Five Things I Should have Known About the Martial Arts!

November 29, 2009 by Al Case
Filed under Fitness

Okay, I’ve been doing the martial arts since mid last century. I’ve lived through judo in the fifties, karate in the sixties, kung fu in the seventies, and stick fighting and shadow warriors and the UFC, and I’ve analyzed durn near every art there is. I’ve made up a list of things that I should have known before I started.

The point here is that classes were where you learned to sweat, and not where you learned to talk. However, the reason a lot of people didn’t talk was because they didn’t know anything. So are you ready to learn the things you should know before you start learning that system of karate or kung fu or Aikido?

I wish people would have told me how painful pain was, and if I had known the truth about why things hurt then they wouldn’t have hurt so darn much. The pain of a block, for instance, can go either go into the block or into the strike, depending upon which person has more strength of will. It’s not a matter of how tough somebody is, it is a matter of which way you want the energy to go. and being the stronger in intention.

I wish somebody would have sat down and told me what all the body parts are for, or at least told me that learning would have been ten times easier if I had figured out the purposes of the body parts are. What does it matter how you turn the bones, and why does it matter which side of the bone the muscle is on. A very important point could have been made if somebody had just told me I had a head and I could think with it!

This matter of how a body works could have made the martial arts ten times easier if somebody had explained why and how all the parts had to work together. This is a thing called harmony, and when the body has harmony, then intention can flow through the body and make it ten times more efficient. How much does each part weigh, what is the ratio of muscle to body part, how far does each body part have to move to stay with the whole body, how much effort is required for each body part.

Speaking of using the body as one unit, if somebody had explained that it was not just harmony within your body, but how harmony extended into your life, then I would have had a ten times easier life. Heck, life is so much easier when you get along with your fellow man! If somebody had just told me to love my enemy that would have made me a real martial artist!

Probably the most important thing somebody could have told me would have been to get the lead out and stop being lazy. Heck, if I had done a little more sweating I would have gotten to the end of the martial arts faster, maybe even gotten further, maybe even learned something! The point here is that I could have learned all the things that I eventually figured out faster, and then I wouldn’t be complaining about how stupid I was.

Ah, the things I didn’t know, they were so great, but, at last I know them. Even more important, you know them, so you don’t have to be slow or stupid or lazy or things like that! Unless, of course, you want to pretend that I didn’t say anything.

Al Case has learned the martial arts 4O+ years. He began writing for the magazines in’81 and has written hundreds of articles, and had a column in Inside Karate. He is the originator of Matrixing Technology and Neutronics. He is giving away a free ebook which explains all about Matrixing at Monster Martial Arts.