The 5 Levels of Cooperation: A Prescription for Failure
That is the primary of a 5 part series of articles analyzing popular training paradigms which inhibit the flexibility to be creative via non-choreographed movements in high speed/high adrenaline fights. The five levels are, “The Set Up”, “Structuring the Fight”, “Wearing Protective Equipment”, “Disregarding Vital Targets” and “Providing Structure”.
99% of sport fighting, traditional martial arts and self defense systems fail at training the body’s subconscious reactions for real fighting because their primary focus is wrongly based upon techniques as an alternative of enhancement of the body’s natural delivery system. As well as, they teach you how you can develop combative tools but fail at teaching how you can utilize them in an uncooperative environment. Worst of all, they propagate techniques filtered through the prism of competitive fighting which is a natural out growth of the restrictions imposed upon the fighters. They fail to grasp that these techniques were developed as a work-around because of the prohibition of using potentially or completely lethal skills for competitive bouts. While practical in competition, these techniques haven’t any basis in life and death combat.
Sport Fighting is Great–But Not for Saving Your Life!
This isn’t successful against sport fighting. Quite the opposite, we recognize that it takes an incredible amount of skill and physical talent to be able to make techniques work in competition, indicating why so few people can fight effectively at its highest levels. Nonetheless, there are some fundamental differences between the goals of self defense and competitive fighting that have to be addressed.
Throughout this series of articles, I’ll quote liberally from various sources including electronic mail I actually have had with Guided Chaos Master Lt. Col. Al Ridenhour USMC who sums up the differences below:
When discussing true combative skills or techniques, we usually are not discussing merely choking people out, submission holds or boxing people into submission. We’re talking about crushing wind pipes, blinding people, snapping necks if possible, stomping skulls and the usage of weapons, any of which can lead to death or everlasting disability. This isn’t something that we openly discuss for quite a lot of reasons that I won’t get into on this email, but suffice to say, these folks who think that real life and death combat is about sparring, forms or making people say “Uncle”, as Master Gichin Funakoshi, founding father of Shotokan Karate would say, “are playing around within the leaves and branches of an ideal tree with none conception of its trunk…” I may also add that those that fall into this category haven’t any concept of the forensic reality of the variety of violence that visits people on a regular basis on our streets, and I’m sorry but what they’re talking about and what we’re talking about usually are not the identical thing Lt. Col. Al continues:
Lethal techniques usually are not only effective but most significantly, so easy to make use of that proficiency in a few of these skills could be measured in training hours versus months or years as demonstrated in WW II. This acknowledged fact is why such techniques are specifically banned from competitive fighting and why training in such skills will also be problematic. There are those that will say “well anyone can strike to the eyes or other vital areas, etc”. That is true; nevertheless the distinct difference I’m discussing here is whether or not you possibly can deliver the strikes to the vital areas with power before your opponent can. Also, are you able to make it work when it is advisable to make it work. Furthermore, are the abilities being taught in concert with the true dynamics of the utter and brutal chaos of an actual fight? Training in even one among 5 various kinds of cooperation not only ignores this fact but completely suffocates “aliveness” because it applies to self defense. On this series of articles, I’ll use John Perkins’ system of Guided Chaos (Ki Chuan Do) as a benchmark to check these differences and explain how you possibly can enhance your fighting system’s potential for realistic self defense purposes.
Level 1: The Set Up Grappling As a Self-defense Strategy
“Moving spontaneously is a purely subconscious kinesthetic skill. Anyone can develop it, because it relies on mastering looseness, body unity, and balance, not mechanical techniques. The one thing it is advisable to learn is how you can develop and use your spontaneous movement so it’s unified and powerful for mortal combat.” –– from the book Attack Proof: The Ultimate Guide to Personal Protection Grappling is a questionable self-defense strategy. In his book Jiu Jitsu Unleashed, Eddie Bravo makes profound arguments about training solely and not using a gi for MMA tournaments and the streets. His rationale is that it’s best to learn and not using a gi so that you simply won’t need to unlearn bad habits when you should use Jiu Jitsu within the ring or on the streets, where nobody wears a gi. He speaks about being opposed by many within the Jiu Jitsu community with an almost religious zeal. That being said, while I love his evolutionary spirit, I completely disagree with Eddie in regard to his belief that the bottom grappling aspect of Jiu Jitsu is a viable self defense system that may prepare you for non-competitive situations.
Jiu Jitsu can be my primary example for this section. Nonetheless, this also applies to any fighting system whose practitioners need to arrange in a stance as a platform to get their techniques off. My argument here is that learning to grapple as a type of non competitive self defense is unnecessary because it presents a dynamic that simply doesn’t exist outside of the sector of competition, primarily since the arrange process makes it entirely too slow and methodical to be effective in the customarily brutal and chaotic environment of life and death combat.
Contemporary Jiu Jitsu has evolved into a technique of fighting whose strength lies in its practitioners taking their opponents to the bottom where they strategize to ascertain and maintain some type of superior positional dominance (control) from which the opposition is allegedly offered less opportunity to counter. From here the practitioner can apply a break, leverage, choke hold or sometimes punches to finish the fight. The more advanced practitioners leave less room for movement of their opponent in between transitional points as they maneuver for superior position.
The issue is that in case you’re not cooperating, it is very difficult for them to get to the stage where they’ll get positional dominance. Just as essential, they absolutely cannot do these items without exposing their eyes and throat, which I’ll discuss later in this text. In later sections and particularly the fifth and final article, Providing Structure, I’ll talk concerning the psychology behind why this hasn’t been exploited and in addition concerning the breakdown of mobility on the bottom.
Mixed Martial Art fighters preferring the Jiu Jitsu method often throw a fake, kicks or punches to be able to set the opponent as much as defend himself or move backwards, giving the Jiu Jitsu player a gap to go in for a clinch or takedown where they proceed to take the fight to the bottom. Sometimes, they’ll simply shoot in through the middle of an exchange of strikes between the 2, especially if there’s overextension, which happens almost as a rule for fighters who don’t understand Guided Chaos Dropping Energy, as they need to totally extend their arms to generate any amount of appreciable power.
In the course of the ’90s, Mixed Martial Art competition began to flourish throughout North America and Japan. The first commentary was easy. Traditional Martial Arts had been watered down so severely that the product had little ability to defend against a take down or fight inside the clinching range. It became obvious that many traditional standup practitioners had such little control of their very own equilibrium that easy football tackles and clinching body locks from grapplers easily slammed them into the bottom, thus negating their techniques.
In a desperate rage they’d lock up, powerlessly flail their arms, or reach as much as push the grappler away. In all cases their tension could be giving their attacker handles to simply manipulate them and apply breaks, leverages or chokeholds. Unfortunately and most vital of all, they’d no idea how you can cope with a fight that did not fit their idealized structures despite the indisputable fact that a lot of them were actually strong and in addition well conditioned.
This same phenomenon is seen on the “Gracie Challenge” video and mainly every other clip floating on the internet where a grappler fights a standard stylist. This has given rise to the prevailing train of thought that you might have to learn some variety of grappling to be an entire fighter and this belief has only strengthened with time.
You may’t expect a 110 lb woman to adopt a self-defense strategy of grappling or putting a submission hold on a 200lb attacker…even for a second. Nor can you might have a grappling strategy against one attacker…while his friend kicks your head in. And grappling against a knife is essentially the most silly of all. Guided Chaos groundfighting involves evasion and attack without entanglement. More on this later.
The Sphere of Influence: The Proper Approach to Thought
In Guided Chaos (KCD), you improve your sub cortical vision and sensitivity by doing various esoteric free-form balance drills, one among the first being Polishing the Sphere. This serves two purposes. It enhances your proprioceptivity, which from a physiological standpoint is the interactivity of the nerve receptors within the skin, muscles and joints. This offers your objective mind the flexibility to look at the actions and placement of your body’s weapons in relation to your attacker from a 3rd person’s perspective. In other words, it permits you to operate without conscious thought as that process could be far too slow in an adrenaline raging conflict.
It also enhances your interoceptivity, which is awareness of the subjective senses which offer feedback in a largely subjective manner akin to seeing, hearing, etc. In fact, this process occurs from a largely first person’s perspective. The final result is that your mind should have the opportunity to handle operating from a largely proprioceptive state while fighting, but in addition have the flexibility to rapidly process subjective senses as well. To all of you individuals who think you possibly can “out think” your opponent or pull off that “cool” technique in a high speed fight, you might be mistaken because we fight in a primarily subconscious state, especially when moving at warp speed. I’ll discuss this more in the subsequent article on this series, Structuring the Fight.
The opposite thing it permits you to do is master your body’s ability to counterbalance and maintain equilibrium around your root without overextending which an cause you to lose balance and power. Dropping Energy (an instantaneous, non-chambering approach to delivering power explained within the book Attack Proof) utilizes the body’s myotic stretch reflex together with perfect skeletal alignment in order that you must have the opportunity to strike with power at any time, from any angle, and from any position.
Guided Chaos Slam-Bag training is one among several methods designed to boost your tendon strength, timing and hand striking ability so you possibly can tear, gouge and shred with tremendous power. That is John Perkins’ Dynamic “Iron Palm Training” which trains you to hit with the load and power of your entire body from the ground to your weapon. This obviates the necessity for excessive movement and maximizes Dropping Energy which is your “short power”, or what Internal stylists seek advice from as “Fa Jing”.
As a substitute of pondering by way of ranges, you must consider fighting in relation to your individual Sphere of Influence, which is the utmost extension of your weapons where you possibly can still strike with power without losing control of your equilibrium. Because you only train to fight inside your individual sphere of influence, this training gives you the flexibility to “attack the attacker” from all angles with extraordinary power, while not leaving you liable to fakes. You consistently move your sphere ever so barely offline so that you simply remain unavailable– yet unavoidable.
Nevertheless, despite all of this, going to the bottom continues to be a possibility. Nonetheless, moving your sphere to the bottom isn’t an issue and I will be going into detail on this throughout these articles.
To be continued… next level: Structuring the Fight.