I republished Chiang Nan as a video course book
It’ll be available on Amazon in a day or two.
It has links to about five hours of video.
So far I have several books repub-ed as ‘video course books.’
How to Fix Karate 1
How to Fix Karate 2
Shaolin Butterfly (the butterfly form) (Kindle)
Shaolin Butterfly
Nine Square Diagram Boxing
Hidden Techniques of Karate (Chiang Nan)
Sales are good, and I thank you.
and I’ll be doing more books,
and writing new ones.
I have a couple of hundred hours of video
that have never seen the light of day,
so I’m looking forward to that.
And,
the courses are still the best source of information.
They have all the videos,
the best videos,
and all the bonuses.
Anyway,
I had a fellow asking about the usage of the hips in the martial arts.
The hips are the cornerstone of the martial arts,
because that is where the major weight of the body resides.
If you hit somebody,
try to get your whole body behind the strike (block)
If you have to move out of the way,
you have to move the hips to effectively move the body.
Unless you want to bend at the hips and be out of balance.
We used to have an exercise.
We would hold a broom stick across the front of hips
then slam the hips back and forth,
pivoting from one front stance to another.
We would judge out effectiveness
by how well the tips of the broom stick
would snap into place.
Really got us centered down.
But here’s the funny thing,
each art has a specific to the hips.
Consider that there were only three directions that the hips can go,
forward, down and rotational.
In karate you thrust.
You drive the hips forward and align them with the strike or block.
In Pa Kua Chang you rotate the hips.
In Aikido you rotate the hips.
But in all arts you must sink the hips.
Sinking the hips connects with the ground,
braces your technique on the earth itself,
and you might consider a small study in physics
concerning the idea of grounding.
Understand what a ground is in electronics,
what it is in architecture,
and so on,
and suddenly you have the idea.
You see most people don’t understand
that their body is a machine
and that it must function as a machine.
Instead, they get emotional,
they start putting their attention (intention)
on their head,
and the body becomes up rooted easily.
One of my big kicks
was to show somebody how to ground.
I would push on their shoulders
and show them how to let the force
go through their bodies and into the ground.
Then,
when they had it,
I would simply say ‘look up,’
and they would fly away.
The col thing was that after I had done that a few times,
people started learning how to put their intention down,
and not be distracted by up.
In other words,
they learned not to be dependent upon their eyes.
They learned intention
without the distraction of the earthly senses.
Very interesting.
Want to know something REALLY interesting?
I would take a student and deliver strikes and have him give the blocks.
Easy peasy, he’s got it in no time.
Then I would have him close his eyes and I would say,
‘I am striking you slowly,
block when you feel it.’
Sometimes my strike would touch them.
Sometimes they would feet it coming too soon.
But eventually, and we’re talking about an hour or so,
even spread out over a couple of classes,
they would feel me coming and get it right.
Blew their minds.
You don’t need your eyes.
You don’t need your ears.
You just need to know where you are
and forget about what is happening.
It’s that easy,
and it changes everything you do.
It’ll change the way you move.
It’ll change the way you fight.
But don’t believe me.
Try it, you’ll like it.
But you should practice your forms a whole lot
before you try it.
The forms enable you to learn control and discipline,
and control and discipline
is what the martial arts are all about.
Anyway,
I’ll talk more on this stuff some day,
but for now,
check out my books from above
and have a great day.
HAVE A GREAT WORK OUT!
Al
And don’t forget to check out the interview
https://anchor.fm/dale-gillilan/episodes/S1E10—Al-Case-e12e3np
BTW
I’ve got nothing but five star reviews on
The Science of Government.
It’s really nothing more than applying matrixing to politics.
Matrixing + Politics = Sanity
I told you matrixing works with anything.
Here’s the link…
How to Fix Karate! (volumes one and two)
volume one is at
And volume two is at…