The Subtle Power of Subtle Muscle Control

 “When one has developed practical knowledge of all skills of the craft, eventually one can become a master carpenter oneself.”

• Miyamoto Musashi

I start this post off by discussing something that I don’t think I’ve fully explained in the past. The whole purpose of this next series of posts is to challenge the way you think about your self-defense training and provide you with a few ideas of how you can improve your martial skill in the shortest time possible. But before I get into the topic of Subtle Muscle Control I need to cover something else first because it directly influences how you not only think about using your body but how you train to develop yourself as well as apply your skills.

The Power of Will

                                         Image courtesy of Comprehensive Asian Fighting Arts

In the image above courtesy of the awesome book Comprehensive Asian Fighting Arts. It depicts two greek fighters who after battling to a stalemate decided that they would allow each other one finishing blow to determine the battle.

We read,

 "The story of Creugas and Damoxenus around 400 BC at Nemea, struggled to dusk without decision. They agreed to permit each other to strike one final blow, unresisted, to settle the issue. Creugas struck Damoxenus in the head and he, weathering the blow, ordered Creugas to raise his left arm. Damoxenus struck Creugas with his open hand spear-like, with such force that it penetrated his side, killing him..."

So, after allowing the Creugas to strike Damoxenus forms a spear hand and through the focus of power and sheer will struck with enough force to kill his opponent.  While for some such a thing would not seem possible I'm sure Creugas would differ with that opinion.  It is the power of our will once properly honed and focused that can often turn the tide or shape the outcome of a battle.

This understanding of the strength of our will sort of reminds me of when I was at Infantry Officers Course as a 2nd Lieutenant and our class advisor during one of our training ops. Talked about how we needed to learn how to pace ourselves at times because many of us are of the mindset where we don't know our limitations and we would push ourselves to the point of dying. Which in my career I have actually seen where Soldiers and Marines would push themselves to the point of death or hospitalization.  My point is one should never underestimate the power of our minds to overcome the perceived limitations of our bodies or to push them beyond their physical limits. 

For those who have played sports before you intuitively understand the importance of gaining momentum and maintaining it over the opponent. Oftentimes it is the deciding factor in a match where a person of lessor physical ability is able to turn the tide on their opponent simply because they wanted it more. It reminds me of one of the comments made by a player on the Baltimore Colts after losing Superbowl III to the NY Jets who were a serious underdog in that game, he said something like, 

"We thought about winning they thought about playing football."

But there's more, you see before that game Jets QB legend Joe Nameth made the startling prediction that not only would the Jets win but that he guaranteed victory. I honestly believe to this day that the reasons the Jets won that game was because of the confidence Nameth expressed before the game and by sheer will and doing the basic things right, upset by far the best team that year. 

It sort of reminds me of the Miricle On Ice when the US Hockey Team Upset the Soviet Hockey team at the Lake Placid Games, who by the way had beaten not only the US Team earlier that year but had previously beat our NHL All-Stars.  I remember a friend of mine told me how his father who was a huge hockey fan cried when we won and all he said his dad kept saying was, "They're kids, they're just kids..." referring to the US Team. 

Pure will...

“Recognizing that the power of will is the supreme court over all other departments of my mind, I will exercise daily when I need the urge to act for any purpose, and I will form habits designed to bring the power of my will into action at least once daily.”

• Bruce Lee

If you’re a fan of comics like I am then you’re familiar with the whole DC Universe and in that universe as a part of the mythology, one of the most well-known characters is the Green Lantern. Now for my money out of all of the characters in the DC Universe I always thought the one guy who had the greatest potential to be the most powerful of all was Hal Jordan (AKA the Green Lantern).

The reason I say this is because he had something that even Superman didn’t have. You see Superman’s power comes from being from Krypton, our Yellow Sun and all that jazz. So Superman by genetics, because he’s always been who he is in a certain sense, is limited in my view as to how powerful he can be. Hey, when you're Superman where do you go from up?

Whereas the Green Lantern has something more, you see he was chosen to become the Green Lantern because of the person he was, the man he became. He was given a power ring because he was deemed worthy to wield it and even though it needed to be recharged periodically by the Lantern. Its true secret was that it was powered by a force beyond physical ability, beyond limitation, the power of “Will”. So the ability to use the ring was only limited by the will and mind of the wielder.

However, due to a lack of imagination and shitty writing, his character never reached the potential it had. This guy had a ring that had the power to create a sun but he would rather settle for some giant fist to smash an opponent. Really?

Me personally if I had that ring? I’d nuke the site from orbit and be done with it.

Anyway…

In the same way, many people in martial arts limit what they can do because they refuse to do the bodywork necessary to achieve the level of control over their bodies to facilitate the type of movement they desire. So they are not capable of focusing their will by extension of their body.

Now before I go any further one thing you need to understand as we go down this road towards how to develop better Subtle Muscle Control. Is that it has to do with not only the development of your body but how you focus your mind during training. You see when you develop your body on the subtlest level. A strange thing happens overtime where things just seem to fall into place for you. Where it seems that all you do becomes almost effortless where thought becomes action as if it were a focus of your will. But you have to practice and train to develop this.

The Subtlety of Movement

                      Image courtesy of the Tao of Jeet Kune Do

"Experience is the teacher of all things."

• Julius Caesar

There are Five Essential Concepts of Warrior Flow that are based on the immutable laws within the known universe and how humans move and interact in it. However, for this Blog Post, I’m going to focus on one that has direct implications on how to train your body to move when dealing with motion, Time, Inverse Relationships, etc., and that is Subtle Muscle Control. 

“Without any confusion in mind, without slacking off at any time, polishing the mind and attention, sharpening the eye that observes and the eye that sees, one should know real emptiness as the state where is no obscurity and the clouds of confusion have cleared away.”

• Miyamoto Musashi

Subtle Muscle Control as we define it in Warrior Flow is the ability to control your body in a way to manipulate the space you occupy, create space for yourself, take space from them, create different physical states (i.e., vapor, liquid, solid) within your body, with different parts, and everything in between, and sometimes… all at the same time. In doing so there is no obscurity no confusion within the body. 

There are a number of ways in which once developed we can use Subtle Muscle Control to achieve a variety of things within our bodies for combat. This is what I’m talking about. By definition I offer the following:

• Creating Space– a method of moving your body in such as way where you are already out of the way of their strikes or have created space for yourself to evade/enter or space for them to enter into. For the purpose of crushing them by leading them to their death.
• Taking Space– a method of moving where you deny them the space they need to freely operate causing them to move where you want them too for the purpose of crushing them.
• Manipulating Space– is pretty much a combination of creating space and taking space. It is a way of moving whether in contact “or not”, where you manipulate the space you occupy and alter their perceptions and timing or where you are in relation to their body. This is the kind of thing that I talk about when I describe bending spoons on people.
• Creating Different Physical States- this is a unique ability because it has to do with understanding how the body is able to use countervailing forces. To create different states where you can create false surfaces, or appear structured and non-structured all at the same time even with direct contact with another person or with different parts of your body. I want to point out while this is a unique ability to develop most people cannot do it. Not because it is unattainable but because they don’t believe it is possible. It also has to be taught properly within the proper framing and context because we are capable of greater things than people think but it has to be presented right or you can never get there. (When I get into how to train these things I will spend some time explaining the concept of creating different states within the body because it has everything to do with how I create deceptions).

"It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience."

• Julius Caesar

When developed this ability allows you to access and increase your "Creativity" or the ability to make logical, intuitive decisions to create what you need where you need it when you need it within time and space. This is that ability I discuss where you are able to draw logical inferences, anticipate and develop a level of adumbration based on what is known, unknown in context within the experience.

Creativity, by the way, is the part of talent we in Warrior Flow call Intellect, that mental aspect which allows you to transcend technique and physical limitations. The wisdom, the savvy, the ability, the intuitive understanding to neutralize an opponent’s movements before they can get their stuff off and crush them. But... you have to be willing to put the work in to develop it and "be willing to endure pain with patience".

The Power of Choice

"Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces."

• Julius Caesar

In order to exercise the power of will, it first starts with understanding that anything you do with your body starts with a choice. In order to exercise choice, you must first have your mind right and hold the proper perspective. You see no matter what you do with your body, even when you are not consciously aware of it you make a choice. The choice to move or not move, or what I like to refer to as being patient. Both are forms of choice and both can be trained too. But only if you hold the proper perspective in your mind on what is the art of the possible.

• Perspective- a particular attitude or mental view toward or way of regarding something; as well as the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance. How this plays with regard to combat is significant because both our perspective and our perceptions as I’ve discussed in previous posts are filtered through our knowledge, experiences, sense of being, capabilities and wisdom or intuitions, etc.…

Naming the Thing

“Res ipsa loquitur” -- Latin for “the thing speaks for itself”

Whatever choice we make with our bodies is based on what we think and what we believe is possible. So if you want to be able to do something whatever it is and of course within reason of your physical abilities. So, if you want to be able to do something, then you need to train to it. But in order to train to it, you first have to know what it is and be able to name the “thing” whatever that thing is. For it is in what the thing is which reveals itself.

As a corollary in order for things to become self-evident, you have to know how they work and the information has to be presented or framed in the proper fashion or it is meaningless. This is why I try not to present information, skills, or techniques as if they are absolutes but try to frame them within the proper context so they can be understood.  

"It ain't bragging if you can back it up."

• Muhammad Ali

So, for example, let’s say I place my arm on someone, where I’m preventing them from moving where they want to move. Now some will say that well the answer is to just knock my arm out of the way. Now true, you can do that and you would be correct but… that is assuming that I’m not aware that such a thing is possible and haven’t already trained to anticipate such as possibility (i.e., understanding the inverse).

In other words, because I’ve had people try to do this to me, as they attempt to knock my arm out of the way. Sometimes I pull my hand away before they strike sort of in the same fashion as Lucy pulling the football away before Charlie Brown can kick the ball… and then I hit them. Or sometimes I yield and return after they struck my arm where it appears as if my arm didn’t move… and then I hit them.

As a side note, there are folks who will say this cannot be done yet I do this kind of shit all the time to people who are even much larger than me even when they are moving fast.  People, by the way, do this in football all-of-the-time against people moving at them at full speed so I don't know what these people who say it's not possible are talking about. I really don't. Does it take skill? Sure... but so does knocking people the hell out. People who don't even know how to fight per se do it so it's obviously possible. My point is if it can be done... then it can be done. But you have to have confidence in your abilities to do so. Remember, proficiency fosters competence and competence allows you to stand in that space between fear and courage known as confidence. 

"It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma…"

• Winston Churchill

While Churchill was referring to Russia and her national interest in the same fashion the truth is when I do this, on some level, it is actually a setup. Where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, or as one of my uncles used to say, “heads I win tails you lose”.  

I can remember once doing it to someone and they asked how I was able to do it and I told them something along the lines of,

“What? You don’t think I didn’t know you were going to hit my arm? I can feel what you were trying to do because I was touching you. The truth is as long as I recognize it in time you were never going to make that work.”

The point is whatever choice I make the reason I can do it is that I’ve trained to be able to do it and no matter how fast it’s done I can still do it because I can still feel what they are doing, especially if I am already touching their body. This is the power of developing Subtle Muscle Control in your body. The ability to make choices in the body without having to overthink what you have to do in the blink of an eye. The ability to do things which appear counter-intuitive to what people think can be done and the ability to neutralize what people are doing before it becomes a problem (i.e., don't let it happen in the first place). It is "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma…" Deception, pure and simple.

But you know what?

If you train to do this and understand how the thing works you can learn to do this too. There’s no magic to it. Trust me I could do a whole post (and I probably will down the line) on how when information is not presented or framed within the proper context how it sends people in the wrong direction.

I'm going to cut this off right here, in my next installment, I'm going to get into the concept of Creating Space within Warrior Flow and how you can develop better control over your body for yourself. Until then I leave you with this thought to meditate on.

“There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.” 

• Miyamoto Musashi

Thanks.