Master Al Case' Matrix Martial Arts
- Thread starter TaiChiTJ
- Start date
Chris Parker
Grandmaster
(Ahem).... Do you really want an appraisal here? Okay....
Starting with the rather unrealistic attacks on the you-tube clip, through to the overly defensive ("He is the real deal, I know because I work on movies!") comments there, it's not looking good. Follow that through to the website, and things get worse.
There is a lot of heavy-handed selling aspects (the drill no-one knows! The only perfect karate!), a lot of rather bizarre claims (Aikido in months, if it is "matrixed".... whatever that means, he learnt this in 40 years of training, and you could train for 40 years and maybe be okay at some things [?], and so on), through to the very removed-from-reality statement that only people who create their own art are actually "artists" (?!?!), which just tells me that he is protecting his own history of not really getting any of the arts he claims to have studied, as well as that he doesn't really seem to get what the term artistry refered to, nor what it entails here.
Not a recommendation in the slightest.
Starting with the rather unrealistic attacks on the you-tube clip, through to the overly defensive ("He is the real deal, I know because I work on movies!") comments there, it's not looking good. Follow that through to the website, and things get worse.
There is a lot of heavy-handed selling aspects (the drill no-one knows! The only perfect karate!), a lot of rather bizarre claims (Aikido in months, if it is "matrixed".... whatever that means, he learnt this in 40 years of training, and you could train for 40 years and maybe be okay at some things [?], and so on), through to the very removed-from-reality statement that only people who create their own art are actually "artists" (?!?!), which just tells me that he is protecting his own history of not really getting any of the arts he claims to have studied, as well as that he doesn't really seem to get what the term artistry refered to, nor what it entails here.
Not a recommendation in the slightest.
Supra Vijai
Black Belt
Not much I can add to the above post really, I saw Chris Parker had replied already and almost didn't bother 
Funny thing is I came across his website last week and shared the link on my facebook with the caption wtf... The guy claims to be able to teach you Aikido and get you competent in 80 minutes and help you master it in a couple of months... all for an astounding fee of $10. Not to mention the multiple forms of Kung Fu, Karate etc. With the Aikido aspect at least, it would probably be a better sign if he learnt to spell the name of the founder correctly....
Just my thoughts
Funny thing is I came across his website last week and shared the link on my facebook with the caption wtf... The guy claims to be able to teach you Aikido and get you competent in 80 minutes and help you master it in a couple of months... all for an astounding fee of $10. Not to mention the multiple forms of Kung Fu, Karate etc. With the Aikido aspect at least, it would probably be a better sign if he learnt to spell the name of the founder correctly....
Just my thoughts
xfighter88
Blue Belt
Not much I can add to the above post really, I saw Chris Parker had replied already and almost didn't bother
Funny thing is I came across his website last week and shared the link on my facebook with the caption wtf... The guy claims to be able to teach you Aikido and get you competent in 80 minutes and help you master it in a couple of months... all for an astounding fee of $10. Not to mention the multiple forms of Kung Fu, Karate etc. With the Aikido aspect at least, it would probably be a better sign if he learnt to spell the name of the founder correctly....
Just my thoughts
Yeah not the highest quality if you can't check your own spelling. Did the website ask for a credit card number or to varify your bank account information as well? When in doubt if it looks to good to be true it is.
I believe Mr. Case is a member here.
xfighter88
Blue Belt
Then he should drop by and let the OP know what's up.
matrixman
Yellow Belt
Hi Fellows. My ears was burnin'.
Yes, I'm Al Case. Yes, I do teach a method of faster learning.
I was also a writer for the mags, had a column in Inside Karate.
I was also featured in the November issue of Inside Kung Fu.
I don't usually go on forums, because people tend to dogpile.
I check out MartialTalk out every once in a while because
the honorable Mr. Hubbard does his best to make this a very fine site.
And my apologies for misspelling O Sensei's name.
and you definitely have my apologies for any offense I make in the future.
Do I have a better method for learning?
Look, there are a few answers.
One, I developed a method for learning which is based on Boolean Algebra.
But don't let the egghead bushwah bug you. Just research what a 'truth table' is
and see if you can use it in the martial arts.
I'm the only one to use it. Ever. Took me a few decades to figure it out.
Second, order a course. See if I'm full of bushwah. Money back guarantee.
I recommend Matrix Karate because it tells you about Matrixing basics.
Third, sign up for my newsletter, or, better yet, just follow me on myblog.
http://alcase.wordpress.com
See if I make sense over time. That's the trick, eh?
Fourth, check out the other vids on youtube.
I'm one of the few people in the world who can put out a candle
with a punch from over a foot away. The vid is on youtube.
Fifth, I'm in Los Angeles. Send me an email, arrange to meet.
I'm not shy, I'm polite, I'm not interested in fighting, only learning.
Sixth, if you don't like me, that's fine, just be rude and I'll sign off.
Guys, I appreciate the intent of keeping the martial arts honest.
But I just don't have the time or the thick skin to play with opinions versus facts.
I hope you guys all have a great new year.
I hope you all get everything you possibly can out of the martial arts.
You have my love, and I'm sorry if I have offended anybody.
Please forgive.
Thank you.
Al Case
Yes, I'm Al Case. Yes, I do teach a method of faster learning.
I was also a writer for the mags, had a column in Inside Karate.
I was also featured in the November issue of Inside Kung Fu.
I don't usually go on forums, because people tend to dogpile.
I check out MartialTalk out every once in a while because
the honorable Mr. Hubbard does his best to make this a very fine site.
And my apologies for misspelling O Sensei's name.
and you definitely have my apologies for any offense I make in the future.
Do I have a better method for learning?
Look, there are a few answers.
One, I developed a method for learning which is based on Boolean Algebra.
But don't let the egghead bushwah bug you. Just research what a 'truth table' is
and see if you can use it in the martial arts.
I'm the only one to use it. Ever. Took me a few decades to figure it out.
Second, order a course. See if I'm full of bushwah. Money back guarantee.
I recommend Matrix Karate because it tells you about Matrixing basics.
Third, sign up for my newsletter, or, better yet, just follow me on myblog.
http://alcase.wordpress.com
See if I make sense over time. That's the trick, eh?
Fourth, check out the other vids on youtube.
I'm one of the few people in the world who can put out a candle
with a punch from over a foot away. The vid is on youtube.
Fifth, I'm in Los Angeles. Send me an email, arrange to meet.
I'm not shy, I'm polite, I'm not interested in fighting, only learning.
Sixth, if you don't like me, that's fine, just be rude and I'll sign off.
Guys, I appreciate the intent of keeping the martial arts honest.
But I just don't have the time or the thick skin to play with opinions versus facts.
I hope you guys all have a great new year.
I hope you all get everything you possibly can out of the martial arts.
You have my love, and I'm sorry if I have offended anybody.
Please forgive.
Thank you.
Al Case
Noah_Legel
Blue Belt
Boolean Algebra? Well, there go my chances of ever checking this out, as I am quite literally an idiot with math--by my senior year of high school I was barely capable of performing 7th Grade-level mathematics, and I was never able to successfully memorize the times tables
Supra Vijai
Black Belt
Mr. Case,
Agreed with Tez3, not offended in slightest. The comment about the spelling of O Sensei's name was from a business perspective as much as from a MA one. As someone who has run their own business and helped manage several others over the years, the crucial thing from a marketing point of view if P&E - Proofreading and Editing.
You may have found the ultimate secret but if you have obvious errors like spelling mistakes on your site which serves as your primary marketing tool then you are going to lose a lot of people right at the outset.
Mind you, with all due respect to yourself and your students, I'm old school. I believe you don't get anything without working for it and anything you do get won't last. So I'd probably stick to slogging it out for a couple of decades with my Sensei myself
All the best.
Agreed with Tez3, not offended in slightest. The comment about the spelling of O Sensei's name was from a business perspective as much as from a MA one. As someone who has run their own business and helped manage several others over the years, the crucial thing from a marketing point of view if P&E - Proofreading and Editing.
You may have found the ultimate secret but if you have obvious errors like spelling mistakes on your site which serves as your primary marketing tool then you are going to lose a lot of people right at the outset.
Mind you, with all due respect to yourself and your students, I'm old school. I believe you don't get anything without working for it and anything you do get won't last. So I'd probably stick to slogging it out for a couple of decades with my Sensei myself
All the best.
Chris Parker
Grandmaster
Hi Al,
The main problem I'm seeing here is that you appear to be applying intellectual methods to non-intellectual situations. Martial arts are not learned intellectually, they are learned physically, and by applying something like Boolean Algebra to it (and things such as the "truth table") you seem to be implying that you can teach complex martial arts by overly categorising the various aspects of them, which intellectually compartmentalises them for a learning experience. The problem is that martial arts are learned by getting the skills into the body, not the mind, and the way to do that is to physically repeat the skills many times over under more and more stress, ensuring that the mind basically gets out of the way.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of fast-track learning, we utilise it ourselves a fair bit, especially in our self defence curriculum. But it's based far more on working similar skill-sets repeatedly, and ensuring that they carry over, rather than looking to an intellectual method of mentally understanding and categorising it.
I don't really want to start attacking you here, so please take the following comments as respectful, but I'd like to go through some of the claims you list above (note: they are not queried themselves, but the reason they are listed is).
You mention your articles in various publications, to be completely frank I have seen more utter nonsense published in magazines than actual good content overall, and there was no dispute of your writing articles, so I have to wonder what the reason was for you to mention them straight away? My only thought is that it is a way of establishing credibility, perhaps you could offer another reason that you included that part?
Next, the issues I can see with using intellectual methods to create a learning system for a physical endeavour I have already gone through, but your comment (accented by yourself there) that you are the only person to apply Boolean Algebra to the learning of martial arts (Ever!) tells me that there are two possible reasons for this. Either you are truly revolutionary in the way you teach, or no-one else has thought it really is beneficial. I also am unsure as to how you decided that this was a good way of learning martial arts that you had already learnt... did you take completely unskilled beginners and teach them using your method exclusively? Then how did you test them, were they compared with, say, a black belt in the same art to see how they performed?
The next method you have of us telling whether or not what you present is good or not is to buy your program(s), and then join your mailing list. Okay, it's a little marketing-heavy for a forum post, but I agree that actually seeing it would be the better way to go. I'll jump on your blog after this.
The videos. Honestly, that brings me back to the idea of teaching others, as that is your claim, not whether or not after 40 years you can actually do it yourself. And the candle trick? Okay, it's fun, but I'm not sure what it has to do with your teaching concepts here. Again it seems like a way to make yourself more credible, and if you are doing that with what is essentially a martial art parlour trick, it doesn't help there.
LA, well, I'm in Melbourne, Australia, so it's a bit of a commute. I'll leave that for the time being, sure you understand.
Finally, I don't think it's a matter of liking you or not, it's more about some rather unusual claims being given, and some clarification being sought. Honestly, I'm much more impressed with yourself and your willingness to enter into debate than many others, so I would hope that you don't suffer any rudeness from anyone here.
Hope to hear on these issues from you.
matrixman
Yellow Belt
Hi Chris, good to meet you. Points well taken.
I usually get a lot of raised eyes, and I usually just throw the credibility stuff out there to fend off. No offense to anyone, I trawl for the person who is interested.
The real point here, in my mind, is intellectual vs skills into the body. Youre absolutely right, an art without the skills into the body is no art at all. Worthless.
But as you point out later, the idea is to get the mind out of the way. I mean, the sooner you get the mind out of the way, the sooner the skills go into the body. Right?
Matrixing provides sufficient data that various questions in the mind are not activated, thus the mind doesnt get in the way, thus the skills go into the body faster.
Will it work for everybody? Absolutely not. You dont have to study Boolean algebra, but you do have to be relatively freed from belief systems.
Belief systems are something that the mind erects when the learning process abuses a person. Public schools, classic methods, all sorts of thing can result in belief systems.
But I dont want to get off the track, so let me say this. The abilities of the individual are more than anybody has ever dreamed.
Horses to wagons to cars to planes to rockets to the moon and beyond...all done within a hundred years by people who put aside their minds and belief systems and started to create, to work, to believe in themselves ( as opposed to a belief system).
Speed reading? People a hundred years ago scoffed.
Nothing in my public schooling ever prepared me for the things I would learn in and through the martial arts, and I dare say it is so for you.
If you believe that people can only learn as fast as bruises are put on their body (I overstate, but you see my point), then thats how fast you learn martial arts. If you believe that human beings are not body, not mind, but something else, some unlimited something else, then the door opens.
Anyway, I apologize for ranting. I get excited.
If this isnt for you, thats okay. If it is, Ill answer any question you throw at me, and be honest about my ignorance. If any of the points above, or ignited in your mind, are unclear, please ask.
And if I have offended anybody out there, Im sorry. Please forgive me, Ill try to do better.
Thank you.
I usually get a lot of raised eyes, and I usually just throw the credibility stuff out there to fend off. No offense to anyone, I trawl for the person who is interested.
The real point here, in my mind, is intellectual vs skills into the body. Youre absolutely right, an art without the skills into the body is no art at all. Worthless.
But as you point out later, the idea is to get the mind out of the way. I mean, the sooner you get the mind out of the way, the sooner the skills go into the body. Right?
Matrixing provides sufficient data that various questions in the mind are not activated, thus the mind doesnt get in the way, thus the skills go into the body faster.
Will it work for everybody? Absolutely not. You dont have to study Boolean algebra, but you do have to be relatively freed from belief systems.
Belief systems are something that the mind erects when the learning process abuses a person. Public schools, classic methods, all sorts of thing can result in belief systems.
But I dont want to get off the track, so let me say this. The abilities of the individual are more than anybody has ever dreamed.
Horses to wagons to cars to planes to rockets to the moon and beyond...all done within a hundred years by people who put aside their minds and belief systems and started to create, to work, to believe in themselves ( as opposed to a belief system).
Speed reading? People a hundred years ago scoffed.
Nothing in my public schooling ever prepared me for the things I would learn in and through the martial arts, and I dare say it is so for you.
If you believe that people can only learn as fast as bruises are put on their body (I overstate, but you see my point), then thats how fast you learn martial arts. If you believe that human beings are not body, not mind, but something else, some unlimited something else, then the door opens.
Anyway, I apologize for ranting. I get excited.
If this isnt for you, thats okay. If it is, Ill answer any question you throw at me, and be honest about my ignorance. If any of the points above, or ignited in your mind, are unclear, please ask.
And if I have offended anybody out there, Im sorry. Please forgive me, Ill try to do better.
Thank you.
I have no idea what you are talking about.
However I do think you should stop apologising, it's weird.
Flying Crane
Sr. Grandmaster
I honestly don't trust a money back guarantee on something like this. Just gives me a bad feeling like there's something in the fine print to make it near impossible to collect on...
how about this one: if you believe so strongly about your method, then make one of your programs available in its entirety, for free, no limitations. Let people see what it is all about unhindered, unhidden. If we see the potential, then we're likely to bite again. As it is, I'd wager most serious martial artists are just too sceptical to blow the ten bucks.
Bruno@MT
Senior Master
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2009
- Messages
- 3,399
- Reaction score
- 74
Money back guarantee... how about we say we'll pay if we are genuinely impressed? After all, it's logically the same, and you are sure enough that we'll be impressed to offer the money back guarantee. Asking for our money first seems to me to be a sign that you want to make sure you have the money first before you are confident to show us what you are about.
Chris Parker
Grandmaster
Good to meet you too.
Within certain communities, there is the concept of sub-communication, in other words, what you're saying when you're not saying it. That is where this feels incongruent, honestly.
Here you are saying that you put out the "here's how good I am" information (what we would refer to as demonstrating value) in order to put off anyone who isn't genuinely interested, and that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Speaking from an analytical viewpoint, it's actually designed to impress someone who doesn't know what you're refering to, but risks coming across as bragging. So you "soften" the message by putting in a lot of overly apologetic language, which is an attempt to appear humble at the same time. It's an interesting balancing act, and can be done if it's done well. But if not, it smacks of incongruence, whether that is present or not in the speaker.
I'm also not sure what you mean when you say you "trawl for the person who is interested". Do you mean that you are looking only for potential customers?
I think it goes a lot further than that, but yes.
No, not quite. Really, the more the body is trained, the better the skills get into the body. And that takes it back to my issue about what level is this learning going to (when you claim on your website that you can "learn [Aikido] within 80 minutes"), as it really doesn't appear to be what I would call learning the martial art. It is getting a grip, to a degree, on some basic concepts, and that is all.
Hmm, in over 20 years in the martial arts myself, I've often asked questions, and the answers have often been rather enlightening, whether they came from experience, reflection, my instructors, or other students... but not while training. So the fundamental idea of there being questions in the mind to be "activated" doesn't really gel with me there. Can you go into any more detail about what you mean by this?
Ah, this is where we get interesting....
On the surface here, I fundamentally disagree with you. A martial art is a belief system, so it's more about embracing one than being freed from one. But I think you mean something different, and are talking more about beliefs about how we learn, yes?
First, an argument.
No their not. A belief system is what allows you to function, it provides your values, and your behaviours. There is nothing abusive about it whatsoever, in fact, abuse would lead to a perversion of a persons belief system (it's okay to hurt animals, for instance). Your concept of what a belief system is appears to be rather lacking from this end.
Honestly, you're talking to the wrong person to say things like that to.... My background and my belief system more than allows for such concepts, and embraces them at all times.
(Okay, the tonality of that line may need clarification. It was said with a beaming smile, and meant in a very friendly tone, without condescention or mocking. Rather agreeable, really).
Well, your history is a little off.... unless you think that cars really came within a hundred years of wagons! But yes, positive belief is a great thing, although that is not the greatest factor in all of these endeavours and achievements, honestly.
Ha, okay. Counter question would be when do you feel that public literacy came to the fore? How long before a hundred years ago when people scoffed at speed reading? Because if the majority of the public couldn't read, that may say something about the general perception of speed reading a hundred years ago or longer....
As for prepared me, actually a lot of my psychology studies have really come into my training and teaching. But I get what you mean.
As I said, we employ fast-track learning methods in our schools as well, but the way they work is constant repetition of principles or tactics. It's what is refered to as a DefTac, or Defensive Tactics Program. And, honestly, what this all seems like to me is a version of that where you take the basic concepts of the physical approach to a system, and cover that briefy without the necessary repetition. And while that can give a basic overview, and can certainly be done in a very short amount of time, it is far from actually learning a martial art.
Your page on "Matrixed Aikido" has some rather unusual claims attached. For example, you claim that after going through the core concepts on the 80 minute DVDs and in the 50 page book, we will be able to "create" Aikido. To me, that is not correct. You may be able to express something out of the base concepts taken from Aikido, but that is very far from being Aikido itself. The essential aspects that make it Aikido are removed (and no, I'm not talking about any of the metioned "spirituality"... although I should say that Aikido is not "founded on religious principles", rather the Otomo Sect of Buddhism played an increasingly large part in O'Sensei's life and expression as he aged). You also ask us to compare the old footage of Ueshiba with modern practitioners, claiming that the modern members are "faster, more intuitive, more able" (?) than Ueshiba was. Honestly, I don't you and I see the same thing when we look at that footage. Ueshiba, to me, may not appear as fast, but I also see him not needing to, and that is something that the modern practitioners I see are striving towards. So we may be looking at different benchmarks there.
Again, no need for apologies, particularly this frequently. I could get into what it says to me, but I'll hold off on that for now at least.
Thank you for taking the time to respond.
EDIT: Oh, just as an adendum, I did check out your blog. There are a few interesting things, but there's also a lot that I would argue with as well (such as the blog on being smarter than a pigeon, the one on rankings, and most particularly the one on the Samurai versus the Tai Chi master... really, that one showed that you don't have much understanding of either weapon or art, frankly, although I must say that, apart from "laughing" at this thread, you weren't "unusually mean" yourself there, although I don't remember anyone here arguing that we "are, uh, not smart". Don't know if it was smart of you to send us there....). There's a lot of gaps in understanding being presented, honestly.
Bruno@MT
Senior Master
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2009
- Messages
- 3,399
- Reaction score
- 74
Chris Parker said:
I've seen footage of the heads of the kans, and imo it is only natural for younger guys to be physically faster. That is what youth is all about. Hatsumi sensei is certainly not bouncing around like when he was half his age. The key is: he doesn't need to. If you are good enough, you don't have to hurry because you can do the bare minimum that is necessary.
I've linked this clip several time already and I am going to do it again. Here you see a frail old iaido master decisively beating someone half his age and twice his size. And he doesn't do it by being faster, but just by moving where he has to move without too much fuss or excitement. This is what you earn through years of repetition, not by book learning.
[yt]83Xq2p0E07o[/yt]
Supra Vijai
Black Belt
Supra Vijai
Black Belt
Wow great clip, thanks Bruno
Was this the Hachidan you mentioned in your reply to one of my other threads about training and humility?Similar threads
Latest Discussions
-
-
-
Aging, health issues and Martial Arts. - Martial Journal- Latest: Kung Fu Wang
-
-
