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| | FIGHTING IN THE FUTURE, Part 1 |
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This is going to be tough.
The reason this is going to be tough is because I’m going to try and explain a “concept” and that’s all it is a "concept”, that can only be “seen” or “felt” for the most part with your mind.
This will be the first in a series of Blog Posts on this subject because there’s way too much material to cover in one post and frankly I really don’t know where this is going to end up, so we’ll just roll with it and see where it leads. Besides life is short.
In previous Blog Posts, "Your Journey Into Fluid Power - PART II", as well as “Striking from the Void” and "Unplugging From the Matrix", I alluded to the concept of what Grandmaster Perkins refers to as “Fighting in the Future” or as I like to sometimes describe it as the “Dimensional Aspects of Combat”.
Now, when we’re talking about Fighting in the Future we’re not talking about “H.G. Wells” stuff here, though it would be nice to go back and change a few letter grades in college. We’re talking about a concept, a way of understanding movement and how humans relate to one another as they move within time and space.
Fighting in the Future deals with not only how you view yourself in time and space but how you view others in relation to you and your position. Like Awareness, believe it or not it is a part of the decision making process as to how to respond to a given situation.
Like Awareness is all about mastering the ability to recognize, anticipate and act, but this is as much a mental process as I said in a previous post on “Awareness”,
“Wrong Mindset = Wrong Interpretation = Wrong Conclusions”
Again, this is one of the main reasons why we place so much emphasis on “Awareness”. By getting your mind right you can learn to “get ahead of their action” (The Future), if attacked and you are able to disrupt their “process” or movements, gaining an advantage but this goes much, much further.
I’ll say it again, in order to get your mindset to the right place you have to understand that the way you think about something influences how you respond to it, react to it, act upon it. Each “action / thought” or “thought / action” has a reinforcing aspect strengthening the bond between thought and action right or wrong.
Each movement in a given situation has a reinforcing action both mentally and physically and since your body's movements are agnostic meaning your body generally doesn't care, it's just trying to do what you are trying to do whether consciously or unconsciously this is how it will perform. |
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Return to Mt. DOOM Loop
I won’t get into it in any depth here but you can refer to my previous blog entry “Awareness: the Line in the Sand” at the following link:
https://protectyourself.mykajabi.com/blog/awareness-the-line-in-the-sand
I’m going to sort of pick up where I left off to point out a few things. Again the concept is called the “OODA Loop” (Observer, Orient, Decide and Act, or the “Doom Loop"), developed by Col John Boyd, USAF. As he stated, it is an ongoing cross-referencing process in which, “Orientation” is the fulcrum that shapes the way we interact with our environment, observe it, decide and act. Most important of all it is capable of shaping the character of our future orientation as well.
Col Boyd when describing operating inside an opponents’ OODA loop, said “It’s like they’re moving in slow motion”. I believe for other reasons as well, because these things are happening “simultaneously” there is as I described in a previous blog post a "dimensional aspect" to this or what Grandmaster Perkins refers to "getting out of phase" with your opponent.
By now many in the martial arts are familiar with the phenomenon referred to as “Tachypsychia” or as it is sometimes called, the “Tachy Psyche” effect. This is a neurological condition that alters the perception of time, usually induced by physical exertion, or a traumatic event. There’s other stuff that can alter a person’s perception of time but none of it is legal and probably not good for you. Just trying to keep people safe.
Anyway, Col Boyd also stated, “It’s like you’re commanding both sides”. He goes on to say that a common impression of what he called Cheng / Ch’i operations with Cheng being an - “orthodox, expected action or reaction” vs. Ch’i being the “unorthodox, unexpected, shocking action.” By operating inside an opponent’s OODA loop, you will find it much easier to set up and exploit Cheng / Ch’i situations. We like to call this “Guiding the Chaos”.
In Jujitsu, Master Wally Jay calls this getting inside of the other guys loop as “Small Circle Jujitsu”. In Guided Chaos Grandmaster Perkins refers to this type of movement as “Micro Circle Jujitsu” meaning that your decision loop through the use of the Principles of Guided Chaos becomes “so tight” that your opponent can barely perceive a change in your motion thus having no reference point from which to mount an effective counter to. Throwing off his timing by altering his perception of when you moved.
For example, if someone moves toward you whether to strike or grab you, just by not allowing them to get purchase on you changes the game entirely. The same is true for an unexpected attack. Just by doing what we call the “Fright Reaction” technique causes a physical change in your body posture covering your most vulnerable areas around the head and completely changes the dynamic of the attack process. As simple as this sounds, the truth is “change your body, change the fight”.
This is why I struggle with the logic of teaching self-defense moves from the perspective of waiting for someone to do something first before you react. What the Hell are you waiting for? I can see in a situation where there is a surprise attack where the bad guy gets the drop on you. But that’s not what you see out there.
Most self-defense is generally predicated on the bad guy doing something first even in an obviously bad situation where the person in the scenario had time to take a different action before the bad guy was able to get their stuff off. |
| Bending Time and Space
“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be…”
--Wayne Gretzky
I guess it was when I was in high school that I had my first encounter with this phenomenon, where I could sort of see it, but I really didn’t know what the Hell I was looking at. It was during a football game against one of our rivals when my best friend who went on to play Football at Syracuse and later got picked up by the NY Jets for a time until he got hurt. Shame.
Anyway, the coach calls a play to my side, I was blocking for him and he goes through the hole and then does the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. He runs for about 7 yards and when the defenders came up to tackle him, he turned right at a 90° degree angle, ran for maybe ten yards parallel to the line of scrimmage, made another right angle turn to the left and ran for about 30 yards for the touchdown.
This was like “Gayle Sayers” or “Barry Sanders” type of stuff. Anyway over 20 years later when my son was a major college football prospect one of the coaches who was recruiting him asked me where I played in high school I said “Sleepy Hollow High, in NY”. The next words out of his mouth were, “Harold Gayden”.
He said he tried his hardest to get him to come play for him. While we were talking he actually brought up that game because he had seen the game film. He said he’d never seen anything like that, how a kid could run full speed and turn on a dime parallel to the line of scrimmage. He said what was even crazier was how the defensive backs literally stopped moving like they were just watching him, and one actually just fell down. He said, “I’ll never forget that”.
Sometime later when I ran into my old friend I told him about what the coach said and I asked him about it and he said he barely remembered doing that. He then said, “man, when I use to run the ball I could just see it, I would just run” (my friend by the way use to be the NY State Champ in the 100m and 200m so that helps, juuuuust a little).
When he said that to me I knew exactly what he was talking about. In football and other sports, we call this skill “vision” or sometimes referred to as “savvy”. The ability to not only just “know things” but to, “play where the puck is going to be…” In other words, he could see the possibilities from his vantage point before others so he was able to move in a way where they could not react in time to counter his movement.
My point in telling this story is that the same thing happens in real fights. It is not uncommon for people to describe moving during a crisis where they don't know they did "what they did", when they had to go into action, they just did it. There was nothing planned about it but through years of proper training they somehow were able to apply their skills on a level where there was no conscious thought to anything. It just happened.
It is also not uncommon for people to feel as if everything was moving in slow motion or that they were watching themselves move in the third person as if outside of their body.
Also mind you that my friend and I had been playing football since we were little kids so we had lots of savvy, we knew how to get ahead of the other guy and "play where the puck was going to be".
But isn't this what people are trying to get to when they study a martial art?
That savvy, that unknown quality to just do it?
I say this because there are many people out there who will tell you that while this may work in sports, such movement that includes fine motor coordination is not possible under the duress of a real confrontation. I disagree. Says who? By who's standard?
I can remember as a kid my friends and I hopping fences at "warp speed" running from dogs for being in places we had no business being in. If you've ever done something like that then you know it felt like your body "barely" touched the fence and over you went.
"Movement is movement" and when you have to move full speed whatever that is for you while you're only going to move but so fast, you'll probably move a lot faster and with more coordination than you think. It may not be pretty or cool looking but as Larry the Cable Guy would say, "You'll gitter done"!
I'll never forget when I was a 2nd Lt during the Gulf War and served with Chief Warrant Officer "Gunner" Steel. (Yeah what a cool name--Gunner John Steel. He was in Vietnam when most of us as Lieutenants were around four years old, which he frequently reminded us of. We used to affectionately call him "Pork Rinds" because he was "salty" and "tough"). Anyway, he once said to us, "Trust me when you have to move to avoid getting hit, you'll run faster than you thought you could, jump higher than you thought, cram your body into spaces you didn't think possible and see shit you didn't think you could see. War makes you strong".
Damn straight!
When you have to "go there" if your mind is right and you've properly trained for that reality trust me "you will go there".
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The Wisdom Tree
Sometime back I was working out with the Grandmaster. We were just moving and at one point as I moved toward him he seemed to “float” out of the way. I said, “Oh, come on, really?” He started to laugh and said, “Yeah you like that?”
He said just do whatever you want so I tried to move in and fake him out, he just seemed to step in and push me off balance. I said, “Okay what’s up with that?” He said,
“Well I know where you’re at so I’m already adjusting my body before you get here. I’m not waiting for you to do something before I change. I’m also changing in a way that’s hard for you to detect so it seems like I’m just walking in.”
He said, “Don’t do anything, watch what I’m doing, I’m going to exaggerate it so you can see what I’m doing,” and right there I saw his body not just step slightly out of the way but literally “change” its entire orientation.
Just as an aside I’ve also seen this with the women who train in this art. I think because they intuitively know that pretty much anywhere a man hits them can cause them damage they already have their radar up, and are already (once aware) changing their bodies before we even get there.
For those who’ve trained with our female instructors like Tina Dawn who’s a 4th Degree in GUIDED CHAOS, you know she has a bad habit of showing up where you don’t want her to be. Let’s just say I don’t really want to talk about it because she’s robbed me if my dignity on more than one occasion. However, I will have my vengeance. Just sayin…
While he didn’t use the term with me then, I would later realize this is what he was doing when he was, as he calls it, “Getting out of Phase”. This is very difficult to explain without being able to see it so I’m not going to get too much into the movement involved. What I will describe is from a physical stand point how this enables one to get ahead of another person’s motion into The Future.
Before I move on, I’ll end with this point: If you want to get a feel for this and you have kids, understand they are masters at this. They call it playing “Tag”. Watch little kids play Tag, they’re already moving before they even extend their arms to tag the other person.
Why? They intuitively know and learn that if they just extend their arm the other kid will begin to move so they “get ahead of their movement” with their bodies by “faking them out”.
My granddaughter has used this “Old Jedi Mind Trick” on me more than once with great success. By the time she’s old enough to date like around 35 years old, her skills will be complete.
Anyway…
The only difference between kids and adults is they’re not moving with malicious intent so it’s a lot riskier for us and the movement more difficult since we’re clashing.
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Using What is Known
Now I’m going to expand on this and get all “Einsteinian” or Einstein-like here. Rather than make something up that may not make sense let’s first discuss what is known.
Now we know that we have mass therefore occupy physical 3-dimensional space. Once we are in motion because movement requires “time” to do things this movement can be referred to as the 4th Dimensional Aspect of Combat.
As time proceeds no matter what we do the only thing that is set is the “Past”. The “Present” or as the Grandmaster calls it "The Now”, is always constant. In other words, as you read this, “now” is the present, as is now, and you know that “now” is also the present. You get the idea.
Like the OODA Loop, the past also informs on the present or current observation, which shapes the character of the future decisions and actions.
The key is to be able to get ahead of the other person’s movement in a way where they do not have enough time to react to your movement.
In truth if you can train your mind to respond in this fashion, just by knowing where another person is not only already starts the clock but places you ahead of their movement because you’re already able to track them even if you are only doing this visually.
Anyway, “The Future” is what I call the "5th Dimensional Aspect of Combat".
Once you arrive at The Future you are able to “anticipate possibilities and probabilities” of the other person’s actions which, I refer to as the "6th Dimensional Aspect of Combat".
Now, stay with me, since you are able to get ahead of another person’s movement (The Future), because they don’t have enough “Time” to react to your movements you are able to anticipate their actions to a high degree of probability, which creates what I call "multiple opportunities” or “possible futures” for you in which each future option is generally the right answer.
Yeah I know, crazy right?
At some point if you are able to reach the degree of “Creativity” where it doesn’t matter what they do because they can’t move fast enough to get ahead of your movement and the ability to anticipate their motion, you have reached the area or dimension I refer to as the "7th Dimensional Aspect of Combat".
At that point they’re just swinging because as they are getting hit they have no idea why you hit them the way you hit them, when you hit them, because they can’t see what you see because it’s “your future” not theirs. They can’t see the possibilities that you see because they cannot see it from their perspective.
I’ll finish with this: Regardless of fighting system for the most part what distinguishes the more skilled fighters from the lesser ones is this ability to get ahead of the other person’s motion. Whether it’s because they have greater reach, or are naturally faster more agile, more “deceptive”, get lucky etc. whatever it is, once they’re ahead of you it’s almost impossible to get back in the game so to speak.
In combat or sports we call this “momentum” and once the other guy or team gain the upper hand and pour on the momentum it’s almost impossible to get back into the fight. It is for this reason that people sucker punch people in fights. It’s simple: he who strikes first generally wins.
This is why students often hear me state when asked how to deal with a particular situation or strike I usually say, “Don’t let that shit happen in the first place!”
Well that’s it for now.
Thanks.
LtCol Al Ridenhour
Senior Master Instructor, GUIDED CHAOS
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SECOND: Dig Deeper.
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| | | | GUIDED CHAOS is the GREASE that makes
all your OTHER training work BETTER.
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"After experiencing Contact Flow hands-on with the experts, I consider it to be the 'piece de resistance' of martial arts."
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--Dr. Jan Bloem, one of Europe's leading authorities teaching special police and military special operation units, www.datmovement.nl |
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"Guided
Chaos should be required training for anyone interested in push hands
and the self-defense aspects of the internal arts."
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--Sifu Ken Gullette, certified as an instructor with the U.S.
Chen Family, connected directly to the
Chen Village tai chi school through Grandmaster Chen Xiaoxing. http://www.internalarts.typepad.com/ |
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