Al Case

Karate Masters of Old, What They Did, and How You Can Become One!



Posted: Tuesday, December 01, 2009

by Al Case
http://www.alcasebooks.com/

Whap, bam and pow! We watch TV and the movies, and we see kung fu flips in the Matrix and sword standing and eye gouging in Kill Bill and we know we have seen the real masters! Wake up, dude, that's a movie, and what the real masters do is a lot different than what you see on TV! Gichin Funakoshi is considered a pivotal karate master. He brought karate to Japan, and thence to the world. If that isn't considered feat enough, why don't you go stand on a rooftop during a hurricane and hold a sheet of plywood? That's right, to perfect his stance, he battled the elements, and word has it he never sailed off to Oz. And, if you want somebody a little more ancient, try Bushi Matsumuri, who made a bull run away just by glaring at the bull. The trick was that he went to the bull every night and glared at him, and stuck a pin in the bulls nose.

Of course you may think intelligence is cheating when it comes to becoming a karate master, and that to figure out how to beat a bull without bashing him is much of a big thing. So try something a little more simple, try pinching the beams of a ceiling with your gnarly, little fingers, not hooking the fingers over the beams, but just pinching them, and hand walking across the rafters. This is something that the karate masters in ancient Okinawa were doing just for grins and laughs! One of the toughest of the old karate masters was Mas Oyama. Mas was famous for chopping the horns off of charging bulls, and he ended up killing three of the poor beasts. Now, cruelty to animals is not what we are about, and this was a while ago, but think about the muscle, the intelligence, the brute strength, and the sheer artism required to kill a bull with your bare hands. It's not something I would try if I were you. Okay, you've heard my spiel on the old legends, so let me give you a simple trick to do, and you can start becoming a karate master all on your own. Learn one of the forms of Karate, maybe Bassai, or something like it, or maybe you might want to start off with a simpler form like Pinan One.

Now, let the garden hose run for an hour on that bare patch of ground behind your house. Now, the ground is nice and gooey, yucky and pukey. So it is time to do your form, heh heh. Whap, bam and pow! Your fanny flies over your face and you look like a plant hiding in the mud. Up on your feet you lazy wanna be karate master! Did you think the legends of old would whine just because they got a little muddy?

Al Case has studied Karate, and arnis and a lot of other arts, for 40 years. A writer for the mags since 1981, he is the originator of Matrix Martial Arts. You can find out about his training methods, and even get a free ebook at Monster Martial Arts !
Al Case loves the martial arts and writing. He is a good enough natured fellow, unless you start talking about the government (grrr). He has a 115 pound chocolate lab that sits on him, and his website is AlCaseBooks.com.

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