How to Understand Mastery in the Martial Arts

Newsletter 947

Becoming a Master in the Martial Arts!

You give a guy a hammer,
show him how to build a wall,
let him build walls for a couple of months
and zingo bingo,
the guy is a framer.
He knows how to set down the two by fours,
nail them into a wall,
uses a square like a champ,
pounds those nails in a wack or two,
and he is quick.
He is expert.
One could even say he is a black belt in framing.
Or,
depending on his job,
he might be a black belt in roofing,
or building chimneys,
or whatever.
Expert.
Zowie.

But,
he can’t build a house all by himself.
Not quick and fast
with no mistakes.
But,
he’s got a leg up on everybody else.
A guy who could build a house would be a master.
He is expert in a number of fields.
He’s an expert in framing and flooring and installing sinks
and putting in light switches and…
and everything you might expect to find in a house.

Simply,
he has become expert in a number of fields.
And if he was a good master
he would even know how to get the money
to build the house.
That’s right,
he would contract it out to various experts,
let them do the work,
while he checks up on them every few days.
Isn’t that odd?
To think of a contractor as a master?

And,
yes,
there are a few contractors who build shoddy houses,
they aren’t as expert as they think they are,
but they fool people and get away with it.

So,
that all said,
a fellow who knows one art can be said to be an expert.
He knows Aikido,
he is a black belt in Aikido.
He knows Taekwondo,
he is a black belt in Taekwondo.
And so on.

Here’s the hard part,
he doesn’t know enough different arts,
and so it takes a lifetime to become a master.

Oh, yes,
he’ll make it,
but it’s hit or miss,
he picks up things by listening to what others say,
by reading books,
by stumbling across concepts he might have seen in his own art,
but in which he doesn’t have the art,
or drills and discipline,
to make work.

And here’s something a. lot of guys are going to hate…
MMA, being a bunch of arts put together,
doesn’t make a master.

A master is made by the accumulation
of the various knowledges of the various arts,
MMA is good fighting.
It is not broad knowledge,
but specialized knowledge,
and limited to the rules of the ring.

I’m not knocking MMA,
just saying something that most MMA fighters,
if they are honest,
will readily admit.

But the real point here is not how many fights you have been in,
the real point is how much knowledge you have.
And knowledge is in the various martial disciplines.
If you study karate,
you need to study tai chi and aikido and krav maga and TKD and…
and if you study MMA you need to peruse the various disciplines
from which MMA came,
to find the knowledge behind why you are a good fighter.
Wing Chun, Shaolin, Silat,
all the arts,
they each have parts of the whole,
and they must be studied in order to put
the parts of the whole together
and make one art.

One art out of all the pieces of arts that you know.
All the concepts of all the arts
arranged in order
that they may be understood purely.

That is what a Master knows.
So there are few masters,
for few people take the time to go into all the various disciplines.
Mostly it takes forty or fifty years,
and then the guy dies.
But a few people understand what I am saying,
and a few people understand that matrixing
teaches one not just the various concepts,
but how the concepts fit together.

Here’s a link about some of the people I have taught,
and who have taught me…

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

Have a great work out!
Al

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

Here’s a win I received a few years ago…

A WIN!

Master Case,
I purchased your Matrix Core Course last October and it’s truly amazing and revolutionary material, it’s taken me months to complete, and it covers a lot of martial arts ground.
Then I purchased the Matrix Master Text and it blew my mind even further out.  It helped me understand the core material even better.
I have never paid so much for a PDF download file in my life, but after opening that eBook, and reading it, I realized how much time and energy you really put into your Matrixing work. Your core course and the master text are worth a lot more than what I paid, you have by far over delivered by redeeming my time spent in the martial arts and saving me all that scratching on my head for the coming years ahead.
I will never see the martial arts the same way again.  After over 20 years in the martial arts studying Judo, Jujitsu, Hapkido, Kenpo, Tang So Do, and Taekwondo, I have learned more in these past 11 months, than I have in my entire martial arts career.

Thanks!
Elmer G

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