HOW I DEVELOPED MATRIXING

AL CASE
(Master Founder)
introduction
The word Matrix comes from Roman times. It is a cage used to hold a
female wolf for breeding purposes.
Matrixing is also a method of graphing.
I want you to consider that the martial arts on this planet are a mess.
Do you fight like one of the five animals?
Do you fight with a method developed out of religion or other philosophy?
Do you fight like your cinematic hero?
Do you fight like some fellow who advertises that he is unbeatable?
There is a lot of information out there, and it is hard to decide which
method is right.
Matrixing will end that dilemma.
Matrixing will enable you to understand all the arts.
Matrixing is a scientific graphing of methods of combat.
And, on a more personal note, realize that you can only be beaten by that
which you dont understand. If you understand everything, however, then you
cant be beaten.
CHINESE KENPO
(Kenpo-Fist Law)
I began studying Chinese Kenpo in 1967.
This was a time when the martial arts were not well known. A few
examples of Judo had been seen on the big screen, and people talked about
karate chops, but Bruce Lee was still around the corner.
One day a friend asked me if I wanted to go check out a karate school that
had just opened up.
No, I said.
He said, Why dont you come along and well get a hamburger
afterwards?
Hmmm. Hamburger.
Okay.
Such were the illustrious beginnings of my martial arts career.
Once at the studio, I signed up for five karate lessons. I didnt sign up
because of any interest, but because of a smooth talking salesman and a well
scripted pitch.
I thought the first lesson was funny. I followed directions and grinned a
lot and thought the whole thing was kind of silly.
The second lesson was still funny, but it was like something was eating
at me. I didnt grin so much. there was something about this stuff....
The third lesson I was standing, watching my instructor show me a move,
and suddenly the entire room glowed with a golden light. The ceiling was
glowing, the walls were glowing, everything was glowing. In awe, I realized that
my instructor had no idea what was happening to me.
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I realized that I would do the martial arts the rest of my life.
It would be some time before I realized that I had had a mystical
experience such as the one experienced by Morehei Uyeshiba, the founder of
Aikido (Way of Harmony in the Spirit).
I worked hard at Kenpo, but was always struggling with boredom. I would
learn a new technique, practice it a few times, then wonder what was next.
I was hungry, and didnt realize that the modern approach of
entertaining students wasnt for me.
After a year I became an instructor. My notes concerning the techniques
even became a training manual for the school.
One night I was trying to get into a locked car. I delivered a powerful
sidekick. The glass window remained unbroken.
I blinked.
Then one of my fellow instructors had a humbling experience. He got in a
fight, and no matter how hard he hit his opponent, he couldnt put him down.
Vaguely, I started to realize that even though I had a vast knowledge of
hundreds of techniques, something was wrong.
One day, while I was at work, I took note of a new worker. The worker, a
nerdy guy named Alex, thought nobody was watching him, and he gave a funny
little hop and kick and the whole wall shook.
Hey! I came forward. Howd you do that?
It turned out that Alex had been practicing the martial arts for about
three months. He had been practicing something called Kang Duk Won.
Three months, and he had more power than I had after two years. Alex
introduced me to his brother, Thiel, who happened to be a high ranking Hells
Angel.
Thiel and I had an interesting talk. Basically, he grabbed me by the shirt
front and said Work your first technique on me.
I locked his hands and slammed upward with a forearm. I brought my
forearm around and raked down on his wrists. Before I could deliver a chop to
his throat, he laughed and threw me through a wall.
Yep. All the way through a wall.
He picked me up and said, Okay, grab me.
Dutifully, I grabbed his shirt front and knotted my hands with all my strength.
Without any flowery technique, he punched me on the chest and through
that wall again.
That about did it for Chinese Kenpo.
Before I leave off, I want to make one point. I was an instructor in Kenpo. I
was respected. Yet I tossed away my investment of sweat and blood and moved on.
I took off my Kenpo belt and put on a white belt. It took a lot for me to do that,
yet I was willing to learn.
KANG DUK WON KOREAN KARATE
(Kang Duk Won-House for Espousing Virtue)
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The Kang Duk Won in San Jose was a hole in the wall. It was run down,
shabby, and not too impressive.
The windows, however, looked like they were bulging. They were just
bent outward like bubbles. They were glowing.
I entered the small school, introduced myself, and was told I could watch
a class.
After a short spat of warm ups, the class began charging down the mat.
One, two, three, step and punch.
They turned, punched towards me, and I found out why the windows were
bulging.
Raw, warm, wonderful power rushed past me.
It was breathtaking.
It was like being in one of those commercials were the fellow is sitting in
a chair in front of a huge speaker and his hair is being blown straight back.
The instructors name was Bob. He was short and skinny and had a narrow
face.
He could put one finger through a piece of plywood and leave a hole.
Once, when I was up at his house, he let me kick his personal kicking bag. I
bounced off it and almost fell down.
He used to pack his bags with circles of newspaper. He would pack them
until they had the resiliency of cement.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
When I started training I found that item that had been missing from
Kenpo. Raw, knuckle busting, endless repetition.
The same technique thousands of times.
It was okay to practice your techniques in the air, but youd better spend
a good amount of time thrusting your fingers into one of the sandboxes at the
front of the room; youd better work your legs out daily on one of the kicking
bags. Every technique had to be done as it was real, and if you were the one
being practice on youd better just gut up and learn to take it.
I always had bruised shins and forearms. A normal one hour class was
like an eight hour day, and when I walked out I was usually too tired, or
battered, to put the pedals down on my car.
Eventually, I toughened up.
I stayed at the Kang Duk Won for seven years, and I had many experiences.
My instructor, interestingly enough, never talked. Seven years and he
said maybe a half dozen things to me.
He said, A tight fist is a heavy fist.
And he said, There are many ways to the top of the mountain.
The students at the Kang Duk won were a varied bunch.
There were usually a few choppers parked at the curb, and a spattering
of Hells Angels or other outlaw bikers would be inside studying.
There were a couple of grave diggers.
There was a glass blower.
HOW I DEVELOPED MATRIXING
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There was the aeronautics engineer from Ames Research Center (next to
Moffet Field).
There were students from San Jose State.
And so on.
Each of those unique individuals became something more to me. I traded
pain with them. We bruised forearms and mingled our sweat on the mat. We
suffered through temperatures that could soar over a 120 in the summer, and
drop to freezing in the winter.
When I meet one of them today the years are gone and we are instantly
friends.
In short, we went to war together.
After a couple of years I was getting close to my Black Belt. At that
point strange things began to happen.
One day I was on lunch break at the factory where I worked. I was sitting
on a curb and staring at a rock. I decided to stare at the rock until I understood
the secret of the universe.
After a while I grew bored. Then I realized...the rock wasnt boring me, I
was boring me. I was a boring fellow.
I had discovered the secret of the universe.
I began experiencing a sixth sense in my life. I could tell when things
were going to happen before they happened.
I stopped dreaming, and what dreams I did have
had a different texture. It was as if I was really alive in my dreams, and in
actual places, and capable of coherent thought and action.
On the mat things were really happening. My body stopped working in
pieces and became a unit. (I would later call this phenomenon CBM-Coordinated
Body Motion).
I lost my reaction time. Simply, there was no gap between thought and
action.
Techniques that I had thought unworkable became really workable.
One day I was freestyling with a fellow. He grabbed my arm and put in an
awkward position and began pummeling my ribs.
I couldnt get loose, and he was really out of control.
Bam! Bam! I felt like my ribs were going to break.
Suddenly, nowhere to go, I had the strange feeling that my foot was a car
stuffed into a shoe. Then, as if through mist, I saw the end of my foot in a
kick.
Then I had the strange sensation that I was outside of my body, in a far
corner of the ceiling.
Then I was just standing there, nobody pummeling me any longer, and the
fellow who had been so pummeling was lying on the floor a dozen feet away.
I felt dazed, and I asked what happened.
You kicked him, somebody said.
After a minute, when my opponent was able to move again, the instructor
HOW I DEVELOPED MATRIXING
5
of the class came over to me and said, You have to watch your control.
But it was the other fellow that had been out of control, and, for the
first time in my life The Art had protected me.
I eventually received my Black Belt.
This was a real belt, not one given by a school that entertains its
students.
And, when my instructor finally retired, I found that it was time to move
on.
AIKIDO
(Aikido-The Way of Harmony in the spirit)
I had been fascinated by Aikido for a number of years. I read all the
articles and books on it, saw it in demonstrations, and my fascination just grew
and grew.
My time with the Kang Duk Won over, I decided to try some Aikido. That
meant I had to take off my Black Belt and put on a White Belt, but that was okay.
I signed up for a month at a school in Mountain View. By coincidence, the
teachers name was Bob.
For a month I attended classes. In that short month some interesting
things occurred.
In the dressing room I had a habit of talking to whoever I felt like. This
included any Black Belts who happened to be around.
The other White Belts, and a few of the Black Belts, looked at me oddly.
It wasnt like there was any written protocol, but people were supposed to be in
awe of Black Belts.
Finally, somebody asked me if I had studied
anything. They were surprised to find out that I was a Black Belt myself.
One night a couple of fellows stayed late to get in a little extra
practice. They asked me if I wanted to stay.
Sure, I said, not knowing what I was getting myself in for.
These two were cowboys, with their own idea of what proper training was.
Lets go full speed, one said joyfully.
The other one ran at him and a technique was attempted.
I say attempted because they didnt have the skill to accomplish it.
All they were really doing was engaging in something which I call The
Joy of Combat.
They were getting high on the action, and so what if somebody got hurt.
Come on, they prompted me.
I dont think I want to do this, I answered.
Why not? and a short philosophical argument evolved.
Finally, the art moving me, I said, Ill tell you why I dont want to do this.
I knelt in the Zen position and looked up at them. Rush me.
They rushed.
I glowed and the room filled with my light.
HOW I DEVELOPED MATRIXING
6
One of them sheered off, the other one fell down.
Thats not what we meant, they protested.
It was what I meant, however.
After a month, even though I was learning and having fun, I knew I
couldnt study Aikido.
I simply knew too much.
After seven years in Karate I could absorb whatever techniques Aikido
had to offer, being in a beginning class was eventually going to slow my
learning curve, and I didnt think an advanced class was going to be much better.
STICKY HANDS
While studying Aikido, a higher ranking Black Belt named Paul, asked me
about Karate.
I thought about it, then suggested that he should try an exercise called
Sticky Hands.
I had learned Sticky Hands while at the Kang Duk Won after receiving my
Black Belt.
The Kang Duk Won was not just Korean Karate, it was a Japanese Karate
translated by Koreans with a Chinese influence.
One of the influences was the exercise called Chi Sao. Sticky Hands.
Sticky Hands was an important part of Bruce Lees training, and is crucial
to Wing Chun (Beautiful Springtime) Kung Fu.
It is part of many Chinese arts.
In Sticky Hands the students stand arms length apart and twine their
wrists. Creating subtle circles, they try to penetrate each others defense. The
trick is that you must not block hard, you must block soft. This means that you
dont clunk arms, you give way and guide.
When training with other people some people are better and some people
arent. As promotions occur people can suddenly get better for a while, then
another promotion occurs and youre back to parity.
I had reached Black Belt a while before my training partner, a fellow
named Doug, did. I was better than him, then he achieved Black Belt and we
rapidly became equal.
Eventually, neither of us could penetrate the others defense, and we
would merely batter our arms on each others blocks.
Then I learned Sticky Hands.
Bam! Bam! We punched and kicked, and suddenly I was past his defenses
and punching his chest.
Other people werent as effected by the exercise, but I found instant
value in it.
Then a couple of years later, I began showing Paul Sticky Hands, and as I
was able to penetrate Karate with Sticky Hands, I found I could penetrate Aikido.
And because of Karate, I could penetrate with power.
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UNIVERSAL KARATE
I moved to Ukiah, a small town in northern California.
Before I even had a place to live I had opened my first Karate school. I
called it Universal Karate.
As I recall, the theory behind the name was that Karate should be able
to be done by anybody.
During this time I taught an abbreviated version of the Kang Duk Won.
The Karate I had learned had been a mixture of some ten forms, which are
listed in books on classical karate, and forms designed by Bob and the higher
ranking students in San Jose.
So why, you might ask, did I want to change the method I had been taught?
After all, it worked, why change it?
I sensed, you see, that there was something wrong.
Now, with all sorts of twenty-twenty hindsight, I can tell you that it was
the randomness of the system that was disturbing me. It was the lack of logic in
the method. I had to find pieces that were missing.
Back then, however, I only realized that I had two systems, and I wanted
to take them apart.
Bob had been able to place his finger through a board and leave a hole.
But that type of technique didnt interest me at all.
Even though I had been lured by power, that wasnt what really
interested me.
I cared about organizing the data that I had.
I wanted to tear it apart.
I had to tear it apart.
And put it back together again.
After turning out a couple of Black Belts at Universal Karate I decided
to move on.
Teaching was incredible, you always learn more through teaching, but it
wasnt providing me with the data I needed to solve the martial arts.
SHAOLIN WEST
I moved to Santa Rosa, a town midway between San Francisco and Ukiah.
I didnt teach much, at first, but rather concentrated on developing my
lists of techniques. I filled notebook after notebook with lists of techniques,
trying to make sense out of all that I was learning.
If there was a book published on the martial arts, I read it.
If there was a tape, I saw it.
I went to demonstrations. I talked to people. I asked questions.
I began doing arts out of books. I did Pa Kua Chang (Eight Trigrams Palm
Maneuvers) and Tai Chi Chuan (Grand Ultimate Fist), and many other arts.
Though I was blindly blundering, my training at the Kang Duk Won had
provided me with the means to make virtually any art work.
And everything I did went into those notebooks.
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Interestingly, though I never volunteered the information, people found
out that I knew the martial arts. Invariably, they asked one question.
Youre a Master!
I never claimed to be a Master. People just came up and started telling me
I was.
Thats cool.
I was teaching a fellow with a couple of years experience in Tai Chi. One
day he asked me if I knew Push Hands.
I hadnt, so he proceeded to teach me. For fifteen minute he pushed me
unmercifully. After fifteen minutes I figured it out, applied those concepts
which were applicable, and began pushing him unmercifully..
I eventually opened a school, which I called Shaolin West. Shaolin
means young forest, and is the name of a temple in China which is considered to
be the birthplace of the martial arts. My theory was that I was starting a
resurgence of the martial arts in the west.
I never said I was not prideful.
At Shaolin West I didnt teach Karate, I taught my first checklist. I called
it Sixteen Step Self Defense.
Now the checklist came in four specific parts, and this information is
important if youre going to understand the history of Matrixing.
Karate force
Kung Fu force with flow
Tai Chi flow with force
Aikido flow
Do you understand this arrangement?
There is only force and flow in the martial arts, and this can be used to
isolate each art and relate it to each other art.
And there are many other ways of arranging the arts. If one has a
predilection towards Japanese arts, for instance, they could study:
Karate
Jujitsu
Aikido
Or, if one wanted to matrix distances, they could study:
stickfighting
kickboxing
wrestling
Really, its about deciding where you want to go as a martial artist, then
being intelligent in your selection of a curriculum.
To be honest, I could have started from scratch, built an art without
using any of the classical arts. But people relate to the classical arts.
Besides, one doesnt want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
HOW I DEVELOPED MATRIXING
9
One day I observed a fellow doing martial arts on the property behind my
school. After class I went out and talked to him.
He taught me Ton Toi (Springy Legs), which is a northern style of Kung Fu.
I wrote my first article for Kick Illustrated. Kick, as I recall, eventually
became Inside Karate, which was one of the more important martial arts
magazines during its time.
I also wrote my first book, The Masters Handbook.
Eventually, after turning out a few Black Belts, I realized that my
method was not working. This was a technique only type of curriculum, and
there were serious gaps in my students abilities and knowledge.
It was however, a grand try, and it provided me an immense amount of
information.
As far as I knew, nobody else was even remotely trying the things that I
was trying, everybody else was just pushing the monkey see-monkey do methods
of classical martial arts. This meant I was either wacky, or a genius on the
cutting edge.

OAKLAND
I moved to Oakland.
I had taught martial arts everywhere I had lived, but Oakland was the one
place where nobody wanted to learn martial arts.
Interestingly, they had a theater downtown which showed nothing but
martial arts movies.
The theater was called the Lux, and it showed three movies for two
bucks.
Unfortunately, for those prices bums came in and slept.
Id be trying to watch the movies and an amazingly pair of dirty feet would
be draped over the seat next to me and loud snores would fill the air.
People who couldnt afford entertainment thought the Lux was the cats
meow. Huge women with immense families would file into the place. All night
long I would hear little heads being slapped, then during intermission, large
thermoses of chicken soup would make their appearance.
It was family night in Oakland.

THE ONE WEEK BLACK BELT COURSE
One day I was sitting around when the phone rang.
You want to come down and teach a bunch of fellows Karate? It was one
of my former students. He was living in Los Angeles.
When my wife got home the car was packed and I was ready to go.
In Los Angeles I was put up in a huge house on Talmadge in Los Feliz. I
interviewed a half dozen fellows, thought about what they wanted, then told
them I could make them Black Belts in one week.
Before you throw up your hands in disgust, I want you to think about a
HOW I DEVELOPED MATRIXING
10
few things.
One, I was of the old school, where it had taken me over four years to get
my belt, and I had suffered every minute.
Two, I possessed data concerning the martial arts that no one in the
world did concerning methods.
Three, a week is forty hours. If you take a half hour private class twice a
week for a year, you only have fifty-six hours of instruction.
Four, the course was predicated upon the concept of pure information.
It would be physical, but only to get across concepts.
Five, and this is most important, have you ever observed a karate class?
White Belts sweat just as much as Black Belts. They do the same amount
of physical work. They dont do it as well, but this is a matter of concentration
and...information.
As the fellows all worked during the day, we ran the class four hours a
night for ten days, thus splitting the one week into two.
The class was held in the attic of the house I was at. It was summer, and it
was hot, hot, hot.
One the guys lost twenty pounds in that two weeks.
I used a form format, but combined it with parts of the checklist method I
had used in Santa Rosa.
For two weeks we sweated. They listened patiently as I explained
concepts, then put them to work.
After two weeks I had actually created bona fide Black Belts. They
could have walked into virtually any school and presented themselves as such.
Interestingly, they could fight well.
This was one of the things I was worried about. I didnt want to turn out a
bunch of paper tigers.
So I had something that worked. There was, however, one huge problem
with it.
None of the students stuck with the martial arts, and their skills
degraded accordingly.
So I could make a bunch of fellows into Black Belts, but I couldnt make
them into life long artists.
Back to the old drawing board.
For the next few years I taught haphazardly. I experimented with an
incredibly variety of methods, searching for one that would produce the exact
results I required.
OUTLAW KARATE
While in LA that my son came of age. I had never forced either of my sons
to do Karate, and now the eldest one actually wanted to study.
I told him that he had to have a friend to work out with, and he found one.
Then, on the night of his first class, one of my old students showed up. I
heard you were teaching again! Why didnt you call me?
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11
And another old student showed up.
And then a total stranger.
I had not announced any class, yet people were coming out of the wood
work!
We began the course with six students. We worked in the living room of my
house, which was being used by my wife for a K-6 classroom. Twice a week we
moved all the chairs and tables out and conducted our class.
I put together a method which I called Outlaw Karate. It was outside the
accepted precepts of classical Karate, and designed to produce a Black Belt
within one year.
I had decided it was going to be a very hard class. It turned out to be the
hardest class I ever taught.
Mike had broken fingers for a solid year. He never missed a class.
Josh periodically ran out the door in frustration, only to show up for the
next class.
Tracy cried every single class.
And so on.
Midway through the year we broke my son.
He started wheezing and holding his chest. I took him to a doctor, and it
turned out that we had broken his sternum.
No karate for two months was the doctors orders.
Aaron showed up for the next class.
I kicked him out.
He showed up for the next class and said, Youre going to have to hurt me
to keep me out.
I let him stay.
One night Bill was struck so hard he turned grey and started to die. We
quickly applied a Scientology Assist and brought him back to life and continued
the class.
The results of this class were better than anything I had ever produced.
The fellows started achieving CBM (Coordinated Body Motion) and experiencing
the sixth sense phenomenon that I had experienced at the Kang Duk Won.
And they were life long artists.
One day my son was walking to work. It was a bright, sunny morning, and
he was dressed in a suit.
As he passed the local hamburger stand two bums started begging from
him.
Hey, man. got a quarter?
One of the bums followed him, and the other one ran around the
hamburger stand and prepared to jump my son.
Aaron was backing away from the first bum when the second one
launched himself from the top of a fence.
Aaron felt the second bum coming and whirled to execute a front kick to
the chin. The bum sailed away and hit a parking meter so hard that the pole bent.
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The other bum grabbed Aarons shoulder. Aaron whirled under the
grabbing arm in an Aikido move and executed an armlock. He then bounced the
bums head between his knee and elbow until the bum was out cold.
Looking around, Aaron realized that only five seconds has passed. Cars
were driving by, birds were singing, and he was alone. He walked on.
I learned several things from Aaron having been in a fight.
One, Aaron was doing things I hadnt shown him, he was working off
concepts.
Two, My method REALLY worked.
IM ARTS
I started a business to export my discoveries. I called my business IM Arts.
As I recall, it stood for Internal Martial Arts.
The main product of this business was a series of books on Outlaw
Karate, plus a collection of books on the various concepts of the martial arts.
Over the next year I wrote some twenty instruction manuals and produced
some twenty videos.
I want to make a point here: I was still not happy with my analysis of the
martial arts. I had a method that was superior to any other method in existence,
but there were still problems that I hadnt resolved.
The result of my unsettled state was that my business didnt do all that
well. The end result was that I resolved to solve the martial arts, and to learn
about writing and marketing that I might succeed in sharing my discoveries with
the world.
Thus far, I had written a few articles for the magazines. I began writing
articles in earnest. To date I have written over thirty articles.
And I have to tell you, there is a joy to writing an article and seeing it in
print...and knowing that over 100,000 people will read it.
One day, out of the blue, I wrote a column. And another one, and another
one. by the time I was done I had written twelve columns, and had not planned
any of them. They just burst out of me.
I wrote a letter to the editor I had been working with, John Soet, at Inside
Karate, and enclosed the twelve columns.
Suddenly I was a columnist!
For four years I sweated over that column. It would burst out of me, then
I would rewrite and rewrite it and rewrite it. I wanted it to be perfect.
It was a unique column, in that it blended humor with lessons, and I think
it was one of the best columns ever run by that magazine, or any other magazine.
Of course I might be biased.
Nah.
At any rate, I was now a professional writer, and I started to understand
some of the things that have to be considered when marketing a magazine.
I realized, at this time, that the martial arts world had changed. People
werent as interested in the philosophy as they had been when I first started
HOW I DEVELOPED MATRIXING
13
studying. When I started people were interested in the sixth sense and things
of a Zen nature, now they werent.
Also, when I had started only people with a diehard interest in the
martial arts studied. There werent many schools, and the schools that there
were specialized in sweat and blood.
Now people were being lured off the streets by the offer of free
uniforms and the exploits of their cinematic heroes.
The martial arts had become a business. Kids with no purpose were kept
entertained that the school might stay open.
Adults with no purpose were sold on programs that promised a Black
Belt.
The general tenor of people just had no purpose being in school.
The result was that Black Belt standards, in spite of the incredible
tournament abilities of a few, was being lowered.
I learned something else from my writing experiences.
People were interested in such things as diet and weightlifting. They
were more interested in science.
This meant that people were being corrupted away from the paranormal to
a science that is only a substitute for the science of the martial arts.
I would read an article on building the better biceps so you could have
that dynamite punch. But the biceps is a retractive muscle, not a punching
muscle! And weight lifting was divorced from the energy systems necessary to
the martial arts.
When weightlifting one isolates a muscle (group) and works on it. But to
CBM (Coordinated Body Motion) one must learn to use the muscles together. This
meant that weightlifting, as it is currently practiced, OPPOSES the martial arts.
It doesnt have to, and I am sure that there are people out there who are
making inroads on the relationship of weightlifting to the martial arts.
AL CASE MARTIAL ARTS ACADEMY
After the hardest class I ever taught, I was persuaded to open another
school. I did so in Tujunga, California, and named the school the Al Case Martial
Arts Academy.
At this school I had students helping me, so I opened up the curriculum.
I taught Outlaw Karate, but also held classes in Tai Chi and Pa Kua and
whatever else I felt like.
To be honest, I was already taking pieces of my arts apart and rearranging
them, searching for the truth of the arts.
On the average, once a month an insane person would walk into the
school. These varied from the incomprehensible to the dangerous. Over the
years I had had many people come into my school, some of them in uniform, to
challenge the master.
I never let any of these people start a fight, but it was interesting
HOW I DEVELOPED MATRIXING
14
watching my students reaction to these jerks.
One day a fellow walked in and started bad mouthing everybody from
Bruce Lee to the guy down the street. It turned out he was an instructor from
the next town. He had taken it upon himself to welcome me to town, and to
badmouth every art and instructor he could.
I always wonder what he said about me.
One day a fellow walked in and asked about courses. It turned out that
he had more years in the martial arts than I did, and we ended up exchanging
arts. I taught him what I knew, and he taught me Fut Ga, which is a southern
Shaolin style of Kung Fu.
One day a fellow walked in with nearly ten years of experience in Pa
Kua.
We showed each other our arts, and we complimented each other, and he
left.
Interestingly, he never tumbled to the fact that I was not classically
trained.
Eventually, I tired of the school. I wasnt any closer to finding the truth
of the martial arts, I wasnt making any money, so I decided to close it.
Interestingly, many students demanded that I continue to teach them. I
turned my garage into a dojo and have been teaching there ever since.
I have taught everywhere. I have taught in basements and attics. I have
taught on rooftops and back alleys. I have had big storefronts and small holes-
in-the-wall. I have found, out of all those experiences, that teaching out of my
garage is the most pleasurable.
I dont have to put up with people who dont have any purpose.
I dont have to put up with the once-a-month crazies that used to wander in
and challenge me.
I dont have to put up with money worries, and my house becomes a write
off.
In short, I only accept the people that I want, and my art is high enough
caliber that there is always someone to teach.
MATRIX MARTIAL ARTS
I started receiving Scientology auditing.
Scientology auditing is designed to help you get rid of the things that
stop you. After thirty years in the martial arts, and nearly fifty years of life, I
had a lot of things that stopped me.
After the auditing I tossed out my notebooks.
Hundreds of notebooks, filled with amazing amounts of data.
It was the smartest thing I could have done.
I began looking at the martial arts with a new, fresh viewpoint. The more
auditing I got, the more I stopped stopping myself, and the clearer things became.
I believe its in the Tao that Lao Tse says, To know yourself is to know
your enemy.
HOW I DEVELOPED MATRIXING
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I stopped being my enemy.
I decided to solve the martial arts.
First, I listed every technique I knew. After thirty years, I knew
thousands of them.
Then I went through dozens of tapes, listing every single technique that I
did not already have written down.
When I was done I had a massive list.
I wrote each technique out on the back of a business card. At the top of
the card I wrote what attack would cause that defense to be used.
I started arranging the cards.
I subdivided the cards according to attack.
Then I arranged the cards under each attack according to art.
Finally, with thousands of cards littering my living room floor, I began to
compare the techniques.
Duplicates were tossed out.
Unworkable techniques (such as when the attacker poses momentarily so
you can finish the technique) were tossed out.
Techniques that lacked in CBM (Coordinated Body Motion) were tossed
out.
When I was finally done I was down to about seventy techniques.
Thats right, seventy techniques. And I knew that was stretching it.
I arranged the final techniques into one art, which I called The Perfect
Art.
I began teaching the art.
The first student I taught The Perfect Art to completed the thing in about
a month. He had no problem with the concepts because everything made sense.
One technique led to the next, and the next, and the next.
There was just no way to argue against the arrangement of purely
workable techniques.
I had found the truth of the martial arts.
HOW I DEVELOPED MATRIXING
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