ISSUE #209  GUIDED CHAOS NEWS         follow us @GuidedChaos    ENDORSEMENTS

Something Big is Coming to Guided Chaos next week...

FOR BEGINNERS THROUGH EXPERTS!      Yes, you read that right. Guided Chaos' unique methods benefit all levels dramatically. In fact, for some people, advanced training in another style could be a handicap. For others, GC can be the Holy Grail you've been searching for your entire life. DAY 1: SIMPLE COMBATIVES. Walk out with skills you can use immediately. DAY 2: ADVANCED ADAPTIVE PRINCIPLES. Take the methods from Day 1 and apply to them martial arts "secrets" (actually simple science) that people spend decades trying to discover. Use them to guide your own training and achieve levels of proficiency faster than with any other system. The Guided Chaos 4 Day Boot Camp, May 3-6, with a special additional 5th day of live Combat Shooting for permit holders only (separate fee applies) May 2nd. Buy 1,2,3 or all 4 days.   GROUP DISCOUNTS: Save $100 per person (for 3 or more people purchasing the full 4 or 5 day Boot Camp in one credit card order). $100/person will be rebated via Paypal within 48 hours after purchase). Offer good til May 1st 2012.  Full info here

MARCH 24TH NEW YORK SEMINAR AT PREMIER FITNESS:  Mar. 24th: Tomahawk Fighting Principles 11 AM to 3 PM $95/person --The first of it's kind --Open to all GC practitioners Premier Fitness [MAP] The area’s finest gym/health club! 430 Nanuet Mall South Nanuet, NY. (845) 920-0501. http://www.premierfitnessny.com/       NEW: GUIDED CHAOS GROUND-FIGHTING CLASS   First Saturday of every month at Premier Fitness --Mobility, core strength, destructions, kicking --Mat work and contact flow on the ground --Completely different from MMA

GREAT QUESTION AND ANSWER EXCHANGE...   Q: How do you guys typically run an introduction for someone in NYC? Our Training Group wants to be as professional as we can and to be honest I would try to draw from my own experience but I just remember getting hit a lot in my intro two years ago!! Lol I remember the principles being explained but I also remember there was a point where John had me do whatever I wanted to one of his students and I was shown how you can apply the principles in any situation. Do you mind explaining that portion of the intro too? Do you also have any advice when a new guy comes to see the art how to hold back and not hurt the guy but still show the effectiveness? It's hard because guys seem to get real aggressive at times, male egos are something else!! Also one last quick question: is getting to a person's blind-side (as in stepping off-line in contact flow) one of the harder goals to accomplish? I’m hoping it is because I’m getting hit every time I try to do it!! A: Running an intro is a pretty personal thing. John typically quickly reads a person's experience, preconceived notions, psychology, etc. and adjusts accordingly. Tim as a matter of policy (he's told me this) makes it very clear to any new person within the first five minutes that Tim could happily kill him at will, so abandon any ego crap. (During first five minutes of my first session with Tim, I came much closer to having my neck broken than ever before--about 20 times! No actual damage though. Go figure.) Not so easy to do if you're not Tim. Al tends to dominate, staying ghostly and hitting everywhere, without necessarily hurting--at least that's what he did with me. Not so easy to do if you're not Al. Are you introducing the new person directly into contact flow or starting with the Guided Chaos Combatives (GCC)? Technically, newbies should begin with a lesson on self-defense and GCC. In practice, though, many want to jump right into contact flow, and/or that's what the class is doing so that's what the newbie gets, and hopefully the GCC will get filled in soon. As for me, if the newbie is willing (i.e. nothing to "prove" and really wants to learn), I'll start by explaining the principles within the context of "fixed-foot flow," i.e. you face each other in L-stances and don't move your feet, just shift your root and flow from there. Yielding by shifting back, penetrating by shifting forward, turning, sticking, feeling balance. Then it kinda goes free-form from there. With any newbie you have to be careful, even if they don't "mean" to they can suddenly spaz and whack you if they get spooked or something. So stick close, stay in control, and be prepared to disrupt his balance at any time. That's key to controlling the situation without hurting him: take his balance whenever you feel him trying to do something nefarious. I remember the first time I worked with one of the guys in San Fran, tough guy, into strength training and "hard" combatives and hardcore, high-contact training. He wanted to "test" out GC as he suspected there was something worthwhile there but was skeptical about all the yielding stuff. In his words, every time he tried to do anything, it was like a rug was being pulled out from under him. As he was so stiff and lacked balance, it was easy for me (even then--this was years ago) to disrupt his balance (without thinking about it) to keep things under control, of course while also whacking him lightly everywhere. Couldn't whack him hard--he was too stiff and would have gotten hurt (still felt hard to him--go figure). But he was really trying to test out what he could do and the balance "monkey wrench" kept me safe without having to thwack him. Here are his words: http://groups.google.com/group/guided-chaos-forum/browse_thread/thread/d5483cd850c5bf82/e7ac8e4308532590?hl=en&q= Remember not to "contact flow" with someone who doesn't yet understand what contact flow is. It's like the story John tells about Wayne, when he first met the big Wing Chun guy in class. John told them to work together, and Wayne approached all friendly with arms outstretched to begin some nice contact flow. The Wing Chun guy proceeded to blast in, punching at Wayne! Took Wayne a second to recover and switch mindset and bury the guy. So don't take that risk--start out with the right mindset, not expecting the guy to "know the program". It's not an actual fight and you of course don't want it to escalate to there, but it's not "just" contact flow either. --A.Kandel Q:  Does it matter that I can’t consciously remember many of the tips I received from you as I didn’t write some of them down? Does the information still sink into my subconscious despite not having the notes to continuously remind myself of them? A:  Doesn't matter. See the bit about the fire hose in this blog post: http://attackproof.blogspot.com/2007/01/my-lessons-with-masters-ari-kandels_29.html Good luck! [Editor’s note: Everyone’s brain works differently. I’ve found that when you get a lot of great tips in a lesson you retain less than 1/4 of them.  I used to write down everything I was told immediately so I could forget about them and focus on feel only as I flowed. Then afterwards I’d refer to my notes and go “oh yeahhh…” This way I defeated the “curve of forgetting” and developed faster. This is also how major parts of Attack Proof were written. –M.Kovsky] Q:  Is there a way to practice the basic exercises like washing the body or polishing the sphere and be more subtle in the movements? When I do the exercises I begin to resort back to those larger motions a lot. Any tips? Is it just a mind thing? A: For Polishing the Sphere, see the "Advanced Sensitivity Concepts" section of the 2nd Edition book. It's not that the motions get smaller, just that they emanate from your root and nowhere else. For Washing the Body, where the motions do get much smaller move as little as possible to neutralize the pressure you're trying to put on yourself. This may entail moving every cell in your body a little bit to accommodate, as opposed to moving one part of your body a lot. Clear? --A. Kandel Q: Yes that makes sense to me the only thing that gets me is sometimes when I’ll try to do the smaller motions within washing the body I begin to repeat the same movements and keep doing them over and over. Should I just try more random motions from different positions? A: You can wash every square inch of your body at virtually any angle. How could you possibly repeat anything? Get out of your head. You don't need to figure out how to move with anything. Think about lunch and allow your body to get creative. Q: I’ve been told to be more aggressive. Does that mean hitting more? A: Big question. . . . You gotta remember the goal. The only way to reliably stop someone from attacking you or yours is to render him/her incapable of doing so (unconscious, structually broken, dead). All of the GC training methods are intended to prepare you to stop attackers without getting stopped yourself. The way you started out moving with me last time (which you didn't always do in the past, which is why I was somewhat surprised) didn't have any of that intent. You seemed content to just try to feel and move, without doing anything to me. You seemed to be doing that with John as well right before. He let you get away with it for those few seconds while he felt out how you were moving in general. Even in slow, meditative contact flow, you need to express the principles for the purpose of disrupting the other guy, not just to move for movement's sake. Notice how even when working with John, I'm trying to hit and unbalance him? I'm doing my best to stay at the same speed and within the principles while doing so, but the intent is there. He doesn't let me get away with NOT having that intent for long. (He'll often give me a "what are you, stupid?" look if I'm not taking advantage of an obvious opening he leaves.) Lt. Col. Al punishes or scolds me severely if in his view I lose that intent for even a moment ("You should have hit me!!!"). I fall into this trap sometimes too, getting so caught up in the principles or how I'm moving that I forget the ruthless intention behind all of GC. Kevin actually corrected me regarding this recently. He pointed out that, instead of wiggling endlessly to try to get out of the way of his unavoidable strikes, I should be moving to make him deal with something (i.e. my own strikes), thereby stopping or forcing him to redirect his attacks. In wrestling, the overall goal is to pin the other guy without getting pinned yourself. The point system generally encourages competitors to do this (i.e. you get more points the closer you get to pinning him, e.g. for a takedown, reversal, etc.). If you're not trying to pin him, you can't really win (unless you get ahead on points and then play all D to run out the clock--but still, you got those initial points by making progress towards pinning him). Same with BJJ. You need to try to submit him, or at least gain points for moving towards that goal. In protecting yourself or others, you need to STOP the bad guys by whatever means necessary as quickly as possible. GC trains you to do this, so long as you keep that intention in mind. Lt. Col. Al always says, "Always move to hit!" Now, some people misinterpret this, and end up trying to force their arms in to get hits no matter what, forgetting about the principles etc. The point is, every element of your movement within the principles should be geared toward moving your body into optimum position to stop him (knock him out, break him, kill him), without getting stopped by him first. You can't do that by e.g. just moving your arms, just staying out of the way, etc. Make sense? --A.Kandel Q: Okay that makes a ton of sense to me. I have to find the balance between having that intention of the goal and not become overly anxious to find strikes where I become totally fixated. Your tips have caused me to have a new outlook on contact flow, thank you. You are right also about the fact I’ll work with you and I’ll get hit more or get stuck in the same positions over and over and I’ll say man I’m not getting "it". But I’m not going to do that anymore as you said that’s just you and others being tougher on me. You’re right on the money about the sensitivity aspect though because I feel different things now and I’m like “body, get out the way--I knew that was coming!!” Thank you though for the response because it puts my mind at ease finally with what you guys have been telling me about the aggression. In any case once again thank you for the time and effort as this really stuck with me and really hit home.

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DEFEND AGAINST A GUN? MORE IMPORTANTLY-- DO YOU KNOW WHEN--AND WHEN NOT TO? BARE HANDS TO HAND GUNS PART 4 OF THE GUIDED CHAOS WEAPONS SERIES DVDS You can be the best target shooter in the world but if you can't fight HAND-TO-HAND at CLOSE RANGE you will never even GET to your gun. Worse, you could be shot with your own weapon! And if you get the microsecond to draw, traditional Isosceles or Weaver stances could get you killed. MORE INFO    PART 1: KNIFE OFFENSE | PART 2: KNIFE DEFENSE PART 3: CANE VS. KNIFE | PART 4: BARE HANDS TO HAND GUNS

How Would You Like a 6 Hour Contact Flow Private Lesson? Well, here's the next best thing: The Attack Proof Companion Part 3: IN THE EYE OF THE STORM "Quite simply, this is the best self defence/martial art/ internal-external arts training experience I have ever had..." --Alistair Horscroft, former amateur MMA full contact fighter

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THE BEST DVD FOR LEARNING KEY GUIDED CHAOS DRILLS AND PRINCIPLES: THE ATTACK PROOF COMPANION PART 2 YOUR GUIDED CHAOS FOUNDATION Contains highly detailed demonstrations of all the drills that are most vital to your development in GC (including some that are NOT in our book). It also has detailed explanations and applications of the 4 unique principles of Guided Chaos: Balance, Body Unity, Looseness and Sensitivity, including many important sub-principles. The stepping sequences alone are invaluable. MORE INFO

SIMPLE AWARENESS TOOLS FOR SAFEGUARDING YOUR LIFE,   YOUR HOME AND YOUR FAMILY:

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ENDORSEMENTS:


"Let me start by saying I thought I'd seen all that the world of 'reality-based self defence' had to offer, so for the easily bored out there, I'll cut to the chase. What I witnessed on the weekend of 26 and 27 March is the closest thing I've come across that resembles a modern-day, reality-based martial art and not just another 'combatives system'. Does it work? Hell, yeah! I got my arse well and truly kicked and at times felt like I was in the middle of a Jason Bourne fight scene."
--Clive Girdham, former Senshido and Geoff Thompson instructor [excerpted from the exclusive review of the Guided Chaos Australia Seminar in the Aug. print edition of BLITZ MAGAZINE: Australia's #1 Martial Arts magazine volume 25, issue 6

"Guided Chaos is the only training in my 15 plus years of Corrections that translates into real world application, period."
---Bob Miller, Corrections Officer at the largest facility in Oregon

"Guided Chaos is the only thing that has worked for me in real life situations. Unless you are 6'3" and 285 lbs of muscle, most of the Defensive Tactics stuff (ok all of the Defensive Tactics stuff) will get you hurt. And even if you are that big and strong, there is always someone bigger and stronger and there may be a lot of them. Nothing like dealing with one guy and it turns into a free for all with all his buddies. This is where you literally need to 'adapt or die' and Guided Chaos is the only training in my 15 plus years of Corrections that translates into real world application, period.

"If I had to pick only one martial arts system in the world it would be Guided Chaos..."
--Dr. Robert L. O'Block founder and publisher of the American College of Forensic Examiners International, American Board for Certification in Homeland Security
 

"...through watching videos put out by attackproof.com, and by
reading Attackproof, the book, I have learned real survival skills.
These skills have been learned...at an exponentially higher practical
yield-per-hour training rate than any other martial art classes or
seminar I've ever attended, or ever even heard rumor of."
--Matthew Shoener, Police Officer, Scranton, PA 

"The Companion Video Part One is stupendous!
A godsend of detail for out-of-state practitioners."
--Mark from Chicago

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