Tag Archives: hardest punch

The Pinkie Death Throw in the Martial Arts!

Posted on April 14, 2017 | Leave a comment

Newsletter 862

The Deadly Pinkie in Martial Arts Fighting!

Happy Easter work out!
I hope you find lots of colored eggs.

Hey,
I thought it was time to talk about
the deadliest weapon in the martial arts.
The pinkie.

Now hold on,
don’t get that look on your face,
let me explain.

If you grab somebody’s pinkie in a lock,
like holding the pinkie vertical with your thumb to the base,
and start applying a bit of pressure,
you hear an ow.

The fellow has been subdued by a pinkie.
He is in pain,
he is thinking of his pinkie,
well,
he is thinking of the pain where his pinkie used to be.
He goes up on his tip toes,
he dances,
and,
here comes the strange part…
if you threw his pinkie off a cliff,
he would go with it,
screaming and shrieking,
so glad that the pain has stopped…
and then he realizes he’s falling hundreds of feet to his death!

And it was his pinkie that did it.

Now,
there is truth to this.
Yes,
there will be the fellow who understands
and would sacrifice his pinkie
that his body might live,
but these fellows are few and far between.

The Pinkie Death Throw.
Moo hah hah!

But,
that leads to something else.

Take a pin,
stick it…HARD…into your finger.
You jerk back with a howl.
DAMN that hurt.

Isn’t that funny?
You would think that a small body part
would only hurt a little.
But your whole body seemed to feel the pain of the pinkie.

Now let’s turn this whole concept around.
What if you hit somebody in the nose
and smashed it like…it was a pinkie.

Weird.

But if you did it the right way
the whole body would feel the pain of the nose.

The trick is,
nobody does it the right way.
Everybody hits like they are trying to displace the whole body.
Move the whole body in space.
But what if you hit a small part of the body,
broke a rib…like it was a pinkie.
Hit somebody in the belly,
but only like you are…breaking a pinkie.

I know,
it sounds stupid.
It sounds like a comic book,
but…but there’s this little, niggling pice of WTF? in your mind right now.

So think about it like this.
If you hit somebody in the chest,
like you are trying to move their whole body,
then the whole body feels it,
and pushes energy into that spot.
Strike is negated.

But if you hit precise,
focus on a pinkie sized area,
AND IGNORED THE REST OF THE BODY!
It would be like breaking a pinkie.
The body couldn’t get behind it,
and yet the whole body would feel it.

That is focus in the martial arts.
Real focus.
Focus beyond tightening the fist in space…
focus of energy in a precise spot on the opponent’s body.

So what got me thinking about this?
I was watching youtube.
I was specifically looking for Heian Five techniques.
I came across this lady champ,
did her own series,
incredibly good looking kata,
and yet,
when she focused her punch,
it wobbled all over the place.

All the muscles in the body tightened,
but it was more like they spasmed.
Not like the whole body entered into her fingers.

And there were other things wrong with her form.
The back leg of her back stance pointed to far to the side,
like it was a half horse/half back stance.
There were timing gaps in her motions,
very significant,
but broke the CBM (Coordinated Body Motion) of her form.

And I thought about the way we did form at the Kang Duk Won.
Every move was a simple move from one place to another,
designed for use in a fight,
no timing gaps designed to impress tournament judges.

So, I was saddened.
Fantastic champ,
knew her stuff,
but the stuff she knew was wrong.

Don’t get me wrong,
I’m sure she gets all sorts of benefits from the forms,
and she is a champ,
probably knows her freestyle like crazy.

BUT, she will never understand perfection of form,
or even understand what perfection of form is,
or that it can be.

Well,
I’ve defined it for you in the various courses.
Shown the angles and motions,
described the how and why so it can work in freestyle.

But if you’re interested in classical karate,
which is a good base for ANY art,
then try Temple Karate.

Temple Karate is the old Kang Duk Won forms I learned
almost 50 years ago.
It was 90% perfect then,
and I’ve done little matrixing tweaks,
to bring it to 100%.

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/temple-karate/

Okay,
I hope you all find a chocolate Easter Bunny under your pillows this year..
maybe a couple of Cadbury eggs.

And don’t forget to Work Out!

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/temple-karate/

http://www.amazon.com/Binary-Matrixing-Martial-Arts-Case/dp/1515149501/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437625109&sr=8-1&keywords=binary+matrixing

go to and subscribe to this newsletter:

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so this is the best way to ensure you get them.

You can find all my books here!

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/

http://www.amazon.com/Matrixing-Tong-Bei-Internal-Gung/dp/1507869290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423678613&sr=8-1&keywords=tong+bei

The Arthritic Martial Arts Punch

Posted on July 22, 2016 | Leave a comment

Newsletter 820

Arthritis and a Martial Arts Punch!

“It’s not how hard you can hit,
it’s how much weight you can deliver.”
Al Case

I just received a great letter,
a fellow name of Damian,
said Yogata helped his arthritis,
and he talked about how
he sometimes had trouble with a fist because of arthritis.

Click on the cover!

I recommend Yogata,
or any form of yoga,
but I really want to talk about punches,
which may impact on concepts about arthritis.

Arthritis is an interesting condition,
doctors sometimes lump everything
under the term arthritis,
and there are a lot of causes
behind arthritis.
It’s all sort of generic,
but generic with a bite.

So here’s the thing:
injury leads to inflammation.
The body is swelling.
Sometimes the swelling is obvious,
sometimes not,
but the pain,
or lack of usability,
is real.

Many, many years ago
I realized I wasn’t a breaking kind of guy.
My instructor was,
many people are,
there is something seductive
about Power,
and power is often associated with breaking things.

But I figured out that it’s not how hard you hit,
it’s how much weight you can transfer into the opponent.
So I thought about it,
and I realized something:

“you don’t have to tighten the fist.”

This is weird,
we all tighten the fist,
and it is important…for beginners.

Tightening the fist upon impact
teaches focus,
introduces one to concepts of power,
but,
at a certain point,
you don’t need to tighten the fist.
Here’s something to think about”

take a stick and poke it into a watermelon.

Did the stick get ‘tight?’
No.
It just had to be aligned,
and it required a certain amount of ‘quick’ weight.
Although,
when you think about it,
you could puncture a watermelon with a stick
using ‘slow’ weight.

So I started working on the idea
of poking the bones of my arm/fist
through an opponent’s body
without tightening the fist.

Having the idea of puncturing the body
in my mind.

It worked.
No fanfare,
no big deal,
just relax,
align the bones,
feed a little energy into the structure
to keep everything in line,
relax and throw the body.

Worked like a charm.

And…
I started holding thumbtacks in my fist
and breaking things.

And…
here is the kicker,
the more I relaxed,
the better I was able to thrust my
thumbtack holding bones
through an object.

There’s all sorts of things to think about here.
My favorite is this:

if you threw 20 pounds at somebody it would hurt.
(especially if that 20 pounds
had 200 pounds of body behind it)

So when you tighten the arm,
when you focus the fist,
the tightening of the muscles actually holds the strike back.

That’s very zen,
very tai chi,
very true.

BUT,
don’t stop practicing with a tight fist,
you need a certain degree of focus to develop internal power.
And hitting with just the bones,
as I describe here,
is not the only strike,
and focusing the energy is VERY important.

In fact,
I would say that it would be VERY difficult
to learn how to strike with a relaxed fist
if one doesn’t first gain an understanding
of how to focus the energy with a tight fist.

Anyway,
those are my thoughts,
and I want to thank Damian for making me think,
and sharing his win with me.

If you have arthritis,
or ANY condition,
there are ways to keep training.
You just have to relax your thinking,
look around,
and find what works.

And you can find what works
in Yogata,
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/yogata-the-yoga-kata/

in The Punch
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/hard-punch/

and if you think I’m just talking,
check out the video on this page…
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/4c-matrixing-chi-power/