Subject: Attackproof.com Newsletter #48
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KI CHUAN DO TRAINING TIPS #48:
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As an ATTACKPROOF.COM newsletter subscriber, we will
be bringing you regular training tips and thoughts on combat
from Grandmaster Perkins, Master Ridenhour, co-author
Matt Kovsky, and others.
Old articles may be found at KCD Newsletter Archives but not
KCD News (only current emailed subscriptions have it).
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KCD Training Groups Member, you can use the same login if you wish.
JOHN PERKINS CELEBRATES 55/50!
As in 55 years young and 50 years training self-defense (as most of you may know,
John was taught to be a warrior from the age of 5 by his father and uncles.)
A big surprise party was actually pulled off at the Ocean Empire restaurant in
Pomona NY where John was awarded a 10th degree Bronze plaque by his students
for decades of martial arts innovation. A reporter for the Journal News showed
up and ran a photo of the event in their Sunday edition. The caption read:
"Master Fighter: John Perkins, left, of Nyack receives a plaque yesterday from Matt Kovsky
of Croton-On-Hudson during a luncheon in Perkins' honor at Ocean Empire Restaurant in
Pomona. Perkins, a retired Yonkers Police officer who teaches Ki Chuan Do at Premier Fitness in
Nanuet with Kovsky, was honored for becoming a 10th degree black belt."
UPCOMING SEMINARS:
"REALITY CHECK" Saturday April 22. Weapons defense and use.
No-Nonsense forensic reality, not Movie-McDojo Mythology!
"GOING NATIVE" Saturday May 20. Modified Native American
Ground Fighting. Drills you've never seen on our videos.
--Why grappling can get you killed.
--Why current U.S. military methods are suicidal.
All seminars $75.00; $50.00 for KCD students (Premier Fitness members).
All Seminars will be at our Premier Fitness location 11AM to 3PM with a half hour
break. 430 Nanuet Mall South Nanuet, NY (845) 920-0501.
http://www.premierfitnessny.com/ See CLASSES
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The 5 Levels of Cooperation
(or, How to Ruin Your Self-defense
Without Even Trying!)
Part 3: The Error of Wearing Protective Equipment
(or, How to Ruin Your Self-defense
Without Even Trying!)
Part 3: The Error of Wearing Protective Equipment
By Ken Freeman
"The
sensation of body unity becomes obvious only to yourself or the
person you are hitting. At this point, the energy is truly internal,
and you may seem to hardly move at all. This occurs, for example, when
some part of your body (like an elbow) is in contact with your
opponent's trunk. Using dropping energy and body unity, you can achieve
(with apologies to Bruce Lee's one-inch punch), a no-inch punch, that
can either send your attacker flying or cause internal damage."
- Attack Proof
In this section,
I will elaborate on the detrimental effects of wearing protective
equipment while training for self defense purposes. In addition, I will
speak on the Attack Proof demos and explain why the kicks in modified
Native American Ground fighting are dramatically different from what
you see in competition. The discussion on kicks is somewhat of
a counterpoint to this level in the sense that you actually should wear protective equipment if it is indeed a part of your normal activities.
Training with
protective equipment such as gloves, headgear, flack jackets, knee
pads, shin guards, chest protectors or any other protective devices
destroy the ability to develop sensitivity and looseness. If you wear
protective equipment, you will never have the ability to properly
counterbalance or completely yield your root in response to pressure.
This especially holds true in clinching range where hand-eye
coordination is entirely too slow.
At times,
observing or even practicing the training of KCD can easily lead one to
believe that it isn't a fighting system, but some sort of meditative,
abstract and flowing way of movement akin to a non-combative form of
Tai Chi. Nothing could be further from the truth, as there is always a
method to what appears as madness.
When you have to
take a person out for real, you have to maintain the process of
penetrating their center and taking their balance so that they won't
have the ability to get back into the fight. If you take a person's
balance, they absolutely can't strike with any real power because the
body's proprioceptive system will be preoccupied with regaining
it's own equilibrium.
If You Can't Learn to Feel, You Can't Learn to Fight
With equipment
you once again inhibit your ability to maintain this process because
you can't differentiate between long and short power, which as
described in the quote at the beginning of this section is the
difference between launching someone away from you or dropping them
relatively where they stand. This gives you the ability to eventually
fight and control people without killing them or engaging in
entanglement. Through many hours of Contact Flow, you begin to develop
a subconscious feel for a person's maximum looseness points before
their skeletons lock and your strikes begin creating compression force
and internal damage against their bones and organs.
The only way to
prevent damage or being controlled is by either yielding faster than
this happens or stepping to a new root point. This is all about feeling
different people's density and motion because everyone moves
differently, and to the uninitiated has to be experienced to be fully
appreciated. For all the reasons stated, it is paramount that in
Contact Flow you always move at relatively the same speed as your
training partner. That way, as you progressively move faster and
faster, your timing in performing these movements will always be
maximally efficient.
Protective Equipment Won't Protect You
The other
problem, aside from the fact that equipment inhibits
sensitivity development is that going full contact with your training
partner, even if a person has on armor will not stop them from
withstanding extraordinary injury if the KCD striking power is
utilized. That being the case, it's completely detrimental to wear it.
As explained by John Perkins in newsletter #15:
"In KCD the
seeming sloppy strikes are thrown with a full connection of the body
all the way down to the feet with full dropping force. This is why we
have a great deal of trouble practicing on each other with power even
when wearing fist helmets with neck braces or professional football
helmets. We must pull the drop slap strikes on the human targets and
mix the attacks with strikes to moving dummy targets. At full speed
they can get a bit dicey. In most cases, only the more developed
students can be relied upon not to accidentally strike full power into
the helmet of the armored fighters."
"The boxer's
block, with the palm toward the face and only an inch away, was only
meant to be used with big soft boxing gloves, which act as cushions.
Without the gloves, your own hands would only serve to hit you in the
head as the opponent's punch comes barreling through."
-Attack Proof
Aside from that,
what purpose does it serve you to learn how to strike while your hands
are protected by gloves, only to condition your mind so that in a real
fight, positioning your hands the same way will likely cause you to
break your own bones?
"Unless
you're attacked in the shower or on the beach, you'll never need to
kick barefoot. Wearing sturdy shoes changes the dynamics of your kicks
and effectively puts a hammer at the end of your feet. You should
always practice with them on."
-Attack Proof
Sport Fighting vs. Survival Fighting on the Ground
In competition,
when one fighter is on the ground and the other is standing, the
fighter on the ground will often go into a position known as the open
guard as opposed to the closed or half guard. The open guard is
basically any position where a standing opponent is in front of your
legs in some fashion.
The closed guard
is when the bottom man has his legs wrapped around the top man's waist.
The half guard is when the bottom man has his legs wrapped around one
of the top man's legs, usually as a result of losing control of the
full guard position. For the purposes of this section, we will only be
dealing with the open guard.
As utilized in
competition, the open guard is a defensive posture intended to keep the
standing attacker from either passing the legs to get the mount or
raining down punches in the form of what is referred to as "ground and
pound". Ground and pound has been done both standing as well as from
the mount position. The defensive idea of the open guard is to put your
feet on the attacker's hip, or sometimes shoulder, arm or chest to push
him back. Occasionally, it is used in a striking manner as well.
From our
standpoint, what they do is morally and legally sound for competitive
fighting as we feel anything more would be excessive and possibly
grounds for imprisonment. We only have a problem when these practices
are espoused as viable self defense methods. Understand something, we
are only concerned with survival fighting and are not playing games
because what we do is not for sport. We are not the jump in the ring
and man up "mano y mano" guys. We are the people that are concerned
with protecting ourselves on the way to the car, in the shopping mall
or after work if something unfortunately goes wrong.
Here's the
problem. If you get into a serious fight and you hit the ground while
your opponent is still standing, I can assure you that unless you are
extremely lucky and not facing a determined attacker, the standing
attacker will not punch you or try to pass your guard to get into the
mount position. If you read police reports of physical assaults that
have occurred here in Chicago, I'm pretty certain that you would find
out more people have been hospitalized or killed by
being viciously stomped than any other method of hand to hand fighting
out there, trained tactics or not.
He or they will practically
attempt to stomp you into oblivion. John Perkins once recommended
watching the movie Menace to Society. The reason was because at the end
of the movie there was a fight scene that displayed exactly what happens when you hit the ground and you're facing a determined attacker.
Though perfectly
suitable for the ring, the open guard methodology can potentially get
you disfigured or killed on the street for several reasons. It is
employed by the prone fighter in a defensive nature in which the
fighter doesn't move his sphere as his root is usually immobilized.
Equally as detrimental, the prone attacker usually doesn't wait long
enough to allow the standing attacker to enter in a manner where he
is so close that he can utilize the power of his legs while on the
ground. Therefore, often times out of fear of getting mounted or
punched, he'll overextend beyond his sphere. In addition to being
barefooted, the kicks, even if not intended to simply push, are
generally weak because they lose the power of their muscles, tendons,
ligaments and momentum as their legs have already been fully extended.
No one's arm
strength should be able to match your leg strength. Nevertheless, in
grappling you see leg locks and ankle control methods working where
people sidestep each other's legs to attain a so-called dominant
position referred to as side control. This is only occurring because
they are cooperating by not moving with real intent. To be fair
however, on rare occasion some competitive fighters have knocked their
attackers out with heel kicks from the ground, but usually it doesn't
happen because of the lack of intent to kill! They are usually trying
to get the attacker away from them or set them up for some type of
sweep or submission. A lot of times it works, at least in competition.
On
the street, if you're on the ground you had better utilize all the
power you have from all angles and most importantly maintain a mobile
root. For an idea of how you need to move, look at Demo #8: Ground
fighting with a Knife on the Attack Proof website. To the initiated
this is obvious, but in reality you will need to literally kick
with every square ounce of your might in an unrestrained manner as Lt.
Col Al is holding back tremendously for the obvious purpose of not severely injuring the training partners.
"Is That KCD Stuff Real?" You'd Better Believe It.
Although
the overall response to the demos on the site was overwhelmingly
positive, I've spoken with several skeptics who seemed to not realize
that the video clips were not real or were offended at the integrity of
the attacks as they meticulously dissected every detail. In a lot of
cases, I could see where they were coming from but the truth of the
matter is that they simply don't understand how dangerous it is to do
demos in that manner because they can't feel or see the power that is
being generated. Although it is blatantly stated that the KCD strikes
were pulled, a skeptical mind would likely ignore that and focus on
several things which I'll explain here.
1. It appears
that the strikes are merely slaps for several reasons. One is that they
are open handed, thus creating an optical illusion. Also, when
you develop loosenes, at a highly refined level it will almost appear
at times to the uninitiated that you lack power unless they are on the
receiving end. Even though full body unity is being utilized by Al,
John and Mike, they are purposely either not penetrating at all,
or purposely not going beyond the limits of the attacker's looseness
as a way to avoid injury. Again, all kicks and strikes were pulled.
2. As the
grappler is shooting, there appears to be a lag time in his movements.
Sorry, this is strictly because he knows if he comes in at full speed
and gets hit, the price paid will not be worth any demo in the world. I
don't think this was a conscious effort, it was actually his body's
recognition that it was more important to protect itself. I can tell
you from first hand experience that it feels almost like you are
hitting a brick wall when someone is properly rooted. The faster you
run into the wall, the greater the injury. However, the integrity of
the shoot doesn't matter and that's something I'll deal with in Level 5.
3. The knife
demos are not how we actually move with a knife, it was only a demo to
show what happens when a determined, even if untrained, attacker goes
berserk with a knife. Personally, I agree with the assessment that it
would have been far more effective to pull a concealed knife after the
grappler attacked, not before hand.
4. The standing
kicker appears to be off balance. In reality, he is actually using the
walls to balance himself in the same fashion discussed by John in newsletter # 27. Just as well, dropping energy is utilized either vertically or while moving forward.
Without any real
contact with a certified KCD instructor who has the control to move
with you at high speeds and give you a feel for the system without
injury, the only way you can truly appreciate the power is by lying on
the ground and kicking an inhuman object like a lying (supine) heavy
bag with all of your might. In a literal sense, when you adapt
an "attack the attacker" philosophy and move with full body unity,
using centrifugal force at reflexive speed, the power of your legs is
the equivalent of a set of swinging sledgehammers with the intent to
incapacitate and bust bones. As Lt. Col Al says on the Attack Proof Companion Part 2 DVD, "We don't kick at people, we kick through people."
John Perkins speaks on the 2003 Seminar Video
about how he kicked a guy's nose off of his face with his police shoes
as the guy attempted to wrestle him. In light of the power you can
generate with your legs, the way I see it, the guy was extremely lucky
because if John didn't miss he would've easily broken the guy's neck.
Throughout the
remainder of this newsletter, I will be presenting emails that I've
received from Lt. Col. Al that support my arguments. This email
reinforces the previous sections and applies to this one as well.
"The
truth is that in a real fight when people mean to take you out, by the
time you try to set something up it's already over. Everything they
[competitive fighters] do is set up either from a position of dominance
or from some sort of stance. This tips off many of the things that they
will do from the start, which would be fine if people cooperated with
you when the fight goes down. Remember, at the end of the day what
these folks are doing is a sport which is fine as long as they have the
understanding that when people are trying to kill you the fight takes
on an entirely different dynamic. This is especially true of boxing,
which is why as with all sport fighting there are only a hand full of
people with the physical talent to do it and actually earn a living at
it."
Self-defense: For the Young Only?
"With
regard to boxing, or any sport fighting for that matter, think of this.
The average Pro-Boxer probably fights over 100 fights before they enter
the pro ranks. They've probably had a highly successful amateur career
and have probably fought in international competition or the Armed
Forces before turning pro. Out of this, there are maybe a couple
hundred ranked boxers per boxing organization in the world. Just given
the law of averages, probably 50% of these guys have losing records and
another 30-40% are just above .500, with the best boxers making up the
last 10-20% of fighters. Out of that number maybe, and that's a big
"maybe", 1-3% actually earn enough money as boxers to sustain
themselves. While I don't have any hard numbers on this, I'm probably
not far off the mark. For sports like wrestling and other grappling
arts which probably have many more practitioners world wide, the number
of folks who can't earn a living at it are greater, especially since
the money is also considerably less than in boxing."
"Why is this the
case? I believe it is because even within their own sports, such
techniques are difficult to make work since people move in a [i.e.,
relatively within the dynamics of a given art] uncooperative manner so
that only the most physically talented and dedicated fighters can
advance. This is also contingent on their ability to remain healthy
throughout their careers, but alas, such things are a young man's game
and in time, no matter how skilled they are, because it is a sport
which relies on tremendous physical talent as opposed to principles,
even the mightiest of them at some point can no longer fight at a high
level."
"Do you think
that all of the great boxers in history had to give up the sport due to
a lack of knowledge? Does anyone believe that the great boxers of old
suddenly forgot how to fight? Does anyone believe that the masters of
the various sportive martial arts disciplines forgot how to use their
techniques? No way! So then why don't you see them anymore in
competition? It's because they're just too old for that sort of thing.
Why? Because it's a sport."
"However, and I
want to be clear about this, given their knowledge of fighting and
their age, in a real fight I'm sure it would be an entirely different
matter and a line you may not want to cross with many of the great
fighters of old."
In contrast,
within internal arts such as KCD, Tai Chi, et. al or some of the arts
based on WWII combatives, as long as the practitioners maintain pretty
much their normal level of physical fitness, they can continue to
improve as long as they continue to practice the sound principles of
close combat. While this may sound paradoxical when you think about it,
it makes sense and may go a long way in explaining why the ancient
masters of the fighting arts in various cultures seemed to be revered
as possessing almost supernatural fighting abilities."
"Could it be
that because their mastery of the principles of combat were so great
that their fighting skill transcended not only the physical abilities
of their opponents, but their own physical limitations as well? I
believe the answer is an obvious yes and explains why internal art
practitioners continue to improve with age whereas external-only
practitioners suffer from the law of diminishing returns, i.e., because
they are so reliant on their physical attributes, as their bodies
diminish, so too do their "physical abilities".
to be continued....
Next Level: Disregarding Vital Targets
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Ken has a KCD training group in the Chicago area you may want to investigate.]
See: TRAINING GROUPS
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"Outstanding newsletter! Definitely balanced and gives folks who can't
practically make it to Nanuet NY some viable options for training in close
quarters combat and internal energy principles. I for one am glad that I'm
at least close enough to make it there by auto."
--WILKINS F. URQUHART, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF
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--Mark from Chicago
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