The Method to My Martial Arts Madness!

From Al Case at Matrix Martial Arts…

When I was beginning my martial arts practice

my intent was to learn every single art I could.

These days I practice forgetting every martial art I can.

I can’t wait to see what people make of the above statement.

Without context, 

it sounds stupid, idiotic, and can be used against me.

But with context it is a different story.

Here is the context…

To understand the Martial Arts you need a large data base.

You need to understand how different arts do their kicks,

how combat strategies differ.

And so on.

But once the database is large enough

you have to focus on the techniques that work for you,

and the number of techniques that work

is surprisingly small.

So you go through a thousand techniques,

you become able to do them,

but some of them you are able to do better.

Some of them work better,

and work better in combat,

and work better with your body.

So you pare down the thousand techniques

into ten or twelve.

My ten or twelve techniques are based on specific concepts.

For instance

First concept = control the distance

Second concept = move left or right

Third concept = up or down

Fourth concept = open or close

Fifth concept = right weapon for right distance

Sixth concept = collapsing the distance

Here’s the breakdown:

control the distance so you can be the one attacking.

Move left or right so you can disrupt his analysis of distance.

Up or down refers to whether he will kick or punch, although it can be constructed differently.

Open or close refers to whether you can trap his limb or not.

(are you working on the outside of his arm, or the inside?)

Right weapon refers to if he is at punching distance

can you beat him at that distance,

or shift to a distance (weapon)

you can beat him at.

Collapsing the distance refers from going from 

kicking distance to punching distance

to knee distance to elbow distance

to grappling/takedown distance…

Ir shift to whatever distance is your strength and his weakness.

Pretty simple, eh?

So at first I practiced specific arts for specific concepts.

TKD for kicking

karate for punching

Wing chun for elbows,

aiki/jujitsu/etc

for grappling.

And so on.

I distilled all this from the breaking down of thousands of techniques,

And I broke everything down using matrixing.

And i found that individual arts are nothing but smaller modules,

and if you can study a half a dozen modules

you’ll have your dozen techniques or so.

Anyway,

that’s the way I did it.

Obligatory ad here…

‘The Last Martial Arts Book’ has 11 ratings for 5 stars.

(There is a video version of this book with no stars yet)

My two yoga books have 9 ratings between them  for 5 stars.

‘The Book of Five Arts’ has 7 ratings for 5 stars.

‘The Science of Government’ has 6 ratings for 5 stars.

‘Chiang Nan’ has 5 ratings for 5 stars.

My novel, ‘Monkeyland,’ has 5 ratings for 5 stars

That’s a lot of good ratings

so hopefully you’

ll find that useful

find the book/course that is right for you,

and matrix your own martial arts.

Have a great work out!

Al

And don’t forget to check out the interview

How to Fix Karate! (volumes one and two)

volume one is at

And volume two is at…

For the best in Martial Arts Online Training, go to MonsterMartialArts.com.