BODYBUILDING NUTRITION BASICS

When we consider the best martial arts forms we are speaking of those martial arts kata that result in a the most benefit to the student. To be honest, I usually recommend learning as many kata as possible, then working on the ones that the student prefers, although there can be oddities in this approach. I also hold that one should learn whole arts, first taekwondo, then karate, then kung fu, and so on.

The kebons are good, basic kata taught in both karate styles and taekwondo styles. Though there are three to five of these introductory patterns, I don’t usually count them as forms because they are actually the ABCs of the martial arts.

The next batch of forms to consider would be the Taekwondo Taeguks. These are basic forms, a bit more advanced than the kebons, but not as advanced as the Pinans (Heians). Though they take a few moves from the Pinans, they serve them up as straight block and counter moves, no inherent throws or weapons, and no real generation of internal energy.

After the taeguk patterns one should move directly into the Pinan forms from the Shotokan system, the shito ryu system, and other Japanese martial styles. The Pinan kata are actually designed more for weapons defenses and disarms, though not many people know that. The idea here is that one studies the Taeguk patterns for hand to hand combat, then moves into the Pinans for a basic understanding of weapons disarms, and the beginnings of chi building.

After the Pinans I recommend the three forms from Pan Gai Noon, which is the base art of Uechi ryu Karate, and which are actually three extremely hard core kung fu forms. These three forms are sanchin, seisan, and sanseirui, though sanseirui is considered more of a show form. These three unique kata are specifically designed to generate internal energy.

Sanchin teaches a student to bolt the body/motor down to the ground. There are not a lot of moves in it, but the moves are perfectly designed for adapting hard energy to excellent self defense moves.

Sanchin may be the power form, but seisan is the technique kata. This form takes the power of sanchin and transfigures it into (probably) 13 specific self defense moves. These are all based on one specific move called wa uke, which is a circle block with a flesh tearing grab on the end.

So, taekwondo to karate to kung fu; Kebons to Taeguk to Pinans to Sanchin and seisan. This arrangement of martial arts forms provides the student with the absolute best and most complete sequence of classical training there is. Other forms can and should be studied, but this is the heart of the art right here.

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I doubt whether most martial arts training halls, be they Goju Ryu or Mixed Martial Arts or Jujitsu or whatever, have ever had a crazy guy in their school like Mud Car. We called him Mud Car because that’s what his license plates on his automobile stated. That vehicle, more than just about anything else, told the story of Mud Car.

He had tied parachute webbing across the insides of his car because he felt that that material was best for holding his car together on the inside. He had fire extinguishers fastened to every surface on the inside of his car. He had a dial on his dashboard to give extra power to his tail lights, and he turned it whenever he faced away from the sun so that drivers behind him could see when he braked.

This was just the surface of it all, though. The most impressive thing that Mud Car did was commit to memory the times of all the stop lights in San Jose. He could travel across that large town without ever hitting a stop light.

Unfortunately, when it came to Karate, he was just as crazy. He couldn’t stretch, couldn’t control his body, and, because he had no control, it hurt to work with him. Just being around him you could feel the sparks in his mind shooting into the cosmos.

One day, in class, he interrupted the instructor to complain about a pain in his shin. “It doesn’t hurt, but it keeps bothering me, do you know how to make the pain in my shin go away?” My instructor looked at me with rage in his eyes, I suppose he didn’t want to look at Mud Car because he would murder him, and he said, “Hit your leg with a lead pipe…that’ll make the pain go away.”

I suppose the ability to drive the people around oneself crazy is the deciding factor in this matter of whether a person is crazy or not. At any rate, Mud Car was never promoted to Black Belt. He just didn’t have the maturity.

One day, however, a new instructor came to the school, and Mud Car was promoted to Black Belt within a month…and then he left the school. He had achieved his goal, and that was all he wanted, and the new instructor knew that was the best and most efficient way to get rid of Mud Car. Yet, I missed Mud Car.

He was nuts, but so is the guy who goes after you on the mean streets, so if you could last a session with Mud Car without getting hurt, you knew your art was working. Furthermore, there was a shift of standard here, for Mud Car had been promoted to black belt because he could drive people nuts, not because he was a competent martial artist. Finally, I think that is where the True Art started disappearing from the martial arts training halls of America…schools, even dojos like classical hung gar or Parker Kenpo or classical Aikido, did not administer soothing discipline to the insane, they just promoted them to get rid of them.

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I learned this type of kick some forty years ago in Kwon Bup Korean Martial Arts. This was the forerunner of modern day Tae KwonDo, and the unfortunate truth is that these kicks aren’t practiced anymore. Why, I don’t know, because this type of kick is the hardest kick, the fastest kick you will ever see.

I call this move, doesn’t what martial art you do, the pop kick. Whether you do a snap, a side, or a wheel, the basic principle doesn’t change. You replace the left foot with the right foot, and kick with the left foot…this all has to occur at the same instant.

By same time I mean that the left foot and the right foot start together, and the right foot hits the ground at the same time the left foot impacts. By doing it in this fashion the whole body gets smaller at the same time, then the whole body explodes. This causes a very pure energy pop in the energy center, which is a point a couple of inches below the navel, which is also called the tan tien.

In addition to the purity of explosion you will feel in the energy center, which will tend to concentrate energy in the kick, you will experience a sudden weight on your standing leg at the same moment you experience weight in the leg you are kicking with. This sudden weight tends to make the explosion of energy very precise, even as it increases the violence. This will really increase the energy of your technique.

If you are executing this move with a snap kick, make sure you get the knee high up so that the foot doesn’t slide up the front of the target, but rather comes in straight. If you are doing a side kick, make sure that the weight of the hips really goes into the target. If you are doing a wheel kick, make sure you get the hips and kick up to a true horizontal plane.

The fourth technique would be a spin pop to the rear, and uses the side kick. You would practice all four kicks against a wall, learning how to lift legs simultaneously, and place the feet on the wall and the ground at the same time. You don’t have to hit the wall with power, save that for a bag, control will actually give you more power in the end.

We used to have all kinds of entry moves to make these kicks work. We would angle our stance as we slapped the attacker’s hands, and the we would do it subtle, and then be in the kick before the target knew what we were doing. As we invested time and sweat the explosion would get more pure and more full of energy.

Make sure you use this technique in a variety of stances, and you will have a much larger arsenal of martial arts weapons. This is a great technique to practice, and it is born of the successful merger of karate power and TKD kicks. Japanese martial arts or Korean martial arts, this is the hardest kick, and the fastest kick, and perhaps the most effective leg technique I know.

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I want the kicks and punches of Jet Li, as athletic and accident resistant as Jackie Chan, and as humble as myself. Now, I’ve seen all the programs out there, I know all I have to do is work through a bone breaking sweat for a few years, and I will achieve my peak potential. Either that or join the spetznatz.

Well, maybe I have taken this a bit far, but there is good news to be had here. The good news is that your body, with a little work, is capable of incredible speed and power and athleticism. The trick is not changing it, but letting it unchange into original DNA structure.

First, you need to change the way you eat. Don’t go insane here, just cancel ALL fast foods, and start eating lots of veggies. When that sugar bowl starts calling, go get a watermelon or a smoothie or something like that. I don’t recommend tossing out all meat, just eating more moderate portions, and maybe ordering more turkey and fish and such instead of those big, juicy T bones.

Now the fun starts. A basic get in shape regimen starts with simple calisthenics, like walking, jumping jacks, a little rope jumping, and that sort of thing, and then progresses into deep squats, dive bomber push ups, and that sort of thing. Actually, I have come to believe in yoga as a very viable and gentle (at least in the beginning) way of putting the body in shape.

Now, the best calisthenic you can do, in this writer’s humble opinion, is the martial arts. The martial arts offer a complete variety of body motion, leaping, twisting, ducking, jumping, skipping, stepping, and so on. Furthermore, they bring you to an understanding of energy, as well as muscle, and this elevates the game to whole new levels.

The message that I am sending your way is that it takes very little work to make your body into what it is supposed to be, it just takes common sense and a modicum of gentle discipline. As you follow the principles I have outlined here, you will realize that you don’t need bulging muscles to get the job done, you just need to streamline your body and make it work the the way it is supposed to work. This concept–using the body in the correct manner–is the key to the matter.

The PE courses in school do not tell you how to use your body, they just get you to throw the ball to your friends, they help you socially. When you start to Matrix your body, which is usually through the principle of learning how the muscles are set up, what direction they are supposed to move in, and, most important, how to make them work together, that is when true efficiency begins, That is when you are going to realize that your body is just a tool, and you can hone that instrument as you wish.

The key, of course, whether you are studying Hapkido, Jujitsu, or any other art, is to apply Matrixing to it. Matrixing is nothing more than the process of studying and analyzing motion …physics. And, when you take apart the martial arts moves of people like Bruce Lee or Tonny Jaa, you are going to find that they are absolute students of physics, which is nothing more than rudimentary Matrixing.

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Power, in the Martial Arts, especially martial arts like Tae Kwon Do or Gung Fu is often measured by how hard you can hit. Thus, people strike the punching bag and the Makiwara, and they do push ups to strengthen their arms, and…and they are doing it all wrong. You see, there is one critical factor that they don’t understand, and so all their push ups and punches are having less effect than they would wish.

I want to emphasize something here…and I can only do that by asking you one specific question. Where, in your strike, do your arms bear the most weight? The answer is obvious, they bear it when the arm is nearly extended at the end of the strike.

So why do you need to work your limb across the whole range of motion from the floor? Being strong at the beginning or middle of the hit is not where you need the strength. Concentrating your work out through the whole range of motion is not putting energy into the exact part of the punch where you need it.

So, when you do a work out, make it gentle and general, and build up your body and your arms as a whole unit, then concentrate your efforts on the end of the punch where you need it. This is easy to do, you can do it for just about any exercise in existence. All you have to do the motion of the exercise where the arm is nearly extended, and concentrate your training on that part of the exercise.

Let’s say you’re doing a push up. Do the push up until your arms are nearly extended, then do go to town. Do as many six inch push ups with the arms nearly extended, as you can, fast, concentrating on keeping your belly tight.

Here’s the point of it all, you need to concentrate the work out, and feel the power, in your shoulders. When you punch something the jolt of impact is going to go up your arms and directly into the shoulders. Thus, it is the shoulders that must become strong and dense, it is the shoulders, as felt in the last six inches of the push up, that must be built up.

For a good punch you need thick and dense shoulders, so perform the six inch push up I have detailed here, and do it throughout the day, until the muscles of the shoulders become as dense and enduring as the leg muscles of a marathon runner. It’s odd that people have never thought of what I am telling you here, and I scratch my head at it. I suppose the problem is that people are taught how to exercise in one manner, and never actually look at the exact goal they are trying to accomplish.

So do those ‘end of the arm six inch push ups like they are going out of style. Do them and breath and put your awareness in your shoulders, letting your shoulders lightly bulk and become densely strong. This is the way you develop a punch that is stronger than the next fellow’s, this is how you have the most powerful punch in the world.

Al Case, The Doctor of the Punch, has studied martial arts 4O years. If you want the straight goods on how to build the most powerful punch in the world, pay him a visit at Punch ‘Em Out.

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The first time I ever read someones mind was in San Francisco. My wife and I were wandering through the stores in Chinatown, and we entered a shop where a grumpy faced old Chinese lady sat on a stool in a corner. As we peered at the goods, the grumpy one snapped at her daughter, “Look, look, look, everybody just look!”

We left the store, and I asked my wife, “Did you hear what that old lady said?” “How could I,” answered my wife. “She was speaking in Chinese.”

The old lady had spoken in her old tongue, and I had heard her in English. In essence, I had peered into her mind and perceived her thoughts in my language. And I had this ability, I intuitively knew, because I had been studying the martial arts.

The mind is like a big radio transmitter, but it transmits, and picks up, thoughts. The sad fact, however, is that the mind is always full of static. Children can usually read minds, but they outgrow the ability and don’t even remember it when they are adults.

In the martial arts you use the discipline of the body to clear out the distractions and static. You do this by focusing on making the moves of your form perfect. Eventually, the distractive static goes away, and the original ability to read minds is once again unleashed.

The problem, of course, is that the martial arts are so messed up that it is difficult to find a form, or series of forms, that work well anymore. Oddly, almost any form can work in this manner, if it is properly analyzed, and tweaked so that it is scientific and true. This normally takes a tremendous amount of work, occurring over decades, but the process can be speeded up if one learns the proper science.

Interestingly, the old Taoist writings of such arts as Tai Chi and other Wudang arts, speak of being like a child in your approach to the world. I also saw mention of this concept in works of Zen Buddhism. Unfortunately, by the time one resurrects this ability one has become old.

At any rate, the old tales are true, the martial arts really do work, and in ways far removed from fighting. Indeed, though the martial arts teach people how to defend themselves, things like reading minds is the real start. And the start of this start, for most people, is simply walking through the doors of that neighborhood dojo and learning a little Karate or Tai Chi or Aikido.

Al Case, 4O years studying martial arts, has written a free ebook which explains the Martial Technology for fixing the martial arts. It is available at his website, Monster Martial Arts.

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You can translate your art of Chinese Karate into Power Kenpo fairly easily. Of course, you’re going to have to go against the grain of the old school boys, but this isn’t always bad. In fact, if you do decide to put power into your Kenpo system, you will be following the footsteps of Ed Parker more closely than the old school boys.

The concept of Power in the Fist Law art is something I made up many decades ago, and have never really revealed. It actually grew from an incident in 1968 in which I asked my instructor to take a look at a form I had been practicing. My instructor stepped on to the mat and I took a position and started my form.

I had learned the form from a series of books on Japanese Karate, and the name was Heian Five. It is a traditional kata, with solid stance and big, significant movements. As such, it seems to stand against the concepts of the fast whirling arms of Parker art.

When I had completed the kata my instructor observed, “Yes, definitely a Japanese form.” He didn’t say much more, and I had the feeling that he wasn’t pleased. Many decades later, I understand why, he was trying to teach me one thing, and I was straying in an entirely different direction.

To be honest, Chinese Karate does not compliment traditional Shotokan. Parker’s art, as I have given hint, relies on quick, circling hands. Shotokan holds a disdain for such motion, and advocates a strong stance, facing your enemy squarely, and attacking in a linear manner.

Each system has its strengths, and its weaknesses, but they don’t fit together. It is difficult even to shift from one art to another in the middle of combat. The funny thing about all this is that original Parker system was built upon the Heian forms of classical Karate.

Most people blink when I say such a thing, but it is true. If you can find a copy of one of Ed Parker’s first books you will find that it is nothing more than a sequence of the applications of the Heian forms. Indeed, if you link the applications in his book, you are actually doing the Heians.

In conclusion, now you understand what I mean when I remarked about Power Kenpo and being true Ed Parker’s footsteps. The fact is that true and dedicated martial artists should study as many different arts as they can. The truth of the matter is that if you want to put power in Chinese Kenpo, or accelerated weapons, or better kicks, then study a separate art that has what you want, and let the power of that other art bleed back to your kenpo, and that is how you build Power Kenpo.

Al Case made his Power Kenpo out of such martial arts as Karate, Aikido and Wing Chun. You can find it on the Monkey Boxing pages of Monster Martial Arts.

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Interesting idea, eh? Sounds like one of those old Kung Fu movies, but is it possible? Could it be true that you actually have unlimited potential, and could learn a complete Kung Fu system within a couple of months?

The mind is unlimited, you know, and that means that you are unlimited. The trick of course, is to figure out a Kung Fu program that downloads into your mind with perfect sense and ease. The trick is to find a software program that really works, and that is actually designed to match your mind.

Most Martial Arts take a long time to learn, and there is a reason for this. Actually, there are many reasons. They all have to do with incorrect data, missing data, illogical data, and that sort of thing that crashes a computer.

First, you must realize that the martial arts are taught using ancient oral traditions. They are passed along by the use of songs and poetry. This is incredibly inefficient, and there is no telling how much data has been lost over the millennium.

Second thing to understand, you must realize that the martial arts are communicated by ‘monkey see monkey do.’ This is mimicry, which is the basic and easiest form of communication on the planet. It works, but does not allow for the interchange of ideas, which makes it totally inadequate for teaching Kung fu, Karate, Aikido, or any art you may wish to mention.

Third, you must realize that the martial arts are taught by having students memorize strings of random data. Memorization is totally inadequate, and often has nothing to do with the actual fact of learning. A xerox machine can’t think, it’s as simple as that.

So to learn a complete kung fu system, or to fix any martial art you might know, you must change the way you learn the martial arts, you must change the training methods you commonly use. You must have mimicry and memorization, but the material of the martial arts has to be arranged in the correct order. This is difficult to do, for people have been enraptured, and convinced, that the old ways of learning should not be changed.

In conclusion, the human mind is a perfect computer, but it is liable to that old rule of ‘garbage in garbage out.’ You don’t have to fix your mind to learn more, you just have to align and make correct the martial arts that go into it. Doesn’t matter what system of Kung Fu you know, what I am saying works, and if you don’t know any martial arts, you can learn a real kung fu system, within a couple of months, all you have to do is change your method of training.

Al Case offers aligned Martial Arts Programs that insert into the mind naturally. He has over forty years experience and writes for the magazines. Pick up a free ebook about his programs at Monster Martial Arts.

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One of the most shocking things in the martial arts is how instructors let themselves go. By this I mean, after they reach a certain point, they never get any more instruction for themselves. The idea here is that you know everything, and all you have to do now is polish it, perfect it, and time will be your teacher.

This concept, of course, is ridiculous. Yes, time will make a person better, but what will improve a person faster is getting more data. Imagine a computer which never inputs any further data and my case becomes obvious.

So you need more data if you are going to get better, and you need to make mental connections with other arts. For instance, if you’ve got a black belt in Karate, a course in Aikido is going to open your mind up. At the end of every karate technique, once you understand what Aikido really is, you can make additional techniques.

And, if you’ve got some good hard Kung Fu, the next step is exploring the internal schools of Kung fu. Aside from improving your understanding of the martial arts, you now have more to offer students and prospective students. This is going to result in better quality of instruction, and it’s going to be a lot of fun besides.

Now, let’s say you don’t have access to an aikido school, or a Wudan school, what do you do? Well, you read the magazines and the books, and this goes a long way. But the real key to improvement is in DVD courses.

You can pick up a course on an entire art, sometimes for as little as ten bucks a DVD, and you can lay on your couch and get up and practice to your hearts content. I used to buy so many arts at my supply store the owner gave me an automatic, good customer, ten per cent discount. And I would spend my late evenings and weekends analyzing and dissecting new arts until I had them totally cold.

When I walked into my kung fu school on a Monday morning, I always had a kettle full of great ideas. Students were always wondering how I cam up with so many great ideas, and they were always blown out by the twists and interpretations I could give the same old same old forms and techniques. I tell ya, when people were bowing to me, they were bowing to superior knowledge by disk, and that can happen to any instructor!

Now, when you pick out an instructional Martial Arts DVD, make sure it deals with an entire art, and not just an overview, an overview is nothing more than an advertisement, there is rarely any meat to this kind of DVD. And, make sure you pick up a new DVD every month, you need to make a project out of this, and not a whim. Martial Arts DVDs are one of the best ways to learn that I know of, I tell you, if you are an instructor, it is imperative that you keep improving yourself, and DVDs are the best and most fun way to do that.

Al Case has studied more than 21 Fighting Disciplines in depth. He has packaged these arts in intense DVD courses such as the Evolution of Art course and Butterfly Pa Kua Chang. Drop by Monster Martial Arts for a sample and a free ebook.

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The era of the extreme and real gung fu was about 1975 to 1985, give or take a few years. Of course, the time period could probably include the time period of 1985 to 1995, because that is when those movies hit the all night movie channels. And, of course, chop sockies forever, because we can now get them on the internet, though we should make sure it is a clean copy and that we have a good DVD player.

One could make argument that Bruce Lee provided the first kung fu flick, and they wouldn’t be wrong, for his movies started the flood of kung fu flicks in America. The first real chop sockie, however, would have to be Five Fingers of Death, with the amazing and inspiring Lo Lieh. Lo Lieh, who thrust his broken fingers into cauldrons of red hot rocks until he could have his revenge.

The main chop sockie movie maker, though there were hundreds, would be the Shaw Brothers. They churned out hundreds of the things, and they convinced the world that if you had an idea and dedicated yourself, you could learn gung fu. The main man of Shaw Brothers was a fellow name of Gordon Liu.

Gordon Liu knew real gung fu, and rumor has it he was adopted into a family of movie makers. One brother was the director of his magnificent masterworks, and the other brother was involved with stunt work. I think that was how it all worked out.

Among his masterpieces, and I will name three of them here, was The Master Killer, also known as Thirty Six Chambers of Death. Mr. Liu always played endearing fools, tilting at windmills, who, through Kung Fu, managed to win in the end. The Master Killer was his entry into the field, and it propelled him right to the top.

One of his gems was Return to the 36th Chamber, where he plays, surprise of surprises, an endearing fool. The plot is silly, the acting is farcical, but the idea that one can learn kung fu from the common tasks of life is incredible. And, when our bumbling fool returns to his village, entirely disillusioned, only to find out what those nefarious monks have done to him…well, the phrase ‘I Do Know Kung Fu’ becomes a clarion call and inspiration to all kung fu students everywhere.

My favorite of Gordon Liu’s movies is an obscure gem entitled Fists of the White Lotus. Our endearing fool is betrayed, practices his kung fu for ten years so he can have revenge, only to find out that the bad guy has also had ten years to practice his kung fu. This movie inspired Bak Mei of Kill Bill fame (played by Gordon Liu) and far outshadows such movies as Crouching Tiger and Kill Bill and that ilk.

The originals flicks, you see, provide innocence and inspiration that cannot be refuted. You want to learn the real stuff of real Shaolin gung fu? Go find these movies, watch them and be inspired, and live life the way real heroes live it.

Al Case has forty+ years martial arts experience. You can pick up a free ebook at Monster Martial Arts. Find out about http://www.monstermartialarts.com/Shaolin_Butterfly.html while you are there.

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