Effortless Power – Part 5

[Note: This is part Five in this series on Effortless Power by Yosef Susskind, 4th Degree Instructor GUIDED CHAOS. Once again I want to thank Yosef for allowing me to post this to my blog. For Parts - 1, 2, 3 and 4 go here: https://protectyourself.mykajabi.com/blog/effortless-power-part-1-2

here,  https://protectyourself.mykajabi.com/blog/2

here, https://protectyourself.mykajabi.com/blog/effortless-power-part-3]

and here https://protectyourself.mykajabi.com/blog/effortless-power-part-4

By Yosef Susskind

“Effortless Power part 4” asserted that without balance there can be no power; our strikes can only deliver as much force to the enemy as our leg(s) can exert when we brace against the ground at the moment of impact.  Even at the limits of our body’s natural range of motion, so long as we remain balanced we can root against the ground, and deliver the full power of our strikes in all directions and at all angles. 

Developed balance not only expands the range of motion in which we can fight effectively, it allows us to create the smallest, most subtle movements, and to perform them with grace and power.  The role of balance in executing fine-motor movement with effortless power will be our subject below.

Balance provides a foundational component of fine-motor coordination that allows us to make subtle adjustments to our movement even as we attack at full speed.  These micro-movements are key to our adaptability, and allow us to constantly modify our attack to the changing situation on the ground.  We become as changeable as the combat itself.

Creative movement does not have to be large movement, nor must it be conspicuously unconventional.  The smallest movements and most subtle changes can be deadly-efficient and deceiving.  Working in concert with the subsequent principles, balance allows us to strike with power at any distance—including zero distance—with no windup, and without over-commitment.  This makes the smallest movements as lethal as the largest.      

Without the need to chamber our strikes, our limbs remain a loaded weapon.  This allows us to change the trajectory of our strikes as needed—to shorten, lengthen, feint or redirect—and impact the enemy when and where we choose.  We can impact multiple times along a single arc, attacking the limbs and body en route to the killing blows.   

This ability to “detonate on impact”—to discharge our full strength at any moment we choose to clash with the enemy—allows us to stay relaxed for the remainder of our motion.  As long as we are relaxed, we remain in control of our motion: adaptable, volatile, deceptive.  When generating power is unnecessarily effortful, the wielder is no longer in control of their movement. 

All power comes from the ground.  The trained and the untrained alike must push against the ground in order to exert force elsewhere.  When the principles are cultivated, students can detonate strikes from a stand-still and root against the ground at the moment of impact.  When the principles lie fallow, fighters must compensate by pushing against the ground to generate momentum and harness their body’s mass.  Unable to control their balance, they must throw themselves into their strikes. 

Relying on momentum, their strikes need time and distance from the target to accelerate.  If the target is close, or if they want to maximize their force, they must wind up.  The effort they require to overcome their body’s inertia and get their mass moving behind the strike betrays their intention.  The more they mean to hit, the more predictable they become.    

Predictable or not, people with underdeveloped balance can still swing with force, but the harder they swing, the less they are in control of their movement:  When they throw a strike, the strike throws them. The greater their mass, and the greater their acceleration, the greater is their momentum, and the more force they can generate—but once they commit to a movement, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to adapt to their enemy’s response.  The more force they generate, the less they are in control, and they more they become a caricature of a drunken brawler in a peasant mob.  War is unkind to untrained peasants. 

Even among trained fighters, the idea of generating power by “putting your whole body into your strike” is endemically misunderstood.  Practitioners tend to focus on the external, on the “show of force.”  They try to make every part of their body move overtly in contribution to their strike, and believe that without overt movement they cannot recruit their muscles’ strength and mass.  Effortless power needs no show of force.

Watch a complete montage of Iron Mike Tyson’s knockouts.  Purveyors of conventional wisdom will laud his ability to twist and turn and put his stout body into his hooks, and assert that this allowed him to knock out larger opponents.  They are deceived.   

Watch Mike’s movement closely.  Watch the entire montage.  The circularity of his movement has nothing to do with epic haymakers and has everything to do with deception.  He faced larger opponents with superior mass and reach.  By bobbing and weaving as he stepped and threw, his head became an ever elusive target, his fists an illusive weapon. 

As he crept into his own striking range, his opponents’ reach became a false confidence.  As he stepped, bobbed, and weaved, he threw hooks and uppercuts from unconventional angles that his opponents could not decipher fast enough to save themselves.       

While many of his finishing blows were photogenic hooks, plenty of Mike’s opponents went down from short uppercuts where he barely moved.  He touched their chin, and they went down.  How did his arm generate enough force to finish larger heavyweights with his body planted and nearly unmoving? 

Watch Mike’s feet.  Regardless of what his upper body was doing—if he was standing, stepping, or swinging, if his punches were large or small—his balance was ironclad.  Where there is balance there is power, regardless of overt body movement.   

Watch a montage of Ali’s knockouts.  Unlike Tyson’s textbook surefootedness, Ali seems to dance around his opponents.  He reaches out to touch them as if he is playing tag.  How does he put them to sleep?  He doesn’t torque his body-mass into his punches.  He doesn’t stand planted.  Again, the truth of the thing is not in the outward show.  No matter how light his footwork appears, believe that at the moment of impact Ali’s balance was centered rock-solid over his root foot.  If it were not, it would be physically impossible for him to transfer knockout power into his opponent’s face with ease, as explained in “Effortless Power part 4.” 

In the master, neither power nor balance require a show.

In the next section, we will move on to the second principle, Looseness, as it pertains to effortless power.  

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Yosef Susskind a 4th Degree Black Belt Instructor in Guided Chaos, who has trained with Grandmaster John Perkins and Senior Master Al Ridenhour since 2003. He is the editor of the Guided Chaos Instructors Guide, and writes newsletters on the mental and technical aspects of the art. He holds a bachelor of arts in literature from Columbia University and a master of arts in philosophy from Duquesne, and has lectured on Nietzsche, Plato, existentialism, and symbolic logic. As a security consultant with a background in executive protection and event security, he has protected prime-time network TV hosts, Fortune 500 executives, and Israeli dignitaries, and provided security at some of the most high-risk nightlife venues in New York City.

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