It makes no sense to let an attacker get close enough to use his hands. If he’s got a knife or club, or just a fist that is fast, the best strategy is to kick low and keep him at a distance. The problem is that many Martial Arts schools do not teach the right way to use the legs.

A couple of things to remember before we get into making your kicks into powerful weapons. Practice kicking high so you have strength and flexibility, but keep your kicks low in a real fight so you don’t get a leg caught. And, the best strategy is to avoid the fight altogether whenever you can.

Practice kicking over a chair. This will train you to raise your knee high. When your knee is high your foot can go straight in and deliver the goods, and not arc up and scrape the body.

Turn your hips so they go into the action of the kick. Always turn, or tilt, your hips so that the weight of the hips is fully utilized. This will also give you a little more reach, and it will help commit the whole weight of the body into any technique.

Kick with the ball of the foot. I know many people like to bash with the instep, but they end up spinning around out of control. Kicking with the ball of the foot forces the artist to be an artist, and it concentrates more weight into a smaller striking area.

Bring the foot all the way back after kicking. Snap that foot back so that an opponent can’t grab it and throw you. This also tends to leave more power in the target, consider it a type of follow through.

Practice planting your foot on your partner, then pushing him. This usually means you will alter the kick so that you can place the heel on the body of your partner, then push. This trains you to use the exact muscles that are actually used in a kick.

Kicks are your first line of defense, don’t just practice these techniques a few times and forget about them, practice them hundreds of times a day for each kick. Whether you are training in Karate, or Tae Kwon Do, or Kung Fu, or whatever, a well placed kick can save your life. So practice, and look at your kicks, invest awareness, study the physics of a kick so that your kicks are effective and end the fight before it can even start.

Al Case has examined martial arts for over 4O+ years. A writer for the magazines, he had his own column in Inside Karate for many years. You can find out how to have the most powerful punch in the world, or how to have the strongest kicks in the world, by picking up his free ebook at Monster Martial Arts.

One of the most important things a superior martial artist can have, inside the ring or out, is the gunfighter mentality. The best fighters, like BJ Penn and Rashad Evans, have this intuitively in their personality. The second place guys don’t.

Interestingly enough, the Gunfighter Mentality used to be part of the training in the classical martial arts. I remember training back in the middle of the last century, and everything we did was geared towards this ability. While there were many factors involved in the death of this principle, people like Bruce Lee probably drove home the spike.

Bruce Lee added circling and bouncing to the martial arts. The Gunfighter Mentality depends on stillness, being coiled like a snake, and here was this fellow acting like Mohammad Ali, circling and jabbing and destroying the mindset of the Gunfighter. Now Bruce Lee would have won most any fight anyway, but a generation copied him, and they gave up the deadly zen stillness of the Gunfighter.

Now stillness is what it is all about when it comes to true martial arts, and there are several good reasons or this. There was much interchange between karate and zen principles in Japan, and people practiced zen for long hours began to see the benefits of sitting, waiting, and cultivating silence. In the silence ones perceptions worked better, and their intuitive nature could take over.

When one is silent, just sitting, when one just relaxes, the senses begin to work better, and the world begins to open up. Try it, just sit in a chair comfortably and just relax for a while. The world will start to make itself known, tell you things, and you will become brighter, sharper, calmer.

Once the student begins to appreciate that his perceptions, and thus reactions, will work better, the real work can begin. In the silence we used to corkscrew our stance downward, into the ground, and search for the best set of the leg, the best position to spring from. In the silence we would examine the angle of the hip and the turn of the foot, trying to make every single part of our bodies into totally responsive and explosive mechanisms.

Freestyle matches, instead of moving all around and wasting energy, would be subtle shifts of the body and edgings toward the opponent. Instead of throwing a hundred punches, most of which missed the target, we would set up to throw one punch, but every ounce of our might would be instilled in that one punch. Most important, we left the training hall as different people, aware people, patient people.

The Gunfighter Mentality in the martial arts is pretty much unknown now, and it is too bad. I believe that if the fighters of today began building the characteristics of a good Gunfighter the Martial Arts would take a turn for the better. This might not be good for mixed martial artists in such places as the UFC, however, as the techniques might become too dangerous to be used.

Al Case has examined martial arts for forty years. A writer for the magazines, he is the originator of Matrixing Technology. You can get his free ebook at Monster Martial Arts.

This is going to be the oddest article on tai chi you have ever read. I’ve never had a lesson in the art of Tai Chi Chuan, you see, but my tai chi is the best. I don’t mean to be self serving, but let us see if you can argue with me after you have read how I came up with my tai chi.

I began learning tai chi with a book, Modified Tai Chi for Health by Lee Ying Arng. Every night I spent hours memorizing the form, trying to figure out the applications, trying to figure out the meaning. And, tell the truth, it didn’t mean much.

So I went through Chen Man Ching, and Chen and Yang and Wu and Sun, but they all spoke this gobbledegook that didn’t make sense. So I began doing my Karate, I had near ten years experience in karate, and the thing started making sense. I was using karate power to wake up the form, and it worked, and then I was able to translate what was happening into Tai Chi power.

More important, I was neglecting all the bushwah philosophy and mysticism in the books and using physics. The martial arts, you see, are taught through the memorization of random strings of data. In physics you look for a reason, and a logic, and you define a concept.

Now, ancient stories claim tai chi was created in a dream by san feng after he watched a bird and a snake fight. Or, it was started by a general in a village, who was retired from war and wanted to make up games for the children. Neither of these concepts have much verifiable validity, but we can’t just discount them out of hand.

Maybe the general was old, couldn’t do the martial arts proper, and so he moved slowly, so as not to hurt himself, and actually came up with something. And the vision of the snake and the crane, though I like physics I would not dare to disclaim the value of visions, which are dreams and inspiration, and at the heart of mankind. Still, whether rehabilitation of the infirm, or big dreams, tai chi does not make sense without physics.

So this is what I want you to do, I want you to go to a library and get a book on physics. Make it a simple book, kids pictures for illustrations, that sort of thing. It would really help if it was about a motor.

Now, peruse that book, and start comparing terms are the same as in tai chi chuan. Rooting is grounding, where is the generator, what are these things called leads and so on. Do that, and when the depths of your tai chi chuan start to alter, do not come complaining to me.

Al Case has studied martial arts 4O+ years. He began Tai Chi Chuan in 1974, became a writer for the mags in 1981, and originated Matrixing Technolgy, which is the study of physics in the martial arts. You can get a free ebook on Matrixing at Monster Martial Arts.

Mixed Martial Arts gladiators circling the octagon, searching for the chance, and, BAM, somebody is punched out. The roaring crowd, the price of the ticket, the cost of good brewski, it is all worth it if you can see a good knock out. What most people don’t realize is that a good knock out, given a little thought and hard work, is actually easy.

Four decades ago, in Kang Duk Won Korean Karate my instructor told me that A tight fist is a heavy fist. Man, that was just what the doctor ordered! Just curl the fingers into iron bands, tie them together with a thick thumb, and, zingo bingo, you have yourself a board breaking fist.

The trick, of course, is to be totally relaxed before, and to be totally empty after. This is the idea of focus, and if you understand it you can knock an opponent all the way out. Hard to do it the way they put fists in gloves before a fight, but there it is.

imagine it like this, a radar station is scanning the open skies for incoming targets, it is scanning, and what would happen if the radar screen suddenly filled up with static? The radar operator wouldn’t be able to find the incoming targets for all the static. So when you make yourself loose and empty, and make your fist totally relaxed, you are trying to get rid of the static, make it so you can see what is going on around you.

Then, your perceptions picking up the path of an incoming fist, the emotion, the very intention of the attacker, your fist will move faster because it is empty, and it will hit harder when it becomes tight. Muscular tension will not bind your motion and slow down your fist, and it will fly fast, your radar will better help it find the target. The moment of truth and your fist gets tight, and that increases the weight and mass of the fist, making it hard enough to knock somebody unconscious.

So there are two things a fighter, whether in the UFC or on the street, must do if he is going to get knock out power. The first, of course, is to be empty, loosey goosey, not tied in place by his own muscular tension. This frees the inner radar to pick up the attack, and enables the MMA fighter to move faster because he is not thinking of his body as weighty and heavy.

The second thing is to tighten the fist upon impact, and loosen it immediately afterwards. This is real microsecond stuff here, but it is guaranteed to work. The energy focuses, the power comes to bear, and that which was empty and quick suddenly becomes full and heavy.

If you are an MMA fighter in the UFC or strikeforce, or even a spectator, think about the physics I have described here, and figure out how to use them in your strikes. Empty/full is actually a classical concept from traditional Karate, and it is used extensively in the ancient Shaolin types of kung fu like Hung Gar or Choy Lee Fut. Emptiness and focus, these are the keys that will lay anybody out for the ten count!

Al Case has dissected Kung Fu for 4O++ years. He has written hundreds of articles for the magazines, and had his own column in Inside Karate. You can pick up a free ebook at Monster Martial Arts, or get the straight skinny on hitting harder at Punch ‘Em Out

I don’t care if I make enemies, I’m going to say it, the kicking I see on the UFC and MMA type of thing is not really kicking. Truth, it is leg swinging, without focus, and it doesn’t work. This article is going to tell you why it doesn’t work, and what to do about it.

I had a friend, name of Ted, way back in the late sixties. He was a tall, skinny, hippie looking fellow, who happened to have the most phenomenal kicking ability. One day he was driving, and a fellow cut in front of him, and Ted hit the horn.

The fellow stopped, got out, and walked back towards Ted, who got out of his car and backed away. The fellow was a huge, easily three hundred pounds, and he dwarfed Ted, and he said some things I wont repeat here. Ted put his hands palm out, and said there was no need to fight.

The fellow swung a punch, and Ted leaned out of the way and planted a beautiful wheel kick in the center of the monsters chest. The fellow sat down, groaned, felt his chest, and then stood up and rushed Ted again. Ted tried to step back, held up his hands again, and told the monster he didn’t want to fight.

The fellow swing, and that was when Ted did it. Ted sunk his weight, put his hips into the kick, and delivered the ball of his foot to the attackers chin. Bang and a ten count, and Ted got in his car and drove away.

So, putting your body into the kick, throwing the hips are important, even crucial, and some fellows don’t it and some fellows do, but the ball of the foot, that was the heart of the matter. Look, when the MMA contestant bashes, he throws his leg like he is swinging a bat, and there is not enough weight behind it. When you use the ball of the foot, the energy goes back along the leg, through the hips, and down into the ground and there is lots of body behind the kick.

Yes, kicking with the instep is okay, but kicking with the instep spreads the striking area over the ankle. The ball of the foot kick concentrates the mass into a smaller area, puts more weight into a smaller contact surface. If you want to put a nice, precise hole in a piece of wood, are you going to bash it and let the weight spread out, or use a balpeen hammer and focus the weight into a smaller area?

Kicking, like punching, is an art, and the UFC and MMA type of fighters are really doing boxing, not the science of pure martial arts. To understand pure martial arts, one has to study this western thing called physics, and apply it to eastern martial arts, and then the answers and ability will come, and then the art will be resurrected. Art will win over sport, and not just gladiatorial contests, but in life, that is the solution and the way of the true art.

Al Case has examined martial arts for 4O+ years. A writer and columnist for the magazines since 1981, he is the originator of Matrixing Technology. You can see his work on developing perfect and artistic punches and kicks at Monster Martial Arts. Look around the site for his free ebook on Matrixing.

In part one we discussed that a person has to know something, and not just in the general monkey see monkey do attitude of the current crop of so called masters. This article has to do with the second and even more important lack upon the part of todays masters. This article has to do with the amount of knowledge a master has.

Yes, a fellow can study an art and say he has mastered that art. He can get so good at karate, for instance, that nobody can beat him. That, however, doesn’t make him a master.

To be able to destroy somebody using a particular martial art is very limited in scope. Destruction, you see, is a very short sighted thing. While there can be an art to destruction, the true martial art is one of control.

How do you control somebody? You must learn more than one art, and this means you must learn both the destructive arts, and the arts which espouse control. You’ve got to learn force and flow, which is another way of saying you must be able to bash something, or control it.

Destroy something and it is no longer around to bother you, but this has another side to it. This means that you have no more authority or power over whatever it is you destroyed. True mastery is a perpetuating state whereby you can sustain your power and authority over your subject even into the future, no matter what.

In the first article I said you had to know something about something. In this article I am telling you have to know everything, and one other thing. I am telling you that you must have power and authority even over those strange and unreasoning things called people.

Having power and authority over not just things, or an art and all its moves is not enough. You must have power and authority over people. You must not just know the moves, you must be able to apply them, selectively, your choice, at any time and any place over any person.

Now, having defined a master, consider those individuals who lay claim to being a master. Can they just destroy and hurt people, and especially those who subject themselves to their teachings? Or have they studied and can apply a wide range of arts, the techniques of their choice, to anybody at any time?

Al Case has analyzed martial arts 4O+ years. He began writing articles in’89, and had his own column in Inside Karate. He is the originator of Matrixing Technology, which you can find out about in a free ebook offered at Monster Martial Arts.

The problem with freestyle is that it has degraded into the basic fact of fighting. Sounds contradictory, I know, but I began learning martial arts over 40 years ago, and I have seen a different face of freestyle. This was a freestyle that was actually more effective, easier to learn, and made students evolve into better human beings.

Now, I have nothing against mixed martial arts, or UFC, or learning ground and pound and all the other types of freestyle. Truth, I think some of this stuff would have been awfully useful back when I was first learning the arts. That said, consider the following objections that I have.

Controlled freestyle in the martial arts effectively died when people started putting on pads and protective gear. Sure, we occasionally wore pads back then, but the purpose was for injuries that had occurred. The breaking point, however, was when school owners realized how much money there was to be made in selling protective gear, they pandered to mothers fears, which stopped little Johnny from learning about true control, and effectively stopped the personal growth stage of the martial arts.

Bruce Lee really smacked the martial arts hard by introducing bouncing. He watched Mohammad Ali fighting, saw how floating worked, and realized that bouncing disrupted timing, and thus he changed the world of freestyle. Unfortunately, the effect was also that people stopped learning how to gauge timing, and this stopped students from observing a whole fact of life, for time, as you may not have known, is what keeps this universe going.

With a loss of reality and a degradation of the sense of timing eating at the innards of martial artists, a loss of control was quick to follow. I remember seeing a fellow who had not had but a few lessons in the martial arts taken to a tournament and encouraged to fight, not to get a point, but to beat people. He fought, there were injuries, and control went out the window. And control, control through timing and of reality, is the course of the true martial arts path.

The final straw behind the downfall of controlled freestyle had to do with loss of respect. I was taught to bow when I entered the school, and to bow when I got on the mat, and to bow to my classmates and partners and everybody else who crossed my path, and it all showed respect. Now there is an attitude of we’re tough and the hell with the other school, and this utterly destroys the art of freestyle, and even the fact of human compassion.

I know there will be those who will not accept what I say, and, let’s face it, my criticisms must be tempered by some of the marvelous things that are inherent in the arts that have developed, and this includes the mixed martial arts and the ultimate fighting championships styles. There are things to be learned in the martial arts that are popular today, and, I am not opposed to these new arts. When I see people showing a total lack of respect, fighting merely to beat each other up, I am on the other side, the old side, the side that shows compassion for their fellow man.

So, I ask you the question, what can you do to resurrect the old attitude of respect? Will getting rid of gloves and pads enable people to feel the reality of what they are doing, and get rid of harmful attitudes? And, can you do this and still make the art work?

Al Case has taught martial arts for 40 years. A writer for the mags, with his own column, Al is the originator of Matrixing and Neutronics. He is giving away a free ebook about Matrixing at Monster Martial Arts.

Matrixing, to put your fevered mind to rest, is the analysis and handling of force and direction. Everything in the universe has a direction, and everything in the universe has lots of potentials for collision. Thus, the study of Matrixing becomes crucial if one is going to understand things like Shaolin kung fu.

Now, to set this article up in the proper manner, let me say that the martial arts are nothing more than random strings of data. This is like somebody memorizing a dozen pieces on the clarinet, and thinking he is the next Pete Fountain. Obviously, one has to do more than memorize a few pieces, one must find the structure of his art, and how to arrange that art before he can lay claim to being a master artist.

So, let us consider this thing called Shaolin. Shaolin has a few thousand years of history, and every master and his sister has made their contributions, and thus the logic of the art has become mixed and impenetrable. There is a vast variety of these strings of random data, you see, and there single arrangement of principles with which to make sense out of it.

If one studies Shaolin styles like Hung Gar or Choy Li Fut, one thinks that kung fu is deep stance, windmilling arms, and a hodge podge of concepts which pop out at you. One thinks there is a hierarchy of rank up to the head abbot, and one must meditate and beat his fists into heated iron pellets to get the real kung fu. Unfortunately, this is a small subset of principles, and while the true art is touched upon, it is not penetrated.

If one studies Wing Chun, one thinks that he has to stand like a bamboo, find an inner eye, and absorb attacks with forearm antennas. Data arranged in mystical sequences, a wooden dummy to give shape to your arms, and never the idea that everything is just random strings of data. Thus, Wing Chun, while being an absolutely astounding practice,touches but lightly upon the True Art.

Then, of course, there is that insect called the Mantis, speaking of antenna arms, and circling motions that manipulate an opponent to his discomfort and destruction. But, if you look at it, it is almost like Hung Gar or Choy Li Fut and Wing Chun have been added together. Thus, the principles slosh and interchange and interbreed into fresh bastards, and the True Art is obscured in a dense fog of amazing ability and astounding art.

This all said, Matrixing could easily organize Shaolin, in the various forms of Hung Gar or Choy Li Fut or Wing Chun and come to the truth of the true art. But I chose Karate to present the principle of Matrixing, and to expose the world to the concept of logic through analysis and handling. Simply, the history was shorter, the mountain was smaller, the obscuring fog more transparent, and karate was easier to define.

This turned out to be a blessing, however, for if you learn how to matrix karate, you can use that matrixing as a template for Shaolin. All you have to do is plug the basics of Shaolin into the Matrix Karate logic, and you have the true art. Too heavy a fog, too much mountain, and yet it can all be resolved into an easy to learn packages of True Art, and thus open the door to the whole of The True Art.

Al Case has analyzed martial arts for 4O+ years. He has written hundreds of articles for the magazines and had his own column in Inside Karate. He is the originator of matrixing Technology. He offers a free ebook on Matrixing at Monster Martial Arts.

There is a tremendous amount of fascination in the martial arts for this thing called Matrixing. It is pretty obvious that Matrixing is going to be the next significant breakthrough in the martial arts. It is pretty obvious that Matrixing is going to cover the globe and provide transformation in the martial arts.

To explain why this eventuality is going to occur, let me say a couple of things. The first is that Matrixing does not make any martial art less than it is, it makes every single art it touches into a grand and glorious success. The second is that the purpose of matrixing is to align data in the martial arts program, to make all martial arts logical and easier to learn.

Now the stated purpose of matrixing is to analyze and handle force and direction. To understand this is to understand that every object in the universe has a direction in which it is traveling. And, collision is the point at which trajectories intersect.

Thus, the point of matrixing is to control the paths of objects so that collision is avoided, or at least for one instead of against one. In the martial arts it is easy to see how this could be the heart of the matter. In fact, a little matrixing and you understand it is the underlying principle of martial arts, and life itself.

Joe Blow throws a fist at you, or a foot or a body or an elbow or a spear or whatever. You analyze the trajectory of the weapon accurately, and you can handle it. If you do not analyze the trajectory accurately, poor you.

How can you be sure that you have selected the correct trajectory? By knowing every single potential path that could be utilized. Only if you have analyzed the trajectory against all the potential trajectories can you be sure that you have analyzed the correct trajectory to handle.

So matrixing is a method by which you can analyze all potentials of motion, and thus select the correct one to handle. And, by matrixing, you can analyze all of your potential responses, everything you could possibly do and be assured that the one you choose is the best one. And, here is the real key, matrixing enables to discover trajectories that you did not even know were there!

That’s right, to discover the things that you don’t know, and this makes you the ultimate pioneer, the ultimate explorer. With matrixing you have the key to discover all the hidden mysteries of the martial arts, no matter if you are studying shotokan or Tracy kenpo or that esoteric form of Wudan. Beginners in Goju ryu will learn faster, wudan pa kua chang students will uncover the ancient mysteries, and even the bash and trash experts of the ground and pound arts in mixed martial arts and ultimate fighting championships will find themselves enlightened and uplifted.

Al Case has analyzed martial arts 4O+ years, including several systems of Kenpo, Karate, Kung Fu, Pa Kua, Tai Chi, and more. He is a writer for the magazines with hundreds of articles and a column, and he is the originator of Matrixing and Neutonics. You can sample Matrixing Technology by getting his free ebook at Monster Martial Arts.

In the martial arts, I don’t care if it is tae kwon do, fut ga, Shotokei, or whatever, there are three key ingredients. These three essentials are what makes an art an art, and they are why people become obsessed with the arts. Oddly, one of the ingredients is virtually unknown.

One of the ingredients has to do with pure, raw strength. Muscle mags are filled with advice on how to be strong, and everybody obsesses on strength. Oddly, strength is the least important of the three essential techniques I am speaking of.

Another ingredient is technique, and this is the most important of the three essentials. Technique is measured by how little effort you need to make a move work. If you need a lot of strength, then your technique is not very good.

The second most important essential to good martial arts, and the one most people are missing, deals with speed. Interestingly, at least in the beginning, speed is absolutely vital to make a technique work. Yet strength is what everybody obsesses about.

Yes, people try to get fast, a little bit, but it is an individual effort, and usually put aside in the pursuit of strength. People believe that strength is going to make them faster, you see. Well, it will, but there are flexibility drawbacks, and the speed gained is not always enough.

Speed must be developed in a fashion which tailors it to the technique. As knowledge of technique rises, so should the escalation of speed. In my over 40 years of martial arts I have found only one technique which develops speed in the proper manner.

The Speed Drill is based on a simple slap and grab motion of the hands. It makes entering all techniques as easy as swatting a fly. And every technique can be immaculately set up using this slap and grab drill.

So practice the strength of weight lifting, and build the technique of tai chi chuan. Work the iron arms of kung fu and focus your concentration into a forever line with hsing i. But if you want sheer, raw, powerful speed…The Speed Drill is the tool for you.

Al Case has taught martial arts for 40+ years. A writer for the magazines, he is the originator of Matrixing Technology and Neutronics. You can learn more about The Speed Drill here, or you can head on over to the main site and pick up his free ebook on Matrixing.