Plague of Strength

You ever get so pissed off at a cow that you spend a couple of years in the woods beating inanimate objects to death, seething with rage that the fact that cows are just, you know, sitting there? Smug as shit at how good they have it, they stand around chewing and pooping and mooing, living their lives without the slightest flicker of intelligence behind their big, wet, cow eyes, ignoring the immensity of the rage that is seeping through your every pore? Did you then descend from the mountains like Thor from Olympus and tear a swath trough the bovine community, knocking out ungulates like they raped your mom in a 7-11 while smiling at the security camera?

No?

Me neither, but the Korean-built, karate-kicking, mini-Galactus known as Mas Oyama did.

Well, at least, that’s how the story goes.  In reality, Oyama just chopped the horn off a single pet ox one time after beating the confused animal for some time and the Japanese press decided that Oyama was to become a fearless killer of horned, male ruminants.  Irrespective of how meaty-delicious animals Sosai Masutatsu Oyama killed barehanded in the name of his beloved kyokushin, no one in their right mind would debate the fact that Mas Oyama was one bad motherfucker.

Mas Oyama (born Choi Yeong-eui)

Claim to Fame: Inventor of badass hard style kyokushin karate

Lived: 1923-1994

Height: 5’7″

Weight: 163

Born in Japanese-occupied Korea, which was an avowedly shitty place, Oyama was forced to move as a child to an even shittier place- what can only be described as hell on Earth, Japanese-occupied Manchuria.  Bear in mind that at this point Japanese soldiers raped anything that would hold still long enough to get their cocks in Manchuria during WW2, and the Japanese had a team of “doctors” cut from the same cloth as Josef Mengele and the weird dude from Human Centipede roaming the countryside in search of victims. Once captured, they’d test theories that basically amounted to seeing how long it would take you to die if they sewed a dog’s head into your groin in place of your cock.  They’d make people hold their hands in freezing water until they were certain they were frozen, than smash them to icy pieces with hammers, or infect them with anthrax and then perform a live vivisection without anesthesia to see the progression of the disease.

That’s the sort of nightmarish hellscape in which Oyama grew up, which seems to have made him harder than a diamond in an ice storm. Seeing the steely eyed glint in the dirty little Korean boy’s eyes, an itinerant worker taught him the rudiments of kempo so that he could defend himself in the hellscape in which the two lived. Once he felt comfortable that he was proficient enough in fighting to trash the goggle-eyed, stoop-backed, and slavering psychotics of Unit 731, Oyama adopted the name Oyama Masutatsu, which was a transliteration of an ancient Korean kingdom Oyama would knew would piss off the Japanese, and moved to Japan to piss off the Japanese even more.  From there, Oyama embarked upon what could only be described as a hate-fueled journey through Japan with only one goal- to shed as much Japanese blood as humanly possible with his bare hands.

In Japan, Oyama started collecting black belts in every style of martial arts he could that no Knockout game-obsessed gangbanger in the world would find himself with saggy pants if Oyama could help it.  After pulling down multiple-dan black belts in Okinawan and Shotokan karate, Oyama did the same in judo, studied Western boxing, and then happened upon another Korean ex-pat martial arts badass in the form of Nei-Chu So.  A goju-ryu master, Nei-Chu So was also a bit of a meathead, and began adding a great deal of strength training to the already stocky Oyama’s training routine.

Under Nei-Chu So, Oyama started focusing heavily on hojo undo, which are traditional Japanese kareteka strengthening exercises that include the use of barbells and more cinderblock lifting than you could possibly find in Marky Mark’s Good Vibrations video.  Since I’ve already covered this and have not only never seen the implements but have never used them, check this shit out if you want a primer on hojo undo.

“The really great man can only be produced through continuous heavy training.” -So Nei Chu

Discontented with the fact that his liberation from subjugation by the Japanese was simply supplanted with subjugation by the gaijin, Oyama did what any sensible person would do and fled to the mountains in a pilgrimage funded by Nei-Chu So.

“When I was driven almost to self-ruin, Mr. So Nei-Chu, an elder of my native province, rescued me from the crisis. Mr. So, a thinker and master of karate, was a rare man of character and confidence. Moreover, he was a devotee of the Nichiren Sect. He preached to me that martial arts and religion are inseparably united and taught me the scripture of his sect.

When I was at my wits’ end as to what to do and went to see him, Mr. So, after encouraging me, said, ‘You had better withdraw from the world. Seek solace in nature. Retreat to some lone mountain hide out to train your mind and body. In three years you will gain something immeasurable.

As the proverb goes, “Temper the heated iron before it gets cold, so train yourself in self discipline before you grow older if you wish to be a great man.”‘

When I heard Mr. So’s advice, I felt as if I had been awakened and I suddenly understood the path to take. The Oriental Confucian maxim is:

‘First train one’s self, manage a household, and then reign of over a country. It is essential to train one’s self if one wants to administer the affairs of state wealth‘” (Heaney).

There, he built a shack and proceeded to train for 14 months in an effort to hone himself into the most brutal killing machine the world had ever seen, at least until the martial arts epic Gymkata was released.  After climbing the mountain on which the great unwashed asshole swordsman Musashi penned The Book Of Five Rings,  Oyama built a shack in which he’d live for six months with one of his students and then another eight months alone after the student abandoned him out of sheer boredom.

Having spent a great deal of time building up his conditioning under Nei-Chu So, Oyama spent twelve hours a day using trees as makiwara, ripping the bark off trees with his fingers (a trick he learned from Nei-Chu So, who learned it from the dude who invented Goju-Ryu), punching rocks, meditating under freezing waterfalls, channeling his inner Dean Karnazes for a shitload of trail running, and doing more stone and tree trunk lifting than a drunken Scot in the months before a Highland Games festival.

Thus, when Oyama’s funding ran out, he descended from the mountains a man with whom no part of nature wanted to fuck and handily destroyed the competition in an all-Japan karate competition.  Feeling like that simply wasn’t enough awesome and filled with so much hatred for modern society that he even made Julius Evola wonder what the hell had crawled up his ass, Oyama returned to the mountains for another 18 months of 12 hour a day training with no days off, because he held the same opinion of overtraining as every other useful person who likes pushing their limits.

Back in civilization, Oyama went back to doing what he did best- beating the brakes off everyone he could.  Before he founded his own school, Oyama was the assistant instructor at the home of Goju-ryu with none other than Masahiko Kimura, legendary judoka who’s one of the godfathers of modern MMA.  Kimura and Oyama trained together constantly, and Oyama’s physique was that much the better for it.  Kimura had by this point developed a pants-shittingly awesome practice we could all stand to adopt called San-bai no Do-ryoku (Triple Effort).  

This method consisted of him just tripling the effort of his competition to ensure that he would never lose.  Having heard his opponents were training three hours a day, Kimura started training nine.  This, he believed, would turn him into a real life Ultron- he’d me insanely confident and virtually indestructible, as his mind and body would exist to do nothing other than to propel him onto victory.  

Thus, this brutal lunatic would awake in the middle of the night to train, and lacking a hair shirt and a knotted whip, decided that as penance for a lackluster performance (after winning his first championship) he had to do 500 pushups, one kilometer of bunny hops and 500 karate strikes before hitting the hay.  This meant that at 5’6″ and 185 lbs, Kimura was pretty much unstoppable- he honed his throwing strength by practicing it on trees (ripping them out of the ground) and dragged Oyama through workouts like this:

Pushups or Hindu Push-ups (Dands)– 1,000 
Bunny Hop– 1 km
Headstand– 3 x 3 Minutes
Judo Practice– 100 Throws
One-Arm Barbell Clean and Press– 15 Reps each side OR Bench Press- 3 Sets: 3, 2, and 1 Reps
Situps off Partner’s Back or Decline Situps– 200 
Squats with Partner/Log/Barbell/Sandbag (150-200lbs)– 200 
Judo Practice– 100 Submissions
Shuto (Knife-hand Strikes)– 500
Judo Practice– 100 Entries
Judo Randori– “X” x 3 Minute Rounds
Practice Throws (particularly Uchi-mata) Against a Tree– 1 Hour
Additional Judo Practice– 1 Hour

According to a couple of sources, another influence on Oyama at this time was Japanese strongman Takemaru Wakaki.  Though I could not find much in the way of information on Wakaki, you can see he was a middleweight strongman and bridged the gap between the truly old schoolers (Saxon, Strongfort, Hackenschmidt, etc) and the Grimek era.  As such, the name of the game was volume, and Oyama’s routines definitely reflected that.  Though he was about as reluctant to give a definitive program as the team for Half Life 2: Episode 3, here’s what Oyama himself said he did on a daily basis in his seminal work, My Karate:

Running- 4km per day
Rope-skipping- 20 minutes per day
Dumbell shoulder press- 200 reps
Dips- 100 reps
Pushups (on knuckles)- 300 reps
Inclined push ups- 100 reps
Jumping side kick over 4 foot vaulting horse
Incline dumbell bench press– 200 reps
Bench Press (175 pounds)– 500 reps

Exercises requiring a partner:
Hitting bag with upper elbow and side of elbow- 200 times each
Practicing jumping kick with bag
Exercises for neck (with partner)
Leg exercise (squat with partner on back)
Back and Abdomen exercises with partner

Think it couldn’t work?  Think again.  Oyama used this conditioning routine to found one of the first truly hybrid styles of the Far East, Kyokushinkaikan, a style in which you have to fight 100 guys in a row, bare knuckles, to achieve the highest belt status.  Oyama was the first to do so, and since then only 14 other people have managed to pull it off (almost all of whom went directly to the hospital, from what I understand).  Oyama is also alleged to have defeated over 270 opponents, and his one punch slaughter technique earned Oyama the nickname “The Godhand.”  

If he hit you, you broke. If you blocked a rib punch, your arm was broken or dislocated. If you didn’t block, your rib was broken.

Thus, when it’s not giving its best fighters rhabdo, Oyama’s baby has given the world the martial arts epic Bloodsport (as Oyama invented the kumite), Street Fighters Ken and Ryu, Tekken’s Jim Kazama, knockdown karate, K-1, Marius Pudzianowski (he’s a European kyokushin champ), Dolph Lundgren (who was also a European kyokushin champ), just about every useful karate style ever, mixed martial arts (Oyama taught Kimura striking, and Kimura went on to beat Helio Gracie’s ass in one of the first mma fights), and threw some big brass balls on the universe as a whole.  

Thus, the next time you think you’ve done enough in training- think again. Remember the Triple Effort Method and do more.

Sources:

Heaney, Scott.  The early martial arts training of Mas Oyama.  The Martial Way.  Web.  https://web.archive.org/web/20190115065308/http://the-martial-way.com/the-early-martial-arts-training-of-mas-oyama/

Keaveney, Liam.  Mas Oyama.  Original link dead, but taken from British Karate Kyokushinkai Magazine.  http://www.kyokushin4life.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6971&highlight=wakaki+takemaru&page=2  

Kimura, Masahiko.  “My Judo.”  JudoInfo.  Web.  16 Dec 2013.  http://judoinfo.com/kimura2.htm

Mas Oyama.  Mute Kyokusin. Web.  17 Dec 2013.  http://www.mutekikyokushin.com/content_bio_masoyama.html

The Mas Oyama Workout.  Pierced Visions.  7 Jan 2010.  Web.  16 Dec 2013.
http://piercedvisions.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/the-mas-oyama-workout/

Ross, Steven.  Masahiko Kimura’s Training.  Real Anime Training. 2 Apr 2013.  Web.  16 Dec 2013.  http://real-anime-training.blogspot.com/2013/04/judo-in-anime-and-manga-masahiko.html

Tsui, Dom.  Masahiko Kimua Training.  Livestrong. 26 May 2011.  Web.  16 Dec 2013.  http://www.livestrong.com/article/455237-masahiko-kimura-training/

Young, Robert.  How Kyokushin Karate Master Kenji Yamaki Endured the 100-Man Kumite.  Black Belt.  25 Nov2013.  Web.  17 Dec 2013.  http://www.blackbeltmag.com/daily/traditional-martial-arts-training/kyokushin/how-kyukoshin-karate-master-kenji-yamaki-endured-the-100-man-kumite/

Liked it? Take a second to support Jamie Chaos on Patreon!