• The GC Push is for combat and to set up devastating multi strikes. Training your nervous system to push for “effect” and distance is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention, the opportunities for huge distance pushes evaporate with true, non-cooperating training partners.

• Pushing the “enemy” far away allows them to recoup and counterattack, pull a gun, knife, etc. You need to destroy the enemy where they’re standing from the inside.

• In GC we train also not to get pushed, within a totally non-cooperative drill, with both moving at the same speed, which analogizes to real violence where everyone is moving at top adrenaline velocity -- which is comparatively the same speed for most humans. When you train to move at a slow speed and suddenly “explode” and push at top speed, you are completely denying the reality of true violence and setting your nervous system up for total disaster.

• GC pushes are used to disrupt the enemy’s strikes and balance and to immediately set up plyometric or ricocheting follow-up strikes with either the pushing or non-pushing hand. This double duty of the pushing hand for both disruption and striking is a hallmark of GC training. Note that you rarely push with both hands in GC because it ties up both weapons for striking which is the priority. Training yourself to push with 2 hands is also a recipe for total disaster.

• This disruptive push is usually extremely short range and runs from extremely subtle to extremely shattering (splashing). This is all made possible by GC’s Dropping energy which, as we’ve explained before, involves a micro-second plyometric rebound generated when you instantaneously drop, as opposed to a deep, sinking, and then long, upwards “unwinding” body movement found in most other internal arts. This type of pushing goes against gravity and is actually destabilizing because you become less rooted at this critical moment rather than more, as with GC Dropping.

• The only reason for an “up-lifting” push in GC is to throw them into an oncoming bus.

• All these problems with non-GC pushes become magnified if you’re fighting 2 attackers.

• By maintaining sensory (NOT forceful or grappling) contact with 2 attackers simultaneously, you can stabilize one or both without “sending” one away, allowing him to regroup, pull a weapon, etc.

• You can also use the rebounding energy from one attacker’s stiffening to strike his buddy.

• Note that you do NOT just stand between 2 attackers like in the movies. You ALWAYS move to a new root point prior to connecting/pushing and always move again immediately after. Remember 2 things: 1. In GC, you develop a “root that can’t be found” and 2. Always hit from where you’re going to be, NOT from where you are.

• At 7 minutes you can see the catch-as-catch-can sort of improvised locking GC can do, where you capture and “control” for a split second as a set up for striking, NOT for full locking or grappling.

• John shows how a short distance dropping palm heel not only has a better chance of getting in than a regular long punch (because it’s hard to see) but it can also do more damage.

• When you are already ON the person with a sensitive pushing/destabilizing hand, you can easily slide, skim, ricochet or rebound to a nearby target – unseen -- with a palm, chop or knife-hand, etc. to the throat where they’ll have no time to respond.

• The enemy will often involuntarily respond with inward energy in an attempt to “smother” the attack and actually pull the strike into the target. NOTE: if the inward energy is at a slightly different angle, the looseness and ISOLATION energy trained in GC will allow you to simply alter the entry line and “Accommodate the Target” (see the previous MATRIX Vid posted last month).

• If the enemy blocks a strike (and even if he doesn’t) the Multi-hitting/Ricochet attributes trained in GC simply hit alternate targets. This Multi-hitting/Ricocheting can also include Destructions of the enemy’s tools (hands, arms, etc.). On much larger/stronger attackers, this may not slow them down, but it gives you a ricocheting launchpad to their vital areas in a microsecond. Note that multi-hitting doesn’t just mean hand weapons to multiple targets; it can also be from elbow to fist, etc.

• The enemy’s mid to close range kicking is disrupted by all the above’s pushing/unbalancing. If they kick longer range, you intercept their kick (no matter what kind) with a kick to their center.

• Note again: In a multi-strike attack, John steps on each drop so he is always hitting from where he’s going to be, not from where he is, which again follows the principle of being Unavailable and Unavoidable.

• “Pushing” can take the form of subtle pressure (Pulsing) that triggers a stiffening that you can step around to attack less-defended targets.

• At 14:38, John gives a demonstration of “Corkscrew” energy wherein his super-developed sensitivity actually lets him change a strike’s trajectory in MID-FLIGHT and attack a different target. As far as we know, this is found in no other system. If not for GC Dropping, this “Corkscrewing” would have no power and be impractical in any other art.

• GC-developed Dropping, Looseness, Sensitivity and Balance allows you to SIMULTANEOUSLY step, root, strike and ISOLATE and loosen a target area on your own body that the enemy has hit, so that you are both soft and powerful at the same time. You feel like mush to the enemy’s strike, but he feels iron at the point of your strike.

• At a more advanced level, the better and more sneakily you can TIME your drop, allows you to defeat the drop of less-advanced GC practitioners.

• Leaning into and putting your weight on the enemy is not the same as balanced and sensitive GC pushing and is a recipe for disaster.

• You can’t do any of the above without training GC Dynamic Balance (balance on the move).