WATCH THIS VIDEO CAREFULLY: Repeated viewings of GM Perkins’ movement while flowing with students yields tremendous insights into how to react properly; words cannot fully convey this but you will begin to feel in your own body what is effective GC movement.
• Training Contact Flow with 1 arm against 2 teaches you to use your body more.
• You have to try harder to align yourself both for hitting and not to get hit because when you’re only using one arm to strike, you immediately become open if you don’t cover yourself by repositioning your whole body and using your elbow, shoulder, back, etc. as antennas and sticking/striking tools.
• However, when you absorb and move back you don’t go all the way back, like in some arts – you move backwards minimally and instead move offline and in, often in a “looping” or small circular motion.
• If you maintain this versatility when using both arms, it will feel to the opponent as if you have 3 or even 4 arms, because each arm is doing the job of 2.
• Now, when you watch John working with 1 arm against a student also using 1 arm, you can clearly see how he uses every surface of his arm, shoulder and back in more creative ways to detect, deflect and hit – and at creative angles.
• Notice the tremendous number of Pivot strikes John does, using his elbow as the pivot point with which to deliver chops and hammerfists, alternating with thrusting strikes, which become extremely hard to defend against unless you are highly skilled.
• If the opponent pushes or pulls on the striking arm, all it does is load John’s spring, making John’s strike even harder and more efficient.
• When you add a drop on a pulse of the opponent’s pull, it creates more energy than the opponent can possibly deal with and will break any hold, while also adding power when you spring off and strike.
• John shows how he traps both of the opponent’s arms until he finds the release point to strike.
• When applying all this to both arms, you could call it the “Sword and Shield” principle. One arm shields, the other strikes – except that in Guided Chaos, they interchange continuously, creating a tremendous amount of chaos for the opponent.
• Using the Sword and Shield vs. 2 opponents, you may be hitting both or either but are always in “contact“ (whether actually touching or not) but never hanging out in the same place and always playing off their energies.
• Of course, when you add kicking with the above you are really training the nervous system in multi-tasking.
• John then emphasizes how important it is to develop single leg balance while doing 1 arm Contact Flow (or any Contact Flow) so that you can move and drop on one or both legs as needed [see the Guided Chaos Combatives DVD/Matrix download for a full explanation of all 5 GC Drop Steps]. This allows you to change roots rapidly with power and both shed and deliver machine gun strikes.
• Part of developing single arm versatility is sensing when you can unbalance the opponent (when he stiffens) which in addition to all of the above, increases your single arm defensive ability while simultaneously creating openings.
• It is essential that you “contain the overtravel” on all strikes, making sure they all splash and can ricochet to new strikes so that your defense doesn’t become overextended and create openings against yourself when using 1 arm.
