Lessons from My Masters 27 Observations - Synthesis Part III

“Because I can feel where you are and where you are trying to go and I know my movement when I hit you causes you to move a certain way. I can just go to where I know you have to go to avoid it.”

                                        --Grandmaster Tim Carron

In this post, I’m going to build on some of the things I discussed in my last post based on some of the questions I’ve been asked. So, reiterating what I wrote about in the last post I just want to point to a few more things.

A couple of key points:

Once again. If you expect the unexpected whether they’re faster than you or not the sooner you act, the more time it allows you to deal with them since they have to still cover the distance to attack you.

How this relates to fighting is simple, if you are aware of the situation or if you think someone is going to attack you be on guard and be prepared to move. As I always tell students when they ask how to deal with a person’s strength, reach or speed I often tell them, “move sooner”. Think of it like this, if you were walking down the street and a car jumped the curb, what would you do? Would you try to stop it or get the hell out of the way?

Of course, you would move out of the way because you know no matter how strong you are you cannot stop a car. Well as a person moving towards you is no different in that as long as you remain unavailable to them they can’t hit you, but you have to practice this over and over until this way of thinking and movement seeps into the marrow of your bones. It is the only way!

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

                                 --Marcus Aurelius

For those who never met Grandmaster Tim Carron let alone had the pleasure to work with him and even "rarer" had the chance to be specifically trained by him. You missed out on a once in a lifetime opportunity. Like John, his ability was truly unique (I’ll cover that in more detail either later in this part of this series at another time). As an aside, if you have a chance to work with John you really need to get your ass to New York if for nothing else than to experience it just so you can have a clue as to what I describe in these blogs posts. Understand, I can only talk about it but so much but at some point, you’re going to have to get in the water if you want to know what it’s like to swim.

The "100 Chambers" of Yonkers

Like the “36 Chambers of Shaolin” (aka “The Master Killer”), training with Tim was like an old style Kung Fu movie it was what people expect in their martial arts training but rarely get. The exercises, the exact understanding of fundamental principles and techniques, the insane level of skill.  The practicality, the simplicity of movement, the "Ruthlessness"! It was all there. 

The feeling of working with Tim when I first started was awesome, to say the least. Imagine training in a way where you literally feel yourself improving almost daily. Where you feel your body changing in ways where you can literally feel your strength growing not just physically but also your mental acuity.  Where your body begins to do things without you having to think about them like catching items out of the air as they fall, or slicing objects in midair without even batting an eye.  Where you find yourself doing things and then after the fact, looking at your hands like, “What the hell did I just do?” Yeah, it’s like that. This is actually a common phenomenon in Guided Chaos. I have my own theories on this but I’ll leave that for another time. But it is the kind of thing that you hear about in the martial arts but never learn to develop in most arts. 

Where you start to see the world differently because "you" begin to feel and move differently within it. More importantly, it was his early teachings at John’s behest that built the foundation for the things that students and instructors alike feel me do that seem like “magic”. Obviously, it's not actual magic but it can feel that way. I know because my Masters moved on me like this all of the time which is how I learned how to do it.

What I’m going to do here because this is the sort of thing I’m always hit asked about by students and rightfully so as I discuss some of the things I observed early on in my own development working with John and Tim. I’m going to start with Tim first in this post and maybe the next one and then I’ll move on to John in other posts as I tie this stuff together. I’ve already discussed a lot of the drills he had me do so I’m going to cover some other stuff that outside of John and a few others are probably not known to most people.

Obligatory Editorial Comment: Now, before I get too far along because I whenever I’m discussing my Masters I always have to put the caveats in there because there are always folks who just do not understand certain things. Remember, these are just my observations from my own vantage point and experiences training with them and my own interpretations of these events. This is important because many who have worked with them have had different experiences. So often when I talk about this stuff, they have no clue as to what the Hell I’m talking about. They may not have even learned these things from them or were shown but didn't understand their significance. You see we’re all different and so how John or Tim worked with one person varied from how they worked with another.

So, other than the basic exercises and principles that’s where things sort of diverge because not everyone needs the same things at the same time. We’re all created equal with the same rights by "The Creator" but we’re all not the same. Sorry, those are the facts... What can I tell you, life's not fair.

So, if your experiences are different than mine, well… No shit!

I’m a different guy with different experiences in life than you and vice versa and those differences count because they influence how we understand the information we are exposed to in our world.

Now after reading some of what I’m going to talk about if you “feel” you don’t agree with it based on your own experiences. Let me help you here. Fuck your feelings! No really, fuck your feelings and get over yourself. Listen, just because you feel differently about some of this stuff than I do doesn’t make it a fact. More importantly, it doesn’t invalidate my experiences or observations and any misunderstanding of what I experienced is my problem, not yours.

I’ve said it before so I’ll say it again, there isn’t a person on planet earth who has received more training and direct knowledge from Tim than I have. Now over the year’s some folks may have worked out with him more times, and gotten their asses handed to them by him and became a “meat puppet”. But training? That’s an entirely different matter altogether, do not deceive your own soul… You’ll only embarrass yourself. 

Just thought I’d clear the air on that before I go too far down the path on this. ;-)

Philosophical Understandings of the Sith Lord

 “Day by day, what you do is who you become.”

                  --Heraclitus

Yeah, make no mistake about it Tim was the "Sith Lord" of Guide Chaos and like the Sith Lord,  Tim was very exacting in what he did, how he trained and taught. This I believe is one of the greatest misconceptions I think that people have about Tim and that is the notion that all he did was just stand around and kick that ass. That he got to where he was from just doing the Contact Flow exercises over and over until things just clicked.

Folks let me tell you... This is utter and complete "fucking nonsense"!

Sorry for being so crude here, but nothing could have been further from the truth. I can remember discussing training with Tim some of it I’ve covered before so I won’t rehash it here but I’ll say this. Tim regardless of what people think had a very logical and methodical, well thought out way of how he went about his own training and that of others. There was a method to the madness a sequence of how and when he did it and taught you things. And when he felt you were ready for the next level, you were ready and he went on to the next thing. He did all sorts of things, paradoxical methods that seemed to make no sense until he revealed at the end what he was doing where you had that "Ah-ha" moment. Direct methods of getting you to stand a certain way, positive or negative reinforcement. There was nothing willy-nilly about the way he trained himself or trained others. I once asked John about "his" training of Tim he said something like,

“Well you know in those days I would sometimes work out with Tim for hours. Tim was one of those people where once I told him what he had to do I really didn’t have to tell him again because he just wanted it. He just went out and did it. Tim would work out on his own sometimes hours at a time but he also made his training a part of him by making it a part of his day. He used to do stuff like Ninja walk up and down the steps in his apartment building five flights up and down all of the time. Sometimes he would do this while carrying groceries. He got good because he just wanted it.”

I remember picking Tim’s brain about training and he said something to me that made so much sense because it’s the kind of thing you hear about with some of the most skilled people at whatever they do. Whether it’s playing guitar, painting, cooking, forging weapons or playing basketball. “You have to be obsessive about it.” In other words, you’ve got to pay the price. I remember him also saying things like,

“Most people want magic they think there’s some kind of trick to this… you’re just dealing with motion. Etc…”

Tim became “Tim” because he worked his ass off. Now I’m sure there is some level of natural ability with him because Tim, as I've said before was "very adept" at a lot of things and like I said he was probably one of the most talented people I ever met.

My mother was like that, she was an artist, skilled with crafts and was still a girl from North Carolina and could whoop your ass. She taught herself how to play piano and guitar, and as a matter of fact, the first guitar I ever owned was one of her hand me downs. My mom used to actually do Japanese style gardening for people with one of her many side businesses. Some people just seem to have that.

However, now as I talk out of the other side of my mouth. Though most people view talent as just a natural physical ability or just "ability". Talent is more than just physical ability because there's a mental aspect to it. I personally believe that much of what we do in Guided Chaos through the principles and exercises designed to develop the attributes. Bridges the gap between the mental and physical aspects of talent at least for fighting (though I know there are much wider applications).

Just from my observations and study think of talent as the intersection between intellect and physical ability. That ability to continually improve through proper practice but also to observe and make logical inferences. To see in the mind the next step what cannot be seen with the eyes. I believe this concept of "presence of mind" is a form of talent where both the body and mind just seem to "know things" and take action or "do things" without "knowing". If that makes sense? A lot of self-taught people seem to have this gift. 

Grandmaster Perkins is in my view like this. He sees and knows things without knowing how he knows them. I can't even tell you how many times I would ask him a question and he would say,

"I don't know how to explain it but it's like I can see it right in front of me, all of the angles, all of the openings. It's just all there. It's like a diagram where I can see the lines, the arcs, "the spaces". When I'm moving with people especially at speed I just know where to be and where not to be. The only thing in my mind is unavailable and unavoidable. But I'm not thinking about that. I just am. It's like I told you how I can listen to peoples bodies when I touch them. I just know where their balance is and I don't let them move the way they want to move. That's why when I hit people in class I have to be careful, I can just feel where their center is all of the time and just punch a hole right through them."

Folks, that's what I'm talking about!

I can also remember John talking about how he trained himself that when I discuss it in later posts in my view. It is the epitome of how and why the art has developed into what I believe the greatest martial art system ever. Very interesting stuff. 

I'll say this though, very few people have ever seen John and Tim really move and I have to tell you to John's credit, he's the only person I ever saw who could make Tim back up. Sure I've seen Tim step out of the way on folks and practically decapitate them like something out of a Steven Segal movie. I've even seen Tim step back only to set people up to walk into his strikes. But what I'm talking about here is a "different thing", and it's really a credit to John's ability because if Tim didn't want to move you weren't moving him. Unless you were John...

Amazing stuff. 

“Simplify and make no simpler”

              --Albert Einstein

Like my mom, Tim had that Occam’s Razor way of looking at something and stripping it down to its raw essence and figuring out the steps of how it worked and how to put it back together. Tim could look at something and see what the end result was that he wanted to achieve, he then would set out how to accomplish it step by step. More important he knew how to separate the wheat from the chafe and discard that which was of no use. He was not afraid to make mistakes and was all about learning from them and correcting them as quickly as possible. I think on some level he figured out the faster he tried something the faster he learned what did or did not work for him and he never forgot the lesson.

This is important because Tim never, as I’ve alluded to before, did an exercise for the sake of doing them including Contact Flow. There was always a method or at least from what I could see a logical thought process as to, "why and how he did what he did the way he did it, and when he did it". There was nothing random about anything he did. I mean the art is called Guided Chaos for a reason you know.  Everything he did, everything he could do was a byproduct of the level of skill he had developed in the body where he could make decisions "in the body" without thought. But, and this is important, he trained himself to get there. He did it, whatever "it" was until he could do it. 

Also, it started with his mindset and it flowed from there. Tim was all about crushing people there was no ambiguity about that. The way he often looked at things totally influenced how he trained. Tim always trained as if his life depended on it. Like I've said before Tim was "supremely confident" in his abilities as a fighter, there was no ambiguity about it.  He didn't care who you were, he didn't deal with people he made you deal with him. I can remember him saying to me and others numerous times,

"If you're not confident in your ability and don't think you can do it, then you never get to where you can do it. If you don't think you can do it then you can't."

When you had the experiences he had in "the Nam", you can get behind that mindset "real quick". His attitude about not letting things happen in the first place was not only key to my understanding of the art but was a radical departure from everything that I was taught within the martial arts. Like Tim, from a mental standpoint, if I think you're going to hurt me or my loved ones, I'm all about eviscerating people first and asking questions later. Most of us, when taught the fighting arts, are taught from the wrong perspective. You know the nonsense we're taught,

“If a guy throws a punch here you block there if he kicks here you move there if he grabs you then you do this…”

…and on and on it went.

Tim was having none of this! 

Tim’s attitude was and I’m paraphrasing here,

 “Listen you’re already in the fight if someone moves towards you or raises a hand to you what the Hell are you waiting for?”

If someone grabs you his attitude was, “Why are you letting someone grab you in the first place?”

His attitude was if you asked, “What if I grabbed you?”

His reply would be something along the lines of pulling your eyes out and shoving them up your ass. For real!

He used to say to me,

“Even in training, you have to be careful because you never know what’s in someone else’s head. When I’m teaching I’m always on my game because you never know... Also, I never know who may walk through my door at any time. If I think you’re trying to hurt me fuck that, I’ll hurt you first. I don’t care what the circumstances are if I think you’re trying to hurt me I’m going to hurt you bad.”

Now to be fair because I understand this may be a little surprising to some folks, understand if Tim said something like that, he meant every bit of it. I remember one student telling me what Tim said when he asked if someone attacked him what he really would do. He said Tim said something along the lines of, “I’d have every intention of pulling his jaw off and shoving it down his throat.”

Like I’ve said in the past Tim had that kind of Outlaw Jose Wales thing about him where if he threw that cigarette down and put it out with his foot. “The Kraken” was getting ready to be unleashed. There was no bullshit in his touch, and if he had to “layeth of hands” on you? Your ass stayed hit.

Some arts boast of death touches and other nonsense, Tim had the real thing or what I called the “Death Slap”. If he slapped, you in the head he would slap it right off. Now technically your head wouldn’t come off because your skin and the muscles in the neck would still stretch and hold it on but "your soul" would definitely move on to the afterlife.

Tim saw his world with "total clarity" and "single-mindedness of purpose" and it reflected in how he trained people. He could summon the Ruthless Intent at will in one instant, and be having a cigarette the next moment, wanting to know if it was as good for you as it was for him. Tim, I believe like John was able to go into Mushin Mind at will where his body could be on autopilot while he was doing something else. One of the things Tim would do a lot as he would be working with someone during class while watching what the rest of the class was doing. Sometimes he would even look around the room to see what folks were up to. Too funny.

I was recently telling some students back in the old days, once I recall John going over knife fighting in class and he asked Tim to quickly demonstrate how he would use a knife.

It was some piece of crap fake knife we used but when John handed that knife to Tim and he faced the person he was going to demonstrate on.  Right there, his whole physical posture and demeanor changed, even the look on his face was different. His mind was “there”. There was no mistaking it, in that instant, you could see in his eyes, the fire, the ruthlessness that he was intent on killing that person and probably everybody else in the room.

That was the other thing about Tim, while he had a sense of humor about him he always had a sense of danger about him as well, that vibe where you just knew it was like crossing the path of a Lion. Where if he gives you that look you know you’re fighting for your life. My boss in the Marine Corps, Col GI Wilson, and MSGySgt Franco were like that, where you "just knew". I'll leave it at that... With Tim, there was no ambiguity about it. John is like that too, by the way, he just plays a nice guy on TV, until he "ain't". Do not kid yourself.

Tim wasn’t one of those sneaky "circumspect" kind of people. At least from my impression. If he was ready to pounce you could only deescalate the situation, in his mind he was already there, it already happened, you were "screwed". Like a Samurai drawing his katana, if he had to unsheathe his “Randall Knife” (neatly tucked under his shirt) it was over, for his blade would "demand satisfaction". 

Now, don’t get me wrong here, I’m not trying to mythologize Tim nor make him into a god, “as some have”. Tim was human and was as fallible as the rest of us he was just one of those guys who lived life to the fullest. Tim was indifferent about a lot of things and while he wouldn’t do anything foolish to hasten his death you could see he had that attitude that, if it was his time. Well...? It was his time...

Tim like a lot of people I’ve met throughout my life who had “that thing” about them whereas if they could not live their life and be the person that they wanted to be, they probably wouldn’t want to live. To Tim, and these are just my observations, being anything but who he was, or being “inauthentic” was to live a lie. A fate worse than death.  I also believe this was a strength he had. This simplicity, the focus, the single-mindedness of purpose. As I said, Tim saw his world with "perfect clarity", he knew who he was and who he wasn't and he was at peace with that. 

Tim was Combat Veteran of Vietnam, a living weapon, a gunslinger, a Viking, a Roman Centurion, an artist, a craftsman, and a damn good cook. And if we ever get US Space Force off the ground (whatever the Hell that is), in a future time, if Tim were a part of it, he’d be like a character in a Robert Heinlein novel.  In certain respects, Tim was born in the wrong time, but whatever the era, above all, he would make a great Soldier in any man’s Army. Tim, in his life, had been through some stuff and like I said. Tim was one of the bravest people I ever met, not because he was without fear but because he knew how to overcome it and not let it rule his life. Tim was all about the Viking Warrior's Death, and worthy of a Viking ceremonial send-off as his body floated ablaze downriver toward the afterlife, and if it was his time it was his time and it wasn't any more complicated than that.

My problem is, I really wish I had told him that before he passed. It's one of my bigger regrets...

You can think of these Lessons From My Masters in a way an atoning for that... 

Presence of Mind Part II

Tim’s “Presence of Mind” like John's, makes no sense. As I said in the previous installment you can have all of the skill in the world. But if you do not possess the presence of mind in context to what is going on you are doing nothing. Again this is important because all too often when it comes to self-defense people have all sorts of advice of what they would do in such and such a situation etc. But what they are missing is if you do not have the “presence of mind” to do something you can be looking right at it and still miss it. Reiterating the quote from the beginning as Tim once said to me,

“Because I can feel where you are and where you are trying to go and I know my movement when I hit you causes you to move a certain way. I can just go to where I know you have to go to avoid it.”

Tim understood that this presence of mind wasn’t just something that dealt with recognizing and dealing with motion but recognizing impressions in the other person’s body and movement. Getting ahead of them to the future and cutting their nonsense off before it becomes a problem.  You see for him, the "presence of mind" was not just some concept of being aware of things in the initial movement but an ongoing process where he repeated it over and over.

“If you can’t see it with your mind you can’t see it with your eyes.”

                            --Marine Instructor, Combat Hunter Program

I remember hearing these words during the Marine Corps, Combat Hunter Course when I was sent there as an evaluator to determine whether the course was effective or not. This was a course designed to teach a higher level of awareness skills to Marines prior to deploying to Afghanistan. But he was right if you can’t envision these things in your mind, if you can’t even imagine the possibility or as Heraclitus said, “If you don’t expect the unexpected, you never find it.”

Presence of mind is all about such anticipation of the unexpected. This is important because one of the things that Tim taught me was when doing Contact Flow, learning how to recognize things soon enough to do something about it.

The Nexus Point

I’ve gone over this before but I’ve never graphically shown this so since I need to explain some other things that My Masters taught me. I realize that have to explain this first. Now there are generally "three ways" you can deal with someone trying to strike you, (well four since you can get hit but we don’t want that) anyway, they are as follows.

Now you’re probably wondering why I numbered them in reverse order. That’s because this is the way most people think of dealing with a strike of some kind. Their first choice is to "stop it" (No. 3), but trying to stop a strike is hard, yet it’s the one most people choose and even if you are successful all you’re doing is allowing them to stay in the fight. Here’s the key thing, no matter which one you choose. From the time you perceive what’s going on, until the time you begin to move, you are going to react at the same rate of speed based on your reaction time. Now the thing is because of how we’ve been conditioned how to react to such things. 99.9% percent of people will try to “stop” it because that’s what “we think” is the right thing to do. The truth is you want to try to get out of the way first (Unavailable) then strike (Unavoidable). In that order!

UNAVAILABLE / UNAVOIDABLE, UNAVAILABLE / UNAVOIDABLE, UNAVAILABLE / UNAVOIDABLE, etc. Always in that order even when in the attack, or attacking the attacker.

You see when moving with another person and dealing with their motion there is what I call a “Nexus Point” (because it sounds way cool like the “Shadow Impression”). Or what students have heard me refer to at times as the point before “The Point of No Return”. Which is that position where it is not possible to get out of the way or negate the fact that you are going to get hit soon enough.  You see at the Nexus Point it is usually the "last place" where you have a chance to begin to move either out of the way or try to redirect something coming at you. 

Now, since we’re all limited by the same laws of physics and human physiology because that’s how “the universe” works. And we can only move so fast. The sooner we recognize something, the sooner we begin to move or react, the more likely we’re going to successfully neutralize their motion. So as you can see in the figures below from the time you recognize something (fig1),  once you start to move(fig2), by the time they get there regardless of which way you turn or step offline (fig 3 and 4), they're not likely to strike you or at least with any effect because you've already neutralized it by becoming unavailable. 

In this picture, I try to illustrate this a little clearer. Now stay with me here because what I am attempting to show is very rudimentary understanding of this concept. It is just an idea, "a thing" and in no way represents all of the possible perhaps millions of combinations a person could throw at another person in a fight. Otherwise, when folks go off to practice this they'll be walking around like the "Frankenstein Monster" as they move toward each other. I'm merely trying to explain something that is difficult at best to explain even in the flesh let alone through words and pictures.

In fig1 as the attacker approaches, once contact is made (fig1a) there is a point of recognition where you know where not only their hands are but you can feel the orientation or impression of their body.  This is the point where you still have a little time to make a decision. Whether it's getting out of the way or redirecting them etc. the point is this is generally the last opportunity to do something about it. Once that window closes prepare to get hit. 

Now you understand why when moving with Tim as I described in the last installment, where no matter how fast I moved he was able to easily handle my attacks.

To reiterate, this is what I mean by developing your presence of mind, this understanding of inverse relationships doesn’t just deal with when in direct contact with a person, this aspect of “Awareness”, that people never either discuss in the martial arts or, more than likely they don’t know it. This "presence of mind" is the ability to feel the Nexus Point, through your spatial awareness and kinesthetic awareness whereas you feel the Shadow Impression, the “adumbration”, the “foreshadowing” of another person’s movement.  Allowing you to move, and develop the “Pre-Movement” the, “….thing you do, before you do the thing, that you’re going to do.”

This is why when I was working with Tim or when I work with John, in truth it doesn’t really matter which way I move. For John as I’ve said in other posts the glass is always half full. The key here is they’re not consciously thinking about this, it’s just who they are. It’s a part of them. That’s why it’s hard to track let alone thinking you’re going to get ahead of it.

Let me help folks here…

Again, this is why when you move, while technique is good, you want to learn to move in a way that “transcends technique”. This is what you want to be able to do in my mind, this is the Shadow Impression you want to develop. This is the level of skill, the level of adumbration, of foreshadowing of movement where, while techniques come and go the ability to change instantly, “smoothly”, “seamlessly”, “gracefully”, is the level of Body Unity you want to develop through the principles and in your practice.

Again, it is just you and your body and how you work within the principles of Guided Chaos. Along, with the will and Ruthless Intent to act and nothing else.   You want if possible to develop 100% percent perfect control over your body. Now while this is not possible because perfection is unknowable, you want to continue to strive for it, because it can only make you better. None of us knows how far we can take our bodies, none of us knows how good we can get, none of us knows what we have to do until we have to do it, and you don't know it until you know it. It's just that way. 

This along with a million other things is what I learned from my Masters.

Well, that’s for this installment however I leave Miyamoto Musashi with some last minute advice.

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

              -- Miyamoto Musashi

Learn to get ahead of them, train to fight like your life depends on it, make them flinch and win!

As always thanks. 

LtCol Al Ridenhour

Senior Master Instructor

GUIDED CHAOS

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