My rant on the 5 big weight loss myths and the fitness industry as a whole.

By Matthew Schafer, CPT, CFN
Copyright 2012, All Rights Reserved

The other day I had to listen to someone give a lecture on weight loss and fitness, and while I was able to hold my tongue it was only with great effort. This person tried to come across as an expert but merely regurgitated the typical information you find in a fitness magazine or hear people talk about in gyms, and the problem is most of that information is either only partially true or just plain wrong.

One of the problems with a lot of the common information that’s regurgitated is that some of it is true, but only true in certain situations, or if you only use certain definitions. There are a lot of things that are only true if you use a very narrow look at research findings, and it gets even worse when you consider that most of the common fitness knowledge out there comes not from real scientists doing real unbiased research, but rather from companies hired by the food and fitness industry to conduct “scientific” studies meant solely to provide evidence that their products work as advertised.

One of the incredibly misleading things these research companies do when conducting a fat loss or muscle building study is to only use healthy people between the ages of 18 and 25. What people don’t realize is that people in these age ranges are so hopped up on human growth hormone and other natural growth mechanisms that nearly any fitness program will produce results. The "scientists" make these young people take whatever muscle building or weight loss product they are testing and then put them on a reduced calorie diet and make them go and work out a couple days a week, usually with a personal trainer, and guess what…all of the 20 year olds who ate less and exercised lost fat and gained muscle…so the new product must work! This is incredibly misleading to the general public but it is these kinds of tests that that are paid to engineer a specific outcome that produces most of the fitness and weight loss knowledge the “experts” are spouting today.

One of my favorite nutrition experts is name Brad Pilon. He worked as a research and development manager for one of the largest supplement companies in the world and ended up leaving in disgust over the amount of corruption in the industry. Over and over he saw supplement companies coming out with new products and then buying test results from labs to prove that the new product worked. Being an industry insider with the education and experience to understand the actual scientific studies being done, he has devoted his life to help people understand the garbage spewed out by the fitness industry. A good deal of the information that follows comes from reading his books (as well as the education I received in becoming a Certified Personal Trainer, CPT, and Certified Fitness Nutritionist, CFN) and then double checking his sources which he happily gives and encourages you to check.

Here are five of the most common myths that everybody is regurgitating and the actual scientific truth behind them. It should be noted that the information I give here is assuming you are perfectly healthy. There are some illnesses that cause the various systems in your body to act abnormally and either speed up or slow down your metabolism.

“Myth #1: If you don’t eat regularly you go into starvation mode and your body eats itself, or it stores each and everything you eat because it thinks food is no longer available.”

Truth: There is a degree of truth to this, but here is whole truth as it applies to losing weight...your body is not stupid or suicidal, if you have body fat to burn your body will burn it before it starts to consume lean tissue. Also, this myth takes a very short sighted look at how your body works. When you look at weight loss you shouldn't measure it day to day, but rather, at a minimum, week to week.

Your body weight fluctuates day to day with your level of hydration so it is very hard to draw reliable conclusions about weight loss on a daily basis. You might step on the scale in the morning and see that you gained two pounds when in reality you lost one pound of fat but drank an abnormally large amount of water the previous day or consumed a very large amount of sodium. Remember, the typical bottle of water is a pint, and “a pint is a pound the world around.” If you weigh yourself and then drink a standard bottle of water and step back on the scale you will have gained one pound but not gotten any fatter.

If you look at results week to week you have enough data to actually draw a conclusion. Let's say for the sake of argument that on Monday your body does freak out and end up storing more of what you eat as fat than what it normally would. When your body gets done freaking out things will go back to normal and everything will even out. So even it it does freak out on Monday, by Friday or Saturday it will have evened out. So if you do go through periods where you don’t consume as much you MIGHT store more of the little amount you do eat, but if that does happen it will all even out over time, AND your body will still break down and consume body fat if it needs to. “Starvation mode”, as it is commonly talked about in the fitness industry, is a myth.

The only time you will go into actual starvation mode is if you are completely out of excess body fat. If you go up to a starving person in Africa and give him a cheeseburger, because he is actually starving, his body will store everything it can and he will only defecate a small portion of it. It is important to understand that, in a healthy person, PROLONGED FASTING LEADING TO KETOSIS is what happens when a person doesn’t have an ample supply of calories in the bloodstream, muscle cells, or liver to meet its needs and starts breaking down stored body fat for energy, STARVING it what happens AFTER you run out of excess body fat and your body is forced to start breaking down lean tissue for energy to survive.

The only other way your body will store an abnormally high amount of something is if you give it something it hasn’t had in a long time. For example, a lot of people who did the Atkins’s diet and restricted carbohydrates binged on carbohydrates when they stopped the program. Since their bodies hadn’t had carbohydrates in a long time when their bodies detected them it stockpiled them and this led to heart attacks in some cases.

The typical American has enough body fat to feed their body for 4 to 5 days. This means that if the typical American stopped eating on Monday their body would have enough fat stored to feed it until at least Thursday or Friday. On Thursday or Friday when their excess fat stores are depleted, only then does the body go into “starvation mode” and consume lean tissue.

If you have more body fat than the typical American then you can last even longer. A morbidly obese person weighing over 300 lbs. can go several months surviving off of body fat until it is all depleted and the person needs to consume lean tissue.

This is another problem with studies regarding fasting. If a lab is doing a study on the effects of fasting they choose typical fairly healthy subjects who are fairly skinny. These skinny people only have enough body fat to last them a few days before they start to starve, and so the conclusion is made that fasting is bad for you after a very short period of time. The truth for a healthy person is that fasting can be very beneficial, and for a healthy person fasting, especially intermittent fasting, can be a very effective way to lose excess body fat.

Myth #2: “If you’re dieting you need to focus on eating protein because protein builds muscle and burns fat.”

Truth: Protein, carbohydrates, and fat are the three primary macro-nutrients (source of calories) and they don’t cancel each other out like a game of rock, paper, scissors. Consuming protein CAN support fat loss in three ways. The first way is that protein CAN support muscle growth (if the necessary calories are there and if muscle growth is stimulated through work or damage) and since muscle cells require more calories than fat cells to survive the more muscle you have the more calories you burn overall. However, it should be noted that a pound of muscle requires between 6 to 13 calories a day to stay alive (based on current findings) so even if you put on an extra 20 pounds of muscle you only up your daily caloric need by between 120 and 260 calories a day, which is a fairly small amount.

The second benefit protein CAN offer fat loss is by extending digestion time. Fats and carbohydrates normally exit the stomach in under an hour once consumed, but by eating protein with the fat and carbohydrates you can offer the body something more time consuming to break down and it will be 3 to 4 hours until the last of that meal leaves the stomach. Where this CAN be of benefit is that by eating protein you can get your stomach to release food to your body over a longer period of time and this can keep your blood sugar from spiking and help it stay more level. More on this in Myth 3.

The third way is that protein is harder for your body to break down so it requires you to burn more energy to process it. I’ve heard claims that due to the increased amount of energy required to digest protein eating a large protein filled breakfast was the same as jogging 3 to 4 miles in terms of energy expenditure, but the problem with this is that while it does take more energy to process protein it doesn’t necessarily equate to fat loss. What determines fat loss is how many calories you consume in a 24 hour period or a one week period vs. your total expenditure. Eating more protein can increase your TEF (explained in myth 3) and, when combined with the amounts of your BMR and AI (also explained in myth 3) can lead to an increase in fat loss, but it not the actual protein itself that is responsible for the burning of any extra fat that could possibly result.

One place where this myth comes from is a misguided notion of what protein is and does, and also there have been studies done that you could read as supporting this myth. Studies have looked at the weight loss of people who ate higher and lesser amounts of protein in their diet and most have found that the more protein people eat the more fat they tend to lose. The problem is that if you look at the studies closely you’ll see that those eating more protein filled up on protein rich food and as a result they ate far less carbohydrates and fat and consumed less calories total. It is the decrease in the consumption of carbohydrates, fat, and calories in general that lead to the weight loss.

The last thing I’ll say about this is that there is nothing wrong with eating a high protein diet while trying to lose weight and there is evidence to suggest it may be a good idea. Did the increased protein consumption in the studies mentioned above make the participants feel fuller faster and make them feel fuller longer? Yes it did. Is there evidence to suggest that eating more protein while trying to lose fat is a good idea? Yes, provided you eat less carbohydrates and fat leading to you consuming fewer calories than you need each day.

So protein CAN have an effect that supports your efforts to eat less, and protein CAN have an effect that supports your overall weight loss goals. Protein, however, in and of itself does not build muscle nor burn fat.

Myth #3: “To lose weight you need to eat 4 small meals a day,” or “5 small meals a day,” or “6 small meals a day,” or “7 small meals,” or “eat every 3 to 4 hours all day long.” Or, “Eating frequently stokes the furnace and revs up your metabolism so you need to eat all day long.” Or, “If you don’t eat every 3 to 4 hours you’ll go into starvation mode and Satan will come up from the depths of hell and claim your soul in his firey grip.”

Truth: Ok, I was a bit dramatic on the last one but I’m just trying to match the adamancy in which these notions are held as gospel by the fitness and weight loss industry. When people find out that I only eat one or two meals a day and I’m a firm believer in intermittent fasting people look at me like they’re trying to figure out how I’m still alive. This is a good example of the fact that if you repeat something enough times people will start to regard it as true..

We’ve already talked about the nonsense of “starvation mode” so let’s talk about the necessity of eating multiple small meals all day long.

First it should be mentioned that the studies that tested this method for weight loss defined a “meal” as anything consumed, liquid or solid, that was over 45 calories. So the studies that looked at this method of numerous small meals didn’t have people stop and eat a traditional meal 5 or 6 times a day. They would eat three traditional meals a day and have two or three meals that might have consisted of a small handful of nuts or even a low calorie beverage. That being said let’s look at the nuts and bolts of this theory.

If you eat a “meal” consisting of at least one exchange (for the purpose of this paper lets say that exchange means “serving”) of each protein, carbohydrates, and fat it will take 3 to 4 hours to leave your stomach, and if you repeat this every 3 to 4 hours your body will be digesting food all day long, or at least during the waking hours of the day. By doing this you will achieve two benefits; firstly by having the food leave your stomach slowly you MIGHT prevent a spike in insulin levels and since insulin is a hormone that tells your body to store energy, by not having a spike you will have less of a signal to store the food you just ate. Lower insulin levels means less of the food you just ate will be stored as fat and it will either be burned for energy or passed through you and end up in the toilet.

The second benefit is that by doling out food slowly you will keep your blood sugar fairly level all day. If your blood sugar goes above 120 milligrams per deciliter you will have an insulin surge and if your blood sugar goes below 80 milligrams per deciliter you will feel hungry. So the thought is that by keeping your blood sugar between 80 to 120 milligrams per deciliter you will store less of what you eat and feel less hungry.

It sounds good, but is it good? We’ll it isn’t bad.

If you like eating this way then you should absolutely continue, but it just isn’t necessary. The actual benefits of this type of diet are more behavioral than physiological. Many people find that by focusing on set pre-planned meals they think about eating less and find that they can stick to a diet better. People tend to find that since they are eating several times a day they are less hungry, but is that because their blood sugar is kept level or is because they’re constantly eating? Is it both?

There is nothing wrong with this but it just isn’t the weight loss law the “experts” claim that it is, nor does it necessarily have the benefits they claim it does.

We already know that the “experts” are wrong when they claim that if you don’t eat several small meals a day you’ll go into “starvation mode” and the world will end, but they also claim that eating this way boosts your metabolism. They say that your metabolism is like a furnace and you need to keep feeding the furnace to keep your metabolism going and burn calories. Is this true? Yes and no (but, in context, mostly no).

There is no end of things that are supposed to “boost your metabolism” so let’s look at your metabolism. Metabolism is the process where your body builds things and tears things down to keep you alive. How the term is used in the fitness industry is to mean the rate at which you burn calories. This is a very narrow definition of metabolism but it is the one that we will use.

In using this definition, there are three things that regulate how many calories you burn a day (again, assuming you are healthy). Those things are your basal metabolic rate (BMR), your activity index (AI), and the thermogenic effect of food (TEF). What this all means is that your body spends energy on only three things: 1.) running the bodily functions that keep you alive, 2.) making you move, and 3.) digesting food and processing energy.

Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is how many calories it takes to do nothing more than run your body and keep you alive for 24 hours. If you were in a coma it is how many calories you’d burn in a day. It is not taking into account anything other than keeping you alive.

Your activity index (AI) is all the movements you make in a day. It is all the movements an average person makes just living, such as yawning and walking, plus any extra exercise like deliberate running, playing sports, or going to the gym.

The thermogenic effect of food (TEF) is the energy it takes to digest and process everything you eat, and we’ve already talked about this a little when we discussed protein.

Those three elements make up your metabolism and determine how many calories you burn in a day. Most of the things that are supposed to boost your metabolism (like pills) merely make your heart beat faster and increase your AI. Eating more protein will slightly increase your TEF.

So where in this math does eating 6 meals a day speed anything up? Taking a set amount of food and consuming it in 6 meals versus just 3 doesn’t affect your BMR, and since it is the exact same amount of food it doesn’t really affect your AI or TEF either.

The way they get away with saying that eating increases metabolism is because “truth-in-weight-loss police” don’t exist, and because in a very small way it does. If you eat something your body has to digest it and it does take energy so you are metabolizing something and for those minutes your net energy expenditure does increase, but in a way that is not necessarily meaningful.

Your metabolism is going all day long and does not stop until you die. Since your body spends most of your energy on your BMR, just keeping you alive, the most meaningful way to increase or decrease it is to weigh more or less so it has more or less of you to keep alive.

This is also why eating less, consuming fewer calories, is the secret to losing weight. If you run on a treadmill for an hour and burn 300 calories you just spent an awful lot of energy, an hour of your time, and now your body MIGHT have 300 calories to make up. But, if instead of going to the gym you look at what you eat in a day and decide to switch to diet soda and eat two fewer muffins during the day the small effort you just made could cut out 800 calories from your diet.

If you need 1500 calories a day to stay alive, you burned another 350 by moving all day long, and another 120 by digesting food that means you need 1950 calories for that day. If by cutting out the muffins and soda you only took in 1150 your body has to come up with the missing 800 calories because math is math. Since a pound of fat contains roughly 3500 calories, if you did that for 7 days you’d lose just over a pound and a half.

While very beneficial, exercise is not a very effective way to lose fat. You can go to the gym and kill yourself every day but until you eat less than what you need you won’t really lose fat. The main benefit exercise has, in terms of weight loss, is in “body reshaping”. Through exercise you can build muscles and develop a strong toned figure that fat loss can uncover.

One thing that should be mentioned before this myth is closed is that through most of human existence man only ate once, maybe twice, a day. There is no actual need to eat three times a day and that we do it today is merely a social convention. For thousands of years people have hunted and foraged all day long, expending a lot of energy, and then at the end of the day they’d sit around and eat a very large meal and did just fine.

The Spartan Army, one of the most effective military forces in history, ate just one meal a day. They would march and train and fight all day and then gather shortly before going to bed and eat a very fatty stew containing animal blood to make it taste bad.

A lot of people try to muddy the water to sell products and uncover fat loss secrets but you still can’t escape the simple truth that fat loss comes down to math: calories in versus calories out, which means eating less.

NOTE: Just so there is no confusion I'm not saying eating several small meals during the day is bad, the fact is that many people do get benefits from it. Eating small items all day long and having all meals pre-planned does help a lot of people not overeat and stick to their diet. If you are sensitive to low blood sugar then this manner of eating is probably ideal for you. There are a lot of benefits to eating this way; my point is that it isn't the grand necessity the fitness industry makes it out to be. While it can help you stick to a diet, consume less calories, and feel less hunger it doesn't "super charge" your metabolism and burn more calories versus eating everything in one sitting. While it is technically true that every time you eat something it does increase your metabolism for a little while, the rise in metabolism occurs simply because you're asking your body to do more work. It is the same rise in metabolism you'd experience if you got out of a chair and walked across the room, since you're now asking your body to do more work compared to when you were sitting in a chair.

If you eat 1500 calories of food and it takes your body 130 calories of energy to digest and process it, it doesn't matter if you eat that food all at once or in small amounts throughout the day, your body will still expend 130 calories to digest and process that food.

Myth #4: You shouldn’t eat just before going to bed because since your body doesn’t need the energy while you’re sleeping, you will just store everything as fat.

Truth: This is a very wide spread myth that is and isn’t a myth. I first heard it years ago watching a documentary on sumo wrestlers who would eat a large meal and then take a nap afterwards because they believed “sleep after eating builds bulk”.

First, you do need energy while you are sleeping. While you sleep your body is still hard at work keeping you alive and healthy. There are even “experts” who suggest that you should eat a small meal right before going to bed to keep your blood sugar level while you sleep.

It is true that you will store more of what you eat because when you are asleep there is little to do with all the extra energy you just put in your body. A far greater amount of what you just ate will be stored as fat, however for most people it will even out once you wake up and start the next day.

If you need 2000 calories per day to maintain your current weight and you consume 1000 in the morning and then the other 1000 just before going to sleep you will still have consumed 2000 for that day. Sure, because you didn’t consume the full 2000 calories during the day at the exact time your body needed it your body pulled what it needed from energy stored in your muscle cells, but then it put what it didn’t need back when you next ate. Again, look at your weight not day by day but rather week to week. Many people have noticed that if they don’t eat before going to sleep they do in fact lose weight. Myself, I’ve noticed that if I don’t eat after 7pm I can easily lose weight but the reason is because I’m in the habit of consuming more calories later at night.

Myth #5: “A calorie isn’t a calorie,” or “not all calories are created equal" or "your body treats different calories differently."

Truth: Brad Pilon put it very succinctly when he said,

“A calorie is a measure of energy. So a calorie by definition must be a calorie, just like an inch is by definition and inch and a pound by definition is a pound.”

He also said, "The controversy over differing nutritional theories arises more from semantics and the limitation of language than it does from scientific principles." How right he is.

People argue this one over and over and the reason this doesn't get resolved is because, technically, both sides in the argument are right. The problem is that they are making different arguments. The truth is that a calorie is a calorie and always shall be; all calories ARE equal. However, when people argue that a "calories isn't a calorie" what they are really trying to argue is that macro-nutrients are different, which is true.

Macro-nutrients are the substances that your body derives calories from. There are three primary forms of macro-nutrients: protein, carbohydrates, and fat (alcohol can also be considered a macro-nutrient). Where they are not equal is that proteins and carbohydrates contain 4 calories per gram (based on current estimates) while fat contains 9 calories per gram. Fat is also the fastest absorbed and easiest to store from of macro-nutrient you can eat, since the other ones require your body to break them down and convert them first.

When people say that all calories are not equal or that your body treats different calories differently what they’re arguing is that if you eat a 500 calorie piece of meat your body will react to it differently than if you eat a 500 calorie piece of cake. This is absolutely true. The cake being mostly fat and sugar will leave your stomach in 40 minutes or so, cause a spike in your insulin levels causing you to store more of it, and since it doesn't have to convert the fat in the cake into fat your body will have to do less work (burn less calories) to digest and process the cake. The piece of meat, on the other hand, will take up to 2 hours to leave your stomach, probably not cause a spike in your insulin levels (although protein can do that), and your body will have to break it down into glucose and fatty acids. So while it may take you 15 calories of energy to digest and process the piece of cake it may take 50 calories to do the same to the piece of meat.

On top of that the piece of meat will have more amino acids in it allowing you to absorb more of its nutritional value.. So the piece of meat will have more of a net nutritional value, not spike your blood sugar, keep you feeling fuller longer, and take more time and calories to digest. It is true that your body does treat macro-nutrients differently; but, at the end of the day you consumed 500 calories either way.

“Just Yell Fire” – A Review of The Self-Defense Video For Girls

By Matthew Schafer
Copyright 2012, All Rights Reserved

Normally I don’t do reviews. Either something has to be horribly good or horribly bad for me to spend the time commenting on it, but “Just Yell Fire” and its sequel, “Just Yell Fire, Campus Life” falls into the former category. Overall I enjoyed these videos and I have to say that they are one of the very few self-defense videos that I would endorse.

I thought the name was catchy too. You have the first video “Just Yell Fire” and the second one “Just Yell Fire, Campus Life”, it reminds me of the TV show “Saved By The Bell”. Perhaps the third video will be “Just Yell Fire, Hawaiian Style”. (Bad joke, I know)

What I wanted to do with this review is list all the things I liked about these videos and all the things I didn’t like. To start everything off the fact that these videos are completely free and can be watched right on their website is great. (http://www.justyellfire.com) You can’t beat the price or the convenience of being able to watch them right away on your computer.

The production value is far above average for most videos on the market and they even managed to put some celebrities in it. Of course you won’t see Brad Pit or Dustin Hoffman in there, but you will see some people from the TV shows “Lost”, “Dancing with the Stars”, and the like.

In terms of self-defense the biggest reason why I like these videos and have given a link to the website to a lot of females I know is because these videos show something I call “Target Based” self-defense. They don’t teach you to put your hand up and dance around like so many martial arts and self-defense programs out there; instead they show you targets on the human body and tell you to hit them. This method is incredibly effective and incredibly simple.

I read a story a long time ago about an elderly Kung Fu master who lived in Chicago. This master was a small man in his 70’s who made a living by running his own martial arts school in the outskirts of the city. One evening he was out walking his dog and three young punks decided he would be an easy target and tried to mug him. He proved to be more than a match for them and he got away, and the next morning the newspaper ran a story on the front page about how a local Kung Fu master had bested three muggers.

The next day this man showed up to open his martial arts school for the day’s business and he found a large group of people waiting outside for is arrival. As he went to unlock the door people cheered for him, congratulated him, and asked to join his school. When he was inside his students pulled him aside and asked him what technique he had used to defeat the three men. One student said he thought it must have been one technique, the other student suggested another, and a third student was sure his master had used a secret technique he had yet to teach them.

At this the old man said, “Technique? I didn’t use any technique. I was so scared I just kept hitting them as hard as I could until I could get away!”

This is the simple truth: the physical side of self-defense is about hitting the vulnerable areas of the human body over and over, as hard as you can, until a situation is created where you can escape. There are no fighting stances, no jabs, or fancy footwork; you drive your thumb into their eyeballs and create a result.

Now, there are a few things I didn’t like so much, but most of them are minor.

In the first video, “Just Yell Fire”, they have these little inspiring clips in-between the scenarios that reminded me of tampon commercials. I just thought it broke up the video. If they would have had the girls sternly look at the camera and firmly say “You deserve to blah, blah, blah…” it would have kept the proactive energy; instead when these parts came up I turned off the sound and recited lines I thought might be appropriate for feminine hygiene commercials, such as “You deserve a vagina that’s springtime fresh!”

Yes…I know these videos are made by young girls and their target market is young girls so it may be perfectly appropriate but I felt it just broke up the energy of the videos. Watch the video and I bet you’ll be doing voice over work during these parts too (well…maybe just the guys).

Another minor thing that I found a little humorous with the first video is that apparently everyone in the entire world wanted that brunette girl to die. When they would show a scenario they would first show the “incorrect” behaviors using a brunette girl, and then they would reshow the scenario with a blonde girl that showed the “correct” behaviors and she would escape her attacker. If you watch the video you’ll see that in every scenario there were several bystanders that couldn’t care less if that brunette girl is kidnapped.

In the first scenario a van pulls up to a bus stop with 10 or so people present. A large man gets out, grabs a girl and pulls her into the van while she screams and struggles. When the van drives off you see that NOBODY has moved and inch or is even looking at the van and one lady is still sitting there reading her book! Nobody there so much as acknowledged the kidnapping.

In every scenario the brunette girl would scream her head off and even though there were people right there nobody even looked up; but when the blonde girl yelled “fire!” people ran right over and in one scenario they even pinned the attacker to the ground. I guess blondes have more fun because they live longer.

As far as more serious stuff, the program is built off of yelling “FIRE” instead of “HELP” because people are supposedly supposed to respond more to the former. This is a common teaching and intellectually it sounds like it might have some validity but I’ve never seen any studies that show its benefits. I don’t believe anyone has proven it to be more effective then yelling “help” but yelling anything I believe is a good idea.

I would have liked to see a close up on all of the strikes. They did show a close up on a couple, but in my experience students really need to see the vulnerable areas being hit so they can get it exactly right. Even the slap to the ear was grazed over mostly, in the second video they talked about cupping the hand when you hit it, but in the first video the demonstrated it with an opened hand.

I would have also liked to see them go over the effects of the strikes they showed. Yes, I know these videos are for young girls but in my opinion people need to know what kind of injuries their strikes will create. I liked the fact that they showed the guy bleeding after being hit in the eye was nice but what is the short term and long term effect of that trauma?

Striking the groin is always a subject that is a little touchy with me. People just don’t understand their biology. The main target of a groin strike is not the testicles, or at least it shouldn’t be. If the testicles are the only thing being hit then that is a source of some pain but pain is so relative. I’ve been kicked in the testicles quite a few times and been very mildly effected and I’ve read cases where people have been attacked and they’ve grabbed their attackers testicles in their hands and squeezed so hard they ruptured, and the attacker kept on fighting. The groin is what you hit, but the pelvic diaphragm is what gives the big result and puts people on the ground (more on this in my article “Striking the Groin, Does it Always Work?”).

Another thing is the technique they show where they grab their attacker’s ear and I don’t know if they are trying to rip the ear off or just cause some pain…that techniques left me confused.

My biggest criticism of these videos is that in the second one they warn you that you can kill someone by pushing their nose into their brain. Complete bullshit. This is a horrible myth that has been debunked over and over and needs to go away. After all, if you picture how a skull looks you’ll see that there isn’t even a bone in the nose to push into the skull.

Despite these few things the videos are fundamentally good I would recommend them to anyone, not just young kids and not just girls. Even boys should see them because they can use the techniques too, and seeing how easy it is to get hurt it might give them a different attitude on how to treat girls.

The website is http://www.justyellfire.com Just click on “Watch Online Now Free” on the left side of the screen (they do want you email address and zip code).

The Art of Using the Fist

By Matthew Schafer
Copyright 2009, All Rights Reserved


When it comes to physical conflict between two people the first weapon of choice is usually the fist. A solid mass of balled up bone and flesh thought perfect for crashing into someone’s body and causing pain and injury, the fist is a weapon older than recorded time. The fist is a noble weapon too; putting up your fists to protect your honor, or boxing in a ring, are seen as noble, heroic, and manly by much of western society.

I remember when I started to train in martial arts and got my first real practice in using my fists. The first few years of my training in Karate I hit nothing with my punches and kicks other than air, and the air seemed to move out of the way of my lethal fists pretty quickly so I got quite confident in them. Then one day I was introduced to a heavy bag, and this is where the story changes.

I went up to the heavy bag which was probably about 75 lbs (at that time I probably didn’t weight too much more) and hit it with a few light punches to get used to it. After building my confidence for a minute or two, I got into a left front stance and prepared to drive a right reverse punch into the bag so hard it would disappear in a cloud of smoke and all that would be left would be a shiny gold coin (Super Mario Bros had just come out). So I drove my fist forward and connected with the bag with a loud “kiai”…but the bag didn’t move and my hand and wrist were in such pain thought I had broken them.

At the time of this writing (May of 2009) I have been practicing martial arts for a little over 24 years and I have come to learn that my story is very common. Very few of the people I talked to have had positive first experiences with a heavy bag. Most were quite disappointed to find out that their lethal fists were more like marshmallows when actually hitting something of substantial size.

The problem people have is twofold: they don’t have the proper tension in their fist and wrist and/or they don’t have the proper bone alignment. What this all comes down to is poor training on the part of the instructor. An instructor should always be present the first time someone uses a heavy bag.

To try to help those who might suffer the same fate as I, and countless other martial artists, here are the fundamental lessons I’ve learned about using the fist during my marital art career:



Proper Tension

When you strike with a fist what you’re really doing is using your fist as a medium through which to transfer your body weight into your target. The ONLY way this will happen is if your fist is squeezed as tight as you can make it.

When you collide with your target a lot of force will try to go in a lot of directions, and force travels quite well thought things that are solid (like bones and tight fists) but it doesn’t travel very well through things that are soft. Things that are soft tend to ABSORB force rather than transfer it on to something else.

What does this mean to you? It means that when you punch something, if your fist is not squeezed as tight as possible and your wrist is not locked tight when it collides with that heavy bag, or a person, the structure of your fist will fail. I’ve sat on the testing panels of a couple different martial arts schools and my biggest pet peeve (I’ve got a lot of them) is seeing people doing their techniques with bent wrists, loose fists, and kicking with relaxed feet. I went to one school and I could actually see daylight through the fists of a lot of their students. At the end of one of these testings I told one young teenage girl that she needed to start making proper fists because if she ever actually hit anything she would most likely break her hand and the audience laughed. Clearly this school taught a “martial sport” and not a martial art.

The first thing that typically fails is the wrist, which will bend (more on this later on) and the second thing is your fist itself. When your fist or wrist fails to remain strong and solid they become soft and guess where the force from that punch is going to go? Once your wrist is bent or your fist is loose you’ve created a weak point that is going to absorb force rather than transfer it. In other words, the force from your punch is going to sprang your wrist or break your hand instead of being transferred into your target.

When you make a fist, start by fully opening your hand and relaxing it. Then curl your pinkie in followed by your ring finger, middle finger and index finger. Squeeze them into your palm as tight as you can, and place your thumb so it lies across the first joint of your index and middle fingers. The harder you squeeze your fist the stronger it is. There is a saying that you want your fist to be “knuckle white” which means that you squeeze it so tight some of the color drains from your fist.

We are going to cover the wrist in a little more detail later, but you want to lock it as tightly as you can. A good mental image to use during your punch to help put the proper tension in your wrist is to imagine that your arm is a high pressure hose similar to what a firefighter might use. When you set in your stance it is like turning the valve on the fire hydrant to let the water out. When the water starts flowing down the length of the hose your rear heel starts you push into the ground and then the water shoots up your rear leg. Then the water shoots into your hip and your hip begins to turn towards your target. As soon as your hip starts to turn the water jumps from your hip and shoots forcefully into your elbow and your arm starts to move, not because your muscles are trying to move it but the force of water inside your body, being under very high pressure, is making your arm move on its own.

The water that began by entering your rear heel in now shooting down the length of your arm and your fist is now going straight into the target, and when your fist hits the target the water forcefully and violently flows through you, up from your rear heel and out of your first, into your target. On contact visualize the water shooting out of your fist and going into your target. This imagery will help you not only hit as hard as you can but also put the proper tension in your wrist.

In terms of the structure of the fist, the only thing that really needs to be addressed is the striking surface. You want to hit with the knuckles of your index finger and middle finger. These knuckles are very strong while the knuckles of your ring and pinkie fingers are easily broken. Whenever I throw a punch I see my target and I think about bringing these two knuckles into my target. I don’t think about bringing the entire fist, I think about the two knuckles shooting into my target and pushing all the way through it as the water shoots down my arm and into my target. The fist is just along for the ride, those two knuckles are your striking surface during a punch.

Aligning the Wrist

The first problem people generally have when they hit a heavy hag, or person, is their wrist gives out. The reason for that is that people generally hit with a “horizontal fist”, or in other words when they punch they hold their fist so that their palm faces the ground and the back of their hand faces the sky.

The good thing about this manner of punching is that it leads with the knuckles of your index and middle finger so that the proper striking surface is out in front. The drawback to this manner of punching is that your wrist is in a very weak position. You have two bones in your forearm; the ulna bone is on the outside of your forearm and the radius bone is on the inside of your forearm.

When being held naturally both of these bones are in perfect alignment, but when you rotate your hand over your radius bone crosses over top of your ulna bone, taking it out of perfect alignment, and that is where the weakness comes from. What you’re really doing when punching with a horizontal fist is taking the bones of your forearm out of proper alignment and putting your wrist in a very weakened state, and then applying a lot of force to it. The horizontal fist fights the natural structure of the body and therefore I never use it.

It is interesting to note the old bare-knuckle boxers of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s knew this too. They had to punch their opponent’s body with absolutely no protection for their fists and what they quickly realized is that it is very easy to injure your hands and your wrists. To help remedy this, the bare-knuckle boxers started using the “vertical fist” (which is also heavily used in the Chinese Martial Arts). In the vertical fist you make your fist the same way as the horizontal fist but you strike with it upright so the pinkie side of your fist is facing the ground and the thumb side of your fist is facing the sky.

The advantage to this is that the bones of your forearm are in perfect alignment so the force coming down the arm flows right through the wrist. This is the strongest way to hold your wrist and it is actually quite difficult to injure your wrist when held in this manner. However, the vertical fist does have a drawback; because of the way the fist is designed this fist tends to lead with the knuckles of your ring and pinkie fingers instead of the stronger index and middle fingers. So this fist is far better for your wrist but not as good for your hand.

The fist that I use is a compromise between the two that gets the benefits of both: the “diagonal fist”. Instead on holding my fist horizontal or vertical, I hold it at a 45 degree angle. At a 45 degree angle the radius bone crosses over the ulna bone only very slightly, so the fist is vertical enough not to compromise the structural integrity of the arm and weaken the wrist. Also, at the 45 degree angle the fist is still horizontal enough that you lead with the knuckles of your index and middle fingers.

The diagonal fist has been my fist of choice for well over 15 years and everyone who I know that has tried it has adopted it, save a few very traditional Karate practitioners who understood the logic and liked the fist but at the end of the day they could not accept it as “Karate”.

Above and Below the Shoulders

Get a partner and have him stand in front of you, just far enough away so there is about 6 inches distance between you and their outstretched fist. Have them extend their fist to your solar plexus and you’ll see that the knuckles of their index and middle fingers are right there at the very front of the fist. Have them lower the punch to your stomach and you’ll see the same holds true.

Now, have them raise their arm so that their fist is held level with their shoulders and you’ll see something, at this height the knuckles of the index and middle fingers and the second joints of those same two fingers are sticking out at about the same distance. In other words, if they punched a heavy bag and hit at their own shoulder height, because the knuckles and joints of those fingers are even, they would actually hit with the flat of their fingers in between the knuckles and joints.

Now have them raise their fist as if they were going to punch you in the nose. What you’ll now see is that the joints of the index and middle fingers are actually closer to you than their knuckles. What this all means is that when you are punching below the height of your own shoulders the knuckles of your index and middle fingers will be out in front of the fist so that the fist will strike the target properly. However, if you throw a punch at a height equal to or above your own shoulders the joints of your fingers are now going to hit first and that is not such a good thing.

The way you remedy that is to firstly don’t punch to the head or neck (more on that later) and secondly, if you do, you should use a “diagonal upset fist”. An upset (to force out of the usual upright, level, or proper position) fist means that you turn your fist over so that your palm faces the sky. If you turn a vertical fist over 45 degrees to the outside (so that your palm now faces upwards) you’ll see that the proper knuckles now lead the fist.

Anytime you punch above your own shoulders you really have two choices: 1.) Strike with the joints of the fist instead of your knuckles, and 2.) Use a diagonal upset fist and hit with the proper striking surface.

The Proper Use of the Fist

Now that we’ve covered the basic mechanics of hitting with a fist (structurally anyway) let’s talk about how to properly USE the fist. Bottom line, the knuckles of your fist are VERY easy to break. If you have your hand wrapped up and have padded gloves on you don’t have to worry that much (although professional fighters do break their knuckles all the time) but if we’re talking about surviving a real violent altercation where you have to use your bare fist directly against the human body it is a different story.

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s bare-knuckle boxing was very popular in America (although it had been around since the at least the 1600’s). There was, however, a problem with bare-knuckle boxing that caused it to fall out of favor…namely it was often boring to watch. The reason bare-knuckle boxing got boring for spectators was the lack of action.

Without any padding on the fists, if you got hit by the bare fist just a single blow could end the fight by seriously hurting you and breaking the hand of the other guy. This lead to bare-knuckle bouts being more like sword fights in Japan, where the two would square off and measure each other looking for a weakness and they won by out-thinking their opponent, not by out striking them.

Since the fist could easily be broken if you hit incorrectly or missed your target (which could end your career and hurt you financially) you didn’t throw punches carelessly. You slowly circled your opponent and only threw punches when you saw a definite opening. Also, since you could get knocked out so easily you also tried to stay away from your opponent and you only closed distance when you saw an opening to throw a punch.

As far as spectators were concerned, what happened during bare-knuckle boxing matches was a lot of nothing. The longest bare-knuckle boxing match on record lasted 6 hours and 15 minutes and occurred in Australia on December 3rd, 1855. The fight ended when, after 17 rounds, Johnson Smith threw in the towel to his opponent James Kelly. After 6 hours and 17 rounds there was no big knock out, just one guy throwing in the towel.

The crowds wanted to see more action and that meant that more punches had to be thrown. The solution was to wrap their hands (to squeeze the bones together and ad tension and support to the fist) and to start wearing padded gloves. They started with 4 oz. gloves and today we’re up to 16 oz. gloves. The reason the gloves got bigger is because the crowds wanted more and more action so the fists needed more and more protection.

When many military and law enforcement units learn combatives they are often taught to NEVER punch. The reason is that these groups use a lot of weapons and tools and can’t take the chance of breaking their fists by punching. If a soldier or police officer injured their hand by punching someone now they cannot properly operate their firearm, use their radio, or even open a door.

A fist is an ok weapon, but it is just one of the weapons that a martial artist has in their arsenal. Just like every other weapon, the fist has a proper use…which is to hit muscle and organs. The knuckles of the fist are best used to hit soft tissue are should be (in my opinion and in the opinion of many other marital artists) used for hitting the soft tissue of muscles and organs.

Any place on the body that is heavily PADDED with muscles or contains major organs is a good target for the fist. The front and back of the torso, the arms, and the legs are fine. The neck is ok, but the hips and head are off limits.

The reason the neck is just ok is because the size of the fist makes it harder to strike the front of the neck. The fist is ok for the side of the neck and the back of the neck, but there are other tools that are a lot better for hitting the front of the neck than a fist.

The hips are off limits because they have many protruding bones and the head is off limits because it is nothing but a large bone.

Let’s examine the anatomy of the head in relation to punching. If we start at the top we find the top of the head and the forehead. These areas are where the skull is the thickest and the fist is the most useless; plus there really isn’t anything there to hit. There are some nerves you can hit but to get them you need to use your fingers tips or the joints of one of the fingers and to use those areas as striking surfaces takes numerous years of dedicated practice to toughen them up and even then they can still break.

The only two decent tools on your body for striking the upper skull and forehead are the heel of your foot and your palm. If you were to throw someone on the ground you could stomp on their head to try to cause a concussion (the brain hitting the inside of the skull resulting in unconsciousness) and you might also crack the skull open (this of course should only be done as a very last resort and when your life is in danger).

The palm is an excellent tool to use against the forehead because it can handle the hard surface better, and that palm to the forehead can jar the brain and cause disorientation and possibly a concussion. An excellent technique that I’ve seen some schools teach is as soon as your aggressor gets close enough to drive the palm strike into their forehead, and then repeatedly fire palm strikes into their forehead as they walk forwards essentially walking right over their attacker and dropping them into the ground.

As we continue down the front of the face we find the eyes; great targets but not for the fist. The eyes are best left for the fingers. If you were to hit the eye hard enough you can vibrate the optical nerve enough to cause a knockout but you’d also most likely break your fist.

Going down we have the nose. Yes, you can punch into the nose to break it but the nose is much easier to break if you hit if front the side and again you might break your fist.

Going down we have the mouth and this is where the old bare-knuckle boxers learned a big lesson. NEVER punch someone in the mouth with a bare fist! You can break their teeth and when a tooth breaks it becomes very sharp. Many bare-knuckle boxers have had those sharp broken teeth severe the nerves in their hands and end their careers. In addition, now days you have to worry about swapping body fluids.

The chin is a great target but not very good for the fist. Again, it is a hard bone so there is potential damage for your fist. Additionally, if you miss you will probably hit their teeth, which we know isn’t good, or their throat which is only good if your intention is to kill them.

Looking at the side of the head we find the temple. The temple is a great target, just not for the fist. The temple is good for three reasons, 1.) While the skull is mostly contoured (allowing your hand to skim off during follow-through and in do so dissipate a lot of the force) the temple is a fairly flat surface. This means when you hit the temple more of your force goes straight into the brain and surrounding nerves and arteries. 2.) If you place your finger on your temple you can feel your pulse. That is your “temporal artery” and striking this artery can result in unconsciousness or death (if the artery becomes pinched shut). 3.) In your head you have a “horseshoe of nerves” that exit the brain at each temple and runs down behind the jaw. Striking these nerves can result in them sending an electrical response to the brain that will overload your body’s electrical system and cause you to pass out. Again, the temple is a great target, just not for the fist.

Going downward the ear is next, but again the open hand is much better than the fist.

The TMJ (Temporal Mandibular Joint) and the jaw are next and here the fist could be used but again I wouldn’t. The jaw is a good target because you can cause the head to whip around and give them a concussion resulting in them passing out, or you can cause the jaw to slam into the skull and pinch down on the “horseshoe of nerves” and make them pass out that way. Again, if you miss you either go high and get the teeth or go low and get the carotid artery which could be lethal.

With the skull being a large bone the fist just isn’t a very good weapon to use again it. When I say “fist” I’m talking about the “two knuckle fist”, or the standard method of striking with the fist where you hit with the knuckles of the index and middle fingers. There are a couple of fists that do have some uses against the skull, such as the hammer fist (hitting with the softer bottom of the fist) and the four-joint fist (putting the thumb on the side of the fist, locking the wrist, and hitting with the joints just like you are knocking on a door).

Other more versatile methods of striking the head are with the base of your palm, your fingers, your forearm, an “ox jaw” strike (like a “karate chop” but instead of using the soft side of your hand you cock your hand slightly and use the hard bone on the side of your wrist), or elbow.

Training the Fist

The last thing I’m going to talk about is training your fist to handle impact. I’m a big believer in makiwara training. The makiwara is a training tool used in Karate to toughen the body to handle impact. I know a lot of people who don’t believe in makiwara training, saying that it does no good or you end up with ugly calluses, but this isn’t really true.

As long as you train correctly you don’t get hurt or develop those calluses. The trick is to not hit as hard as you can, especially in the beginning, and your makiwara has to be able to move a little bit. The standard makiwara is just sticking a post in the ground, wrapping it with some type of padding, and then hitting it repeatedly, but I believe this is too jarring for the body. I’m not going to go in depth on the makiwara here but from the point of impact the striking surface should be able to go back 4 to 6 inches. This is going to take a lot of that jarring force (wear and tear) off your body and help you learn to drive through your target, not just to your target.

The thing the makiwara does it is actually strengthens the bones. By repeatedly punching, chopping, kicking, etc. the makiwara your bones will develop little fractures and then heal itself by building new bone over top. The result is that makiwara training is for bones what weight lifting is for muscles. Makiwara training causes your bones to get denser and stronger so you can punch harder and harder without being injured.

Makiwara training also teaches you to transfer your body weight into something hard which results in you learning to hit harder and harder. The hardest punchers I know use the makiwara as part of their training. The effect of the makiwara is cumulative, so you don’t have to spend hours every day using it. If you punch it 20 times a day with each hand, focusing on perfection and not just getting to 20 as fast as you can, in just three months your punches will be greatly improved; in 6 months it will be a night and day difference, and in one year you’ll have to start pulling your punches during class as to not hurt your partner.

Where Does A Martial Artist Get His Power From?

By Matthew Schafer
Copyright 2012, All Rights Reserved



Most of the articles that I write stem from conversations that I’ve had with friends or students. The idea to write this one came from a conversation I had with a friend the other day about bodybuilding. The comment came up that people who study martial arts today are better than those that studied in times past because today a lot of martial artists are weight lifters and, according to pictures he’s seen, the old masters were frail old men.

While this certainly wasn’t true, it did give me the idea to write an article on the various sources of power the martial arts use. So here I will discuss the various sources, their uses, and at what stage they’re learned. It should be stated that each style is different and some styles teach the different sources at different times and many only teach the first two.

The Beginner: When someone first begins martial arts they will get all of their power from their muscles. They will try to muscle each and everything they do and this can lead to premature exhaustion as well as injury. Most people use muscle strength as their sole source of power until they get near attaining their black belt.

Pre and Post Black Belt: About the time someone gets ready to test for their black belt they get proficient enough in their techniques that they are able to get most of their power from proper technique and leverage alone. Once someone gains the technical ability to allow their power to come from technique they are able really appreciate the martial arts and see how well thought out they are.

The problem with this stage is that there are a lot of martial arts that stop here and never progress to hirer levels. I’ve seen people that are 7th or 8th degree black belts and they’re still relying on their technique for all their power. If they got injured or were loaded down with packages and were not able to execute prefect technique they would find that their strikes and blocks would suddenly become far less effective.

The Mid-Level Black Belt: While I’ve seen this taught at many different ranks and ability levels, from my experience somewhere in the neighborhood of 3rd to around 5th degree black belt the practitioner is taught one of the great secrets of the martial arts: rotation. When I say rotation I’m not talking about just rotating your hips into your techniques, I’m talking about rotating your entire body left and right and using that to power your movements.

Getting power and leverage from rotating your body has been a well-kept secret in the martial arts and it was revealed as the secret of the Gojo-Ryu Karate system practiced by the Miyagi family in “The Karate Kid: Part II”. Most people I know didn’t catch that in the movie but that is what they were getting at with that toy drum.

The reason that rotation was kept as a secret by many of the masters is because it gives you a lot of advantages they would rather keep to themselves. Here are some of the key benefits from rotation.

1.) It gets you off the line of attack. By simply rotating your body you can move out of the path or a punch, kick, or even a bullet. To be best used one should combine the rotation with a step in the opposite way you’re rotating your body.

2.) You can use it in tight spaces. If you’re going to throw a traditional reverse punch you’re going to need a bit of room, but what happens if your back is against a wall and your aggressor is standing a foot in front of you? You don’t have the room to do a traditional punch, but you can chamber your punch, rotate your body towards your target as hard as you can, and allow your torso to “throw” the punch at the target. By simply rotating your body you can get force and leverage in tight and confined spaces.

3.) It will allow you to throw multiple strikes very quickly. If you turn your hips all the way to the left and then turn your torso all the way to the left as well it will be like a compressed spring, full of energy that can be released when you rotate back the other way. When you rotate your body back all the way to the right you can easily throw a right knife-hand strike, left punch, and either a left roundhouse kick or front kick. I scored all the time with that combination during classroom sparring when I did Taekwondo.

4.) It will allow you to hide your strikes. Most people hold their arms up like a boxer so their aggressor can see their hands in full view, but when you rely on rotation your entire body is moving all at once and it is hard to see an individual strike in time to block or evade it. Another nice thing is that each strike will hide the one behind it. In the example I gave above the rotation will partially hide the knife-hand strike, the knife-hand strike will nearly entirely hide the left punch, and the left punch will nearly entirely hide the left roundhouse kick.

5.) It adds power to your strikes by increasing their acceleration. The faster you can move your fist the more force you can deliver in your punch. By rotating your body first and then throwing your punch about halfway through you can move your fist a far greater distance and greatly increase its acceleration. In karate this is called by many names, I learned it as the “double whip principal”.

6.) It will get you out of a lot of holds and grabs. Almost all grabs and quite a few holds can be escaped from by simply rotating your body one way or the other.

The Upper-Black Belt and/or Master: Very few people today really learn about rotation and even fewer learn about one of the most closely guarded secrets in the martial arts. Did you ever see an old skinny Chinese master give a martial arts demonstration and he seemingly just touches his partner and they lift up in the air or are thrown across the room? The way they do that is not by using the mystical “chi” or anything like that, but by using…their bodyweight! Transferring your bodyweight into someone is one of the most closely guarded secrets because it is the most powerful. Using your bodyweight allows you to make a fairly small movement and get a huge reaction from it. The secret is not really using your bodyweight as much as how to transfer that bodyweight into your target.

Transferring your bodyweight is so powerful because it is deceptive and hard to see and also its fatigue proof. Even if you’re sick and feeling weak and frail and you can’t deliver a decent punch you still weigh the same. Even if your arms are full of groceries you can still use your bodyweight to strike with, and in fact the added weight of the groceries will increase your weight allowing you to strike harder.

Using bodyweight also allows you to conserve your energy because you can defend yourself by making very small movements that get very big results. Your bodyweight is the ultimate source of power and once mastered you can easily end an altercation in one blow.

How To Read Your Attacker or Opponent

By Matthew Schafer
Copyright 2011, All Rights Reserved


Several years ago I was showing a martial arts technique to a friend who studied a different style. In the technique I came at him with my left hand followed by my right and concluded with a takedown. This particular friend was a 3rd degree black belt in a Korean martial art and I respected his opinion greatly, but when he saw me demonstrate that technique his response was, "That will never work. If I saw your hand coming at me like that I'd counter with ____." He went on to tell me how flawed the technique was because it started with a large movement and he thought you could easily see it coming. I replied, "Ok, I'll come at you again and let's find out."

I came at him again using the same technique and he showed me the counter he thought he might use, and he went on to very precisely explain what he was doing and how it was the perfect counter. Being a very skilled martial artist and instructor he made some very good points and I enjoyed getting his input. After he was finished we spent about 10 minutes working on his counter and discussing its merits, all in all we probably did this counter 20 times each. Then I said, "That's pretty good. I'll come at you one more time, I want to show you something."

This time, however, instead of coming at him with that same technique I kicked him in the shin, grabbed his wrist, and threw him on to the mat. He jumped up and with big eyes and he said, "What the hell was that?"

"Reality," I replied, "Although you made some great points, if you know what I'm going to do beforehand then you can counter any technique, but in a real violent situation you never know what someone’s going to do."

The simple truth is that if someone is standing there challenging you or attacking you, you never really know what that person is going to do. They could punch with either of their hands, grab, push, kick with either leg, pull a weapon, there are a myriad of possibilities and no way to predict with 100% certainty. However, this is a way we can get a fairly good idea and at least tell which limb they're coming at us with. The way that we do that is by knowing how to use your eyes...and by completely ignoring Mr. Miyagi.

Mr. Miyagi told his pupil Daniel, "Look eye...always look eye!" His advice (although common in many martial arts) is flawed because it lacks an understanding of how your eyes detect movement. You have two basic types of vision, Focus Vision (FV) which is your direct line of sight, and Peripheral Vision (PV) which is along-side of your direct line of sight. Both of these types of vision have their uses, for example FV is used to examine an object and identify what it is but it is not designed to detect and measure movement; PV is used to detect and measure movement but it is not designed to examine and identify objects. So, if we want to look at something that is standing still and determine what it is we should use our FV and look directly at it, but if we want to detect when something is moving and measure its direction and speed we should look next to it and allow our PV to work.

So we know that we want to use our PV but how do we do that? To answer that let's look at how the body moves by examining an attack with a knife. Let's pretend that someone is standing in front of you with a knife if their right hand and they step forwards with their right foot and thrust that knife at your chest. In this scenario most people would look at the knife and that makes sense since it is the knife that is going to impale you. However, that is not ideal, in fact, the Japanese have a saying: “You see the sword that kills you." What this means is that you should never look at an attacker's weapon. The reason for this is that if you look at their weapons then you're using your FV to detect movement and it is not designed for that. Have you ever seen something come at you and for some reason you just stood there and watched it hit you? A lot of people have (myself included) and the reason for this is that when you focus your vision on something that is moving your eyes aren't able to give your brain the necessary information it needs to judge its speed and direction and you often are left standing there almost in a trace while you try to figure it out. So looking at the knife is out, and that also means that you shouldn't look at someone’s hands or feet to see when they are going to punch or kick you.

With the knife being out lets go up the arm to the elbow. If you watch his elbow you will see the thrust seem to slow down a little bit. The reason the thrust seems a little slower is that in most cases the elbow has to move before the hand does so you get a little tip off when the thrust is starting. Add to that that the elbow moves 4 times slower than the hand and it becomes obvious that if you had to get out of the way of that thrust then by watching their elbow you've have a much easier time then by watching their hand or the knife itself.

Let's not stop there though, let's travel up the arm and take the advice of boxers by watching the shoulder. The shoulder generally moves even before the elbow and it moves about 20 times slower than the hand. In boxing you're taught to watch your opponent's shoulders and when you see one raise, drop, or move forward that means that arm is about to throw a punch. This is very sound advice but we can do even better by looking at the center of their chest. Look at the center of their chest and suddenly getting out of the way of that knife thrust is easy.

The reason it is so easy to see that thrust coming towards you by looking at the center of their chest is twofold. First, most all movements the body makes starts with the very center of the body moving and most of the time the very first muscles to move are the ones connected to the spine. So if they are going to thrust at you with their knife the very first thing that will move is the very center of their body which, because it’s connected, will make the right side of their chest move. Next, the entire right side of their body rotates towards you, followed by the shoulder moving, then the elbow, and then the hand. By looking at the center of the body you're actually seeing the attack build up and you can start to move while the attack is just starting. Second, by focusing your vision at the center of their chest you're putting their chest and shoulders in your PV so your eyes can detect as soon as they move.

Now, while all of this is great for dealing with people that might punch, stab, push, grab, or just use their arms to attack you in any way...but it doesn't help you with kicks. The same things that are true with the arm are true with the legs in that the feet move fast, the knees move must slower, and the hips moves even slower still. The hips and the shoulders are the two great fulcrums of the body and pretty much every large movement the body makes can be detected first by watching these areas. If we take everything we've just gone over we can see that the most advantageous place to look is actually right about their solar plexus. The solar plexus area is right in between their hips and shoulders in the center of the body and by watching this area you will have their hips and shoulders all in your PV.

The answer of where you want to look to be able to detect someone’s attack is the solar plexus area, but HOW do you look? This might seem like an odd question but if I focus right on their solar plexus I'm making my FV dominant when my PV should be. Instead of looking AT the solar plexus area you should look THROUGH the solar plexus area to focus your vision about 2 to 3 feet behind them. This will direct your vision at the very center of their body but put the entire thing in your PV. Practice this a little bit and you'll soon be able to see as soon as they move and you'll be able to tell which limb they are coming at you with.

Secrets and The Martial Arts

By Matthew Schafer
Copyright 2011, All Rights Reserved


In the martial arts there is an idea that there are no “secrets” out there. The belief is held by many that everything that can be taught is being openly taught, and secret martial arts techniques and principles held only by the by masters simply don’t exist. I’ve also noticed the commonly held idea that the only “secret” out there is plain old hard work and effort.

While hard work and effort are very important, the simple truth is that the reason martial artists think that secrets don’t exist is simply because they don’t their history, the definition of the word “secret”, or they don’t know any of the secrets themselves! If someone is successful at competition fighting or of high rank with 20 or 30+ years of study they naturally assume they know everything. If someone was a 7th or 8th degree black belt then surely they, if anyone, would know the secrets, wouldn’t they?

You can only learn what you’ve been taught. If no one has taught you any of these mystical “secrets”, and you haven’t figured out any on your own, then you don’t know any. I’ve seen many 6th, 7th, and 8th degree black belts give demonstrations, and in some cases I thought that what they were doing didn’t even qualify as martial arts (an explanation of why is below).

By assuming that there are no secrets and that you already know everything you simply stop learning. From what I have personally observed I think that this is happening to most middle level and high ranking martial artists. They think that they know all there is to know so for the rest of their martial arts career they learn more and more about less and less. At the end you ask a 70 year of 9th degree black belt, a “master”, what he knows and basically you find that he knows how to punch and kick in a straight line. Sure he probably knows forms, sparring, board breaking, traditional weapons, self-defense techniques, and some wrist locks and throws; but it basically adds up to most of what he knows is how to punch and kick in a straight line.

Please understand that I’m not knocking martial arts or the masters. What I’m trying to convey is that by thinking that there are no secrets to the martial arts you stop looking for them and then stop learning. There are more to the marital arts than a simple kick, punch, and block. However, the more and more I meet fellow high ranking martial artists the more and more I find that all they know is how to kick, punch, and block.

The martial arts are very old and many masters spent their lives studying and developing them. There are many secrets in the martial arts, but the secrets aren’t necessarily what most American martial artists might expect (more on this below).

The reason why certain things were kept secret is that originally the martial arts world was a very hostile one. The martial arts trace back to China, and in ancient China your ability in martial arts was often a great determining factor of how long you lived. This being the case you tried to keep an “ace in the hole” so to speak.

Towns, villages, and wealthy families all had their own private armies to protect themselves and their holdings. In these military groups you wanted everyone properly trained because you’d be fighting together and your life would greatly depend on the person standing next to you. However, there was also an internal power struggle in most of these groups. Lower ranking members would naturally want more and more status and power within the group and higher ranking members would want to keep the status and power they already had. One way of keeping the status quo was to withhold certain teachings. If the junior members of a family had to be strong well trained martial artists to fight for your family’s interests, the senior members, especially as they got older, needed to have tricks up their sleeves so they could keep their status if challenged by a younger lower ranking member. Thus, the more sophisticated teachings of most styles started being held back in order to maintain a status quo.

In most commercial martial arts schools there were two separate groups of students: inside students (often called “disciples”) and outside students. When a student came to a master and was accepted at the school be became an outside student. Outside students had two classes: senior students and junior students. You’d begin as a junior student and be taught almost exclusively by a senior student. You’d often spend years learning the basics and drilling them day by day having very little contact with the school’s master. Over time you graduate to being a senior student and you’d be given the responsibility of teaching new junior students. One may be an outside student for 5 or 6 years, while others might remain an outside student forever.

While you’d have very little contact with the school’s master he or she would keep a watchful eye on you to monitor your progress and behavior. A junior student would receive a basic martial arts education and a senior student would receive an intermediate martial arts education. However, after years and years of study the master might decide that you were ready to become an inside student and his personal disciple. This decision was often based on your personal skill, character, and the commitment you’d shown to learning the art. After all, even if you were the most skilled student at the school, if you regularly missed classes or didn’t practice on your own the master wouldn’t waste his time giving you more instruction.

As an inside student you’d receive the advanced training of that style. This training was kept secret and you could be kicked out the school and ostracized from the martial arts community for sharing it. During one of these training sessions you’d enter the school and the doors and windows would be locked so no one could spy on you.

The Chinese grew up with a very turbulent history and saw all non-Chinese as potential threats. When martial artists from Korea, Japan, Okinawa, Vietnam, Thailand, the US, and other countries came to China to study almost all did so as outside students. While many martial artists from other countries may have been accepted as inside disciples, most were not simply because they were not Chinese.

What this boils down to is that the basic and intermediate teachings of the martial arts were widely taught, often to anyone who paid the school fees, but the advanced teachings that inside students received was closely guarded and seldom shared. The result of this is that many students would study as an outside student for 10 or more years, think they knew enough, and then they’d leave and begin teaching martial arts. Then they would teach students, then their students would teach students, and suddenly it is several generations later and that outside student is now considered a “master” and his students aren’t even aware of what they don’t know.

An interesting example is that long ago I read an article about an American Kung Fu Master who was the direct disciple of a late well known master who came from China. This American Master was the head of a large organization and had several masters himself. One day he decided to go to China to visit the village that his art, and teacher, were from.

Upon arriving there he found that there really weren’t any formal martial arts schools but that many people did practice various arts including the one his master has brought with him. After finding some people who he deemed to be masters of his style (although they themselves denied this status) he put on a demonstration for them. They reported that his technique didn’t look right and several things were “off”.

What this American Master found out was that his style of Kung Fu was actually built around a certain style of footwork. Once they taught him the footwork he said it was like being hit in the head with a brick. Suddenly everything in the art made sense and he realized he had only been doing the techniques of the art, but not the true art.

When he asked the local masters why they thought that his master never taught him the footwork, they replied that his master probably had never been taught the footwork himself and most likely had left the village before his training was completed.

When he returned to America he had to recall all his masters and teach them the footwork. Now that master visits that village every few years to train with the villagers.

This is just one example of an art being taught without its secrets. Often arts would be developed around certain principles of combat. Then the techniques would be added that supported those concepts. The concepts and principles would be kept as secrets and only be divulged to disciples and masters. Everyone else would have to spend years getting just the techniques down.

Other reasons that secrets weren’t passed down were that the master quit teaching, closed down his school, was killed (numerous times Chinese Masters were hunted down and killed by local warlords and the government to prevent uprisings), or just didn’t like a particular student.

There are teachings that have been kept secret; close door lessons that only a select few in a school were taught. The really interesting thing to most people is that these secrets are generally not techniques. One of the reasons people think there are no secrets is because they consider the martial arts to only be a collections of techniques. However, most of the secrets are actually strategies and scientific principles that make the techniques work.

In the interest of sharing some of the secrets with my fellow martial artists, here are 11 of the secrets that my master has shared with me. I can personally attest that all of these 11 secrets will make all martial arts more effective. The reason why I know they are secrets is firstly because he told me that they were secrets when he taught them to me, and also in my 24 years in the martial arts I rarely if ever see them used, on purpose anyways.

I should state that there are hundreds of secrets in the martial arts. Some are sound scientific principles, others are actual techniques, and others boil down to personal preferences held by a particular master. What are discussed in this article are the 11 that popped into my head while writing this article. I believe these are the 11 that will be of the greatest benefit to the average martial artist.

I’m sure that while reading this certain people may say to themselves, “this isn’t a secret! I’ve knows this for years!” Well then that is great. You know something that the vast majority of martial artist don’t know, or at least don’t practice.

The first four secrets are what I consider to be the four pillars of martial arts. In my opinion what makes a particular movement martial arts is not exactly what you do but rather how you do it. You can throw a punch but if that punch does not contain these four things it is not martial arts, it is simply swinging your arm around. However, if you simply shove someone (not a traditional martial arts technique) but you did it using all four pillars then what you just did was martial arts.

11 Martial Arts Secrets

Secret #1: Proper Breathing. Proper breathing is something that I see a lot of people talk about but almost never practice. Proper breathing is important because it keeps you from getting winded, provides internal tension that gives you structure for your stances and strikes, and by regulating your oxygen flow you can keep yourself calm under pressure. Simply breathe in through the nose and slowly out through the mouth. Whenever you pull into your body breathe in and whenever you push out (strike) breathe out forcefully.

One of the most important things is the internal tension created by tightening your diaphragm and stomach muscles. An easy way to get this tension is to make a sound when you exert yourself. It doesn’t really matter what the sound is or how loud it is, simply making a forceful sound creates that inner tension. When I do techniques I make a sound that is basically a very quiet, but forceful, breathing sound. It is hard to hear and doesn’t draw attention but it does give me more power, structure, and help regulate my breathing.

Another great thing about sounds is that when you make a forceful sound the next thing that your body naturally does is to take a large inhale afterwards. This way you’re forcing air out to give you power and then encouraging your body to take a deep breath afterwards to keep your oxygen intake up during the event.

Secret #2: Grounding. This is another thing that is often talked about but rarely done. I think it is rarely done because it is described in a mystical sense and not understood. In Karate you’re taught to “grow roots” or to “grab the Earth with your toes”. What grounding really is is to simply lower your center of gravity.

If you stand up straight then your center of gravity is very high and your balance is easily disrupted. If you are dancing on your toes like a boxer then you have even less contact with the ground and your balance is disrupted even easier.

The easiest way to learn to ground yourself is to study Tai Chi. In Tai Chi you’re taught to stand up straight and keep your spine long. Push your heels deeply into the ground and then push the crown of your head (the rear portion of the top of your head) towards the sky. Next, with your feet naturally at shoulder width apart, bend your knees to lower your hips slightly towards the floor. With your center of gravity (your hips) lowered closer to the floor you suddenly come more stable and with practice much more fluid in moving.

You can ground yourself in any stance simply by keeping your back straight, keeping your shoulders back, bending your knees, and slightly lowering your pelvis closer to the floor.

The benefits of grounding are many. With a lower center of gravity you have better balance, can better handle being pushed or pulled, can generate more power for punching or kicking, you will move in a smoother more natural manner (which is harder for the human eye to detect), and your body will move as one unit. Simply, if any time you have to exert or take force you want to ground yourself, and if you study the martial arts and are not grounding yourself you are not practicing marital arts.

One complaint I get about grounding is from people who engage in sport fighting. They say they cannot ground because they need to be on their toes. Being on their toes allows them to move quickly in all directions so they can dodge incoming blows and advance to attack. My reply to them is to try it and decide for themselves.

When you ground your entire body will fluidly move as one unit, but you will move one step at a time. That doesn’t mean you won’t move quickly or that you cannot move in any direction, it just means that instead of hopping several feet at a time while on your toes you will take one step at a time (or a series of step) while being securely flat footed.

One great thing about grounding is that you’re forced to take one step at a time. By taking one step at a time you will be able to stay close to your aggressor. Instead of shuffling several feet to the side so you can “get ready”, you will step alongside and be in perfect position to attack or counterattack. In order to do any technique you have to be close and grounding will help you be close or allow you keep distance if you choose to.

Secret #3: Bone Alignment. A simple truth is that when an object moves it will generate force, simply by virtue of it having mass. When that object collides with another object a portion of that force will go into the object it collided with. If two objects collide with each other, whichever’s structure yields first will be where the majority of that force will want to go.

For example, if you punch someone and your wrist is not tight your wrist will want to bend. If your wrist bends your bones are no longer in alignment so instead of that force flowing smoothly down your arm it will be backed up in your wrist and you will most likely injure yourself more than your opponent.

To make sure that the majority of the force goes into your opponent you need your bones to be in alignment starting at the heel of your rear foot (which is ideally pressed into the floor) up your leg to your hips, back straight, shoulder down, elbow down and in, and fist and wrist squeezed as tight as you can. If all of these bones are aligned then the force you are transmitting will flow smoothly through you and into your target and you will not even feel it. If any part of your body is out of alignment that that is where the force will get backed up and lead to your injury and a wasted punch.

What I see is often people leaning to the side with their shoulder up, their elbow suck out, and their wrist bent. Their lower body usually has bent knees and their heels off the floor. This is one reason why boxers and people who practice on heavy bags often end up with problems in their knees, shoulders, elbows, wrists, or neck.

A bonus secret along this same line is that when you strike your opponent should move away from your first and not the other way around. One reason that in every test of punch strength Karate practitioners test as having some of the weakest punches is that they train to retract their punches as soon as they make contact. The reason for this is that don’t want their opponent to grab their striking limb.

However, in the same way that the longer you touch a hot pan the more severely you will be burned, the longer your fist is in contact with your target the more force will be transferred into the target. In order to put the most force possible into your aggressor you need to strike with proper grounding, breathing, and bone alignment and then push all the way through them and let them move away from your first.

Secret #4: Coordinated Body Movement (CMB). CMB simply means that in every movement you make your entire body should start the movement at the same time and finish the movement at the same time. The benefits of this are many; here are only four.

First, you will move more smoothly and will incur less wear and tear on your body.

Second, by moving in a smoother manner you will instantly appear much faster to your aggressor. The way that the eyes and brain pick up offensive movement is by observing all the movements in its field of vision and then focusing on the jerky ones. Fast jerky motions are seen by the brain as offensive but relaxed smooth movements, while clearly seen, are generally not considered offensive. By executing a technique smoothly with CMB their brain generally won’t realize you’re making an offensive moment until it is almost over. The late David Carradine was quite adept at this.

Third, with CMB your entire body has one intention. This means it will move quicker and end up generating and transferring more force.

Fourth, by moving with CMB you will always be stable and able to switch techniques or targets quickly.

Secret #5: Physics Explains Martial Arts. If you want to understand martial arts you should study physics. By studying physics we know we have six simple tools to accomplish “work”. These tools are the wedge, the inclined/declined plain, the lever, the screw, the wheel and axle, and the pulley. Every martial arts technique uses one or more of these principles and by understand them you can understand your techniques and fix the ones you’re having problems with.

The wedge exists when one object intersects another object. Every strike is a wedge. The purpose of a wedge is to insert an object INTO another object forcefully in order to split it. Think about this and then think about punches and kicks.

The purpose of your strikes is not to hit the surface of your aggressor, make him say “oww”, and give him a nasty bruise. You need to focus on penetration. Anytime you strike you should penetrate a minimum of 6 inches into your aggressor. By focusing on driving your strike inside your aggressor, and not just to him, you will accomplish far more “work”.

An inclined and declined plain are used to guide an object in one direction or another. A hard block is often a wedge while a passing block or parry is a plain. If you block with intent of injuring their arm then you’re using a wedge, but if your intention is to guide their arm or stop it by having your arm at a 45 degree angle then you’re using a plain. Plains are also widely used in takedowns, throws, and tripping techniques.

Levers are used to apply force on joints for submission holds or joint breaking. Levers are also widely used in both throws and takedowns.

A screw is used to accomplish “work” by turning something in a circle. Aikido and many internal Chinese styles use the screw concept widely. If you place a screw on a piece of wood and turn it enough in the correct direction the screw will descend into the wood. In the same way if you turn a human in a circle, in the right way, they will be forced to descend into the ground.

To best understand a wheel and axle think about your car. Your car has a wheel that turns around an axle. Essentially it is like using a handle to turn a screw. An example is the Japanese technique Kote Gaeshi. You turn the hand not to put pressure on the hand, but to use the hand to apply pressure to the wrist, and then the elbow, and then the shoulder.

A pulley is a machine that allows us to do half or less of the work of moving an object. How do we allow our aggressor to do half of the “work” (work = injuring him) for us? The easiest way is to pull him into a strike. If you grab your aggressor and pull him towards you as you step in and drive a strike into him then he will be supplying a great deal of the force needed to injure him. In Aikido when someone punches you can step and pivot to the outside and then grab his wrist and use his existing forward force to spin him around and put him where you want him; this is another great example.

If you understand these 6 tools and how they work you can look at your techniques and understand HOW they work. Once you know that you can better use them, tweak them if they if they don’t use the tool effectively, and fix them yourself.

Secret #6: Thrusting, Dropping, and Raising Your Body Weight. When you’re small you are weak; when you a tired or sick you are weak; when you grow old you will become weak. All these things are true and still we focus on muscle for our power.

There are many stories of little old masters in China seemingly touching a person many times his size and making them fly across the room. How did he do that? Was it magic? No it was physics.

The master was simply transferring the potential energy of his bodyweight into kinetic energy and then transferring that kinetic energy into the other person. Since people equate force with ferocious swinging of the limbs and they didn’t see that, they assume the effect was mystical.

Your bodyweight is the greatest source of force you have. If you are small you still weigh something; if you are tired or sick you still weigh the same as you did when you weren’t, and if you’re old you may be heavier or lighter but you still have bodyweight to use.

Anything with mass generates force when it moves. So if you move your body you will generate force and if your body runs into something a portion of that force will transfer into that object. If you weigh more you will have more force; if you move faster you will have more force.

If you want to add bodyweight to your punch then step into your aggressor while you punch. The deeper you step into them the more bodyweight you will add. If you step all the way through him and actually bump into him and knock him back you will send it all into him.

Force = Mass x Acceleration. The average lunging step forward a person takes while they strike is 3.5 miles an hour. So if you hit someone with all four pillars of marital arts (“secrets” 1-4) and you step all the way through your aggressor and actually bump him with your body you can send 3.5 times your bodyweight into him.

So, if you weight 100 you will send 350 lbs. into him. If you weigh 200 you will send 700 lbs. into him. Nearly any injury can be caused with 50 lbs. of force or less.

If you cannot step into him to generate and transfer force you can still move your body up or down. If you squat in a deep horse stance and then explosively straighten your legs while you throw a punch you will put bodyweight into that punch. If you are standing nearly chest to chest with someone and don’t have the room to throw a traditional punch you can bring your fist into body, and then bend your knees to drop your bodyweight while you punch. This can easily supply the force to knock someone back. To add more force use the “4 pillars” and rotate your body into the strike.

Secret #7: Unbalance them to move them or do leverages or throws. In the martial arts we often talk about the importance of keeping your balance while taking your aggressor’s balance. However, rarely if ever do they discuss why. The reason why is simply that if you are off balance then you are vulnerable.

If you want to walk up to someone and try to put them in a wrist lock you will have a hard time because they can easily defend themselves. However, if you walk up to them and knock them off balance they will go into a very brief period where have limited ability to move and are focused not on you but on regaining their balance. So, walk up and hit them with a palm underneath the chin to knock them back and off balance and when they’re busy being off balance you can put him in a wrist lock with little trouble. The same is true with both throws and takedowns.

If you want to throw someone who still has their balance…good luck. Take them off balance and then a little nudge will knock them down.

Secret #9: Targeting. Nearly every time I see a person teach martial arts they will tell their students “high punch, low punch”, “high kick, middle kick, low kick”, or “face punch, body punch”. This general manner of striking is made worse in sparring.

Training to hit general ambiguous places on your aggressor’s body generally leads to just standing there and trading blows with him. Hitting someone in the face does little but hitting someone in the temple does a lot.

As much as I don’t like to use “MMA” (I put it in quotation marks because it is not marital arts and has little to nothing to do with actual martial arts) for an example, a great example of this appeared on the TV show “Ultimate Fighter”. I saw a few minutes of a show that featured Kimbo Slice. In that short clip that I saw fighters warming up for a workout by paring up and taking turns lightly tapping each other with punches. You saw all these guys going back and forth warming up their muscles and then you saw Kimbo Slice doing that warm up drill with his partner. When the partner lightly tapped Kimbo with his gloves he tapped his body a few times and his head a few times; when Kimbo did it he tapped the body a few times and then tapped the tip of his partner’s chin a few times.

The result? In this slow warm up drill Kimbo dominated the other guy. Instead of going back and forth: partner 1, partner 2….partner 1, partner 2, Kimbo and his partner went: Kimbo…..partner 2, Kimbo…..partner 2. The light taps on the chin were enough to create a small effect that the partner had to recover from before he could respond.

If you don’t focus on targeting you’ll just trade blows back and forth with your aggressor. You’ll be fighting his entire body and causing bruises instead of injuries. If you do focus on targets (throat, ear, eye, knee, spleen, etc.) then it won’t be your entire body against his entire body; it will be your entire body against his temple, or your entire body against his groin.

Secret #10: Don’t block, strike. When it comes to defense, aggressiveness overwhelms non-aggressiveness, and action is always faster than reaction. This is why there is an old Chinese saying that anyone can block one punch, not many people can block two punches, only a couple can block three punches, and almost no one can block four punches.

If a training partner puts on gloves and comes at you with one punch most of the time you can block it. If he comes with two quick punches it is a lot harder; with three strong aggressive punches one of them will most likely connect; four will overwhelm almost anyone. Combine them with a combination of punches, kicks, knees, and elbows to varied areas of the body and four or five strike combinations are nearly always successful.

This being true trying to block what your aggressor throws at you is fighting a losing battle. A better strategy is to strike their arm instead of blocking it. If you block it then you’ll stop that particular arm but they can use their other arm, their legs, or retract their punching arm and continue their attack. However, if you strike their arm you can either knock it away and open up their body or knock it down and pull them off balance.

For example, someone comes at you with a right punch. You do a right cross block with your forearm as you step into the block with your left foot and rotate your body to the left. This moves your entire body into the block and you will hit their arm hard enough for it to go numb (most likely) and you will knock it out of the way and cause their body to come off balance and rotate to their right. Now their right arm is numb and they are off balance and temporarily vulnerable to counterattack. If they were planning on unleashing a combination they will be stopped in their tracks.

Another method would be to use that same right cross block with your forearm but when it connects with his arm bring your arm down sharply in a chopping motion to your waist. This will knock his arm down, most likely make it numb, and pull him forwards off balance getting the same basic result as before. A nice thing about this method is that is often quicker because a sharp downward chop can be added to any block to get the same effect and you can often move your arm faster than you can move your body.

Two more nice benefits of the second method are that since it makes them bend forwards sharply you can use that by throwing a quick strike of your own. By doing this they will bend into your strike and add their own weight to it.

Also this tends to create “eye jerk”. The quick drop of their head will often cause their eyes to go in and out of focus resulting in them perceiving that they actually lost that second of time. If you do the block-strike with your right arm and then chop the right side of their neck with your right hand it will have occurred with the rhythm “one-two”, but they will perceive it as happening at the same time.

Secret #11: Focus On Principles, Not Techniques. The final secret is to not put too much emphasis on techniques but rather focus on the principles that make them work. If all you know is the techniques of your art then all you’ll end up knowing is how to punch and kick in a straight line. By knowing the principles behind that techniques you can fix them if you or someone else is doing something wrong.

You will also we better at defending yourself because if all you have is techniques you‘ll have to sort through your bag of techniques to find a technique that matches the situation as it happens and it can take time. However, if you focus on principles you can quickly adapt and adjust to any situation.

Another great benefit is that you can walk into a different martial arts school and you’ll understand what they are doing. For example, when I started martial arts I focused solely on techniques until I got to black belt. Once I earned my black belt my instructors started to make me focus on principles. They stressed that techniques themselves are not power, rather knowing how and why techniques worked, or didn’t work, was power.

With this knowledge I walked into an Aikido school several years ago and found that I understood nearly everything after viewing it a few times. I looked at a joint lock or throw and knew the science behind it that made it work; I just had to see exactly how it was that Aikido applied that science. The result was that I picked up everything quickly and rose through the ranks with ease, despite only being able to attend classes infrequently

These are just a sample of the secrets that the martial arts have to offer. By studying these you can greatly increase your skill and get closer to mastery.