Lessons from My Masters 4I Observations The Grandmaster Chronicles Part XIII

“Nature never breaks her own laws.”

• Leonardo da Vinci

This will be the last installment of “The Grandmaster Chronicles” then I’ll close out the series on “Lessons from My Masters” and move on to other things. I know I’ve covered this stuff below in a variety of ways before but I don’t think I’ve ever covered it where I’ve laid it all out from a logical standpoint. So what I’ll attempt to do here is dive a little deeper into this from a mental and philosophical standpoint. I promise this won’t be “War and Peace” as the last installment.

“An attack is a process…”

• Drew Miller, Former Coordinator of the Degerberg Martial Arts Academy

I’ll never forget those words all so long ago from Grandmaster Perkins’ old friend because this is something that I would actually see played out over and over in combat. You see while many of us have been led to believe that an attack as it’s is portrayed often on TV or in the movies as if it’s something that happens out of nowhere. The truth is more often than not the warning signs are right in our faces yet we can’t see it half the time because we either don’t know what to look for or we don’t realize what we are looking at. You see when it comes to fighting I’m of the belief that we have more influence (dare I say control) over the situation and the outcome than we think.  But in order to do so, you have to get far enough ahead of it at least mentally to buy yourself time to act.

This requires a different way to look at the fight and not just a physical thing but as mental thing as well. In other words, the physical confrontation more than we think is a manifestation of what was going on “beforehand” whether verbal on non-verbal. In any event, what is important to understand is that this shit is in our faces all of the time. When I discuss this with folks I’m often asked what the hell I’m talking about and what I tell them is this,

“When you watch what John is doing watch closely how he moves his body. No matter how innocuous his movements may appear, notice that he’s never really standing still for anyone. This is something I think is a byproduct of being a police officer for so long that he intuitively will not just stand still in front of someone waiting for them to take a shot at them. So if you’re going to take a swing at him he’s already not just anticipating that possibility but he’s already doing something about it. He’s not waiting for you to make the first move. He’s already moved and whether you can discern that is not his problem. He makes you work for it.”

The thing I think I want to get across to people is John is always changing the “attitude” of his body so that what you think he’s doing in the body is not what’s really going on. This is part of what I mean when I say that he moves in a way that influences the movement of the other person whereas the place they think he is, is not really where he is because he’s already moved to a point in the future. He’s already playing “where the puck is going to be” I know for many this is hard to comprehend because we’ve been raised in a culture where everything is very visual and if we cannot see it with our eyes as far as we’re concerned it either doesn’t exist, or we want to relegate it to the realm of magic.

"War is the continuation of politics by other means."

• Carl von Clausewitz, On War

In other words, an attack is a process that starts in the minds of the attacker and the person who may be attacked. Or as von Clausewitz states above looking at war, a fight, battle, etc. as a “continuation of politics by other means”.  You begin to realize that this stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum, that this stuff doesn’t happen by coincidence that there was stuff going on before and in some cases “long before” the fight got physical.

Your mindset on this is crucial because how you perceive the fight or “a fight”, will greatly influence your actions and how you move and how you deal with things. I believe this concept is a lost art amongst martial artist where they think “attitude” is just some nonsense they spew from their mouths or that the “proper attitude” of their body is how far they can “puff out” their chest in order to intimidate potential attackers.

While this behavior is probably more biological than anything else it is also predictable as Hell and once you become predictable in a real confrontation it’s only a matter of time before the enemy makes full use of it and cuts you down.

Not to go too far out there but it needs to be addressed, now I’m sure some of you out there are familiar with the “Sheep Dog, Wolf and Sheep” stuff, whatever… that’s been going on in law enforcement circles, the military and shooting magazines for some time. Me personally I do not subscribe to this mindset for a lot of reasons.

First of all, it assumes that only people with specialized training can be “Sheep Dogs”. It also assumes that we don’t have an inherent right to protect ourselves and our families. The other point that gets missed not to get to “nick picky” but the last time I checked the Sheep Dog worked for the rancher.  In other words, they’re assuming that the Sheep Dog gives a crap about the sheep in the first place and not his reward for protecting the flock. Trust me if the Sheep Dog gets hungry enough the sheep are going to find out “real-quick” who side he really on.

Whaaaat?

This is bullshit…

In his recently published article about Guided Chaos, “Fighting Evil: Inside the Martial Art of Guided Chaos”, by Jack Kerwick, he calls this out for what it is, he writes,

“…Master Al, this retired Lieutenant-Colonel from the United States Marine Corps, is not exactly enamored by talk of Wolves and Sheepdogs. These conventional metaphors, he insists, reinforce the fears constitutive of a “statist” mindset insofar as they exacerbate the impulse of the average person to turn to “experts”—the police, the military, etc.—for protection.  After all, it is soldiers and law enforcement officers alone who, according to this paradigm, are the Sheepdogs.  All other law-abiding civilians are the Sheep, and the evil-doers, “the bad guys,” are the Wolves.”

I’ll say it again and make it simple for you, this way of thinking is bullshit. The bad guys put their pants on the same way as everyone else, eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom just like everyone else and don’t want to die any sooner than the next guy.

The founding fathers of our great nation would be rolling in their graves this statist nonsense if they knew that many people today have retreated from their God-given right to self-protection. Instead of sitting around waiting for Superman to show up and save the day. People need to become “warriors” and “hunters” and become proficient in the use of violence, weapons, and the warrior arts, and they need to get their mind to the place whereas John’s uncle Bob told me on the phone, “You must look at your enemy as prey…”

The truth is in order to get ahead of things in the body you have to develop the “Hunter Mindset”. When I was working at the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab I can remember how we would see the weekly IED casualty reports and after some analysis part of the problem was clear. We didn’t know what to look for prior to a bomb being placed in the ground. I’m sorry but nobody is walking across the Arabian Peninsula in 120-degree heat carrying four 155mm Russian made artillery shells or approximately 160-lbs, then to dig a hole and plant them along the side of the road that we are known to travel. There are just too many activities that have to take place to do this in a stealth manner lest they end up on the side of the road with a hole in their head. I remember one of my Marines, Maj Bailey, telling me a story about when he was doing some operations with one of our allies while we were in Afghanistan when they asked,

“How is it the Marines have been so effective in reducing IED casualties in Helmand province?”

He said something like,

“Simple, we go out and kill or capture the people who are doing it before they do it again.”

Like I said in “Lessons from My Masters 11: Anticipation”,

“When you get to the future position understand that it already happened. Meaning that whatever you were going to do because you are ahead of their movement you have pretty much cut off all of their options. Therefore, providing you’re willing to strike them in essence it already happened because they don’t have enough time to respond.”

Now I’m sure some of you are saying,

“Why would we capture some of these Taliban scumbags?”

Simple, if you want to kill the King you can’t waste all your energy killing off the pawns. Those guys as far as the enemy was concerned were meant to die so in some respects at least from a strategic standpoint they are just a waste of ammo. Besides, you can always circle back on them and punch that ticket later.

(Editorial comment here: Trust me they are scumbags these are guys who are adamant that it is “their right” to stone female rape victims or little girls to death for going to school as they did in Marjah. And rape prepubescent boys. The Taliban even had a rule called “Rule Number 19", and it read, “A Mujahedeen warrior shall not take a young man back to his tent unless he is old enough to have hair on his face.” Whaaaaat!?! Folks, I started growing a cheesy mustache when I was like “fourteen”, it was so bad my Mom even laughed at it. Listen, I don’t care what your culture says is appropriate, these are kids and this is just evil …  and I am as far as Heaven is to Hell from being all right with this shit. In other words, these guys couldn’t die fast enough. So fuck them…)

Anyway, the point is once again this shit doesn’t happen in a vacuum. We would eventually develop a program called Combat Hunter to address these deficiencies in our training. Now, I’m not going to get into specifics but I’ll say this, once we knew what to look for we were able to successfully interdict these activities and “let the bodies hit the floor”.

My point is if you want to learn to get ahead of the curve you first have to know there’s a curve there and anticipate it and act accordingly. This is no different when it comes to self-defense and in fact, it is probably more crucial since your life may very well depend on it.

In the same fashion, you too can learn how to do these things by practicing how to anticipate and change the attitude of your body by developing the “Hunters Mindset” and learn to get ahead of their actions as best as possible.

The Deep Dive

“It doesn’t matter if the arm is up or if the arm is down, in that moment, that instant you are the master of that motion.”

• Grandmaster John C. Perkins

Okay, pay attention to this because this is one of the most profound ways of thinking within the art of Guided Chaos (really anywhere. That is the idea of not only looking at the fight not just from the perspective of dealing with “this” or “that” but dealing with it from the perspective of “just movement”. This way of thinking is in my mind a radical departure from the way in which most people in the fighting arts think of dealing with a thing. For most of us when we first learned how to do something within the martial arts it went sort of like this.

“So when they throw a punch like that you then block like this… How you deal with a grab is you grab here and then you move like this and take his balance and so on…”

This is pretty standard fare for the martial arts the problem is they’re missing at least in my mind the most crucial part… “context”!

In other words, if you know you’re already in the fight why are you waiting for them to do something before you act?

Why are you waiting?

What are you waiting for?

What? Do you need an invitation to act?

Most people will get this a small few will not and that is as John says, “…when you move no matter what you do, you are the master of that motion.”

I’ve always liked this saying because it is profound on so many levels but also it stresses the importance of understanding that we have more of a vote in the fight than we think. As I discussed, in the beginning, a fight is a process and this stuff is not as random as people would like to believe. As far as I’m concerned it is “far” from random. Now let us reason together, the lottery is random, happenstance, “luck”.  In a fight, something happened, something gave the bad guys an indication you were a mark, something caused a brawl to break out in the bar. In other words, something happened that set things in motion. A movement, a look, a repositioning of the body or just their overall demeanor. My point is it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Human movement prior to battle is no different as far as I’m concerned. Heck, there are whole books written by former police officers, FBI profilers and bouncers that attest to what I’m talking about.

For better or worse you are the master of your motion no matter how slight.  Because whether consciously or unconsciously when you move (or not) you made a choice. When training by becoming aware of how your movement affects the movement of another person you can begin to develop an almost “sixth sense” of these matters and learn to anticipate trouble and snuff out the serpent at the head.

This believe it or not is also the key to beginning to develop the ability to move as naturally as possible within your own body (I’ll come back to this later). You see when you move for whatever reason, there was a reason, this act as I’m postulating here, was not random even if you were not aware of your actions. That something happened even if it was a perception you had that caused you to move the way you moved. When training, one technique that I found that was useful that I learned from my Master was the ability to just focus on doing one thing but allowing myself to lose myself in the movement to allow for a more natural flow to my movements. This, in turn, begins the process of preventing you from doing something that is the enemy of natural movement. “second-guessing your actions”!

Mastering Motion Part I - Being Invisible

“From one thing, know ten thousand things”

― Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

When you think about the old Kung Fu movies of the past before special effects replaced good story and plotline in a movie. One of the skills that the masters at the highest levels always seemed to possess was the ability to strike an opponent at will or move in a way where they seemed “invisible” to their opponents. The dream of being invisible is a much sought after skill. The whole concept of stealth technology is based on making our weapons systems invisible to the enemy.

Techniques in camouflage and how to hide in the shadows goes back thousands of years and many of these practices are still in use today predating the Ninjas, the Nizaris, were a deadly sect of Ismaili warriors, feared across the Middle East and beyond for their daring attacks on powerful enemies. They became known as the ḥaššāšīn or Ḥashshāshīn – which was later modified in European languages as the “Assassins”. Ironically Arabic origin was,

 “…a derogatory slur to highlight a particular habit of the group. To the god-fearing, they were the notorious order of hashish-eaters.”

If you’re a fan of the “Predator’ movies, then I’m sure you’ve thought to yourself what a great concept to be able to have such a capability. Well while not perfected the technology is called “optical camouflage”. There are other capabilities out there being developed but the bottom line is the idea of stealth or invisibility for combat is not new.

So while the US Department of Defense is going full speed ahead spending billions on developing such capabilities for the decisive edge in combat. For the most part, much of this has been relegated over the years to fantasy martial arts.

One of the skills that people in Guided Chaos get to see done on a fairly regular basis is where more senior practitioners have the ability to seemingly move in on people or strike people at close range. Where their hands are either in full view or they are physically touching them and then, “poof” just like that they are gone, and the next thing they know they get hit in the head. This quality to seemingly become invisible is one of in my view the main byproducts of becoming unavailable.

Mastering Motion Part II - Becoming Invisible

“What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Okay, now “this” is to put it bluntly some cool shit!

I can remember once moving with John very recently whereas he moved with me I almost had to do a double-take because he moved in a way where for a second I literally lost track of his body. while that not sound that impressive the problem was I was already touching him. I said to him,

“You’ve got to be kidding me?”

He just laughed. But there’s also a point to this and that is this level of movement cannot be learned unless it becomes a part of how your body naturally moves. The reason is there is no way you can consciously think about all of the adjustments your body has to make that in truth are outside of your conscious awareness and to be able to pull it off in time. You just can’t process it that fast. This is that subtle adumbration that I’ve discussed in previous posts that you want to get to. The key here is you have to develop this ability throughout your whole body and not rely on your arms to do it. Please re-read what I just said because it drives me nuts when John does a demonstration and he literally says things like,

“Now as I make contact here notice what I’m doing? My whole body is working with this… Now you can see this because I’m going slow but at full speed, it looks as if I’m just walking in on people… Now as I enter, I don’t just pocket or get out of the way I’m feeling my way in, getting around things but I never back up. I take that space so they can’t get back in the fight… you’ll notice on the street people who back up eventually get hit. They have no balance their just running so they can’t hit properly. I’m always in, always in! I never go back, now this doesn’t mean I don’t step off line but I never go backward.”

In essence, John doesn’t go backward, as he yields and pockets or whatever, so what he’s doing is, if you think of it this way. He’s creating the space for people to enter into where he wants them to go to get crushed. It’ simple as long as you think it’s your plan you have no reason to change course.

I’m so all about this! This is gold!

So, when you are practicing something slow as you are training your muscles, your body, etc., you don’t want to “overthink” what you are doing as best as possible otherwise you get in the way of what you’re trying to accomplish. More importantly, you interrupt the process of what your body is learning and you never get to the level of subtle adumbration to develop that foreshadowing of movement, that savvy, “The Wisdom” to fight in the future, “…to play where the puck is”.

You want to only focus on the thing that you are doing, at that time as best as possible and nothing more. Your body believe it or not will fill in the rest. Like I’ve said in previous posts when you throw a football or a baseball I can tell you all of the mechanics of how to do it but to get good at it you have to throw a lot of balls like in the thousands to get good. The reason is that each time you throw especially when throwing to different places with different levels of speed, timing, strength, etc. it is never the same. This is that thing we call in sports “touch”. If you want to develop that “touch” in the body when fighting you need to develop this throughout your body in the same fashion you throw a ball and let your body fill in the rest.

As I discussed in previous Blog Posts the “Quantum Sphere” as I like to call it has to do with the ability to move within your Sphere of Influence in ways on the most minute level because “There are no small movements with regard to the end result”.

The “Quantum Sphere” like “The Matrix” in some ways has to be experienced to be believed. For the sake of those who still may not be familiar with this concept because it is not easy to grasp because in order to understand it you first have to feel it in the body, then you can see it in your mind and then conceptualize it.

Now, if you imagine your body in the position like Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” within your Sphere of Influence your hands and feet are able to affect all aspects of your Sphere within their natural reach and range of motion. Now, no matter where you move your Center of Gravity is “always” at the center of your Sphere of Influence. Allowing you to “control the space” within your Sphere in every direction.

But there is something else…

Inside of your body, each one of your joints can move “with” yet “work” at times seemingly independent of each other and the rest of your body. The truth is they don’t actually work independently of each other as much as they play off of each other or reinforce each other or cancel out superfluous motion such as when isolating, depending on what you choose to do within your “Sphere of Influence”.

Additionally, these points of rotation within your joints are not just limited to your arms and legs but extend to virtually every joint within your body. Within reason of course.

For example, while each bone in your arm is linear in structure too include those in your hands. Each joint, when combined with the other joints in your arm, creates a “spherical range of motion”. The more joints that are involved the greater the freedom of movement. This is what allows you to move your arm in a graceful, fluid fashion as if your arm were like they were made of rubber or flow like water.

One thing I need to point out before I go any further. With regard to your hands whether forming weapons or just moving them in general. No matter what you do with them you always have a sphere that your hands move within, and because each of your fingers has tremendous dexterity they too have a sphere of their own. This is the reason as an instructor you must teach students how to use their hands freely yet efficiently as soon as possible. Your hands have more dexterity than any other part of your body why would you give this up in a fight for your life?

Again, the reason I call it “The Quantum Sphere” is because this concept is “Fractal” in nature meaning from the smallest to the largest movements no matter what your joints, relatively speaking, of course, are always doing the same thing no matter how much or how little you move. Also, there is an exponential or compounding effect once you begin to move in this manner. For there are circles within circles within circles, etc. in which the pattern repeats itself theoretically to infinity. Sort of like looking in the reflection of two mirrors facing each other where the reflections seem to repeat itself and go to infinity.

So there is an almost infinite number of possibilities within our movement as long as we move within our natural range of motion. Another reason why I call this concept is because changes even at the “nano” or "quantum" level of movement as I like to refer to it, causes dramatic changes in your body position in relation to theirs because “There are no small movements with regard to the end result”.

The Way of Nature

“You want to move as natural in your movement as possible…”

• Grandmaster John C. Perkins

I know I’ve discussed this before but I’ll just rehash it a little here because it directly relates to moving in a way where you become invisible right in front of someone. So, I’ll just tell you outright that natural movement by its very nature is very difficult to track but also difficult to develop, because in order to develop it. You not only have to “relearn” how to move like you did as a child but you have to get over the idea of trying to overly structure your movement as you move. I’ll try to explain this as best as I can because this is a difficult thing to understand since it really can only be felt and not necessarily seen. Natural movement, for the most part, doesn’t look threatening and whether they know it or not on an intuitive level. This is what people who are trying to sneak attack or throw a sucker punch are trying to achieve before they attack.

When you move naturally what you are doing is moving in a manner with the least amount of effort as to how your body moves. So if I want to raise my arm I only move enough to raise my arm if I want to turn a certain way I try to move as little as possible to turn in the most efficient manner possible and so on. By learning to move in this fashion you will begin to develop the smooth movement but also control over your body where each movement as Grandmaster Carron use to call it was “purposeful movement”.

You Have to Learn to Move Like You

“Whatever you do in life, if you want to be creative and intelligent, and develop your brain, you must do everything with the awareness that everything, in some way, connects to everything else.”

• Leonardo da Vinci

Too many people give this up even in Guided Chaos. They want to be like others or move like others so much that they forget something fundamental. Guided Chaos is art for everyone because it is built and designed in a way that makes it accessible for anyone who is willing to seriously study it. But you have to be willing to pay the price, that means not only in time but also in surrendering your ego to the truth and accepting what is.  In all my year's training with John, the one thing I’ve always admired was the freedom in which he moved within his body. That no matter what there was a level of ease within his movement where I realized, in his body, within what he knows he can do he enjoys a level of freedom where, in his movement, his thoughts become merely a focus of his will.

A big part of this is because he’s not trying to move like anyone but John.

I was recently working with some student on their movement in their body and I was doing a drill to loosen their joints as from head to toe (I’ll describe how this is done later on probably towards the end of this). And after I was finished I asked,

“Do you feel how your body feels right now?”

“Do you feel how smooth your body feels?”

“Do you feel how free you feel I the body like you can do anything right now with your body?”

He said, “Yes, yes I feel that.”

I then told him,

“My friend, I feel like that all of the time in my body and even on my worst day I still feel that amazing in my body.”

Now how I do this is simply first getting them to move in a similar fashion as they do either when Washing the Body or Polishing the Sphere, but I now have them “concentrate” on feeling all of their joints while keeping their feet firmly rooted to the ground where they move in a way like a willow tree.  

I get them to focus on feeling all the way down to their feet to derive that internal feeling where they begin to feel the shifting of their balance, the weight of their body, their muscles, and joints move with ease.

When doing this I remind them to remain slow and as smooth as possible moving the arms in a graceful manner in every possible direction. First with large movements and then with smaller and smaller movements while trying to remain as smooth as possible until they get them to the point where the can feel themselves barely moving at all yet can still feel the sensation of moving if that makes sense?

This should have the feeling in your body as if you are floating or moving as if you were moving in water, where everything as a graceful flow feeling to it. there should be no jerkiness, if you feel yourself become jerky or tens up, just relax and go back to what you were doing. It’s simple you cannot move in this fashion without using your whole body within your Sphere of Influence. I always recommend that in the beginning, people practice this at least every day until this becomes a part fo you where “it’s just the way you move”.

Well, I’m going to end this right here. I hope folks got a lot or as much out of “The Grandmaster Chronicles” as much as I enjoyed writing about my Master Grandmaster Perkins. I’ll be finishing this up with a final installment.

As always thanks.

LtCol Al Ridenhour

Senior Master Instructor

GUIDED CHAOS

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