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It took me seven years to get my black belt in Karate, but it only took my instructor two and one half years to get his black belt. I always wondered at this discrepancy, 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 get their black belts, and to truly learn anything in the martial arts.

When I took apart the system I had been taught I found two systems. I had not only learned the classical system of ten forms that my instructor had been taught, 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 his teachings 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 material out there. The real problem is separating the material of the martial arts into logical slices. Each of the slices must represent a logical look at a style or system.

If we were talking dance, we would be separating flamenco from waltz from whatever. If we were talking music we would be separating pop from classical from so on. In the martial arts we must actually separate karate from gung fu from ninjitsu from tai chi…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 differences then you are mixing arts, and different ways of moving the body, and different ways of using energy, and so on. Thus, a peach becomes indistinguishable from an apple from an orange, and so on. Thus, the arts become a mush which the mind refuses to digest.

Understanding these differences, the arts become very easy to absorb, and the mind just absorbs and catalogues everything easy as pie. The martial arts, you see, are only illogical because we have made them so. Separate Wudan into Wudan, or karate into karate, or shaolin into shaolin, and the martial arts canbe learned in a matter of months, not years.

Al Case has delved into martial arts for 40+ years. He has written dozens of articles for the magazines, and founded Matrixing Technology. You can find out how to separate arts and make them pure by picking up his free ebook at Monster Martial Arts.