Lessons from My Masters 36: Observations - The Grandmaster Chronicles - Part VIII

“In battle, if you make your opponent flinch, you have already won.” 

• Miyamoto Musashi

Okay, in my last installment I promised to clarify for those who asked me about “Stopping Time” and “Disappearing” how to practice on folks only because Omari George, 3^rd Degree Guided Chaos and owner of Atlanta Combatives, called me out on it.  I’m also going to discuss a level of adumbration within awareness when doing Contact or Combat Flow. Like I said before this is some way cool stuff however I also know that when it comes to this sort of thing some folks in training are just plain old stuck.

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”

― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

As I alluded too in the last Blog Post the reason folks get stuck in their development is that they don’t believe these things exist so they don’t believe it’s possible. You know, I have to tell you it kills me how people can think this way because people do this in sports all of the time, boxers faint strikes to cause a reaction in an opponent, running backs in football cut back on defenders, soccer players do ball tricks with the ball running full speed and fake people out all of the time. Basketball players do so many subtle fakes on each other that unless you know what you’re looking at you miss it entirely. I’m not saying it doesn’t’ take skill to do but to say it’s not possible? This is just stupid to say. But it explains why when the Grandmaster is demonstrating why people miss it and do not understand many of the things he’s doing and why he’s able to get past people often with greater size, reach and speed. They cannot see it with their minds so they cannot see it with their eyes. Like Musashi said, “In battle, if you make your opponent flinch, you have already won.” In the battle between life and death, I’m so all about making people “flinch”.

Think if of it like this, if what we say is true that Guided Chaos is based on the laws of physics and human physiology; if we say that the reason we go slow at first is to develop our muscles and the timing in our movement; if we say that all things being equal when moving if you can do it slow then as you practice to do it faster, you can do it fast providing that you develop the skill to do it (because that’s what we say). Then what I’m saying here has to be true or, none of it is true. We can’t have it both ways...

It reminds me of a famous martial arts instructor once saying that you cannot deliver two strikes simultaneously with power in two opposite directions. I guess he’s never seen a football game where an offensive lineman blocks and pushes two defenders at the same time on two different angles. The funny thing is bouncers in bars do this sort of thing all of the time breaking up fights. This is my point this stuff happens all of the time in other venues especially in sports yet when it comes to the martial arts we act as if people can’t do these things.

Nonsense!

Anyway, as I was telling a group of students recently when teaching how to “Stop Time” or “Disappear” on people. If the Masters in the art can do it then it can be done and if it is important enough for the Masters to do it. Then it is important enough once a student reaches a certain level of skill for us to teach it to them. My reasoning is in a fight for their lives why wouldn't we want them to know these things? Why would I want to deny one of my students the one thing that could mean the difference between life and death for them or their loved ones? My point is it's not for me to decide what they should know per se but focus on giving them what they need and want. It's the only thing that matters. 

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

As I've said, if you can’t see it with your mind you cannot see it with your eyes, they’re in their own way and that of their students. But the truth is if you train to develop your body to do these things when you go faster it's actually easier to do since it gives the person reacting to it less time to react and counter your movement once they get caught looking through the kaleidoscope.

Now, in truth these things I call “Stopping Time, Slowing Time, Disappearing, etc. these are just names I gave these things to describe what Grandmaster Perkins calls “faking people out”. The reason for naming these things is because while they are pretty much the same thing within the same continuum they are also slightly different things meaning while they all work off of the same principles and concepts. Like modulating the frequency on a radio you can slightly “change the tuning” if you will, on the dial where the “difference in feel” and how it causes a reaction in the other person’s body is like night and day.

Now in a previous Blog Post, I talked about Stopping Time and Disappearing, etc. where I discussed that what actually allows you to do it is by developing your body to gain greater control to prevent what we call “over travel”. Okay, here we go.

Just Bending Spoons

“Be extremely subtle even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

For those who train in our regular classes, they've heard me describe these skills along with some other stuff the John does as, "Bending Spoons" as a play off of the metaphor in The Matrix. But as Spoon Boy, as he's known says,

"Do not try and bend the spoon, that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth...there is no spoon. Then you will see it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself."

When I Stop Time, Slow Time, Disappear, Ghost, Isolate, Pulse, Tool Replace, Get Out of Phase or whatever, I am not actually stopping time, slowing it or disappearing for that is impossible, I am merely in the blink of an eye, "bending you"!

When done with Ruthless Intent it is delivered at seemingly "supernatural speed." Oh yeah... it happens that fast. Make "no mistake" about it. 

Stopping Time – is a way of moving where for a brief moment all movement in your body “stops” for like a microsecond, to change the tempo either to get them to overcommit or in anticipation of them over committing so you can affect their body as they try to adjust. In order do this you need to be able to develop the level of Body Unity where for a microsecond you "decelerate" your body movement and come to a “complete stop”, then have the ability to start again. Usually, this is done within the movement so for example if your moving with someone and let’s say they’re moving to your right. As you feel them move you want you “synch” with their movement matching both in speed and tempo so that everything from their perspective feels the same.

Now, once you feel that you are in a position to strike you literally want to “stop all movement” in your body from your hands all the way down to your feet. Once again, everything needs to come to a complete stop. This stopping of all motion has the effect of causing them to “over travel” in their movement. From there they are in a position for you to strike the key here is in understanding that until they stop moving in the direction of their over travel they are not doing anything else because they can’t change direction fast enough.

Slowing Time – is a way of moving where for brief moments, like a microsecond, you actually “slow down” your movement to change the tempo either to get them to overcommit or to direct them to where you want them to go. Like Stopping Time, in order do this you need to be able to develop the level of Body Unity where for a microsecond you "decelerate" your body movement only this time instead of stopping you “slow” your body movement down, allowing them to over commit or direct their motion/redirect their motion, then have the ability to start again. 

Disappearing – is a way of moving where you can literally “lift” your hands, arms or even move your body away from them where for a microsecond, they actually get stuck where they are because they are still holding the shape of your last “impression”. Like Stopping and Slowing Time, in order do this you need to be able to develop the level of Body Unity where for a microsecond you "decelerate" or "change" your body movement by isolating on a micro level only this time you let them go after you have made your adjustment and strike from an entirely different place in relation to their body. Usually, this is done within the movement so for example if your moving with someone once again as you feel them move you want you “synch” with their movement matching both in speed and tempo so that everything from their perspective feels the same.

Now, once you feel that you are in a position to strike, you “first” have to change your body position then you literally want to lift your hand, arm, or body off, away from where it is and change direction and strike. This subtle lifting off or taking away has the effect of appearing as if you "disappeared" since by the time they are able to react to what you did they are not able to react fast enough. One of the things you want to avoid when lifting off/taking away is unnecessarily moving your hands or arm in any direction since this gives away your movement. From there they are in a position for you to strike the key here is in understanding that until they stop moving in the direction of their over travel they are not doing anything else because they can’t change direction fast enough.

This is a much more complex set of skills than the way I'm describing them and I'll be honest most folks will never get there for various reasons, but not necessarily due to a lack of physical development but a lack of understanding these things in context and imagination. 

Again, these are not formal things these are just names I just gave them to describe things that I’ve felt not only John showed me under The Wisdom Tree when I would ask him what he did, etc. In order to do these things above all, you must also develop the “patience” in order to successfully pull them off. This is hard to do because it requires you not only develop the right timing and competence to do it but have the confidence in your abilities to sort of stand in that space because when practicing this you’re going to get hit, that’s just the way it is.

Remember, that when you move with another person there is an unconscious communication that goes back and forth between you and the other person even if they are your enemy. This interplay of relationships cannot be ignored. This is the reason why those who try to create or maintain too much separation between people out of fear of closing with the bad guys only prolong the fight.

Adumbration Within Awareness

“When I move I extend my sensitivity out as far as I can see not just to what’s in front of me…”

• Grandmaster John C. Perkins

I already discussed how to “Strike and Changing Within Movement” to some degree in “Lessons from My Masters 32” so I won’t rehash it all here I’ll just cover this from the perspective of how you can do the same thing through your “Awareness”.  “Adumbration Within Awareness” is the same skill as you use when gaining a Shadow Impression over another person’s movement the difference is you now want to extend this concept further out using your ability to judge spatial relationships. The main thing here is when you move with people you want to focus on developing the ability to begin moving and not staying still even if the movement is only a slight movement or what we call “pre-movement” which is the thing you do before you do the thing that you’re going to do.

Yeah, that.

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The battle starts in the mind with your perceptions of what you think it is and how you perceive the fight. You need to win first through training both in the mind and body if your sword is to prevail in battle. 

Because context is important if you already know you may get into a situation the question you have to ask yourself beforehand in your training is,

Why would you wait for someone to do something to you?

Why would you wait for them to do anything for that matter?

You’re under no obligation to wait for someone to do something which is something that you see in many self-defense programs. Where they tell you to do something “after the fact”. You're already in it so why wait?

Why would you let it happen in the first place?

More importantly, what are you going to do about it?

In the same fashion that you can perceive motion when you move with another person in direct contact with them. You want to extend this level of sensitivity outward using your ability to judge spatial relationships tracking them visually or feeling them within "proximity" of our bodies and move in a similar fashion as if you were already in physical contact. Now believe it or not we already do this for the most part whether we’re driving or walking down a street or passing a person as we walk. We’re always playing off of these relationships. Yet as I've said before when it comes to fighting we act like people can't do this yet they do it all the time 

You can practice this when doing the Contact Flow exercises where, as you approach your training partner focus on stepping offline getting “Out of Phase” with their movement before you make contact focusing on moving in to strike immediately. This will begin the process of you getting into the habit of always moving offline as you enter.

This is a way cool skill.

At a more advanced level, you will want to begin the process of changing the attitude of your body when moving in with people where you literally “change” not only the position of your body but begin to angle and do a thing that John does called “pre-pocketing”. Where he “creates space” with his body on the way in as he enters at the same time while "creating the space" for you to enter into to neutralize your attack. This creates this “dimensional” effect I've discussed where it feels like he is in one place when in fact where you are striking is not where he is but where he was. This is an insane skill to develop because is literally sucks people into their death so to speak.

In a less formal fashion, one way you can practice this in your everyday life is to use this skill where, when you are out and about learning to make little subtle changes in your movement as you move around people. Focusing on “feeling” all of their movements, their hand gestures, their turns, learning to develop this adumbration, this “foreshadowing” of their movement and learn to predict where they are going to step, or turn or whatever. In other words, in the same fashion that you drive your car, learn to anticipate the actions of the other person like you would anticipate the actions of other drivers on the road.  

It’s All About Choice

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

• Marcus Aurelius

Folks along with a thousand other things in Guided Chaos, the ability to change without thought, to make decisions within movement without having to think about it, to make changes in the body in a micro-second without thought is the thing that people seek in the martial arts. The whole premises behind the Contact Flow exercise is to provide a training modality that "fuses" a variety of skills together in a “seamless” manner where you can flow from one aspect within the fight to another all within one continuous movement. This smooth transition of movement at some point takes on an “eerie quality” whereas to the other person you are everywhere and nowhere. But you can only develop this ability within the flow “if” you let it.

Quantum Leap

“All points in time and space are connected.”

• Russell Targ, Ph.D., Professor of Laser Physics, Stanford Research Institute – International

I'm going to wax philosophically here and people can do with it what they will. Now, Dr. Russell Targ is an interesting character, to say the least, I never heard of him until I attended a National Security Course at National Defense University in Washington, DC. Interesting course and very "eye-opening". Some consider him brilliant, he holds multiple patents in laser physics and has done much to develop systems for the Department of Defense.  Others, on the other hand, consider some of the things he was involved with as "pseudoscience". If you ever saw the movie, "The Men Who Stare at Goats" about the development of the US Army's "First Earth Battalion" what many don't know is that the movie was based on actual events of something we tried to do during the Cold War. Well, Dr. Targ and his team were involved with some of the aspects of the program but without giving away what he was involved with because I love holding people in suspense if you want a glimpse, rent the movie "Suspect Zero" with Ben Kingsley.

Now, whether you think he's a crackpot or whatever, let me just say when I worked at the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab in Quantico, VA. Suffice to say I had more than my fair share of encounters with "interesting characters" who were brilliant in ways that made no sense working on "interesting things".  I'm not going to get into the context of the comment I quoted above but the discussion during the course I took brought his name into the conversation and I can tell you. The matter of fact tone people discussed his ideas along with a number of other topics was mindblowing. My point is, trust me when I say that there is more we don't know than we know and when we close our minds to what is possible we kid ourselves.

The point of all this cloak and dagger talk is if you do not expect the unexpected you never find it. If you close your mind off to what may be possible you never see it. This is not to say you throw all caution to the wind for it does you no good to empty your cup if you can't tell the difference between tea and horse piss. But if you never even try to understand? Shame on you. 

In all of the skills that I describe that my Master’s taught me, I think that the thing that is the hardest for people to grasp and I alluded to this earlier in the Blog Post is the notion that you can do these things for real. At high speed at the speed of "unconscious competence" the speed of thought that is outside of our conscious awareness. The ability to know without knowing. That when the chips are down and you have to go to that place when you have to stand in that space and “hold the bridge”. That you are capable of pulling these things off for real. Which to me is the whole point of training otherwise why bother?

The secret though is if you have developed it in the body in the right context then you can do it. But you also have to have the confidence in your abilities and your training to do so because if you don’t believe that you can do it then you can’t. Too many folks don’t believe these things are even possible including some folks in Guided Chaos at various levels so they either can’t or they don’t because they don’t believe they are possible. Shame because the knowledge and the methodology is there, like the song, “Epic” by Faith No More says,

“You want it all but you can't have it…

It's in your face but you can't grab it…”

In all things, for the most part, there is always a “choice”, and why you do, what you do, when you do it, the way you do it, is all about this. Even when you do nothing you still have made a choice but when it comes to training for fighting. The choice you make in how your body moves or handles a situation doesn’t take place in that moment but was developed and made in the training hall in many cases "years" before you ever found yourself in that situation. In other words, you have to build it in the body beforehand because the time to figure it out is not in the heat of battle. Each battle brings its own challenges and lessons but the ones you don’t want to learn in the fight are those that you could have taken care of earlier.

When you watch how the Grandmaster does things I think something that is missing in the way most people view his movement is they get caught up following the shiny object and they miss I believe one of the most important aspects of fighting. The ability to make the right choice at the right moment, in time and space in a fight. But in order to develop your skill to get the level of adumbration to be able to make choices faster in the body can only come with proper training within the context of what you are doing and an open mind within the principles of the art as to what is possible. However, if you are the “Doubting Thomas” type where you believe nothing except what you can only see with your eyes and not with your mind. Or if you think you know it all, that you think you know all there is to how a thing can be done versus what is possible in the millions of ways in which we as humans can move. I can tell you from what I’ve seen after nearly 30 years in this art you will never get there.

My Masters have done these things that I give names to such as Stopping Time, Getting out of Phase, etc. for as long as I’ve known them and even before I had even the slightest understanding of these things they were doing them. They have shown me over the years that there are things that we are capable of within the natural range of motion within our bodies but we have to develop the capacity to access these things and that can only happen as I’ve described above. Like I alluded to, “it’s in their face but they can’t grab it”.

Behold A Mystery

“I always leave myself an out.”

• Grandmaster John c. Perkins

I remember John saying this to me under The Wisdom Tree on several occasions but it took me quite some time to figure out what he was talking about. It’s not that he didn’t tell me it’s just that I hadn’t developed the sufficient level of skill at the time to see it in my mind. I can remember John was doing a demonstration with me very recently where he was showing how he moves to prevent himself from getting trapped or pinned down as he’s referred to it at times.

“When I’m moving with people no matter what, I always leave myself about five percent leeway in the body. So when I move I never allow my joints to go to the max range of motion. I never let myself get trapped where I can’t move… if I can. I’m always changing even if it’s only in the slightest always unavailable no matter what. Unavailable / Unavoidable in that order always. So watch what I’m going to do here...”

• Grandmaster John C. Perkins

So while demonstrating with me he deliberately places himself in an awkward position and said,

“Now see here as I’m working with the Col. and I allow myself to get to the point where I can’t move where all of the slack is taken out of my body it’s too easy for him to push me over or whatever. So instead as I move within the movement I’m always adjusting where I don’t let myself get to that position in the first place. Too many people wait until they’re in a bad position before they start to move that’s why when they’re doing Contact Flow they find they have to speed up. They’re not moving when they feel stuff. It’s simple when they move I move when I feel them change I change, I’m not waiting.”

Folks, this is gold!

Inner Space

“One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.”

• Leonardo da Vinci

Right there he revealed something that martial artist have been chasing for a very long time. The ability to anticipate movement and get ahead of movement within the flow of battle. To change and make the right choices without thought. But he’s not moving for the sake of movement but moving within the context of what is happening with a purpose. There is no flailing around nor is there anything random about what he is describing here. What John is describing here is a byproduct of training within the principles of the art to develop that “mastery of oneself” to change within change within change at the speed of light, better known as “Creativity”. That, amorphous, elusive quality where things seem to come out of the ether, out of the void of subconscious thought. Where mere thought becomes action where “it” just happens and all under Heaven falls to your will. Where you feel in the body you can do no wrong.

It just “is”.

This understanding of movement where you leave yourself room to create space when you need it is the level of adumbration that you seek. Final point on this, you can only begin to experience this by developing yourself within the principles of the art and through proper Contact Flow but there is something else. You have to not just feel this externally based on where they are in relation to your body but “internally” within your own body, within your muscles, your joints, how you feel yourself move, shift your weight, step or whatever. You must learn both internally as well as externally to feel “everything”. This is the thing that he was impressing on me.

Well, that’s it for this installment hope this clears up some of the questions folks had for me.

Thanks.

LtCol Al Ridenhour

Senior Master Instructor

GUIDED CHAOS

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