Focusing on Keeping the Main Thing the “Main Thing” Part II

 “Also by training you will be able to freely control your own body, conquer men with your body, and with sufficient training you will be able to beat ten men with your spirit. When you have reached this point, will it not mean that you are invincible?”

• Miyamoto Musashi, “The Book of Five Rings”

In the last Blog Post, I pulled the curtain back a little so to speak to help you start to train yourself on how to “polish” and “refine” all of your movement through “smooth movement” including when practicing the exercises. I also told you that this will begin the process of you developing those micro-muscles so to speak to also control fine motor coordination throughout your “entire body”.

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

• Leonardo da Vinci

Again, the old Chinese Warrior Monks always talked about mastering your mind by mastering control over your body and like I said. Maybe they didn’t have the fancy terms we use to describe these things now but trust me they knew what the hell they were talking about.

The main thing is developing “Mastery” and “100% percent control” or as close to it, over your body and the ability to be able to "move deliberately" without thought (subconscious competence). Remember as I said before that this shit is not random (a subject I’ll cover later as it relates to this). You see whether you move correctly or incorrectly or not at all there was a reason for it but no matter what it was far from random. It only seems random from your “perspective” if you do not understand it.

To rehash, what I mean is the ability to control your body where you are only moving as natural as possible doing only those movements at that time in your body necessary to complete the task at hand (i.e., focusing on what “the thing is). Eventually, your body will begin to learn how to deal with “the thing” at hand as well as begin to move to where it knows it needs to be in the future without thought.

Master Your Body Master Your Mind

“The purpose of today's training is to defeat yesterday's understanding.”

• Miyamoto Musashi

I can remember it like it was yesterday… sitting there watching my Mom paint. Watching her create colors where it seemed like some sort of sorcery in the way she could take a dab of this a little of that and “poof” make brown, green, or some weird shade of red. Even more impressive was watching how she could seemly hold her hand with the brush on the canvas where it looked as if her hand never moved yet like watching the hands on a clock see her create a shape with just the right amount of paint with just enough contact with the brush to achieve the desired effect. Sometimes she could paint a very thin line and then with the same brush flatten out the brush and make a wider shape then create an illusion as if the paint faded away on the canvas.

I would ask her, “How’d you do that?”

She would just laugh but eventually, she would show me. However, once shown while still cool as Hell some of the magic would disappear but it would serve as a template for future endeavors and understandings. You see within those movements, within those strokes no matter how slight there was stuff going on not just in my hand but in my body. Much later in life in my martial training, I would come to understand it better and that is this other “Thing” I want to discuss or better yet, the Thing that makes the “Thing” work. You see within every stroke of my mother’s brush she already knew where the brush had to be before it got there. She already knew where to position her hand, her arm, her body, to position the brush to do the thing she wanted to do.

Whether talking about developing your body even down to the micro-movement level what I’m really talking about is a part of our movement that we can cover under the broad term of “Adumbration”. While I’ve defined is in this context or fighting as a foreshadowing of something or foreshadowing of a form a shape an impression. It is also the thing we do as we are doing the thing we want to do that makes the thing work. Like I’ve said in other Blog Posts, I can teach you all there is about throwing a football with perfect form and there are plenty of books out there to help fill in the blanks for you. But if you want to through a football well you need to throw a lot of footballs. As a definition and for our understanding here I describe it as it relates to combat as follows:

Adumbration - this movement where we get this “foreshadowing” of a person’s movement, this “listening” to their bodies, feeling their impressions, their intent, their direction and speed, their adjustments relative to your movements or position in time and space. The ability to feel how they react to our movement in real-time where you change your movement to alter their perception of what they think it is you are doing long enough for you take advantage of their confusion. It’s all about using the Shadow Impression to get ahead of movement and deliver strikes at supernatural speed. Like Modeling, it is a calculus and the very means in which we get ahead of another person’s movement to the future. Adumbration also has an internal feel to it within your joints, muscles, the center of gravity, sense of equilibrium, etc. where it governs how you just “know” to move within your body just enough with the right amount of movement at the right time where it just feels “right”

[As an aside when I use the term Modeling I’m discussing a process a very real thing of how we actually deduce things and learn how to “…play where the puck is going to be”. This is not “mimicking” as some have incorrectly assumed because mimicking is just that but it doesn’t explain the most important questions you should be asking… Why? Modeling is the way in which we draw logical inferences based on what we know and or don’t know, and connect the dots. This is a different level of skill because it is an entirely different mindset altogether.]

You Fly with Two Fingers 

This is the reason you want to start off slow you train the muscles, the body, the timing until you can do it without much conscious thought of how to move in the body.

From there as you refine and polish your movements you will become more proficient, competent and confident, but you must start slow and only after developing a thing to some level can you add speed. This is something you want to do as early in your training as possible since speed changes the way we move on a "profound level". Let me just say when I discuss micro-movement there is a part of this or what is called “ideomotor movement”. This is the type of highly refined moment we engage in that is outside of our conscious awareness that I believe is taking place all of the time. However, because we can’t really feel ourselves doing it or at least perceptually feel ourselves doing it. It takes on an intangible quality where it can make some of the things we do at the fine motor coordination level seem like magic sort of like when I used to watch my Mom paint where it seemed like the brush didn’t move.

I was recently talking with a friend of mine who is a living legend in the Marine Corps, Ben Casio. Ben has seen more and done more shit than most men see and do in three lifetimes. Sort of like Col Durant USMC ret, (I won’t give his full name) from Vietnam through Iraq and Afghanistan Col Durant was wounded in combat “eight times”. I shit you not! I once told him when I ran into him in Afghanistan after he retired while he was doing “something” for someone as a contractor (I was smart enough not to ask). Anyway, when I told him he already used up eight and that he had only one life left. He laughed and then mumbled something about taking people with him to Valhalla.

Let’s just say I was smart enough to leave that one alone…

Well, Ben is a guy in that mold and saved a lot of lives and got shot up quite a few times and even once flew a rescue mission where upon being wounded flew with basically one of his eyes practically “blown out”.

Yeah… Ben is a real fucking badass…

Anyway, one thing Ben recently told me was that when he used to teach pilots how to fly at flight school he used to always tell them the story about how he learned to drive and how it relates to flying a helicopter.

“When I was a kid I grew up on a farm. So one day my dad wanted me to bring the car up. Even though I didn’t know how to drive my dad said you know you’ve just got to master the machine. So I started up the car and I was struggling he then walked over and said. ‘The problem is you’re letting the machine control you, you need to master the machine’. After that through trial and era somehow I figured it out driving just became easy. Now, obviously I had an idea how to drive a car from driving other machines but most important of all I never forgot what my dad taught me. So when it came the time the learn how to fly a helicopter I approached it the same way. So now I’m telling you, young men, the same thing my dad taught me, you need to master the machine and not let it master you. When I fly believe it or not I fly with two fingers, it’s just a light touch. It almost feels like wherever my mind wants to take it the helicopter just goes. When you master the machine you can do this. Master the machine.”

Now, not being a helicopter pilot and having been the victim of their shenanigans such as “auto-rotating” which is basically a controlled crash. Yeah… they do shit like that to people. A good example of this that I always use when I want to train someone how to move as polished and as smooth in all they do is the phenomena we all experience when driving our cars on a long turn on the highway where it almost feels as if the car is turning by itself. Now obviously it’s not magic, because you have to be turning the wheel but because it is happening at the ideomotor level it feels like the car turns not by touch but more like a focus of your will as if your mind directs it where to go.

This is the level of movement you want to be able to develop throughout your body to develop a level of subconscious competence and control where you do what you need to do when you do it with such a level of control that everything you do seems effortless as if “it” just happens. Where you built it up in the body beforehand to a level where your body already knew the answer before you even moved. Where through adumbration you already knew where and how to adjust on the fly to get ahead of movement.

You Can’t Win On the Defense

“True warriors are fierce because their training is fierce.”

• Miyamoto Musashi

Okay, because it needs to be said and because this is the sort of thing I get hit up with questions about all of the time. Understand that what I’m going to explain is where your mind needs to be when practicing these steps I highlighted in the last Blog Post if you want to develop this.

I remember a sports commentator once asking the legendary college football coach Bobby Bowden, why doesn’t Florida State ever go into a prevent defense? He replied,

“Because when you play prevent defense you prevent your team from winning!”

Folks, I gotta tell you and I know I’m going to sound hypocritical for saying this because I use term self-defense as much as the next guy but Coach Bowden was right. You can’t win on the defense. It just doesn’t work. When I played football in college as a Linebacker we had one rule on defense “3 and out” meaning hold the offense to 3 downs and make them punt. Why? To give your Offense the ball so you have a chance at winning the game. If you always play on the defense unless you score on a turnover or get a safety the best you can do is tie the game and  as one of my old coaches would say,

“Playing the game for a tie is like French kissing your sister.”

Umm… okay now… I don’t know how he knew that but we just took his word for it.

The point is, you can’t win the game unless you’re able to put some points on the board it’s really that simple. Your objective on defense was to 1) keep them from scoring if possible; 2) get the damn ball back either by forcing them out on downs or; 3) creating turns overs. Above all do everything in your power to get the ball back and get the Hell off the field. The longer a defense stays on the field the weaker it gets.

This, believe it or not, this is why the most athletic guys on average, especially with the linemen, play defense at the college and pro level. Why? Because in order to react to the other team’s offense you need greater athleticism.  

The same is true for baseball you can’t win unless you’re up at bat, in basketball you can’t win unless you have more chances to shoot and shoot clean shots but you’ve got to have the ball. Fighting in many respects is no different even in boxing a good counter puncher doesn’t really counterpunch, he sets you up to get hit, that was his plan the whole time. By the time you think he’s throwing the counterpunch it’s too late because he was already throwing it.

Ah… and therein lies the rub...

The Element of Surprise 

"Attacks should be delivered at supernatural speed..."

• Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I saw this on Facebook some time ago and I just had to find a way to work it into a blog post.  Anyhow, folks, the whole point of training is to give yourself the best possible chance to win the fight, to tip the scales drastically in your favor, and he who hits first generally wins. That’s why people sucker punch people. Why? To win the damn fight. So the question you have to ask is if you know you’re about to get into it, why in the Hell would you wait?

The reason I say this is because you really don’t want to train yourself to “adapt” to what the other guy is doing. Adapting to someone else means you’re trying to win on the defense. There is no doubt that you have to possess this skill but it shouldn’t be your primary focus but a byproduct of your ability to anticipate and get ahead of their movement in the first place. Because listen and here’s the question, if you already know these things then what the Hell are you waiting for? You see and I’ll cover this in more depth in a separate blog post. This whole idea that a fight is random is just not true. It is only random, happenstance, coincidence to the guy who got ambushed.

“Purity is something that cannot be attained except by piling effort upon effort.”

         ― Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

This is the whole point of mastering your body so that in all things you are able to do what you need to do without thought before the situation if possible reaches the point of no return for you.

I’ll just reiterate a few things of the last post, Here we go…

 “A bullet from a gun does not make a distinction between practice and combat. You are training to be one and the same way in your life.”

• Miyamoto Musashi

1) Practice moving "slowly" and as "smooth" and as "deliberate" in your movements as possible -  In all that you do, and not just when you are practicing some martial technique or exercise. Remember to your body a punch is just a punch, a kick is a kick, it’s just movement and as far as your body is concerned throwing a punch is not any different than throwing a baseball, it’s just something you command it to do. The movement only has meaning based on the intent or context that you apply to it.

2) "Zen Out" with the Movement – again develop "purposeful habits". This idea of developing purposeful habits is what this slow smooth movement and deliberate movement develops. After that, as you practice with your weapons or whatever, the better your body moves the easier it is to control the weapon the more it becomes a part of your or a mere extension of who you are. I also want to point out if you want to learn how to do something to include how to counter a movement then you need to train to do it here’s the deal. If you understand how a thing can happen within time and space and you understand the dynamics of a thing, then you can learn how to neutralize its effects to some degree. I won’t get into it here because it requires a lot more electrons to explain that what I’m trying to reinforce here but let’s just say the idea that there are certain things that cannot be trained to because they happen to fast is bullshit and all a matter of perspective.

3) Moving Masterfully will enable you to move “faster” - as you gain greater control over your body the efficiency in your movement will remove all of the unnecessary movement and antagonistic muscular movements in your body and you will be able to move “more naturally” and at supernatural speeds. The key is in order to move at as I like to call it “supernatural speed” you have to train the muscles first thus the smooth movement practice. Then gradually practice doing the same things faster and faster and faster etc., while trying to remain as smooth as possible focusing on being as accurate in your movement as possible controlling the tendency to over-travel in your movement.

Eventually, this type of movement will begin to take over all of your movement where as long as you move within the natural range of motion in your body the various ways in which you can move within your body become virtually limitless.

Warrior Flow is all about this about moving in ways that give you the combative advantage to crush the enemy or neutralize them before it becomes a problem “for you”.

“The way is in training…”

• Miyamoto Musashi

Like I’ve said, Warrior Flow is a different vibe all together…

Well, that’s it for now...

Thank you.

     Al Ridenhour

     CEO, Creator Warrior Flow™

Al Ridenhour is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the US Marine Corps with 28-years of service active and reserve with multiple combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. He has also served as a Law Enforcement consultant to the NJ State Police Special Operations Section, NJ Transit Police Operations Section, The NJ Regional Operations and Intelligence Center, the FBI Philadelphia Bomb Section, and subject matter expert to the US Department of Homeland Security's, Explosives Division. With nearly 40-years of Combative Arts experience, he is recognized as a self-defense expert worldwide and is highly sought out for seminars, workshops, lectures, and special individualized training.  He is the author of "Warrior Flow Mind" (2019), Co-Author of "Attack Proof: The Ultimate Guided in Personal Protection (Human Kinetics, 2010) and the Co-Author of "How to Fight for Your Life" (June 2010).

For more go to https://protectyourself.mykajabi.com/

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