QUESTION:
"I just wanted to say once again thanks
for the great training sessions these past few days. They were informative
beyond words. These days of training gave me a whole new appreciation for
Guided Chaos. What advice can you give me for progressing? What do you think I
need to focus on most?"
ANSWER: MOVE MORE EFFICIENTLY
For you the
most important thing is learning to move more efficiently. You have good athleticism, which at times
causes your movement to become frenetic causing you to move more than you need
to. You need to refine your movement and
learn to move “as little as you need”.
Which is easy to say yet hard to do because how little you need depends
on your relationship at the time when you are moving with another person.
Remember that when
you move too much for every inch of movement in excess of what is required you
are forced to try to recover that space when you miss. If you’re much faster than another person it
is not that much of an issue however if the fight becomes protracted, or if the
person you are dealing with is equally as fast, agile, very coordinated or
if there are multiple attackers you’re going to be in a world of trouble. The reason is there is a “timing” to striking
people that cannot be ignored.
TIMING
Think of it like
this, hitting people in a real fight is much like hitting baseballs in that
again there is a certain timing to it.
If you swing at the ball too soon you miss, if you swing too late you
miss. The timing must be precise and in
order to get a good piece of the ball you also must be able to strike and
penetrate the ball with the center of the sweet spot of the bat through the
center of the ball striking it relatively flush to the balls surface. When fighting for your life there is no
substitute for victory. You must be “on", period.
Below are a couple of drills that you can do. Most are in our
book and the Attackproof Companion Part 2 and Combat Conditioning videos ( DVDs or On Demand Downloads) so I won’t go into detail here. Some are not specifically mentioned but are
none the less good exercises. Of course the following must be done, Ninja Walk, Vacuum
Walk and Long Stepping.
Also include:
- Puppeteering
exercise
- RHEM exercise
(see Attack Proof for explanation)
Now add the
following:
- Extremely slow
rolling the ball – Roll the ball slow smooth and even keeping the hips as level
as possible, turning the shoulders smoothly and evenly with the feet firmly
planted to the ground. Ensure that you
literally feel your weight shift from one root to the next.
- Extremely slow contact flow with a
partner (Attackproof Companion Part 3, DVD or On Demand Download)- This is the one where you move (figuratively speaking) as slow as the
hands on a clock with the idea of learning to move as unitized in your motion
as possible. No matter what, do not, do
not, do not speed up even if your partner speeds up or you will lose the bubble
on this. This exercise will begin the
process of allowing you to feel all of another person’s movements so that even
in the slightest movement you can discern their intentions. There is a higher level to this that we
explain in Attack Proof, which I would re-read under “Sensitivity” and “How to
Practice Contact Flow” to get a better
understanding of this.
- Total Unitized Movement Drill – though
not specifically addressed in “Attack Proof” it is based off of the RHEM and
Puppeteering exercises in which, in everything you do throughout your day
(hopefully without looking kooky) you want to move with “your whole body”
behind everything that you do no matter how slight the movement. If you pick something up, walking through a
door, opening a door, picking up a cup of coffee or whatever, move with your whole
body in a smooth, unitized, efficient manner.
After about a week what you will begin to notice is all of the inefficient
movements that you make throughout the day (you’re going to be surprised how
much you can learn about your movements from this practice). Wherever in your movement you find
inefficiency you want to work to remove it as quickly as possible.
Remember this is just an exercise to help
develop your body to be able to move at a much higher level through greater
body unity. This does not mean you
ignore developing adaptability and greater creativity. This is just an exercise to correct the
superfluous motion that inhibits efficient movement or Economy of Movement.
DEVELOP GRACE
Final note on this,
as an advanced level to all of these exercises you’ll want to begin to move as
graceful in everything you do from brushing your teeth, to sitting down, to
pouring a cup of coffee or changing the channel with your remote being mindful
of your movements. Every movement counts
and nothing you do must be random you must be mindful of “everything”. Any “jerky” or “staccato” like movements must
be eliminated as much as possible. You
must in the beginning get that ridiculous in order to become aware of your
body’s movements.
The reason you must
become mindful of everything is so that you can focus on ridding yourself of
all of the little quirky things we all do that when moving “inadvertently”
gives away our intentions when flowing.
After a while, (about a week or two) this will become second nature and
just something you do out of habit.
GO EASY ON YOURSELF
Oh, sorry one more
point and this is very important…
When you find yourself doing something that you want to
correct do not get angry and "punish" yourself for it. Just say to yourself "that was
interesting, oh well", and go back to what you were doing. I’m not kidding, "literally" say
that to yourself. The more you make a
game of it the better, after a while the game becomes how quickly can I correct
myself when I do these things, then it advances to how quickly can I correct
myself and do something “completely different” but just as, if not more efficient,
from what I did before just for the fun of it...and on it goes. If you look at it in this fashion the faster
you will develop it.
By the way I still practice this to this day from
time-to-time and it is amazing that even after all these years I still find a
multitude of things that I can improve upon.
--LtCol Al | 
