Several items are necessary to a punch for it to be effective. Focus must be to a precise spot in space. It must have no energy in it.
That is exactly what I said, a punch must be empty. You probably know that the word Karate means 'Empty Hands.' People have assumed that you won't be using weapons, but they are wrong. What it really means is that the hand has no energy, and thus no mass, and is actually empty in the sense of physics.
It is an interesting sensation to strike with no mass. Taken to its highest and purest altitude, it means that you do not feel the strike, and this is possible. This would mean that you are not really inside the body, and you are throwing the body like a big freakin' ghost would throw a chair.
On other levels it means that you don't experience the feeling of weight. Why can a child run under a table with no effort, when if you bent your legs and did the same thing it would take tremendous effort? Because the child hasn't realized the concept of weight, yet.
So how do you achieve this sensation of no weight? You achieve it through training the mind. You train the mind by training the body, and you train the body by making it do forms.
People who speak slightingly of forms haven't done them sufficient to see what happens at the end. When you master a form you become lightly removed from your body, and you gain, and lose, different perceptions when it comes to motion. It is very interesting to do a form and feel the whistling sensation of being an object thrown through space.
The good news is that this is a pleasant sensation, and yet, when done in a strike, it results in the most unimaginable damage to an opponent you...never imagined. Simply, he doesn't have a defense for something that is apart from the body, and the body of the universe, and seems to slip between time and perception. This, incidentally, is the feeling of Mushin no shin, mind of no mind.
Your body is still going to weigh the same, and then some, when colliding with an opponent, when you practice doing your art with no weight. Just because you don't consider yourself to have weight doesn't mean that the weight isn't there. Actually, it is even more there, because when you move weightless, and think weightless, you move faster, and your opponent will anticipate accordingly.
That is exactly what I said, a punch must be empty. You probably know that the word Karate means 'Empty Hands.' People have assumed that you won't be using weapons, but they are wrong. What it really means is that the hand has no energy, and thus no mass, and is actually empty in the sense of physics.
It is an interesting sensation to strike with no mass. Taken to its highest and purest altitude, it means that you do not feel the strike, and this is possible. This would mean that you are not really inside the body, and you are throwing the body like a big freakin' ghost would throw a chair.
On other levels it means that you don't experience the feeling of weight. Why can a child run under a table with no effort, when if you bent your legs and did the same thing it would take tremendous effort? Because the child hasn't realized the concept of weight, yet.
So how do you achieve this sensation of no weight? You achieve it through training the mind. You train the mind by training the body, and you train the body by making it do forms.
People who speak slightingly of forms haven't done them sufficient to see what happens at the end. When you master a form you become lightly removed from your body, and you gain, and lose, different perceptions when it comes to motion. It is very interesting to do a form and feel the whistling sensation of being an object thrown through space.
The good news is that this is a pleasant sensation, and yet, when done in a strike, it results in the most unimaginable damage to an opponent you...never imagined. Simply, he doesn't have a defense for something that is apart from the body, and the body of the universe, and seems to slip between time and perception. This, incidentally, is the feeling of Mushin no shin, mind of no mind.
Your body is still going to weigh the same, and then some, when colliding with an opponent, when you practice doing your art with no weight. Just because you don't consider yourself to have weight doesn't mean that the weight isn't there. Actually, it is even more there, because when you move weightless, and think weightless, you move faster, and your opponent will anticipate accordingly.
About the Author:
Al Case has learned the martial arts for forty years. You can learn The Perfect Punch at Monster Martial Arts.
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