There was a goju ryu karate club in my hometown when I grew up, but knowing about something didn’t immune me from the chaos of the educational institutions. I was treated to the teacher father figures, bullying school kids, and an education that didn’t have much to do with anything. So I needed Goju, or another art of similar value, but didn’t know it.
As school progressed people began taking drugs, lots of drugs. Man, a good fighting discipline really would have worked to protect me from people who were intent on going unconscious and crazy, which is what pills do to you. A good karate club would have helped me to retain my natural dignity and integrity at a time when I needed it the most.
Eventually, society turned to the Viet Nam War, and this war had to be the craziest thing in the world. The bumper sticker used to read, ‘Travel to strange, exotic lands, meet wonderful people, and kill them.’ Fortunately, at about that time I was rescued from this chaos…I happened across the Ed Parker Chinese American kenpo karate system.
I worked out ruthlessly, doing karate kumite and practicing my kenpo moves by the hour, but, eventually, I was to be disillusioned by the martial arts techniques I was learning. I was learning hundreds of fighting techniques and all the variations, but they didn’t have to much to do with the real world. Kenpo, though it was wonderful, was based on combat fantasy scenarios that didn’t always happen.
I went to the Kang Duk Won for my next step towards a rational world, and it was to prove a blessing. Here the discipline was rigorous and total, and the energy created was all consuming. I learned that all my sweat and bruises could concentrate on one factor: the handling of the incoming fist.
One, single incoming missile, and I had to handle it, but that one incoming missile represented rage and anger and chaos. Thus, in handling the fist, I was handling the rage and anger and chaos of a world that believed in war and drugs and misinformation. As I understood this I began to develop my matrixing methods.
Through this thing I called Matrixing I ordered all my martial arts techniques, put them in a logical arrangement so that they represented a whole science, and not an out of sequence string of randomity. The art became a science, and through the combative sciences I said good by to the gods of insanity, So for me there were six separate points of insanity: school, drugs, war, kenpo, classical karate, and matrixing…and this is the path I chose, this is the path I ralized when I discovered Real Karate.
The path the author followed is well laid out at Monster Martial Arts. You can download a free ebook which explains his Matrixing theories. 4
