Principles of Kmt Martial Art

Origins of Martial Art

As with all other elements of civilization, martial arts originated in African KMT, over 6000 years ago in the period of federal unification of the Kmtic nation (Upper Kmt and Lower Kmt) and from there it moved to Phoenicia, Carthage, Greece, Rome, Persia, India, and China. Modern education, moral standards of conduct, and martial arts for the purpose of self defense and self discipline are products of an intellectual evolution extending over thousands of years and many continents.

For students of world studies through African eyes, the edifice of contemporary moral, mental, and martial systems of human self development therefore have their origins in the rain forests, deserts, and Nile rivers of African antiquity, over 7000 years ago. In fact, the Nile Valley River system, which runs through the heart of the African continent, is at the heart the center of (1) the human species in all of its stages dating from 5,500,000 years ago; (2) the first settled human class societies, dating from 10,000 years ago; (3) and the first ancient advanced civilizations, dating from 7000 years ago.

KMT was an indigenous African ethnic and cultural cluster of civilizations, geographically situated along the 4,144 mile Nile River, which flowed from the interior of the African continent to the delta region of North KMT is essentially, at the center of Africa's ancient moral, cosmological, scientific, methodological, and theoretical. Therefore, any contemporary African scientific worldview must be founded on ancient African systems of thought and practice, which constituted the first moment in Africa's long moral and scientific educational tradition. KMT intellectual material consists of the inscriptions engraved on the temples, monuments, stele and statues; the inscriptions in temples, pyramids, and tombs, and on sarcophagi; obelisks, papyrus, and stone pallets.

The sphere of knowledge varied from the highest cosmology and philosophy, which was veiled under intricate symbology down to secular notes, letters, and elementary school exercises. The form that this knowledge took varied from inscriptions on pyramids and steles; cosmological symbology, astronomical inscriptions, hymns and poems with moral meaning, philosophical narratives, historical records; legal documents, business and commerce documents, letters, governmental decrees and enactment's to codes of morality, ethics, and concessions of innocence. Also there were scientific papers that documented the following: mathematics, medicine and surgery, therapeutics, symbolic formulas, family morality, justice, ethics, and public manners.

The preliminary stage is the awakening of the latent consciousness by cultivating the power of observation, the recognition of values and the sense of responsibility.

The Ancient KMTs engaged themselves in martial arts for the purpose of preparation for war, national defense, discipline, strength training, sport and recreation.

Maat Principles

The body was viewed as a temple of the soul, and as such, it should be cared for with ritual preparation:

•1. Control of thought.
•2. Control of action.
•3. Steadfastness of purpose.
•4. Identity with the elements of the spiritual realm.
•5. Evidence of having a mission in life.
•6. Evidence of a call to spiritual orders.
•7. Honesty, righteousness, justness, and unbending determination to right that which is wrong.
•8. Freedom from resentment when under the experience of persecution and wrong (courage).
•9. Confidence in the powers of the master teachers of KMT.
•10. Confidence in one's own ability to learn.

The Stela of Amenophis II near the Horemrkt (Sphinx) illustrates Kmt's long history of martial arts given that this monument has been dated to be 8000 years old or more. At Beni Hasan, in four separate tombs, there are hundreds of paintings on limestone walls of African martial artists using a sequences clinches, engagements, takedowns, wrap-ups, chokes, kicks, locks, arm and leg bars.

Over 621 martial arts moves are performed on these walls. No where in the world is martial arts fighting more graphically displayed this early than in this underground building in African Kmt---no where. This is by far the oldest and most perfect presentation of ancient Kmt martial arts in existence. It should be studied carefully. The very foundation of modern jujitsu and ground fighting are graphically illustrated on these walls at Beni Hasan. They are Black people, not whites or Arabs. They have mastered their techniques in sequences long before the Asians mastered sequential fighting maneuvers. They have clinches, takedowns, guard moves, wrap ups, close out moves, and submission and death moves on those walls. They have leg locks, choaks, wrist locks, neck snaps, kicks, punches, and essentally all of the modern arm bars.

These images are mainly recorded in the tombs of governors, or princes by the names of Baqet III, his son Khety, and his son Amenemhat. They all reigned in Mahez during the 11th and 12th Dynasties. Illustrations were also found in the well known tomb of Prince Khemenhotep. The paintings feature pairs of fighters who are martial artists, as well as illustrations of warriors using other forms of unarmed combat that employ kicking and punching techniques. There are scenes of martial artists using weapons such as a lance, short sticks, daggers, staffs, and bow and arrows. There are even scenes of warriors utilizing military technology such as a testudo, which is a shielding device used during the siege of a castle.

Fully aware of the invaluable role of martial art in raising the standard of health, and hence of national productivity, the Ancient KMTs as a whole, men, women, youths and children, were all engaged in martial arting activitiest.

The Benni Hasan underground buildings preserve Kmt martial arts on its highest levels.
Petah Hotep tomb, 5th Dynasty, 2600 B.C. Saqqara
Paket tomb, 11th Dynasty, 2300 B.C. Benihasan
Khiti tomb, 11th Dynasty, 230 B.C. Benihasan
Brussels Museum, 11th Dynasty, 2300 B.C. Benihasan
Tell Elamarna, 18th Dynasty, 1700 B.C. Benihasan
Cairo Museum, 20th Dynasty, 1300 B.C. Benihasan
Ramses Funeral Temple, 20th Dynasty, 1300 B.C. Medinet Habu

Initial Preparation Self-Defense

1. Be alert, be quick, size up your surroundings. Look for openigs.

2. Practice how you would deal with any type of attack in numerous environments.

3. Know your opponents, study their strengths, size them up, focus on what they are trying to do and /neutralize/stop it first. Take away their best offensive, and in most cases you take away their hearts.

4. Force the opponent to plan "b" which they usually don't do as well as their first plan. This means to frustrate their closing moves, aviod direct hits, smother their advances, and lock up their best atack arm.

5. Recognize the danger of the situation: is there a gun involved, is there a knife, do they want to steal, do they want to kill, do they want to assault, do they want to rape? What is it that they want? Take it away from them, seek to defuse or avoid them.

6. When faced with an actual self-defense situation, first determine how many opponents you face. What do they have? How are they prepared to attack? Are they skilled? Then develop your strategy accordingly.

7. Sound self-defense is about developing alertness, quick responses, a recognition of danger, a calmness linked with fury and fire. Practice techniques that accomplish this. As a martial artist you have nothing to prove, so apply all of your training to destroy the opponent's strength; prepare to win at all cost. Define what winning is.

Belt system:

Belt ranks start at green belt, and progress through green/red, red, red/black, black/red, then black. It generally takes about 13 month to 21 months of training multiple times per week to be promoted to the next belt rank. There is a written morality/ethics exam, life situations, and a formal testing period measuring technical proficiency.

Rank is directly tied to controlled street fighting, weapons use, and most importantly being able to apply techniques in a competitive match with another seba who is at a higher belt level. A seba generally needs to be able to reliably defeat most other seba at the rank they are leaving to be put in a position to be moved to another rank.

Training:

Heru uniforms are black, made of durable material, loose fitting, and always kept clean even if you have to wash them every night. Hygiene is most important. So to is respect for your master teachers. You workout in a temple room called a Peraa.

You have a rubber foam mat that is padded. A session starts on time, involves 13 minutes of warm ups and conditioning, 21 minutes of technique practice with a willing partner, and 33 minutes of free sparring training, against an opponent of equal skill who attempts to submit you. Sparring training usually begins with both students facing each other from a kneeling position.

Competition is also encouraged. For an exercise, seba are divided by age, and belt rank. Time limits are generally 6 to 9 minutes, depending on belt rank. Matches start with both seba standing, on a mat. Engage, clinch, take-downs, wrap in guard, move to close out/submission move. Chokes, and joint locks and breaks are to be mastered along with other close out maneuvers.

A tap out from submission ends the match. Quickness, execution of techniques, and leverage are important in these controlled matches. If time runs passes without a submission, points determine the winner: 1 point: Takedown from standing; Knee-on-stomach position; or wrap, sweep, or flip, using legs (from bottom position to top) 3 points: Passing the guard 6 points: Mount; or Mount on back.

Basic Sequences of Combat

1. Unarmed, single combat can be divided into five main sequences: Engagement/positioning, clinch, take-down, guard, closing moves. Each sequence is different from the others by the degree of control the two fighters have on each other and the type of body attacks.
Each sequence has a different technical skill set reflective of it. Thus, it is possible to be skilled in one sequence, but weak in another. For instance, one may be able to take another down but may not have closing moves to end the fight once they are on top.
Maintaining control of a fight from beginning to end is the goal of a skilled martial artist. As such one must develop the appropriate skill set for each fight sequence.
2. The initial engagement sequence is a feeling out process where the fighters measure each other based on size, strength, positioning, demeanor, and level of expertise. What is the opponent's purpose? What weapons do they have that you must neutralize? What do they rely on for victory?
Are they backed into a corner? Are they desperate? What do they want to achieve and how can you take that away from them? How much time do they have? All of the above are important and can be sized up in a few observant seconds.
3. The clinch occurs in the process of fist fighting, kicks, and body blows. If the initial attack based on fist, feet, and force blows does not result in supremacy by on of the fighters, the engagement has to go to a clinch at some point.
The clinch is unavoidable in a real fight where over 9 out of 10 fights end up going. In a real fight, combatants quickly run to each other attack with arms, legs and body then clinch. Skilled fighters wrap up an opponent as to minimize the possibility of stray knock-out punches.
4. Once an opponent is in clinch and under control, the next stage is to begin to move toward strategic positioning and take-down. The clinch takes away an opponent's striking offense while opening up offensive possibilities but it is only useful if you have the next sequence thought out.
The clinch is usefully in blanketing an opponents attack, smothering wild blows, and snuffing out their belief that they can win quickly. You clinch, position yourself, wrap them up, take them to the ground, maintain the front, top, bottom, or side guard, then prepare for a close-out move.
Others use the clinch to stay up on their feet. They prefer to fight standing, to punch, to kick, to head butt, to knee, to choke, to grab.
5. The primary purpose of this type of fighting is to use the clinch to gain a better position for stand up fighting or take downs depending on your expertise and style. The clinch plays the role of an intermediary sequence of combat, somewhere between the free-movement sequence and the ground-fighting sequence.

Basic Self-Defense Philosophy

Preparation and Positioning

Do not be afraid of fear. Fear is natural. Face it. Stand tall while you study your opponent, the environment, the time scope of the fight, the avenues of escape, the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent.

Maintain sound posture, remain relaxed, breath, be fluid, quick, and alert.
Keep your head up, be flexible but firm.
Maintain sound awareness; don't look at the technique, flow into it, feel what must be the next move, don't be mechanical and stiff. Leverage is central to everything you do. Using the opponents strength as your own is the key to being successful in Heru fighting.
If you are unsuccessful, move to the next technique, try to sequence fluidly into the next position or hold.
If your intent is to escape a hold, do so. Step back and reestablish a defensive posture. If necessary, leave completely. If you are escaping in order to prepare a better position to fight, do so with caution.
If you counter, decide quickly what to do next; do not stand around giving your opponent breathing room. Further attack, smother, tie-up, lock, confuse, subdue or incapacitate your opponent---or get out of the area.
All techniques can be countered, so be prepared to use the next technique in the sequence. Do not worry that you miss an opportunity to close out early. Prepare for the next opening.
In most cases of ambush, there are multiple opponents laying in wait. Prepare to get rid of the first and second attacker fast with attacks at the throat, eyes, groin, ribs, shin, stomach and ears. Quickly incapacitate your initial opponent, fight to escape, get out of the area. Create diversions.
Remember that though the pain resulting from well-executed techniques may subdue the opponent, in some cases it will cause further rage. Be prepared for this.
Winning should be defined by the one seeking victory. If running is winning in that situation run; live to fight another day, track them down, incapacitate them when you have a better set of circumstances. If there is no way out but to fight, fight to win.

Basic Escape and Counter

First learn to escape the grab, the clasp, the clinch; then learn to escape by countering the grab, high, middle, low, block undesirable takedowns then assume control. Once you have progressed to the level of developing a variety of takedowns, you then progress to utilizing the appropriate submission techniques mirroring the position you are in.

Thus seba exercise, train, prepare, sequence, learn in stages and phases how to interpenetrate, string together, techniques as fluid, moving, engaging interrelated maneuvers. Leverage, technique, control, flexibility and sequencing ate central to Heru martial arts.

Once an attacker moves in the seba uses quickness, positioning and leverage to the joints, arms, legs, shin, feet, or other extremities in order to control the opponent's ability to maneuver, then control the position of their body, taking away their ability to deliver blows that harm you.

In this way the seba is able to seize control of the situation and channel the energies of the attacker against them. Essentially then, your goal is to take the force of the attacker and use it against them. In physics, no matter in the form of energy---force----is ever lost, it is merely transferred into another state. What ever they have take it, use, bend it to your own purpose, make it work for you, turn it on them.

This logic takes careful appreciation of what a person has and how they are attempting to use it. Position yourself using angles, taking their angles of force away, channeling their energy into open spaces that allow you an advantage on a side, on top, over, or wrapped underneath but firmly in control. Punching an kicking must be taken away from the opponent, either by angle fighting, smothering, channeling (parrying), blocking.

This is why you should not fear the enemy, because, what they have really is yours if you know how to get them to use it so that you can take it from them. You should be excited by how much energy they bring because your task is to figure out how to use it, reflect it, re-channel it, refocus it, deflect it against them efficiently. Our Ancient Kmt ancestors mastered even the leverage of two ton stones---2.3 million of them---to build one pyramid temple. They were masters of physics (force/energy, mass), geometry (angles/leverage/levies) and the process of fluid/flowing matter, Ka.

Sequence have categories, categories have techniques, techniques have variation, variation of techniques can be used in combinations, combinations lead to transitions. Each sequence has many techniques in each category depending where the seba is in the fight sequence. There are also variations on each category of technique, and many different ways to get to new combinations.

At some point in the seba's development, there will come a need to integrate the techniques together into a fluid sequence of fighting reflective of the flowing Nile River. This is the point where training transitions from one belt level to the next from green to green/red to red/green to red to red/black to black/red to black, levers 1,3,6,9 etc. The seba flows freely from technique to technique, not thinking, but reacting naturally, channeling, seeking a position of victory, a position of strategic offense.

The seba learns combinations and their sequential techniques and how to flow right into a different move that will work. Sequences are practiced so that the seba develops an appreciation for which techniques best set up the next sequence. The opponent should not be allowed to use their strength: do not oppose strength with strength, do not fist fight a fist fighter, do not knife a knifer, do not box a boxer, do not kickbox with a kickboxer, or wrestle a wrestler. Take away from them what they are best at doing; turn their strength into your own advantage. Frustrate their best thrusts, snuff out their first plans, force them to do things they are not comfortable doing, wear them down, confuse them, in time take their very heart away from them. Essentially, you will win when you position yourself not to lose.

Perfection in Execution

No art form is perfect, but they can be perfectly executed. If they work, you are successful; if they do not, you flow into the next, you move fluidly to another position of strength. Some techniques work well against most attackers, but not technique is 100 percent effective. Seba must train to adapt themselves to rapidly changing conditions, and to develop fluid flexibility useful in transitioning from one sequence to another, one technique to the next.

In time, the seba prepares a wide range of transitioning techniques that become a system executed to perfection until the attacker is defeated, put to sleep, or decommissioned.

Clearly, their will be times when a fight ends in a tie, where someone just quits and leaves, where nothing is finalized by the encounter. In these times the goal is to understand what victory is, in a fight, or in life. The seba should philosophically appreciate what victory is in any situation and prepare for it.

The initial size-up sets the stage for the battle or war to come. Develop a strategy, a style, and a system of tactics.

Make your martial art system into a way of life as our ancients did.