It took me almost seven years to earn my black belt in traditional Karate, but it only took the fellow who taught me 2 1/2 years to get his black belt. I always wondered why this was so, but it wasn’t until I began to take apart martial arts systems that I understood why. It turns out that there are several reasons why it takes people longer and longer to truly learn anything in the martial arts.

When I took apart the system I had been taught I found there were two systems. I had not only learned the classical system of ten forms that had originally been taught to my instructor, but I was learning an additional system of seven forms that my instructor had made up. I was also learning several other forms that my instructor had thrown into the mix just because he thought they were valuable.

This is rampant throughout the martial arts. Ed Parker, for instance, of Kenpo fame, started out with simple karate forms. When he ran out of material to teach he started importing vast amounts of kung fu into his teachings.

Now the problem is not one of not enough material, there is endless martial arts material available. The real problem is separating the martial arts into logical, little slices. Each of the slices must represent a logical perspective and viewpoint of individual arts and styles.

If we were talking dance, we would be separating ballet from ballroom from whatever. If we were talking music we would be separating jazz from blues from so on. In the martial arts we must actually separate karate from kung fu from aikido from wudan…and so on.

When you separate the martial arts into individual pieces, you must understand the differences between basics and stylistic interpretations. You must understand that the hard blocks of karate, for instance, go outward from the center of the body, and wudan type blocks are rotated off the turning body, and silat blocks are slipping types of blocks, and so on. If you don’t understand these differences the arts won’t be easy to learn and will remain complex.  

If you don’t understand these things then you are mixing different arts, and different ways of handling the body, and different ways of using energy, and so on. Thus, a peach becomes indistinguishable from a watermelon from a cantaloup, and so on. Thus, the arts become a mush which the mind finds difficult to absorb.

Understanding the differences between the arts, however, the arts become very easy to absorb, everything aligns and catalogues everything easy as pie. The martial arts, you see, are only illogical because people have made them that way. Separate Pa Kua into pa kua, or karate into karate, or Choy Li Fut into Choy Li Fut, and the martial arts can be learned in a matter of months, not years.

Al Case has examined martial arts for 4O+ years. He has written dozens of articles for the magazines, and developed Matrixing Technology. You can find out how to separate arts and make them pure by picking up his free ebook at Monster Martial Arts.

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