ShirKhan

There is good reason tigers are nearly extinct and sheep and cows are everywhere. Our civilization makes $$$ from breeding and harvesting sheep. It makes nothing from a tiger. Civilization has governments that have power through their control of the sheep. Tigers tend to keep their power for themselves. Sheep are gathered into the rich, flat, green areas of civilization, while tigers must make their way along the rocky fringes of society and the caves of solitude. Tigers have no place in civilzation, but can make their way through it if they are unseen. The days are over when a tiger can walk in the open and be accepted as having a part and place in the world without being mocked, attacked, or ostracised. If a time machine brought Alexander the Great or Miyamoto Musashi back from the dust of years, it would be a matter of days before they were dead or incarcerated in today's world. There are reasons why this is a good thing. There are reasons why this is a tragedy. There are times when anyone must wear the costume of a sheep, and, God help us, even "BAA-AAA" on demand. But never believe there is something wrong with you because you hunt in your dreams and grass tastes like cold dirt. If there were no such things as "dojos" and "kwoons" an enterprising tiger would invent them. SOme people think a dojo is there to teach them something they are not. Tigers find such things as dojos are there to show them what they always were, and to help them remember. They might also be called "sanctuaries". Just don't go nuts and start eating people. You don't know where some of them have been...

At least to my experience, a lot also depends on the outlook and temperament of an omnipotent judge...I think mine spent his whole life on the "right" side of town from his silver spoon on up... BTW before anyone mentions it, I have consulted lawyers who specialize in "felony abatement" procedures, because of recent "get tough on crime" laws enacted in my state, I have NO option to have this taken off my record. The good news is, if I'm a good little citizen for the next 20 years, I can ask the governor for a pardon, which would take the felony off my record. So I could probably go back to work at the same time that I would be eligible to collect Social Security...

Years ago I was working part time driving a cab and was physically attacked by one of my fares as I brought him to his destination. I exited the cab to evade his attack, he pursued me and I put him down hard. I called 911, gave the police my report, and my attacker went to the emergency room, and I went to JAIL. I went to court, my attacker did not appear, although the story he eventually told the cops corroborated mine in full. According to the judge, since I put him in the hospital, I was physically in control of my attacker. Since I was in physical control, I should have been able to escape and get to a policeman. I was convicted of felonious assault and battery, even though my attacker confessed to assaulting ME. According to this judge, the only way I could have been "innocent" is if I had let my attacker put ME in the hospital. The law only sees criminals and victims, refuse to be a victim and you are a criminal, apparently. The judge didn't sentence me to further jail time, but I was fined $3K and had to pay for my attacker's medical bills, almost $11K total...! In addition to which, I previously worked as a respiratory therapist for over fifteen years, because I am a felon I lost my job and can never work as a medical professional (or a multitude of other jobs) EVER AGAIN. I basically ended up starting my own business in order to not become a welfare case! Just to add frosting to the cake, my attacker had a past record of BURGLARY, ADW and DOMESTIC VIOLENCE...isn't our legal system wonderful? I'm not saying don't defend yourself...just that if you manage to save yourself from murderers and psychopaths, remember you ALSO have to save yourself from the law... Idiot that I was, I was the one who called the cops and told them all the details...I should have dropped my attacker in a dumpster and moved on!

I know that there are a LOT of Chinese styles whose martial exercises include physical 'eye exercises' that are supposed to benefit the eyesight, or the chi, but I know very little about them, and I've NEVER heard of anyone who improved their eyesight with them. I've also seen even infomercials where people claim to have reduced or eliminated their need for glassesd with 'eye exercises'...I know no one personally who this has worked for. I have found that meditating on a point far off in the distance, to some extent a person can mentally control their eyes focus to SOME extent and sharpen their eyesight at least temporarily; I've done this myself. As far as training the eyes to see incoming blows, the only way to train this is to have people hit you when you're not expecting it. I had a teacher who had the perverse hobby of throwing a small rubber ball at the back of his student's heads...and sooner or later all of them got to the point where they caught the ball, whether they 'saw' it or not. It heightens your 360 degree awareness.

There's a Black Tiger training technique where you slap the top of a training post as tall as your head and make the wood make that "bong" sound, it's supposed to teach you to make the chi "rise up and fall on the top of someone's head", also how to use your body weight in this somewhat awkward strike; you're supposed to use it against a standing person and it's supposed to be a very dangerous strike. I've found it also is very useful for any charging person, if you step back into deep stance and slap or palmstrike the top of their head down or diagonally, the body follows the head and falls at your side or against your legs. In Tiger tactics I follow with a grip on the closest shoulder with fingers into the muscle mass as an anchor and strike against the back of the head with the other hand, or finish with a joint lock, whichever seems to flow better. You have to do the hand exercises to be able to hold someone in that way..."muscle separation" with the fingers.

I'm presuming these are people you see every day? Work with, or go to school with? My advice is Suck it up and take it. And if you can't take it anymore, wait for one of them to go to the bathroom, follow him in, try to catch him either pissing at the urinal or just entering one of the stalls. In the urinal scenario, your optimum move is to catch him with both hands occupied and push his face through the wall. You have to break a leg or arm before you leave. The stall is less good but still workable, plant a foot in his * and send him over the stool and against the wall, try to keep him facefirst against the wall and hit him until you're holding him up. Break a bone before you go. Sometimes your timing can be so perfect that the person can't even identify who did it, especially with the urinal thing...and if you are patient long enough this kind of opportunity (or one just like it) will come up. When half of the 'dynamic duo' is out of commission, the other half usually wilts away into the ordinary garden variety type of *.

Sometimes it's interesting to return an insult with one so obviously vile that anyone with any self respect would get physical. Especially if you sense the insults are coming from a person who's accustomed to fighting with their mouth anyway. Just have eyes in the back of your head before you practice this technique...*eg*

Grrrrrr

The best feint or fake, IMO, is a mindset that either communicates to an opponent that you are not a threat, or provokes him to overconfidence, or that produces a state of fear or being startled that freezes him in place momentarily... A feint with the hand, an experienced fighter can see through, but making an opponent reach the wrong conclusion about you, is more difficult for him to see through because for him to rethink his first impressions, is an act of doubting his own mind or his own conclusions, and he has to mentally stop for a moment to do this...like a computer rebooting... A simple example. You are walking down a dark alley and you are confronted by three assailants walking towards you. If you puff yourself up, make yourself look tall and go forward with hands ready, you collide with three peole who are braced to recieve you. BUT if you walk along with your eyes on the ground like a distracted inattentive person, or even pretend you are intoxicated or a deranged person talking to themselves, AND THEN at the last moment collide with them strongly, you can go right through them...you may even find they have their eyes closed and their hands held in front of them in surprise. You may only have a few seconds, but that's enough to put down whoever you sense to be the alpha of the group. I know one person who if he encountered physical conflict would take on the appearance of a mad person and say clearly "you raped my sister" just before collision...if an angry person comes to you and says "I'm going to kill you", well, most people who are prepared for life are prepared to hear that, and they brace themselves for the encounter. But a mad person closing with you saying "You raped my sister"...your mind tries to compute it, you wonder who he thinks you are, you might even try to tell him he's crazy or he's got it wrong...all this amounts to being frozen in place or unprepared at a moment that they run over you. (He doesn't even have a sister.) It's not necessarily a feint but it is very tricky...if you're coming for someone, and they know you're coming for them, they're preparing themselves and they see you walking forward with your hands at your sides...they're wondering what you're going to do with your hands or your feet...and you just drive a simple shoulder thrust or hip thrust with all your weight to their center mass and drive them flying. Especially someone who thinks he's a boxer...they put their hands up, and in their mind they are wondering why your hands are down, and then wonder how they ended up on their back with your foot on their neck. Shoulder and hip thrusts are pretty ignored by a lot of MAists as weapons but the old masters swore by them...there's even the story of the old Tai Chi master who used to go cow-tipping to practice his shoulder thrust...except he did it while they were awake ... It's also interesting that if you walk to a person with your eyes on their eyes, they're immediately defensive and guarded, but if your eyes are pointed elsewhere, you can have their hands on them before they even know you're there. A lot of people on these boards claim to be bouncers, I did work as a bouncer for a while and I noticed when someone was acting up, they would always look for me to see if I was watching them or coming for them (almost like a little kid trying to get Daddy's attention)_...if I looked at them, they were ready to mess with me and make my job harder, but if they always found me looking elsewhere, I could be walking right up to kissing distance without it really registering on them, and I've got my anchor lock on them and I'm dragging the body outdoors before they can say "wassup..." There's a lot communicated by body language, and if you can make a person believe what you're saying to some extent you can control what they do for a brief time. To some extent your body only reflects what's going on in your mind, so you've got to believe in what you're doing and you've got to empty your mind...to some degree an empty mind makes you less visible, as well...I'm getting into thin air at this point. But, you can ask any hunter, if you're out for blood and looking through all the brush and bushes, there isn't a deer to be found, but stop for lunch and read a book, and they walk right up to you and try to eat the sandwich out of your lap...well, there's a reason for that. Similarly, when I used to go spearfishing in Florida, if I looked at a fish with the intention of shooting him, he would always drift right out of range. But if I looked at the rocks next to him with no thought of fish in my mind, then I could almost reach out and grab him. In an MA application I call this the "cloud" approach because I'll approach the opponent with the thought in mind that I'm nothing, nothing but air, nothing but a drifting cloud, as relaxed as can be...and when I run into him it's almost like he's surprised I'm there. He knew I was THERE, but for some reason the threat didn't register. Almost like if my thinking "I'm nothing" was somehow shared by his mind that this approaching person is just nothing, nothing to worry about. I've been told it's a body language thing, a mind thing, a psychic thing, I have no idea it may be a mix of a lot of factors. But try it, play with it, see what you find out for yourself. That's all I got...take what helps you and flush the rest.

There are many traditional styles where kicks are strategically limited, many will not kick above the waist and consider the kick as a finishing move or a "putaway" or a weapon of opportunity and never an opening attack... Given all that, a person should recognize their weaknesses and over come them as best they can, but also recognize that there are certain techniques, weapons and ways of fighting that they are most comfortable with and which contribute more heavily to their own personal style. All of us have a way or path we learn from and which we have to conform to, but having done that, if you cannot find how to conform that way or path to serve your own personal style of fighting, you become the servant continually chasing their tail and not a master of yourself and your environment... I once saw a Taiwanese policeman who was holding a plastic shield doing riot control, who was suddenly rushed by a crowd breaking through a sudden gap in a barricade. Holding the large plastic shield, he had only one hand free and could not use his legs. Literally in seconds he had four people who broke through the barricade lying at his feet, he had hit each one with his one free hand precisely on the point of the chin as they broke through the gap...the pile of bodies got in the way of other people breaking through the gap until the other officers could assist him...you could say with one hand he had contained over a thousand people. I have no idea what style he practices (or if he practices ANY "style") but I was definitely impressed that I had witnessed a true "master" at work...not very fancy, perhaps, but undeniably effective with what he had available to him...

I frequently get the shakes AFTER an encounter, but not before. My attitude is, adrenaline is my friend. If it's giving you the shakes at an inappropriate time, find an outlet, hit the bag or go work out. You should LOVE adrenaline...let it help you drive forward, not wonder or worry how to bring your shakes under control. Work it out and form a connection in your mind that adrenaline is power on demand.

Well, some people will find this silly and some people will find this golden: Some Tiger styles practice growling as a psychological and diaphragmatic exercise. For instance. in a bag working session, the emphasis is to vary speed of movement from slow and tension-filled to light and fast attacks, while firming the stomach and growling, with the expectation that the growling is an energy gathering and focusing exercise. The mechanics are a firm abdomen, forcing air past the vocal chords, with the teeth clenched together the air is mostly expelled thru the nose while growling (sounds like HN! HN! HN! not RARRR or anything like that). The emphasis is NOT the sound you make or how loud it is, but the effect it has on you both psychologically and physically...physically the breath gradually escaping pressurizes in the lungs and promotes oxygenation, and psychologically encourages "explosiveness", but not endurance so much...it's better suited for people who want to finish an encounter in seconds rather than dance around for many minutes. Trying it for the first time, many people actually feel a little dizzy trying it at first because your blood O2 level goes way up...and after lengthy practice, the sloar plexus area actually may feel SORE because you are working your "core" to direct power. Experience for yourself, with practice you feel a definite "overcoming power" is the only way to describe it, psychologically and physically. An unusual visualization exercise that works: Imagine you are a tiger or a lion hunting in tall grass. You are hidden and a deer walks right up to your nose. What size deer would you feel confident seizing and killing withoutit getting away? You may think, well, if a baby deer came by I could handle THAT...visualize the speed and explosiveness and commitment it would require to take that baby deer. Having visualized this, work on the bag or spar with a partner, with no other thought than what it takes to take them out immediately...no dancing, no strategy, just the vague notion of seizing them before they can get away and putting them down with your most powerful, natural move. Take them out of the world so fast that there's a vacuum where they stood...at least, have this ideal in mind. Further down the road...Visualize again, except you are taking down a larger animal, an adult deer. Now you can't just overwhelm it, you imagine it takes speed to surprise it, strength in your hands/claws to anchor it and keep it from escaping, maximum effort to knock it off balance and maximum powerstroke to put the animal down. Engage in sparring after this and niotice how you play the same emphasis on speed, but now you notice more that you are well rooted and your feet well planted, your powerstroke more methodical and businesslike. You have to put the meat on the table. And again, a little further down...now imagine attacking an animal you have NO HOPE of taking down...for instance an enormous and enraged Kodiak bear. Mechanically you simply don't have the strength to put this enormous animal down, it will simply enwrap you in it's arms and kill you...BUT...if you attack it with enough ferocity and enough force, you may just drive it away. There is a definite feeling of "kamikaze" here...take it for granted you will not live, but perhaps you are saving a loved one standing right behind you...how much speed, force and ferocity can you impact the bear with before he kills you? These type exercises are very influential on you psychologically, and you have to be careful not to go too far off balance. Sometimes people take things too far and start to believe they can knock anyone down, and people walk the streets only by their permission, if you know what I mean. It's said a balanced body balances the mind...stand on one leg, raise one knee, look straight upwards at the ceiling, and raise your hands as if you are crawling upwards...BUT in your mind, again visualize the lion or tiger actually crawling horizontally thru the grass (your body is actually in a vertical position)...as you imagine the cat crawling, move your other leg up and switch hands as if you are reaching for another handhold, your body appears to be reaching upward, but your visualization is that you are reaching forward, creeping through the grass... I hope I'm not making it confusing, I'm describing as best as I can this exercise that is very good for balance in the body AND getting your mind focused. When you do face an intimidating opponent in sparring or in a defensive situation, there are two "gears" to the growling. First gear is when you are doing it unconsciously and it is just firming your abdomen, hyperoxygenating the blood, and making you feel physically stronger. The second gear is when you bring the psychological thing into play and you behave animalistically, such as when you see an opening and you take advantage of it forcefully, or there is a sudden attack and your fear brings the "animal" out, this is second gear and an explosion of power comes out. If a person who practices growling is surprised by someone coming around a corner, they may reflexively bend the fingers in a clawlike motion and their breath comes out in a soft "HNnnn..." without consciously choosing to do so. And my experience is, when these people are attacked, they often fight back in a way where they fight without thinking, and later afterwards discover they have executed complicated techniques they have practiced previously in their safe area...it not only accesses strength and aggressiveness, it accesses a different state of mind. Sounds weird, but trust me it works for those who work it out and these are traditional exercises...if I'm not explaining well enough consult someone who practices traditional Northern Tiger or Black Tiger styles. Be careful you don't go growling around civilized people, they tend to be closed minded about that kind of thing...

In my humble O the secret is to train with forms like you should be training with everything else...as if your life depended on your performance. If you do forms as if you are practicing against actual opponents...and QUESTION the forms..."what if they block this? What if this needs a followup?" etc...then a different part of your brain, a part that thinks and responds rather than digs up rote memory from the archives. More than once I've responded "spontaneously" in a extracurricular conflict and only realized later that my move was not something I came up with out of thin air, it was actually a sequence from one form or practiced technique or another.

Kenpo is really flexible, and it seems there are new Kenpo substyles or people's personal styles of Kenpo coming up all the time. I think probably because the basic principles lend themselves so well to personal invention and also combination with other styles. I started in Ed Parker Kenpo and in later years got interested in Black Tiger KF, and for the past few years I've been tearing apart Kenpo techniques and turning them into a Kenpo/Black Tiger fusion just in the course of my personal practice, and several people have said I am starting my own style...! If so, it's a personal style.

If a "fighting" Kung Fu style is what you want I can recommend Northern Black Tiger. It's nothing but fighting. You'll learn to run over people like a truck.