The Subtle Power of Subtle Muscle Control Part III
Apr 01, 2020
“If you wish to control others you must first control yourself”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings
A big part of developing the level of Subtle Muscle Control you desire is developing a level of awareness in your own body where you master control over your body and its movements to the best of your abilities. Musashi fully understood the importance of self-mastery if one was to attain such skill.
Folks, I have to tell you I could read Musashi’s stuff all day because he really nails it. In my view, A Book of Five Rings is probably one of the most if not the most profound books on fighting because it comes from the mind of someone who not only has been in many, many life and death duels. But he was able to reflect on his experience and provide an understanding into the strategy, mindset and attitude one needs to develop as they tread the path along “the way”. In other words, there is no bullshit in what Musashi teaches.
In this post since I’ve pretty much laid the foundation in the last post I’m going to get right into the understanding you need to Take Space.
“The important thing in strategy is to suppress the enemy's useful actions but allow his useless actions”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings
So I’ve already explained for the most art how the known universe works so I’m not going to go there (for now) but I’m going to explain something that you need to take to heart because it is a major part of developing this skill. The main reason is to prevent the enemy from ever getting their stuff off in the first place. When you take space you must also take up the space of their physical mass. Sort of like tackling in football or a takedown in wrestling you must collapse your sphere into their sphere and take over their sphere from them suppressing the enemy's useful actions but allow his useless actions.
This is important because one of the things that I do not understand is the notion in the fighting arts that you have to wait for someone to do something first before you take action. To me, if I’m already in the fight, believe me, I don’t need an invitation to put someone’s lights out. To the same token if they’re making a mistake no sense in interrupting them. Works for me…
When you take another person’s space this is what you are trying to do.
The other thing I want to point out and that is, when engaging in mortal combat hand to hand, for the most part, you have to deal with their hands and feet of course if they’re kicking. So if you can effectively deal with their hands and feet on the way in you’ve pretty much neutralized them. It’s funny because I was once working out with a guy and he made the incredulous statement, “If I could only get past your hands I could hit you…”
No shit… Really…
“Either I’ll find a way or make one”
- Hannibal
The problem was he was trying to block my arms and trying to control them when he should have been focused on making them useless or of no effect. This is a different mindset and a totally different way of thinking because it takes you from the realm of trying to control people’s hands and arms when it is not necessary to do so as opposed to focusing on finding a way to win or make one.
So if their arms are in the way you need to learn how to neutralize them either by getting past, around or through them. While I generally as a rule only physically deal with people's arms if I have to. Personally, I have no problem breaking a person’s arm on the way in. Why? Because it's in my way, however, if as I enter I don’t have to become decisively engaged with another person’s arms I just cut to the heart of the matter and end it right there. Why fuck around with it? You’re either trying to win the damn fight and probably save your life or you’re not. Anything else is just a game…
The key is developing your skill to the point where you cannot only do this and trust me this isn’t as hard as people think but also have the confidence in your ability to be able to do so. The bottom line is if you want to develop such skills you need to at some point take the leap of faith in your abilities otherwise you never get there.
As an aside, think of it like this and I’ve probably said this before in previous posts but I’ll say it again. If you ever learned how to ride a bike with training wheels, I didn’t, but let’s say you did. After about a day of that nonsense, you’ve pretty much learned how to ride the bike.
At some point, you realized that while the training wheels were good they eventually became a hindrance because you see. Your parents didn’t just put the training wheels on to protect you from getting hurt but also to give you confidence while riding that you weren’t going to fall and crack your skull open. But like I said at some point, you came to the conclusion that if you’re going to jump the Snake River Canyon on your bike like Evil Knievel tried (he actually used a rocket) you need to get those damn training wheels off because they are now hobbling your ability to really do what you could do on the bike. Learning to develop this skill is no different, at some point if you want to jump the Snake River Canyon so to speak, you have to take the leap of faith and take the training wheels off.
As I’ve discussed in the past there are generally three ways to deal with a strike coming at you, you can either try to block it, redirect it or evade it. But no matter what choice you make you’re going to act in the same amount of time no matter what. Now the one people usually choose is to block it, this is because a) they don’t want to get hit; b) they’ve trained themselves to block because well, they don’t want to get hit or; c) that’s how John Wayne, Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, and Gordon Liu (i.e., The Master Killer) fought in every movie they’ve ever seen and so that’s how you need to fight.
Yet this (blocking) is the hardest one to pull off for the same reason when you tackle someone in football the worst thing you can do is “stop” moving towards them before you deliver on them and wait for them and thus lose momentum. It’s a recipe to getting run the fuck over.
But the truth is if you know where their hands or arms are where you’re confident you can block them then you also can either get out of the way of them or redirect them. So what you want to do is invert the choice and focus on evading on the way in first, followed by redirecting and then as a last resort not block but to strike and crush on the way in. However, I want to point out that no matter what choice you make, no matter what! You want to always move your body out of the line of fire to their strikes as you enter and hedge your bets to the possibility that you may be struck protecting your head and throat on the way in.
Now, as I enter it is not as if when I enter there is no contact with their hands or arms, etc. it is that I’m not becoming decisively engaged with them they are merely a guide should I have to touch them at all to aid me on the way in towards sending the other guy off to meet their ancestors in the afterlife. I’m all about this sort of spiritual reunion for bad guys. As the Latins would say echoing Hannibal, “Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.”, I’ll either find a way or make one.
Taking Space
“Do nothing that is of no use.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
When you take space you want to think of it as moving in and filling all of the gaps as in the old martial analogy that armies, as Sun Tzu would say, are like water. As I’ve discussed before there is an inverse relationship to movement that cannot be ignored. And just as you can Create Space the inverse to this is Taking Space, “from them”.
So just as when you create space you steal time from them when you take their space it has an exponential effect where in a sense time collapses on them. So as you collapse your Sphere of Influence onto their Sphere and fill in all of the crevasses of space within their Sphere you make their movements useless.
Oh, one thing I need to say before I go on whether taking space or creating space one thing I don’t do is I never step back per se but step to a future position to crush them. In other words, my stepping back is usually offline on an angle and designed to set them up for an ambush to step into the space I want them to enter into. Just thought I’d throw that out there because there is a way to step where it appears from their relative perspective that you stepped back but it’s not, it’s a setup.
There is No Escape
If you’re a fan of the show Ray Donovan, on Showtime, you just can’t imagine his father Mickey played by the great Yonkers, NY native Jon Voight ever getting into a situation like this in the photo above like in the movie Anaconda. But this is basically what you want to visualize doing to some extent when taking another person's space.
They cannot go left, they cannot go right, they cannot go forward and even as they try to escape by stepping back it is in vain because no matter where they attempt to go they do not have enough time generally speaking to accomplish it because all time and space has collapsed on them.
There is no future position for them to flee to because you are already there. Everywhere they step is because you placed them there. Everywhere they attempt to create space is a fool’s errand because you have already caused them to move to the only possible place they can move and then you are waiting there for them...
Basic Taking Space Exercise
- If you have a training partner, movingly slowly at first, have your partner without striking at first move around as they did when they were creating space for themselves. What you want to do at first is stick with them, following their movements however and this is important do not push. The reason is if they are already moving away from you and you push. Then on some level, you have to be moving faster than they are. If you do this in the beginning as you are trying to gain control over your body to learn to prevent the over-travel in your own movement while developing this skill you will screw up your timing. Don’t do it!
- Next, you want to do the same thing only with the lightest touch possible first skimming along the surface of their body while trying to not restrict their movement using the Shadow Impression of their body as a guide. Follow their movements and develop a feel for how their body is moving and learn to anticipate their reaction to you following them without restricting their movement. In other words, learn without speeding up to anticipate where their next movement might be and see if eventually, You can smoothly get there.
- Eventually, you want to do this where your hands are maybe 1” inch above the surface of their body moving with them in the same fashion as before while they are moving. What you will find once you get the hang of this is first you will notice that this is not as hard as people think (or make it out to be) due to our ability to feel and track things within proximity of our hands (body). What you're going to find is a strange thing will happen. You will actually begin to feel where they are going or want to go before they get there. Like no shit!
- When this happens (and it will trust me) you need to ensure that you do not over travel with your hands otherwise for the same reasons above you will begin to over travel (I’ll explain over-traveling in a later post). Again there is a timing to this so you don’t want to build in bad habits in the initial stages as you are learning how to do this or you’ll once again screw yourself up.
- Then, and this will be the hard part for some folks. Purely on faith in your ability, repeat this exercise as above only now using your arms and whole body. Use to the outer surface of your arms, your forearms, elbows, shoulders, step in with your body and feel with the side of your body, your chest, etc. all without pushing if possible. Be willing to move in at uncomfortable man distance where your noses could practically touch. If your training partners breath stinks, get over yourself. Trust me there are worse things in the world than stinky breath like dying so get over yourself. No really get the fuck over yourself because let me tell you. If you do not learn how to collapse the sphere and are willing to place your body up against other human being's body. You will never develop the necessary will to close with and destroy the enemy. (As an editorial comment one thing, I've always given the grapplers credit for and being a former wrestler I totally get this is their willingness to get close to the other guy and kick that ass. In my next post, I'll speak to this a little more when I discuss what I call "The Fear Bubble". I'm just going to say upfront, the Fear Bubble is not a good thing and if you don't learn to get over that shit I don't care what you know if your moment of truth arrives you will not step into that space and do what must be done because you have not trained to it. "The way you train is the way you will fight" -Miyamoto Musashi). Just sayin...
- Final points on this exercise start slow stay as smooth and economical in your movement as possible and gradually build up speed until you can perform this at full speed without killing your training partner. In doing so you will develop the level of adumbration necessary to do this at high speed and they will learn how to get out of the way of things in the same fashion. Learning how to also anticipate your movements as you learn to anticipate theirs. Remember when you practice these skills it will take you just as long to develop a good or purposeful habit as it will to develop a bad habit. The difference is because the bad habit is not what you want and it takes like one hundred times the amount of effort to get rid of the bad habit or overwrite the bad code. Don’t do it!
Now if for some reason you do not have a training partner you can practice some of this on a heavy bag or Bob Fighting Man Dummy. while it's not the same it's at least something and will at least allow you to practice moving your body in this fashion. If you use a Bob you need to really move all around it. If you have a heavy bag you want to let it swing in every possible direction. Below are some training tips on how to do this with the heavy bag.
Taking Space Bag Drill
Eventually, you will add striking to these drills learning to anticipate the direction of where the bag is moving and where to be in the future. To strike the bag either as it comes towards you or even away from you as you follow it.
Well, that's it for now in my next post I'm going to get into how to Manipulate Space.
Thanks.
P.S. for those who want to learn more about how to develop this type of movement.
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Al Ridenhour
CEO, Creator Warrior Flow™