How to Learn Martial Arts

[Heretic]

Martial Arts are simply an art form. Some are for sports while others are life and death. You may think you cannot know them but by spending many hours in a school, or intense training but this is not true in my eyes. A novice who has trained very well in one or two key moves may out-do someone who has practiced years at many moves.

This is my view of the arts. It isn’t the right or only way as I don’t think there are limits at all, and I also firmly believe that the martial concepts will just continue to evolve. Therefore I will not say that one art is better than another because I think that is bunk. It is the person that performs the art and not the art itself, and people don’t have such limits. I do have personal opinions on what is better of course and that is why I think it is fun to discuss because I learn from it still.

I will say that my preference is the older arts because I feel most of the western arts and even some of the eastern even miss out on the finer aspects that I appreciate more. My contention is that there are many systems and they all seem different but they are not. They are styles developed off a core set of ideologies, and in older times certain families saw these core ideologies and developed their own system based off them.

Even you or I can create our own art from these core principles.

Core Ideologies:

Yin and Yang, Breathing, Stance, Palms, Boxing, Chin Na, Ukemi, Mind

Yin and Yang – this is a very deep subject and the basis of religion so I will not go too deep into it. In regards to the arts yin is the soft side and when used in fighting it can be associated with diverting energy or just moving out of the way. Gravity is a good example of yin as it is a calm force that is ever present in a natural state. If someone throws their fist at you and you grab the arm and pull them in the very direction they are punching, it sends them flying…this is yin, you are not fighting the gravity but add to their own gravity and they cant contain it and they go off balance. Yang on the other hand is like lightning, it moves from the ground up against gravity, in other words it the guys punch is a yang style of fighting. It is the application of force to oppose and not to compliment.

Hard and soft arts are basically defined by how much yin or yang is applied in the art. All arts have some of both, but most predominate towards one or the other. The easiest way you can determine if it is hard or soft is to look at the stances. Hard styles have static stances most of the time while soft arts are more relaxed and fluid. Static stances tend to generate a lot of internal chi as a shield to blows while the relaxed ones allow for the externalization of chi as a weapon. It is a subtle difference though as being relaxed is common, it is the movements from the stance that allows you to tell. The use of tight tense muscles combined with force is hard style.

Breathing – this one is pretty basic as there is very few differences in how to breath in the arts. When I first started to learn about breathing it was a shock because I found out I had been breathing wrong my whole life, and it is a very difficult thing to correct because we do it without thought or focus. We tend to hold our breath when we exert ourselves, even when we sit down, bring a fork to our mouth, walk, and worse when we work out. The arts teach you to breath out when you exert force. The breath is very connected to the chi and it is very difficult to externalize chi unless you push a lot of air out of the body, the better you get, the less air you have to expel. This is one of the reasons you are taught to yell when striking in the arts.

Stance – this is the dominating place power comes from. A good stance is immobile to force that is applied to the line the stance is on, in other words you can be in a stance that can’t be broken, but if one were to push you from another angle you are fully vulnerable to being knocked down. Every art and sport uses it to define the strength it takes to withstand the force of another. You can even use stances as an attack called a “check” by moving into someone stance and then tighten yours up and they go flying.

Most arts have stance exercises and thee are unlimited stances. There are stances that are even applied when you are on the ground. Some stances are so difficult you have to train the body for years before you can even find strength to withstand force while in it such as one legged stances. Kicks are a bad idea unless you have stance.

One of the primary methods of advancing a stance from hard to soft is called sinking, which also radically strengthens a hard stance. Imagine approaching a bathroom scale and using just one foot to try and exert pressure on the scale to see how much weight you can apply. When you put both feet on the scale and push down into the ground with both your feet, and the scale measures a higher weight, you are sinking.

By being able to do it consistently a 100 pound person can get on a scale and sink then hold it, and the scale will measure 110 pounds consistently (for instance). Someone good at sinking can stand in a normal posture with no stance, then sink and he is considerably harder to push over from any direction.

Palms – this is basically the posture the upper body is in while in a stance, striking or even in meditation. Some people confuse palm with the position of the hands, and yes that is part of it but the whole upper body is the palm. Iron palm and other hand training techniques are not palms although they contain palms. For instance in bagua there are 8 palms, each representing a certain posture. Each posture can be used in a yin or yang fashion and you can even use both, which is called the tai chi palm because it contains both yin and yang. Notice that Tai Chi Chuan is almost always using yin with one hand and yang with the other because this is the core of the system.

Boxing – also called the pugilistic arts, and it looks as if it is simply striking with the hands all the various ways you can imagine. It is more than that because it is the core of most of the holistic practices in the arts. Acupuncture, acupressure, and Dim Mak are good examples of what is employed via the pugilistic art. You can use an accupoint for hurting as well as healing. The pugilistic art is about the physics of a punch as well as the location and the desired effect. IMHO this is the most deadly part of the core principles as the rest are supportive. Hurting with accupoints is a yang practice while healing with them is a yin application. Professional boxing is mean, and it uses these principles in a controlled setting. Most people think martial arts and boxing are separate, but I disagree.
Kicking is also part of the pugilistic arts in application. Fa Jin is a manner of boxing that could easily become its own core principle were it not for the fact that it is simply a style of boxing.

Chin Na – this is simply grappling, locking, and throwing. There is a chin na forms for every part of the body. Finger, wrist, forearm, elbow, shoulder, neck, head, back, waist, leg, feet, and some that involve the whole body. Each of these categories has many many different applications in chin na. Squeezes are also a part of chin na and are really mean, and the accupoints are used almost always. Grab a hold of your love handles and give it a good squeeze and you will see what I mean. It’s really painful.

Ukemi – the art of falling down and getting up. Good for any art, necessary in some. Drunken boxing and sage monkey kung fu are really good examples of Ukemi as a combat art. Aikido, Ju-Jitsu, and judo (and others) teach it because it is necessary to perform the art safely.

Mind – anything philosophical that is a basis for an art or enhances an art is a mind art. Most people wouldn’t think there is mind kung fu, but Jeet Kune Do in my mind is more a philosophy than a separate art itself. Yet is it wicked and it changes an art once applied. Comba-Tai is another mind art which concentrates on strength, timing, agility, and resourcefulness (STAR) which can be applied to an art to change it as well. But of all the mind arts I think Satki is the coolest because it is a system of reading or transmitting intent. The body advertises a strike by the first shift of weight or lifting of an arm. Satki is more like telepathy which allows you to see beyond the body and predict an attack based on the intent of the attacker. Now I know it sounds weird but I a master of Satki can make you back up or away or even attempt to block a strike even though he makes no physical move to do so. Qigong, meditation, chi cultivation and manipulation are all parts of mind kung fu as well.

These are the core principles that I see making up the martial art world. If you see that I forgot one please post and correct me. If you know of some other core you yourself have experienced please please post it because I want to know it too.

There is an unseen world to the martial arts world called the Holistic arts. I am sure you can spot them in these core principles, if not ask away and I can help if I am able.

I am a Peace Seeker and in no way someone who goes out to look for a fight. Fighting is nothing less than a last resort because life is precious. I will be happy to answer questions, offer advice, and argue a point. If the demand is there I can lay out a small, medium, and high end goal plan on how to gain a foothold on any of these core principles barring the ones that can take a lifetime. Please take not that some of the techniques require supervision by someone who has already mastered them to learn them safely, but this is a more rare than not.