Karate Masters, The Things They Did, and How You Can Become One!

December 3rd, 2009 Posted in Fitness

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 to be one of the more important karate masters. He taught karate to Japan, and then to the whole world. If that isn’t considered feat enough to be considered a master, why don’t you go stand on a rooftop during a hurricane and hold a 3 by 6 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 not think the intelligence to figure out how to best a bull without bashing him is not much of a deal. So try something that doesn’t take much intelligence, like grabbing the beams of a ceiling, not hooking the fingers over, but just grabbing them, and hand walking across the ceiling. This is something that people were doing in old Okinawa just for kicks!

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 read my take on the old legends, so let me give you a simple trick to do, and you can start becoming a karate master of legend all on your own. Learn one of the forms taught in Karate, maybe Bassai, or maybe you might want to start off with a simpler form like Heian One. Now, turn the garden hose on that bare patch of ground behind your house for an hour.

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 feet go over your butt and your face plants in the mud. Up on your feet you lazy good for nothing! Did you think the Karate masters of the legends would whine just because they got a little mud on their face?

Al Case has studied Karate, and kenpo and a lot of other arts, for 40 years. A writer for the mags since’81, 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!

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