An Example of No Martial Art

Posted on November 5, 2019 by aganzul

Newsletter 988

Martial Arts Changing Over the Last 50 Years

When I began martial arts,
back in 1967,
things were different.

At this point you expect me to say something to the effect of…
we were more ‘dedicated,’
we were willing to suffer bruises and breaks,
we walked 20 miles,
barefoot,
through the driving snow,
uphill both ways.

Nope.
Has nothing to do with that.
You see,
I have been in modern schools,
I have seen people train until they couldn’t stand,
I have seen people suffer injuries and keep going.
I have seen that uncommon degree of dedication
that the martial arts create in individuals.

I am talking about knowledge.
Let me give you an example.

Do you do the horse stance?
Can you do Teki 1 for an hour?
Can you hold a ‘horse meditation’ pose
for an hour?

Nope.

Most modern schools no longer practice the horse stance.
At least,
I have never seen them.
They don’t force themselves to do low stanced forms.
And in this they are different than
the way we did things fifty years ago.

So,
why is the horse stance important?
It’s just a weird squat, right?
so what’s the big deal?

Okay,
here we go,
see if you can stay with me.

If you stand on straight legs
you don’t work.
Your legs don’t work.
You can stand on two legs for hours,
no prob.

If you stand in a deep horse,
legs bent,
you work like a mofo.
You sweat and strain,
and…the tan tien has to produce more energy.

The tan tien starts to work.

So you do it again.
And you last a half a minute longer.
And you do it again,
and again,
and over a month or so you start to notice weird things.

By breathing deeply,
and imagining that you are breathing to the tan tien,
a ‘place’ a couple of inches below the navel,
you are able to stand in a horse longer.
Your legs don’t shake as much,
and you begin to feel the energy coming out of the tan tien.

You realize that your legs are working harder,
so your tan tien is working harder,
and you are experiencing a weird sort of body energy.
An energy that Joe from the western world doesn’t know exists.

And,
here it gets interesting,
you start moving differently.
You brace in stance and people can’t move you.
Your arms become unbendable as you wish.
You stop using muscle and start using energy,
as from the tan tien,
to do certain types of work.
Most of all,
you move differently,
energy courses out from the tan tien,
goes through the arms,
becomes an unstoppable force
that is directed through and out from
your well structured karate form.

What is happening is
if you practice low stances,
doing karate forms,
that little thing called a tan tien
will ignite.
and…

THE MOTOR OF YOUR BODY WILL TURN ON.

It will change the way you move,
the way you treat life,
the way life treats you.

But,
most schools no longer practice the deep stances,
and especially the deep horse stance.
And,
here is the sad thing,
if the instructor insists on it,
students leave in flocks and droves.
Don’t want to work.
Aren’t willing to make the sacrifice.
Can’t put up with a little pain.
It’s not fun.

So…the martial arts are different
than when I first began them 50 years ago.
People are still willing to suffer,
but they don’t understand things like the horse stance,
so they end up fighting,
going to tournaments,
softening the experience with padding,
and they never get the true karate.

And,
here is something really weird.
Gichin Funakoshi,
some 50 years ago,
said much the same thing.

He said that the karate he saw
was not the karate he learned….50 years before.

Did he just observe the same thing I did?
Or was there some super secret that they were doing
that I missed.

Uh oh.

I recommend Outlaw Karate,
because I took the most important techniques
from the two most workable systems I have ever seen,
and combined them in one system.
It really works,
and you will have an opportunity
to work that horse stance the way I recommend.

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

Have a great work out!

Al

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

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Formlessness as the End Result of the Martial Arts

Posted on October 13, 2019 by aganzul

Newsletter 987

How to Be Formless in the Martial Arts

Bruce Lee talks about being formless.
Zen teaches us to be formless.
This idea of being formless permeates the martial arts,
but what the heck is it, really?

To be formless is to be in the moment,
actually moving in concert with an attack,
and not in response to an attack.

It means you don’t react,
you don’t move in specific ways,
but rather in unspecific manner,
adapting to the motion of your opponent,
and not moving in specific manners
your training has dictated.

Here’s the problem,
there are total idiots out there
who hear about being formless,
and think that because they don’t study anything,
and especially a classical art,
they are formless.

Nope,
they are idiots,
trying to make their lack of learning
more than it is.

So,
here we go,
here is what it means in ways you can understand
and even adapt to your work out.

To be formless is to be like water,
pour it into a glass and it assumes the shape of a glass.
Pour it into a bowl,
and it assumes the shape of the bowl.
So it doesn’t mean you have the no shape
of somebody who knows nothing,
it means you are smart enough
to shape yourself to the attack.

Somebody punches and you block?
That’s a response form Karate.
Somebody locks you go with the lock
and figure your way out of it?
That’s a response form Jujitsu.

And freestyle is just reacting,
it is fighting,
no pouring yourself into a shape
that fits the attack.

Let’s say somebody pushes you.
How do you react?
Do you brace, then attack?
Do you grab and throw?
Those are specific responses
created by studying specific arts.

If you were formless
you would adapt to the push,
shape your body around it,
and that might entail blocking or grappling…
or unbalancing or shifting or…or…
but it would be unique to the situation…
WITH NO LOSS OF AWARENESS.

Indeed,
you would have more awareness,
because that is the result of the martial arts training…
if done properly.

If you do not study a martial art
you are certainly formless,
and a victim to the forces of the universe.

If you do study a martial art,
and then another one and another one,
you eventually become formless…
and the universe is victim to your desires.

So these fellows who study something and say,
‘I stopped studying so I could break out of that art
and become formless,’
are total and utter idiots.
They have exchanged their inabilities
for the right to sound stupid.
It’s true.

The BEST way to be formless
is to study an art,
maybe karate or kenpo or something,
then another art,
maybe Aikido or tai Chi or something,
and then another art…
and so on.
Eventually you learn ALL the options
for forcing or flowing an attack,
Then you have choice,
actual AWARE choice,
within the structure of the fight.
And that would be formless.

Here’s the obligatory ad…

Tai Chi Chuan

I put Tai Chi here because most people study hard arts,
or arts requiring great effort,
and the best way to achieve formlessness
is to study an art that take little effort,
and which makes you think
and figure things out.

Make sure you check out the video halfway down the page.

Have a great work out!

Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/five-army-tai-chi-chuan/

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Use Martial Arts to Make Your Punch Ten Times Stronger!

Posted on September 12, 2019 by aganzul

Newsletter 984

The Easy Way to Punch Hard in the Martial Arts

Most people don’t understand how easy the martial arts are.
Take, for instance, a good karate punch.
It will generate more power than any other punch in the world.
And takes less energy.
Don’t believe me?

I was watching a fellow punch the bag the other day.
The guy was maybe 25,
much experience in boxing and other arts.
The bag jumped and bent a little,
and that was it.

I stepped up to the bag.
I’m old…71.
I put my fingers to the bag,
then,
without retracting the arm,
I closed my fingers and thrust my arm out.
Freakin’ bag went to the roof.
You could feel it say ‘OW!’

So why was my ‘old’ punch stronger than some young turks?
Because I used less energy.

What is energy?
Go ahead,
give it your best shot.
Nope,
it’s not that.

Energy is the capacity for work.
Go on,
look in the dictionary.
That is the physics definition.
Physics,
if you don’t know it,
is the stuff we made up
to measure the universe.

So how do you measure work?
Here’s where it gets tricky.
You can measure work with…
watts, ohms, pounds, gallons per minute,
and so on and so on.
How you measure work depends
on what you are measuring.

So how do you measure work in the martial arts?
Here’s what nobody knows,
and why punches are so spectacularly lacking in horsepower.

You measure work by weight.

When that young Turk was punching the bag he was punching with his arm.
Twenty pounds of weight.

When I punched the bag
I moved my 71 year old body into it…
200 pounds of weight.

20 pounds versus 200 pounds.
I was literally punching ten times as hard as he was.
And,
I’ll tell you this,
it was easier for me to move my 200 pounds an inch or two
than it was for him to try to punch as hard as me
using his 20 pound arm.

Now,
I’ve given you all the clues,
how you going to put them together?
How are you going to make your body work ten times easier
than some guy nearly 50 years younger than you?

Well,
I’ll tell you,
it took me a while.
Fortunately,
I wrote it all down.

The totally scientific martial art
that opens eyes everywhere
and makes all martial arts quick and simple to learn.

Here’s the obligatory ad…
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/hard-punch/

But I’d be careful before I go there.
Sometimes it hurts to learn something,
you have to give up what you thought you knew.
Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Have a great work out!

Al

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A Drill to Find the Soul of the Martial Arts

Posted on September 5, 2019 by aganzul

Newsletter 983

The Windows to the Soul of the Martial Arts

I’ve talked about where you put your eyes before.
So let me say it again,
and give you a rather phenomenal martial arts drill.

My first school,
kenpo,
held the belief that you should focus on the chest,
develop peripheral vision when fighting.

My second school,
kang duk won korean karate,
was of a similar opinion.
My instructor,
the best martial artist I have ever known,
took it a step further.
‘Don’t look at the eyes,’
he said.
‘They will fool you.’

Well,
both schools were wrong.
Even the best martial artist I have ever known was wrong.

The eyes are the windows to a man’s soul.
The eyes are nothing but devices.
‘binoculars’ for the spirit that drives a man to look through.
What does the looking is the ‘I am.’
The spirit.
Who you really are.

I find it absolutely fascinating
that so many martial artists will hold to caveman theories
of watching the body,
and refuse to see who they really are.

So,
I get newbies pretty regularly,
and I teach them martial arts,
and I teach them to freestyle.
Shortly after they begin freestyle
I always do the following drill.

I have them stand with their back to the wall.
I tell them to look me in the eyes.
They are always staring away,
looking elsewhere,
it has become hard for man to look his fellow man in the eyes.
Used to be easy.
I met old timers and that is all they did.
Eye to eye,
a firm handshake seals the deal,
an honest day’s work,
that sort of thing.

So I have this fellow standing back to the wall,
I make sure he is looking at me,
and I punch him.
The first dozen punches are easy.
I swing roundhouses.
I punch fast,
but they are easy to see.
Frequently the student will close his eyes.
I do this easy method until he is able to keep his eyes open.
Then I speed up.
I spin and back fist,
I throw an occasional kick,
I have good control,
but the student’s eyes usually open up
as I put a little steam on the strikes.

He blocks them all.

That’s right.
the newbie student blocks virtually
EVERYTHING
I throw.

Why?
Because open eyes create intuition.

If a guy is looking away he is not seeing
and he might as well be unconscious.

If his eyes are open,
if the spirit of the man is actually watching,
there is no limit to what he can do.

From that point on I can teach him anything.
He will learn everything.
And easily.
And if he doesn’t,
I put him to the wall
and open his eyes again.

But…
don’t believe me.
Do it for yourself.
Put some bozo back to the wall,
go slow throw lazy rounders
and make sure he is watching,
that he doesn’t go to sleep with his eyes open.
Guaranteed,
you will have a fast learning student
who will staring looking at the world
in open eyed wonder.

This little drill has been brought to you
by the same fellow who gave you Matrix Karate

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

The totally scientific martial art
that opens eyes everywhere
and makes all martial arts quick and simple to learn.

Have a great work out!

Al

A WIN!

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Bruce Lee Actually Killed Himself!

Posted on July 12, 2019 by aganzul

Newsletter 977

How Bruce Lee Died

One of the biggest questions I get,
year after year year,
is how did Bruce Lee die.
At first I didn’t know.
I searched through all the theories,
his family was cursed,
he was poisoned by jealous masters,
he had a bad reaction to
marijuana, tea, speed, aspirin, etc.
None of these worked,
all the theories fell apart under close examination.
Recently,
however,
I found out the real reason Bruce died.
It is totally logical,
backed up by facts,
makes sense,
and I fell it is the real reason.

Did you know that Bruce had his sweat glands removed?
That’s right.
He was trying to get rid of ‘underarm blotch,’
which looked terrible on the camera.
Now,
sweat glands are important,
and the ones under the arms VERY important.
It is a way of cooling down the body when it is overheated.
Overheated like working out,
shooting films in 100 degree heat under lights,
and so on.
In the months before Bruce died
word has it that he had fainted several times.
His brain is supposed to have swollen.
Again,
a byproduct of heat.
So Bruce Lee died through overheating his body,
which was caused by his having certain of his sweat glands removed.

Can I be totally, 100% sure?
No.
But I can be 99% sure.
His history,
the condition of his body,
the effect of removing sweat glands,
it all makes sense.

I would love to have a doctor exhume the body and find out for sure.
Except,
it’s done.
Whether it is misadventure
through the removal of sweat glands,
or Triad masters giving him repeated overdoses of aspirin.
Bruce is gone.
Thank God he was with us for a while,
he sure left us some gold.

Here’s a link to a site filled with Bruce Lee info.

http://freebrucelee.com

Have a great work out!

Al

A WIN!

I’ve come to the same conclusion as Bruce (Lee):  I no longer believe in ‘styles’.  I believe every martial artist has to create their own personal martial art.  Even if they are a die hard ‘traditionalist’ they still do it their own way or their own interpretation. ~ Matt R

“The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”
– Bruce Lee

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Be Formless, Said Bruce Lee, and Here’s How…

Posted on July 8, 2019 by aganzul

Newsletter 976

How Bruce Lee Became Formless

There is a quote by Bruce Lee…

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”

Now a lot of people refer to this quote.
It is held up as an iconic concept,
a golden standard.
Be formless.

And it is almost entirely misunderstood.

I heard one fellow say,
I don’t want to study karate
because I want to be formless.

But how can you be formless if you don’t have form first?
Do you think Bruce didn’t study forms?
He studied Wing Chun,
which has forms.
And he studied the forms of the drills,
the form of the Sticky Hands.
The guy was a living,
walk and talking
form.
Then he was formless.

First comes form,
then comes formlessness.

I want you to google Fred Astair.
Old time dancer.
Probably the most graceful man who ever lived.
His secret?
He makes every thing look effortless.
Do you know how much effort it took
to make his moves effortless?

Now consider that same concept with form.

Do you know how hard Bruce studied
how hard he worked,
how he must have visualized and sweated
to become formless?

Fortunately,
you can choose from a lot of arts to study,
and you can choose from a lot of forms.
You can choose the ones which intrigue you,
which fascinate you,
which seem to be the best for self defense,
or whatever your goal is in the martial arts.

Here are some of my favorite forms.
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/6-shaolin-butterfly/

They are incredibly simple,
very short,
very easy to translate into formlessness.
(Read the win below…)

Have a great work out!
Al

A WIN!

Al,
I’ve sped through the Shaolin Butterfly, am learning the Five Army Tai Chi Chuan and the Butterfly Baguazhang. It seems to me that now I can look at classical forms and simply understand how to do them correctly. It’s absolutely amazing. The practice and learning process basically infuses a student with the basics to make anything work. To correct the whole of an art simply by looking at the forms and playing around with them. I’ve applied this to many classical forms I learned years ago. Thanks so much for the master key to all the martial arts right in my hand. ~ Justin

“The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness;
only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest.”

– Bruce Lee

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Awareness is the Key to the True Martial Art

Posted on July 2, 2019 by aganzul

Newsletter 975

The True Martial Art of Awareness

Got a student here,
having a rough time with Tai Chi.
When doing the form
she wants to go to a posture,
strike the posture,
and that’s all.
But the problem is one of awareness.

When I was doing a lot of Pa Kua,
one of the drills I made myself do
was walk the circle
while staring at my finger.
Focus on the finger.
And the point was this…
DO NOT GO UNCONSCIOUS!
In other words,
grow more aware.

When you strike a pose,
this is common in Karate and kung fu,
you have a moment of awareness.
When you follow the finger
as you walk the circle,
you create awareness at all times.
So striking a pose might result in 10% awareness,
but you need to achieve
100% awareness.
Awareness at all times.

If you go to a party,
and you are aware 10% of the time
and a fight breaks out,
there is a 90% chance
you will get struck.

But if you are aware 100% of the time
you will probably avoid getting struck at all.

People think the martial arts are about fighting.
Or building the body,
or quickness or strength,
or winning tournaments,
or making an image to impress the girls.
Martial arts,
TRUE martial arts.
have nothing at all to do with that.
They are about building awareness.

You have to break through the obsession with the body,
then even put aside energy,
and just become aware.

When I walk the circle in Pa Kua
I hold a finger and stare at it without break.

When I do a Tai Chi form I create circles
around my body with my hands,
and I never have a corner,
never pause or speed up,
just hold awareness in every motion I do.

When I do a freestyle drill,
the point is NEVER to beat the other person,
it is to create awareness,
to create a shield of awareness around myself
so that nobody can penetrate,
so that I can deal with anything
because I am aware.

And,
forgive me for the obligatory ad,
but if you are interested in Tai Chi especially,
but any art,
Matrix Tai Chi creates awareness
about ten times better than the classical form.
It is a simple matter of applied logic.
Maybe I’ll go into this in a later newsletter,
but for now,
remember this…
if you want your martial arts to be true
you must create awareness.
Period.

Here’s the link…
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/2ba-matrix-tai-chi-chuan/

Now have a GREAT Fourth of July!
Al

A WIN!

Al, Very early this morning I downloaded the Matrix Tai Chi package and wow! I read through the manual and am very impressed. I cant wait to start practicing what I am reading. The posture matrix and the application matrix, it makes so much sense. It took me a long time to learn the Yang short and long form as well as the Cheng Man Ching 37 form. Using the matrix I could have learned that all much quicker. I also glanced at the form video that came with the download and it reminds me of both Yang and the Cheng Man Ching forms run together but it all makes such perfect sense having read over the manual. I will read the manual over and over as I go through the course. I did the 5 Army Tai Chi course first and love it but I am seeing a lot more in the 5 Army form now having read the manual and all this after a quick read! This is great, I cant wait to get heavy into this program. I will keep you posted and as always, Thanks! ~ Kurt

“If you want to learn to swim jump into the water.
On dry land no frame of mind is ever going to help you.”
– Bruce Lee

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Should you Feel Emotion in the Martial Arts?

Posted on May 19, 2019 by aganzul

Newsletter 971

Under the Martial Arts

There are people who do the martial arts,
and there are people who wander around
on the surface of the martial arts
and never get to the real depths.

Now look,
fighting is good.
It’s got to happen.
It’s martial,
right?

But what is under that?
What is under the fighting?
Fighting is when two people communicate.
Yeah.
It’s a form of communication.
The communication is pretty basic.
‘I hate you!’
I want to kill you!’
That sort of thing.

So let me ask you,
what do you feel when you fight in the martial arts?
And,
what should you feel?

When you are doing freestyle with friends
it’s all pretty light.
It’s a game of tag.
No escalation,
but the potential is there.
And you are practicing for that potential,
for when you need it.
Except…

Yeah, that exception thing,
it’s right under everything,
nobody gets it much,
but it’s there,
and here it is.

If an insane man comes at you on the street,
wants to kill you,
should you feel hate?
Anger?
Rage?
If you do then you are lowering yourself to his level,
you are just as insane as him.
Even in the middle of a fight for life.

What you should feel is joy.
Somebody is talking to you,
and they mean what they say.
Doesn’t matter if you like what they say,
what matters is that they think enough of you
to communicate such important things to you.

And,
he is giving you a gift.
That fist,
that foot,
that knife,
is the solid part of the communication,
and it is a gift.
He is allowing you to work your technique.
He is giving you a chance to present your art,
to manifest your soul.

So let me ask you,
should your soul reflect hate?
Or should you be grateful that another human being
loves you enough to communicate his deepest desires to you?

This idea,
that a punch is a communication
and an expression of love
is underneath the martial arts.
And you should practice the martial arts
not to feel hate,
or some other emotion,
but to express love.
Except…
uh oh,
one more of those exceptional things…

when you do the martial arts
you shouldn’t feel love nor hate.
Love is a contract to express affection no matter what.
Hate is an out of control emotion,
signifying that the human has stopped thinking.

The best way to understand this is this:
there is no such thing as good,
there is no such thing as evil,
those are terms we made up
to describe things we like or don’t like.
They don’t exist,
except as concepts to describe what we are feeling.

The same thing holds true for love and hate,
love is a contract for affection,
hate is an emotion we use to attack someone.
You are going towards or way,
and to be totally efficient in the martial arts,
you put aside love and hate,
not wasting energy on such emotional expressions,
and focus only on what you are doing.

Have you ever read a book
and lost track of the time?
Or even seen a movie,
and gotten so engrossed
you were unaware of the passage of time?
That is what you should be doing in the martial arts,
that is the martial art underneath
fighting and hate and love
and all that sort of distraction.

When you fight it should be as if
you are in a tunnel,
and the reduction of the situation
is at the other end of the tunnel.
Hopefully it won’t include
the reduction and destruction
of the other person.

Oddly,
I didn’t learn this through freestyle,
I learned this,
became able to enter the tunnel,
and divest myself of distractive emotions
and concepts and such
by doing the forms.
I learned to focus and concentrate by doing the forms.

And that’s what is underneath the martial arts,
and it is easy to get to
if you just focus,
concentrate,
and dedicate yourself
to a higher existence.
Of course,
it is much easier to get there
if you have eliminated distractions from your art,
gotten rid of impure techniques,
unwanted motion and such,
by matrixing your art.

Here’s the obligatory ad;
it is one of the advanced drills I use
for teaching people how to fight without distractions,
emotions, and that sort of thing.

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

Have a tremendous work out!
Al

A WIN!

Freestyle: I have had awful instructors who do and promote a gladiator freestyle event on a weekly basis. I hated it and never came back. What really ticked me off was that it was a TKD class. I felt like he was selling TKD as a viable street defense and I did not agree. As a brown belt in jiu jitsu I would have no problem shooting a single or double leg take down on an advanced TKD practitioner and did so repeatedly but the sparring was only stand up and people were just pounding each other. When that occurs they regressed to gross motor skills and swung and kicked wildly. That being said, your method allows the student to slowly build the skill, grown the fine motor control, and get used to the time dilation that occurs when sparring or fighting. As a person that’s deployed several times I work well in high stress environments but that took years to develop. I think your method is a scientific, controlled, and best of all repeatable manner in which to inoculate a student to stressors. ~ Paul v H.

“If you don’t want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today.”
– Bruce Lee

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Release of New Book linking Five Different Martial Arts

Posted on February 13, 2019 by aganzul

Newsletter 959

New Book Release!
The Book of Five Arts

Just released a new book:
‘The Book of Five Arts’
The title idea comes from Myamoto Musashi’s ‘Book of Five Rings.’
In this book I detail the exact sequence of five martial arts.
Now some of you have seen some of the material.
There is matrix karate, shaolin butterfly, butterfly pa kua chang,
matrix tai chi chuan and Monkey Boxing.

The glory of this book, even if you have seen parts,
is that it includes graphics and charts
showing exactly how the progression of matrices work.
So you look at the karate matrix,
you understand what the blank spots are,
then you look at the shaolin butterfly,
different blank spots,
and so on through each of the five arts.
By the time you’re done you won’t have any blank spots.
At all.
A blank spot in one art will be filled by a technique from another art.
BUT…
you have to do it.
Fortunately,
it is simple.
If you have picked up the books on Perfect Karate,
or the small book I wrote on the butterfly,
you will know exactly what I am doing.
But you likely haven’t seen the work on Matrix Tai Chi.
Not at all.
Even if you’ve done the video course,
this is quite a bit more linear,
easier,
simpler.
And Monkey Boxing.
Ahhh.
That is my art,
and here is how you get started in it.
You’ll see how the basics come together for a perfect matrix.

The book is 160 pages,
over 300 illustrations.
And it doesn’t just show the matrix of five individual arts,
it shows how they come together to make one art,
the real art,
the real path of the martial arts.

So here’s the Amazon link.
The Book of Five Arts
Make sure you give it five stars.

Have a GREAT work out!

Al
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Five-Arts-Martial-Training/dp/1796218332/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=the+book+of+five+arts+al+case&qid=1550014606&s=gateway&sr=8-2-spell

A WIN!
Al,
I’ve sped through the Shaolin Butterfly, am learning the Five Army Tai Chi Chuan and the Butterfly Baguazhang. It seems to me that now I can look at classical forms and simply understand how to do them correctly. It’s absolutely amazing. The practice and learning process basically infuses a student with the basics to make anything work. To correct the whole of an art simply by looking at the forms and playing around with them. I’ve applied this to many classical forms I learned years ago. Thanks so much for the master key to all the martial arts right in my hand.

Justin H

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.
Bruce Lee

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Do Real Martial Arts by Breaking the Law!

Posted on November 29, 2018 by aganzul

Newsletter 948

How to Break the Law!

So,
the mean, nasty little secret,
why and how I break the law.
Let me set this up, first.

You ever see ‘Little Big Man?’
It’s a movie with Dustin Hoffman,
came out decades ago,
an okay movie,
with one, big gem.

An Indian is studying to be a shaman,
or great warrior,
or some such thing,
and part of the procedure
is to do everything backwards.

He washes with dirt and dries with water,
is the example in the movie,
I believe.

I thought of that
when I started doing my forms on the other side,
then started doing them backwards,
and tweaking them all over the place.
Very educational.

Sort of a funny thing,
opens up your mind,
loosens you up,
makes you think of things.
Doing things backwards is pretty nifty.
And,
it can be all the way to enlightening,
if you know what I mean.

So,
how often have you driven down a road
come to a stop light,
and sat there while it is red?
There’s nobody there,
no reason for the light to be red,
but you sit there anyway.
It’s The Law,
you know.

I don’t stop.
I look around,
I might slow,
I might not,
but I run it.
Regularly.
I do it all the time.
I refuse to halt my life
just because society thinks I should.

A real human being is outside the box.
He thinks outside the box,
he does things outside the box.

I remember the story of Bill Gates.
He ignored the law,
ran stop signs,
one day got caught.
So he hired a team of lawyers,
they found out that the stop sign in question
was one quarter of an inch too low,
so he got the case tossed out of court.

Probably cost him a hundred grand
to beat a $40 ticket.

But that’s not the point.
The point is that a man who thinks outside the box,
can’t be contained by the box,
and lives a better life.
Has better thoughts.
Is not slowed down by society.

Think about that
while you’re sitting at that stoplight,
counting the seconds
till it changes
and lets you go.

Now,
let’s take it a little further.

You’re doing the martial arts,
people tell you not to grab the fingers and twist,
it is against the MMA rules.
I say…
HEYSOOS CRISTOS!
Grab them fingers and twist.
Practice it,
figure out how much you have to twist
before you get an ‘ow.’
Figure out how to grab those fingers in the middle of a fight,
Make finger twisting into a useful technique!
BREAK THE FREAKIN’ RULES!
The rules contain you,
stop you,
slow you down,
make you into a responsible citizen…

but the essence of martial arts is learning
how to be an irresponsible citizen!
How to break somebody before they break you!

I remember growing up
and kicking somebody in the apples
was considered ‘dirty fighting,’
and people who did that kind of stuff
were looked down upon.

But kicking somebody in the apples
wins the fight!
Should you be the honorable fellow?
Who loses and has a knife stuck in their chest?
Or should you kick him in the freakin’ balls
so hard his testicles replace his Adam’s Apple?

I hope you get the idea.
I practice things people say I shouldn’t practice,
and the more people told me I was full of sheet,
the more I practiced,
until ideas spilled out of my head,
I was considered enlightened,
and I actually felt that I knew something
about the martial arts.

Until I felt unbound!

When you run a stop sign
you are saying ‘no’ to all the things
society is trying to implant in you.
When you run a red light
you are refusing to toe the line,
be a respectable citizen,
and saying,
instead,
that you are
GODZILLA
King of the Universe!

And all the little people,
with their pencils and clipboards,
their rules and regulations,
their holier than thou disdain
are just that,
little people,
and they cannot bind you
stop you
make you less than you are.

Break the rules that bind
and the spirit grows big.

Now,
if you object,
chances are that you are trapped,
inside the box,
behaving because you believe
that society is God,
and you have no power.

So you need to start breaking laws right now.
You need to grab the notion of yourself
as being unique and independent,
right now.
And you really need to break open
your ideas of the martial arts.

Learn a new art,
and you will be twice as smart.
Think about it,
a guy who is bilingual
has MANY more advantages
than a single lingual.
So why not for the arts?
And,
with matrixing,
you get an entirely new and true
totally expanded understanding of the arts.
With matrixing
you get tossed out of the box
whether you like it or not.

And,
in this subject of breaking the law,
I will only say one thing…
I never steal.
To steal is to break all laws,
and to step outside humanity.
We want to get outside the box
of restricted thought,
we don’t want to step outside
of our understanding and compassion.

Okey dokey,
here’s the obligatory link,
for the system I used,
I created,
to help me step all the way outside
of that furshlugginer box.

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/3a-blinding-steel-matrixing-weapons/

Have a great work out!
Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/3a-blinding-steel-matrixing-weapons/

Here’s a great win…

A WIN!

Al,

I have gone through many of your courses and am currently going through blinding steel and eventually on my way to forty monkeys. I recently went through your book Matrixing Tong Bei. Several things clicked and the martial arts universe opened up after finishing that book.

Respectfully,
Tyler K

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