Whap, bam and yippee! We eye the big screen, and we see kung fu flips all over the place in the Matrix movies and we watch pai mai sword standing and grown up girls eye gouging in Kill Bill and we know we have seen the real masters! Smell the coffee, dude, that's a a bunch of actors, and what the real masters have done would put those cinema heroes to shame.
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 make his stance totally immovable in every way, he battled the very elements, and word has it he never sailed off to Oz. And, if you want one of the older masters, try Sokon Matsumuri, an Imperial bodyguard of old Okinawa, who made a bull run away just by giving the bull a serious stare. The trick was that he went out to the bullpen during the dark hours and jabbed a pin smack in the middle of that old bulls nose!
Of course you may think intelligence is cheating, and that to figure out how to beat a bull without bashing him is not much of a deal. So try something simple, try grabbing the beams of a ceiling, not hooking the fingers over the beams, but just grabbing them with your gnarly, old fingers, and hand walking across the ceiling. This is something that the karateka in old Okinawa were doing just for kicks and grins!
My favorite old karate master is Mas Oyama. Mas had this little trick of chopping the horns off bulls, and he ended up killing three of the poor brutes. Now, that was a while ago, and we certainly don't want to talk about killing poor animals, but the muscle, the intelligence, the brute strength, and the sheer artism required to kill a bull with your bare hands! I wouldn't try it if I were you.
Okay, you've heard enough of the tales, so let me give you a simple trick to do, and you can start being your own legend making master of Karate. Learn a karate form, something like Bassai would be great, but you might want to start off with a simpler form like Pinan One. Now, take the garden hose and run it for an hour on that bare patch of earth in the backyard.
Now, the ground is soft and gooey, yucky and messy. So it is time to do that karate form, heh heh. Whap, bam and kazowie!
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? - 31491
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 make his stance totally immovable in every way, he battled the very elements, and word has it he never sailed off to Oz. And, if you want one of the older masters, try Sokon Matsumuri, an Imperial bodyguard of old Okinawa, who made a bull run away just by giving the bull a serious stare. The trick was that he went out to the bullpen during the dark hours and jabbed a pin smack in the middle of that old bulls nose!
Of course you may think intelligence is cheating, and that to figure out how to beat a bull without bashing him is not much of a deal. So try something simple, try grabbing the beams of a ceiling, not hooking the fingers over the beams, but just grabbing them with your gnarly, old fingers, and hand walking across the ceiling. This is something that the karateka in old Okinawa were doing just for kicks and grins!
My favorite old karate master is Mas Oyama. Mas had this little trick of chopping the horns off bulls, and he ended up killing three of the poor brutes. Now, that was a while ago, and we certainly don't want to talk about killing poor animals, but the muscle, the intelligence, the brute strength, and the sheer artism required to kill a bull with your bare hands! I wouldn't try it if I were you.
Okay, you've heard enough of the tales, so let me give you a simple trick to do, and you can start being your own legend making master of Karate. Learn a karate form, something like Bassai would be great, but you might want to start off with a simpler form like Pinan One. Now, take the garden hose and run it for an hour on that bare patch of earth in the backyard.
Now, the ground is soft and gooey, yucky and messy. So it is time to do that karate form, heh heh. Whap, bam and kazowie!
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? - 31491
About the Author:
Al Case has studied Karate, and arnis 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!
