaolin Temple Boxing’ by Robert W. Smith.
In that book Mr. Smith stated that Bodhidharma brought Kung Fu to the Shaolin Temple. Actually, he brought a system of calisthenics to help the dilapidated monks get strong enough to listen to his lectures without falling asleep.
The monks used this method to get stronger, and ended up defending themselves against bandits, and changed the simple calisthenic into a self defense system.
The monks realized five principles of combat (animal fighting modes), eventually expanding the five principles into 72 techniques.
So Shaolin Kung Fu shouldn’t take a lifetime to learn. It should be able to be learned within a few months.
The original Shaolin monks learned it within months; why can’t you?
The reason is that for over 2,000 years well meaning people have been adding things to the once simple system. These things have confused Shaolin Kung Fu, mushed concepts all together, put techniques out of order, and even slanted it for tournaments or other personal interest.
In Shaolin Kung Fu the five animal fighting modes have been redefined. The original five animals were the tiger, snake, crane, leopard, and dragon.
But the tiger and the leopard are similar; why should you learn two animals that ae pretty much the same?
In the system called the Shaolin Butterfly the five animals are the tiger, snake, crane, dragon, and Monkey.
Actually, the monkey has been held to be one of the original five animals by many schools of thought.
So, we have a revised and better definition of the five animal fighting modes.
Now, each of the five animals has a specific attribute; one gives strength, one gives balance, and so on.
The problem is that these attributes are mere descriptions, tactics, at best, and not real martial arts techniques.
However, if you assign a stance to each animal, you suddenly come up with the five original concepts of the Shaolin Kung Fu monks.
The tiger is aggressive, and he uses the front stance for charging.
The crane is delicate and balanced, and he uses the one legged, crane stance to achieve this.
The Dragon twines and writhes, and he uses a cross kneeling type of stance.
The snake is flexible clinging, and he uses such stances as the one legged squatting stance.
The monkey is agile, and he uses the back stance to build this agility.
Now, these are still mere approximations of techniques. But one can see how the five stances could be used to begin the animal emulation process. But, how does one expand upon these stances/characteristics into a simple list of techniques?
Well, there is only so much that can be put into an article.
But, if you really want to learn this stuff, and I mean in months instead of lifetimes ~ if you want to figure this stuff out and be able to use it in real life ~ then you’ll find another great article on Shaolin Instruction at Monster Martial arts. Or, you can take a look at the Shaolin Kung Fu Butterfly course itself.
Posted in bruce lee, kung fu, shaolin, wing chun
Tagged kung fu, kung fu instruction, shaolin, shaolin kung fu, shaolin monk, shaolin temple
