Tag Archives: hapkido

New Master Instructor!

A New Master Instructor, Plus…

Why We Study So Many Martial Arts…

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

In Karate Pain Can Work For You!

In Karate Pain is Not Necessarily Bad!

Karate pain might be good, and it might be bad. It depends on the circumstances.

I know, we’ve all heard the saying, ‘No pain, no gain,’ but that isn’t what this is all about.

karate pain

In Karate Pain can be an instruction


You see, there are two types of Karate Pains.

One type of Karate Pain is the real injury. The broken bone, the accidental punch in the nose or poke in the eyes. These injuries, these types of Karate pain are real and should be attended to.

If you’re bleeding, stop the durned bleeding. If you’re nose is broken, see a doctor. A poke in the eye could result in all manner of eye problems.

So you take care of it.

The thing here is to be able to tell the difference between karate pain that is real, and karate pain that is in the mind.

A bruise isn’t usually serious. So just inspect it, take care of it if you have to, and move on.

A dislocated joint, better get that sucker looked at.

A bone bruise…hmmm.

Bone bruises, especially when they are the result of some fast and intense sparring, can be quite painful.

I remember a blocking exercise which kept me in bone bruises for years.

I remember overextending punches, and suffering bone bruises inside the elbow joint where the bones slapped together. That was painful for a long time.

But, bruises, even bone bruises, are just something you go through.

The karate blocking exercise I spoke of, it was called the eight step blocking exercise, and we did it every class, and we all had constant bruising of the forearms.

BUT, after a couple of years of this we would be doing freestyle, do a block, and our opponents would yelp in pain. Simply, we got used to the pain, started ignoring it, and got the abilities that we wouldn’t have gotten if we hadn’t persisted in our karate classes.

And there were other exercises, some quite painful, that gave us abilities that people who don’t take karate, or other martial arts like kung fu or taekwondo, would never get.

The ability to grip somebody with a hand and bring them to their knees simply by squeezing.

The ability to get calm and focused when terrible things are happening and everybody else is going into a state of panic.

There is a saying, you don’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. Man, is this true.

For seven years I broke eggs. I still have bumps on the bones in my forearms from the durned eight step blocking exercise.

But when it comes to getting things done, I’m the go to guy.

Simply, I have faced pain, and now no the difference between real pain, and fake pain, the kind of pain one should just ignore and go ahead with his work.

This is something that is not taught in school.

And, truth, this is something that makes people great.

Pioneers of America had this quality. There was nobody there when they broke a wagon or got shot with an arrow or whatever, and so they had to fix everything themselves.

In recent times this ability, to forge ahead when the going gets tough, has been weaned out of people. But the martial arts, especially exercises that result in the karate pain i describe here, bring this ability out again.

Here’s a great article on the toughest Martial Arts class I ever taught. And if you are seriously interested in finding out more about this Karate pain type of thing, and how it can help you, check out the Evolution of an Art course at Monster Martial Arts.