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 GUIDED CHAOS TRAINING TIPS #87
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A Word of Clarification
on the Interdependence
of the Guided Chaos Principles

By LtCol Al

This is just a quick hit newsletter to provide some clarification of the principles as to how they interrelate in order to guide you in your training. This was prompted by the lively discussions we've been having lately on the Guided Chaos Web Forum.  This is where the real airing and clarification of ideas come from. The bottom line is if you don't ask the question you will never know. What I'll do here in very short and succinct manner is provide a little explanation for our readers so that they can further their knowledge and enhance their training. But before I get into this here is just a little of my own personal philosophy on training to help guide your training; hopefully some of these hints will help.

In Fig - 1 below you can see that I have created a pyramid based on the major principles of Guided Chaos. On the left I have identified the various aspects that make up each of the major principles. Obviously there are other "sub-principles" to each one of these but none of that matters if you don't have a basic knowledge as to how they interrelate on a macro level.

Balance is the foundation which all of the other principles rest on top of. Notice the disproportionate size of the "Balance" section as it relates to the rest of the principles. This is no mistake but done on purpose to reinforce the importance that balance plays with regard to developing real fighting skill. Without balance it is very difficult to remain loose or pliable no matter how gifted you may be and without looseness it is extremely difficult to respond through your sensitivity in relation to what you physically, visually or "mentally" perceive. Also without balance, even if you are loose without being connected to your root, you are not able to bring your power to bare where you need it. Balance is nothing more that being able to control your equilibrium under "dynamic conditions" and has a physical as well as mental aspect to it.


Looseness or Pliability is nothing more that using you muscles in an efficient manner. It is not just muscular relaxation (as some think) although that plays a role.  It is the "subtle muscle control" one requires when moving to strike from one point to another or while avoiding a strike while delivering one, all at the same time. It is the ability to be hard and soft all at the same time and everything in between. It is the ability to slip through the smallest space possible or elongate your body when you need to. It is the ability to be solid like a rock, liquid or vapor all at the same time by isolating various parts of your body through subtle muscle control.

Sensitivity is nothing more than what you "mentally perceive" based on your sense of touch [kinesthetic awareness] or what you see in context of the fight [sub-cortical vision]. As with balance and looseness there is a mental as well as physical aspect to this, which cannot be ignored. Sensitivity is what tells you where to be when you need to be there and drives the other principles in as much that it tells you where to be loose, hard soft, where to root, shift or step without thought. I will cover this in a little more detail when discussing body unity.

The culmination of these principles "working together" as shown in Fig - 2 is Body Unity / Proprioception. Trust me when I tell you that whole books could be written on Body Unity and the virtually limitless possibilities it holds. If you want to know what allows some practitioners of Guided Chaos to seemingly transcend the physical limitations of their bodies and continue to improve and thrash younger, stronger more agile guys [as in the case of Uncle Larry well into his 70's] it is the development of Body Unity through the principles. Forget fancy strikes and kicks; through the development of proper Body Unity you can basically do what you want to people and in some cases instantly master various techniques that normally takes people years to develop. [Note: while proprioception is more of a by product of your sensitivity, after some consideration I think that is too narrow a view so I've placed it along side Body Unity for ease of explanation. I think Ari really nailed it in his discussion as to the interrelationship between the principles in which proprioception touches on each of the principles to some degree which is why I state that sensitivity drives the other principles].


This is not hyperbole but fact and those who have been around the art long enough know exactly what I'm talking about because you've probably experienced it for yourself first hand. I personally have students who have mastered certain techniques in a fraction of the time it took me simply because their understanding of the principles and how to train to develop them was much greater at the time. The point is there's no magic to this, do the exercises and try to focus on applying the principles when training in contact flow and get good at them.

Now I will discuss Igor R's two equations below. By the way, great stuff, you're on the right track because it is in the arena of subtle muscle control where you are able to generate the necessary explosive power or what Grand Master Perkins sometimes refers to as "Cutting Power". Now while looseness greatly facilitates this, it is still a Body Unity issue because even in the subtlest of movements you need your whole body working together to make this work to the degree where you are able to strike with bone crushing force in the shortest possible span under dynamic conditions which is what a real fight is all about. The reason Looseness "seems" like the catalyst to all this is because, like Balance, it is the one which feels more tangible to your body. However at the end of the day it is the culmination of the principles working together or Body Unity that makes this all possible.

This is good...

Final thoughts on Tendon Strength Training
In the figure below [Fig - 3] you see the muscle-skeletal diagrams showing the tendons highlighted in the blue boxes. What is important to understand here is that the tendons connect the muscles to the bones and it is in this area where in a real fight many of the injuries occur. It is also in the tendons where you must work to develop the greatest amount of "muscular elasticity," not flexibility although that is important as well but muscular elasticity or what is known as "tendon strength" because it is the tendon strength that allows for your body to absorb the sudden shock under extreme or high speed contraction / relaxation known as the "stretch shorten cycle" or the "plyometric effect" generated from drop hitting.

This is not to detract from the importance of developing muscular strength in the muscles themselves, as a matter of fact as I often tell students, strength, speed and size are good if you have them and if you like to do heavy weight training or endurance training that's good too, however understand that in order to develop the kind of cutting power that we are talking about you are going to have to do the tendon strengthening exercises to achieve the type of deep penetrating and explosive power as developed through the Guided Chaos Strength and Conditioning regimen.  From the balance and looseness training to the dynamic contraction etc... it is all designed to develop the type of strength or what I call fighting strength that you need in a real fight and not the kind of strength that is only useful in a sportive contest.

Well that's my two cents hope this helps...

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(PLEASE NOTE: this is a one person, solo workout DVD. Drills that require partners, elaborate equipment or are too "esoteric" for a workout video have been excluded. Full explanations and applications of principles and exercises can be found in The Companion Series DVDs).

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