First: A Word on “Street Sparring”
There are vital explanation why we do not spar. If we’d like to enter, we utilize John Perkins’ version of WWII Combatives since it’s faster, easier to learn and provides much better protection than Western Boxing and all other variants of sport fighting. Sarcastically, this is useful whether you may have the physical advantage or not.
This shouldn’t be the stage of Roman Gladiatorial games where two men battled in front of 1,000s of spectators for the dignity and glory of winning. We only care about surviving.
Sparring is for sport and doesn’t simulate an actual time, violent attack. In the event you are circling around someone on the streets as they do in a 23′ x 23′ ring, while using eye-hand coordination to strike your attacker with kicks and punches, it means you may have enough distance to run. If that is not a possibility and also you carry a concealed weapon, you may have enough space and distance to attract your weapon and shoot your attacker in the top.
It’s ridiculous to fight someone in a sparring manner in the event that they have superior strength and reach, which is the rationale why they’ve weight classes during these sporting events. You might take the best possible welterweight in existence and put him against an untrained man the dimensions of an offensive lineman and he’ll get completely destroyed if he tries the methods taught in sport fighting.
Someone will argue that no system would work…well, therein lies the misunderstanding. That is the rationale why we train to literally disfigure and destroy individuals with deadly strikes while utilizing the principles of the system because it is actually the one solution to overcome size, speed and strength in close quarters combat. Please don’t ever let anyone provide you with the mistaken impression that those physical aspects aren’t vital in a fight. Fortunately nonetheless, at extremely high levels, you’ll be able to achieve proficiency to the purpose that you just haven’t got to permanently hurt people.
Now despite all of that, let me be clear about something else. The systems that advocate sparring often have higher athletes and higher fighters than those that avoid physical contact or move from structured patterns. While KCD negates the physical benefits of the varied sportive systems, those athletic individuals will most probably absorb the principles of KCD even faster than the non-athletic. That is just the truth.
It Takes 2 to Clinch
Because we do not spar, which we view as any fighting where you might be at a variety when eye-hand coordination is the predominant factor, we’d like to once more think when it comes to our Sphere of Influence. To exert your influence, you either allow the attacker to enter your sphere or you progress your sphere into his. Otherwise there isn’t a fight. Despite the fact that we operate primarily in clinch range, the difference is that we depend on body unitized momentum and sensitivity to strike vital targets at any angle in relation to our sphere as a substitute of counting on clamping strength to regulate.
The clinch range for Jiu Jitsu employs the identical approach to strategizing for positional dominance as ground grappling, but is performed while standing. The concept is to put the opponent right into a position where his ability to defend strikes, takedowns, throws or submissions are greatly compromised.
Though this shouldn’t be a comprehensive description of each possible clinch, the first clinch and transition you see in MMA and even some street fighting is the over-under clinch during which each parties pummel to get to the double-under hooks position (chest to chest body lock). Over and under simply describes the position of their arms in relation to 1 one other. For instance, within the over-under, one in all your arms can be over one in all the opponent’s arms. Your other arm can be under the opponent’s other arm and around his back. Your head can be positioned on the identical side as his over hooked arm.
The Fatal Flaw of Clinching
Most fighters, expert or not, don’t yield on this range. Fairly often, you will see each parties attempting to strike one another from the clinching position, even in the event that they haven’t got positional superiority. The strikes are often weak and really ineffective because they sacrifice their dynamic balance and skill to take care of a fluid root by entangling themselves in a single position and counting on their attacker’s balance. They don’t have any ability to create real space or movement, which is a necessity, especially for those who lack short power. At the top of the day, lots of times they’re merely bumping into each other as they try to regulate and avoid by utilizing attachment or pure strength.
Along with leaving you entangled, clinching is extremely inefficient in addition to energy consuming since it involves sustained tension. Except for that, it also leaves your eyes and throat completely exposed. You possibly can’t protect your head from a determined attacker by turning it sideways and placing it against the attacker’s body either.
Cung Le, who I discussed within the Attackproof FAQ, was probably the most dominant fighter within the history of San Shou. We recognized that he either developed the next level of sensitivity through a keen understanding of internal training concepts or through extraordinary natural ability. In lots of his fights, as he and his opponent would clinch, he’d simply utilize his sensitivity to feel the strain of his opponents, which he would immediately use as handles to throw or slam them to the bottom. While that is the goal of San Shou Shuai Jiao, he’s capable of perform these movements in a way more effective manner than his opponents due to superior sensitivity.
Though we completely disagree with Cung Le’s approach to fighting since we oppose any type of entanglement for self defense purposes, it underscores a vital point. Having just just a little bit more sensitivity in any arena, whether it’s competition or street, gives you an enormous advantage over your opponent. The truth is, grappling in and of itself develops a level of sensitivity, nonetheless the responses that it programs are once more, inappropriate for self defense, though perfect for competition.
You Cannot Grapple a Ghost
When entering clinching range, you must be almost undetectable, as for those who are a ghost; you must be completely unavailable to the attacker’s strikes and grapples, yet completely unavoidable as you utilize dropping energy to inflict damage. That is the rationale why Ki Chuan Do translated means, “Way of the Spirit Fist” or why it is usually called “Ghostfist.” In fact we’re speaking figuratively, but that’s the dichotomy that we are trying to perfect after we train. Here’s an elaboration on this method from newsletter #16 by KCD Master Lt. Col. Al Ridenhour USMC:
Ghost Entry– as described by Musashi– that is striking from the void in its truest form. Grand Master Perkins has up to now referred to this as “hitting people together with your spirit” [this is wild!]. With the ghost entry you just wish to get an impression of the opposite person’s body. As I enter, I launch myself attempting to remain as graceful [unitized] as possible and with the “lightest” of contact or “perception” [spatial awareness] of where they’re in relation to my body I quickly move to a kill strike dropping and penetrating on contact. In the event that they adjust their position, irrespective of, I adjust. I imagine myself moving just like the wind and striking like lightning. The lightness of my contact whether physical or mental is predicated just as much on my perception of contact in addition to what I actually feel. While this could be very esoteric it is a totally learnable skill but it surely requires much practice.
Once more as with most of the techniques I’ve described I do know there are going to be those that will remain skeptical about this form of thing, for many who have felt this you understand exactly what I’m talking about! This movement when applied against you has an eerie feel to it because you think that you understand where the opposite person is coming from nonetheless you truly don’t see the strike coming even when looking right on the person, and if dropping energy is applied to it, “fa-gedda-bout-it”, it’s the Ghost Fist in its purest essence…
On the chaos levels we’re engaging in, the one way you’ll be able to achieve this level of combativeness is by mastering the 5 Principles of Combat (Balance, Body Unity, Looseness, Sensitivity and Freedom of Motion) with a special emphasis on the fifth. In the event you are deficient in even one in all the 5 Primary Principles, you’ll be able to never utilize any of them in high speed, high adrenaline motion in an efficient manner.
Actually Working the Principles, Not Just Talking About Them
There are practically no other schools that teach these principles in a scientific and proper manner so that just about any dedicated student can absorb them without spending half of their lives (30+ years) in training. The truth is, we do not know of any. Nonetheless and just so I’m clear, many faculties speak the identical language as us and we recognize that the vast majority of them will properly train 2 and even 3 of the principles.
The issue is that they often fail even with those because they’ll train their minds for patterned movement or another stylistic nonsense (i.e., static, pigeon toed footwork and even body hardening) to preserve lineage on the expense of effectiveness. Fairly often, they’ll discover one or two principles and go on to stylize their entire system around these principles on the expense of others. To be clear on what I mean, I’ll give several examples.
There are those that could have the power to display a high degree of speed or looseness in demos, but then won’t have the sensitivity and freedom of motion of their delivery systems to put it to use in a dynamic, non-choreographed environment where they should use it while concurrently attacking an actively resisting opponent.
Looseness as a separate component is useless when applied without the opposite principles to combative motion. It’s the manifestation of all of the principles working together without delay that makes your body pliable, yet and still extremely powerful.
Or perhaps, they’ve some Iron Palm training and have developed a point of dropping energy, but they’re unable to put it to use in an actual fight from any angle because they have not developed the looseness.
There are systems that may advocate the principles, but then will completely undermine all of them by performing some absolutely ridiculous techniques that only probably the most athletic and coordinated could pull off in the event that they get lucky.
Devotion to Style Limits Freedom of Motion
Greater than likely nonetheless, they simply don’t have any approach to developing the principles, although they could be consciously aware of them. So often you’ll be able to go into a faculty and only the trainer/s can actually fight, while the scholars don’t have any combat proficiency by any means. The goal of Guided Chaos is to take you to the extent of mastery of those principles which can robotically provide you with the power to filter out incorrect methods and evaluate your personal training, no matter system, style or body type.
Here’s one other take from Lt. Col Al on this matter:
As for the inner arts, in fact they’re by far superior in every way so far as body development compared to external arts. Nonetheless, where people go unsuitable in lots of internal systems similar to Tai Chi, Wing Chun and Ba Gua is that they ignore fighting and deal with flowing or the developed pattern movements as in Wing Chun, which restricts their freedom of motion. I think you wish each and here is where KCD has a bonus over the inner systems. A lot of their practitioners may develop good body unity and sensitivity but they never learn easy methods to apply it in an actual fight because they do not know easy methods to transpose the abilities into their fighting arsenal.
The Grease That Makes All Your Other Training Work Higher
In these articles, except for a reference or two, I purposely avoided the discussion of weapons or multiple attackers for 2 reasons.
1. Grappling/Clinching intrinsically sets one as much as fail in these situations. Nonetheless, the vast majority of their practitioners are aware of this. The sensible amongst them will simply adapt KCD style movements for street defense and save the grappling for the ring. One shouldn’t be higher than the opposite; they simply serve two different purposes.
2. Even at best, no matter what your skill level or training, these variables introduce elements that will not be survivable even under the very best conditions. Period! Nonetheless, because KCD is built upon the principles of Freedom of Motion and avoiding Entanglement, it robotically gives you your best probabilities for survival.
As stated before, to various degrees the inner principles of Guided Chaos might be utilized to reinforce the movement of any system, even sport fighting and it already has. The difference lies within the proven fact that the tools we utilize are from WWII Combatives and end the fight as soon as possible because our focus is self defense. This also where most Tai Chi training falls short (except in certain select schools) because there is not the relentless deal with destroying the enemy using the inner energy that’s so conscientiously developed.
At all times Keep an Open Mind
Even in KCD, we’re very careful (not less than most of us are) concerning the assumptions that we make because it might be very easy for us to fall into the identical trap as so many other schools. That’s the reason we adhere to principles versus “this” technique or “that” technique because while techniques come and go, the principles apply to each form of fighting no matter who you might be. I try to emphasise that we’re never satisfied with what we all know and are continuously searching for recent experiences to be able to expand our knowledge base.
Because of this we still give folks the time of day even when we disagree with what they’re doing if for no other reason than to know what “doesn’t” work. As Thomas Edison once said, “…90% of genius is knowing what doesn’t work.” What he (Edison) doesn’t inform you unless you study his quite a few experiments is that for his most successful inventions, he failed hundreds of experiments before developing the sunshine bulb. When asked why he required so many experiments he replied something along the lines of “…well now I do know 1,000 things that do not work…”
Like Edison, we feel it’s just as necessary to know the logical reasoning of why something does or doesn’t work. Nonetheless, we attempt to focus our energies on developing good purposeful habits that are rooted within the principles of combat. This is predicated on what actually happens and never what we would love to occur. This same attitude is something that I also consider truly separates KCD from other arts and is one in all the explanation why we still proceed to enhance with time. We aren’t afraid to fail in school and challenge the validity of what we all know and teach because we all know there are not any second probabilities on the road. The purpose is that if we knew all of it (and we do not), we would not must train, because we’d have already got all of the answers but the reality is that even in KCD we’re only scratching the surface and have much to find.
