Would you please share a concept from your art that those practicing other arts might find of value?

Misdirection: using techniques from one "class" to set up a technique from another "class". For instance, we have sayings like "leglock to pass--pass to leglock" and "strike to get position--get position to strike".

Hip movement: every power technique--whether in striking or grappling--comes from hip movement. If you can't seem to pull off a power technique or feel like you can't "reach", check the position, orientation, and movement of your hips.

This is a great question Byron and after thinking about it one that best comes to mind is falling and how many in stand-up striking arts misunderstand this technique and some of the things behind it. Falling or break falling has several different techniques and how you are being thrown determines which one you will use-its not one particular falling technique for all situations. All these techniques stress many of the same aspects like breathing out, having your spine straight along with your neck and in good alignment to better avoid neck strains and your chin tucked and breathing out to keep the wind from getting knocked out of you and also to better protect the back of your head and neck from serious injury but beyond that the technique you use is determined by the throw.

Also for some of these throws like being thrown over someones hip or shoulder a certain amount of the force that you hit the mat with is dissipated across the mat rather than being absorbed by you directly and this is accomplished more easily by relaxing and going with the throw than tightening up and/or trying to resist being thrown.

Break falls are designed to minimize the damage you sustain so that you don't get the wind knocked out of you or get seriously injured and instead can get back up and continue to defend yourself if needed.

Having studied Judo as a child and tween the importantance of break falling and some of the things it teaches and stresses are something that a lot of stand-up type fighting and martial arts could benefit from. It has stayed with me all these years for that reason and is why I make it mandatory for all my students to learn this skill for promotion before ever reaching the advance levels in karate. Unfortunately it is not usually well taught if at all in many stand-up arts unless the instructor has some prior background in Judo but is a skill that is important for students to learn I think.

Well i'm not sure how much this is exclusively karate but one concept i would say is the idea of closing your opponent off. Eg. an opponent does a left front kick and you scoop his leg around so his body ends up spinning to his right. At this point quite a bit of his back is facing you and you have effectively closed him off. This gives you the time and position to land a perfect counter strike. Can also achieve this positioning in other ways.

Much harder to close off a skilled opponent in sparring however does occasionally happen. Will normally get a respectful nod from the opponent. This is because if i successfully did this i would have not only out-skilled my sparring partner but positioned both him and me so i could easily do a fight finishing move if it were a real fight.

It is a difficult mindset to explain, it is small, almost invisible. It is like making your entire self move down into your stomach and shrink down and hide. It is like losing your soul. Moving your self form the seat behind your eyes to the seat of the stomach. I have been standing in front of friends and have not been noticed for three or for minutes. It is like hiding your soul. It is not that your next action can not be logically predicted, but that it does not "feel" to your opponent like you are even capable of action. Some release this energy as they move, we do not. Our move has no emotion, no feeling, no great expansion of energy. In fact, the energy is only hidden, but not less than present. It creates an emptiness, almost like an awkward silence. And even as a deep awkward silence is hardly stifled by a small grunt or a word or two, a strike does not break the lack of motion within the void. When the emptiness is deepest, you have won.

We also us conditioning that does not show. I train in iron palm, iron vest, iron arm, iron leg, iron skull and iron neck. I have taken full force blows in the stomach with oak poles, and thought my iron palm remains somewhat undeveloped, No matter how hard my hand may be struck against iron or steel, I feel no pain and sustain no injury, thought the wood remains yet unbroken. I have taken punches to the neck and palm heels to the head, and this is standing still and just letting someone else go at it. These training methods do not levee visible marks, it is a secret weapon.

I am one of little skill. My understanding is that of one who has not yet to even taste the fruit, but known only its odder. but I train hard, I have an infinite amount to learn. The truth of what I have found is not to be communicated in words, that is impossible. It is that same sense, the same feel, with each of the paths of martial valor. To feel this can be described as satori, a flash of transcendence. It is found it the forest and mountains. As we watch the hawk swoop to the rabbit, we may play either role, but understand neither is harmed. Death is not feared by those in harmony with nature, no harm comes to such a man.

I apologize it this sounds like random mysticism found from the rant of a gong fu movie, These are yet the best words I have found to describe experience. Eloquence is limited, life can be experienced and experienced only. It is the diffidence between reading the tea ceremony and actually placing your forehead on the tatami. Many on this form seem well respected, and I believe they understand more than I, those who do not I am sure will. We are all where we are.

Relaxation. You wouldn't believe the reactions you can get out of your opponents when you relax. The more power they give you and the more relaxed you are the more devastating your technique when returning their own power. It really does work.

Timing. You don't have to be able to move with the speed of Superman to counter. Correct timing can be just as effective as speed. This is especially helpful when you are an older practitioner and are not quite as fast anymore.

Sounds like Matthew does Aikido :P

In my style of karate, we focus on the speed of our techniques a lot. This is hard for me to answer though because I don't practice MMA but there's over 40 different styles in my school. Ranging from Shoto-kan Karate to Shaolin Kung Fu under Sifu Shi Yan Ming (my sensei just became a disciple of his). We practice a lot of different concepts...which I guess could be considered a concept in itself. Diversity of the art.

The best way to avoid getting hurt by an attack is to not be there when the attack lands. This doesn't always mean "run away" because sometimes the option to run isn't open to you. But you don't have to stand there and take it, either. Often just getting a little "off the line of attack" is enough to make a normally devastating attack harmless.

If you can't get completely out of the way of the attack, then redirecting the attack in a harmless direction can sometimes do the job.

You don't have to wear yourself out throwing punches and kicks when you can just use the energy from your attacker's attack, or his attempt to recover from your deflection of his attack, against him. When he recoils from his failed attack or tries to regain his balance/center, HELP him along in the very line he has chosen, so that his momentum and your help throws him off balance again, this time into a fall and/or pin.

There are lots in my style.

Probably the most important one, if that we get our power from our back hand, we pull our back hand back, and propell our punching hand, and we generate power almost double what we could otherwise, and in a full stance stepping forwards, when you can use you're legs as well, you can knock them right down.

Also, a philosophy of my style of karate, is that one attack should be all you need, one attack for one oppenent, and we also don't fight more than one at a time (normally) even if there are more than one oppenent attacking, you pick out ONE of them, finish them quickly, then move to the next.

I'll go with footwork. In TKD, we practice shifts, single steps and double steps in combinations. Moving well and staying in balance are basic to any style of fighting, but they can get overlooked.

the style i use has motion to your hands while they are up they dont stop moving and you keep the hands open till you strike this give excelent blocking and grabbing and its hard to tell when and were the hands will come from and then we use the bodys center of gravity so our stance is wide but when we grab or counter we put your wieght in to our center then pivit it and throw you with out using much force