Karate Masters, The Things They Did, and How You Can Become One!
[I:http://mymartialartsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/AlCase13.jpg]Whap, bam and ka-zowie! We watch the silver screen, and we see kung fu flips in the Matrix movies and sword standing and eye gouging in Kill Bill and we know we have seen the real masters! Wake up, 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 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, 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!
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 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 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 shaolin 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!
Related posts
Tagged with: aikido master • break boards • break bricks • karate classes • karate instruction • karate master • karate online • kung fu master • martial arts • martial arts master • martial arts online • ninjitsu master • online instruction • self defense
Filed under: Martial Arts
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Leave a Reply