Lower Providence Aikido

When I happened across that headline, which compared a punch to a shotgun blast to the face, I had to laugh, and then I groaned. I laughed because it was so silly that it would pull in loads of readers. I groaned because it has so little to do with what a real Powerful Punch is.

The headline came from one of these internet pages. You know the ones I'm talking about. They hit you with the headline, then splash you with 'Gee, I'm like you,' and if you give me money you can kill the bullies.'

Now, aside from the idea that killing, even of a bully, is not a great thing to do, there is the misrepresentation of what a punch is. Do you know how much power comes out of a a discharging shotgun? Do you know how much roid rage you'd have to store up inside yourself to actually knock somebody in the face as hard as a load of buckshot?

And, if you were fighting ten morons, would you be able to get that much rage, and keep it going it through hitting ten guys in the face? Can you see that this shotgun power idea is not really logical? Can you see that it plays to the emotional child hiding inside, offering a solution that is pure comic book?

I've written more than a hundred thousand words on the correct methods of how to punch. I've written these words in Kenpo articles and Taekwondo instruction manuals, and, beyond that spoken a few hundred thousand words on the subject in martial arts video courses. So let me give you the real information on what a punch actually is.

Correct body alignment. building intention. Using as little energy as you can.

Go over that last paragraph again, because that's the truth. On one of my courses I instruct a fellow on the correct way to strike somebody. No, it's not three months of just hitting something, it is only five minutes of how to punch at the beginning of some twenty lessons, and focusing on how to actually realize those three concepts I mentioned in the last paragraph.

The striking part of the lesson is four minutes and fifty seconds of practicing, until he understands what I'm showing him, and the next lesson is four minutes and forty seconds of showing him, and then four minutes and thirty seconds until he understands, and so on, until he finally does his perfectly aligned, intense, effortless fist the first time. Personally, I don't think teaching somebody how to launch a shotgun blast to the face is very much fun, or very nice; I would much rather train him how to make a powerful punch with little effort, a perfectly aligned body, and the correct knowledge of what a punch is.