What is Martial Potential?

 

As fate allowed in 1974 I began my study of Isshinryu, and along the way other arts. Okinawan, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, Burmese.

 

I admit I know little, but tried my best to retain much that I saw and felt.

 

Once from a novel I got the idea not to shake hands, for doing so say you don’t have a weapon in your hands. I took that to heart and learned that when someone goes to shake your hand, they open a space so you can just tap their palm and continue inward to strike them with your fist. 

I have congratulated hundreds on their promotions and then continued to let them have it, just a tap of course. But I worked it and learned that others really don’t want to shake my hand. Of course they never again shook my hand again, there is a price.

 

 

One thing is the emphasis on breath, as I continued my studies into Tai Chi and my Isshinryu to realize that correct breathing is a vast force enhance to make everything work.

 

How you conduct yourself in the smallest details is also very important. Correct alignment in everything is another force enhancer to increase the power you have available. The same principle also shows you mistakes others are making showing where to attack. Two sides of the same coin.

 

 

I could go on and on, Of course reading this exists and training to the level to use it is an entirely different matter.

 

 

Training in everything is very time consuming, Most martial arts training is seen as a short term thing, covering several years (2-6 depending). But in martial studies one is never finished either.

 

 

Then there were time I participated in the incredible.

 

 

One day I was assisting an Indonesian instructor to prepare for a demonstration. I was 10 years into my own training. As we practiced one time I threw him to the floor and then prepared to stomp him, he immediately moved his hand up, striking me with a single finger, and I immediately learned how to fly. Totally unexpected, and the point he struck never a thought of it being used. I won’t divulge where of course, but I became a true believer.

 

 

At another clinic he was giving in 1984 his group were all warming up, he wanted to make a point to his Senior Student. So he asked me to step in and attack. That was a pretty standard beginning practice, for working on anything someone has to begin somewhere. I just thought I would be wasted (for he was a level beyond me). However nothing I had ever experienced prepared me for his response.

 

 

So I stepped in to strike him. Instead of zapping me, he danced past me then next thing I knew he was standing on my shoulders (I had no idea how he got up there). Then he lightly leaped off me, threw a light side kick towards my face, and lightly landed on the floor with a grin. I had no idea he could do that nor how he did it. I turned and asked all his black belts what he had done. All of them never expected that and they stammered they had no idea.

  

Now one never asked an instructor how they did it, it was up to them to show what to do.

For the next 5 years now living in NH I tried to work it out and came up with 2 different ways he could do it. Then when giving a clinic for my students I saw what he did. Of course He was using an entirely different way from what I figured.  It was a version of an aikido principle adjusted as I was a more stable platform. Afterward he admitted what he had done.

 

 

Now because of my size it was not a possible technique for me. And I wasn’t looking to do it, I would just do something else. But the understanding, priceless.

 

 

Back in 1980 I learnt those drills his father taught him when he was 4.  20 years later I was giving a clinic at a Goju school and decided to show a very simple one, the fourth one. I ended up dropping over 40 black belts to the floor one after another, controlled drops, no one was injured.

 

 

Of course I have seen many other things from other instructors I have trained with.

 

 

The way Ernest Rothrock could walk through an attack, using no hands, and dropping the opponent (that one was something  I could learn).

 

 

So many things from Ernest among them Ghost Techniques, a way to disappear before someone attacking you and then being behind them before they realize it. 

Ten years later I had some new guys join the club, they insisted I could not to that to them, I invited them to attack me, When they completed their attack, they discovered I was standing 20 feet behind them. And I taught a simple variation each Halloween to the kids I taught.

 

So what exactly is human potential, with the right breathing, with the right movement, doing anything unexpected.

 

 

Anything goes.

 

 

And as I still breathe I still have not met the real thing.

 

 

No Chi or Ki involved. None of the instructors I trained with taught Chi of Ki as part of their studies. Even my tai chi instructor never used the term; everything was expressed in physical terms.

 

And nothing mystical concerning any of the instructors I trained with.

 

Of course I don’t know everything, or anything close to that.

 

What each of them used or explained were based on solid training, just training often not given in many arts. With proper training I could do most of them, of course there were those techniques beyond my own physical capabilities.