Newsletter 942

The Punch That is NOT a Punch!

I’ve probably thrown a few million punches in my life.
50 years times 365 days
(and yes, I do work out EVERY day!)
multiplied by as little as 100 punches
(and that is a little)
equals 1,825,000 punches
Truth,
I usually throw hundreds, if not thousands,
of punches a day.
In that time I’ve learned some nifty things.
How to punch with ‘chi power.’
How to put out a candle from a couple of feet away.
How to break a bone
A complete method for being able to multiply
the power of your punch
by many, many times.
It’s all written in ‘The Punch,’
if you’re interested.
But I’m going to talk about the punch that isn’t a punch here,
the punch that steps outside all the theories and writing I’ve done.

4d The Punch

When you punch it is a process of:
sinking weight in a stance,
breathing out at the same time,
and aligning your bones.
Aligning your bones efficiently would be called CBM
Coordinated Body Motion.

Now,
keep that all in mind when I say
you should do all this
and let the other person run into your punch.
That’s right,
you don’t punch him,
you assume the position of a punch,
with good stance and body alignment,
a nanosecond before impact,
and it is almost like the fellow runs into your punch.
But the key is this:
You have to construct your body so that it is ungiving.
You have to sink it into the ground,
and arrange the bones so that the structure does not give way
under impact.
This is all a matter of timing.
Sure,
you can hit somebody,
see if you can power up them biceps
(it’s actually the triceps that is the punching muscle,
in conjunction with a lot of other muscles besides)
slam your body around,
see if you can collapse his structure
by overloading it with your mass and mayhemish thoughts,
but my way is easier.
If you can master the nanosecond timing,
of settling your body into stance and strike
just as he reaches you,
he runs into the punch.

To tell you the truth,
I usually don’t tighten my fist anymore,
I usually just stick the aligned bones of my fists
into the space my opponent is about to occupy.

And,
to tell the truth,
it works better with blocks,
but you can make it work with punches,
if you are willing to
first, read ‘The Punch’
second, do 4 or 5 million punches
(which is probably more what I have done
than this measly million or two)
three, believe it is possible.
Without belief nothing is possible.

You just have to believe.

Have a great work out!
Al

Tai Chi is great for developing intuition and abilities,
here’s the link, and below it a great win!

4d The Punch

A WIN!

…the things you teach (keys to unlocking the arts) and then you encourage people to think for them self, for eg. In your book the punch you speak of two ways to punch, letting the force run back up the arm or making it pop in the opponent’s body.
I have seen a demo of a guy breaking blocks, a whole stack and he breaks the 5th one down. Then a light bulb went on
“Did sifu just teach me dim mak!”
If I can control where my punch pops, under some of those acu points are vital organs, nerve and vascular plexuses. Is this the secret to the death touch, hmm?
This is some REALLY DEEEP SHIT!!!
There more but this eg made me stop and think. Again my hat off to you sir

Louis R

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/