The Thing of Mastery Part IV

“Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

A big part of Mastery is this knowing yourself as Sun Tzu describes above. This knowing yourself and your enemy or at least his capabilities or what is the art of the possible I believe is the key to removing much of the ambiguity of combat or the fog of war. In order to do this though requires a level of introspection that few are willing to partake in.

So… after my last blog post, I had an interesting conversation via Facebook with Prof. Luciano Imoto of Academia Imoto in Sao Paulo Brazil. Luciano is a long-time practitioner of the martial arts and is proficient in various arts. He was my host for a series of workshops that I did last summer while in Brazil as well as being forced to each chocolate pizza. The horror!

So as a continuation of my last blog post discussing the nature of chaos and our understanding of it as it relates to our ability to develop “Mastery”.  He opened up in response to my blog post with a number of observations. What I’m going to do here is present that discussion because I think there are a lot of points that were raised that are totally applicable to our ability to develop Mastery.

Once again it is my postulation that when two or more people are engaged in combat that there is nothing “random” about their movement and the choices we make right or wrong are not random, and as another Instructor pointed out that a fight is NOT chaos but one of perception based on our observations, etc.

So with that said,

   Prof Imoto:

“Good question Al Ridenhour.

First, what is the definition of "chaos" in the context of martial arts?

I will give the definition I study:

"Real Violence is Chaos, and Chaos is Real Violence."

But what is the meaning of "violence" so as not to have a circular definition?

'Violence is enough force used for some purpose, whether constructive or destructive.'

Thus we will avoid placing moral values ​​since self-defense implies a situation in which it was impossible to avoid by running or negotiating and only physical action (i.e. violence) remained.

I find it impossible for anyone to predict all the possibilities of attack, defense and counterattack in milliseconds (and without touching the enemy), but it is likely that it will be possible to limit the number of alternatives available to both sides and thus "guide" the random flow of ongoing physical violence; in other words, controlling chaos by causing chaos (through sensorial disorientation, illusion, deception) on the enemy first: the number ONE rule of Art of War by Sun Tzu to win with the sheathed sword!

Another point is the question of the element of surprise that always haunts any fight. Anyone who has watched the movie "Final Destination" will understand how a chain of events having a domino effect alters everything: Imagine you are fighting and about to deal the fatal strike when suddenly your foot slips into a pool of sweat (or blood, or oil, or ice, etc.). This unpredictable factor is what I understand as chaos in an unexpected real fight. Even in the controlled and regulated scenario of fighting sports, "shit happens" ... That is, no matter how skillful, armed and superior to our opponents we are, in the real world we risk a setback that no martial art methodology could solve.

Of course, luck usually favors the best prepared, but if we put "luck" (or "bad luck") in the equation we will be entering an esoteric conversation that would lead us nowhere.”

“Prohibit omens altogether. You can best predict your future by controlling it yourself, not by trusting luck or fate to control it.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

My Response:

"Great points that’s why I asked those guys the question because there are a number of factors that can influence the outcome of any battle.

However, one thing that I’ve discovered over the years is that more often than not the idea that the fight is “random” gets thrown into the mix and is often confused with chaos as it pertains to human interactions.

But that can’t be true because if it’s true then there’s no way to train to deal with it nor is there any delineation between skilled fighters and the unskilled and we know from history that is not true either. In other words, it is more of a perception based on the level of skill one possesses. Otherwise, it assumes that there is nothing you can train too. And that is just not true.

Chaos when we’re talking about fighting as I said, is a perception and is relative based on a number of factors, training, experience, terrain, weather, mindset, you name it. But just because there are more things that we can probably name does not make it any more chaotic than it is but rather 'subjective' based on those factors.

When I was in Iraq I used to do 'Red Team' evaluations, that’s where we would go to a base and look at the vulnerabilities based on the enemy's known capabilities and then make recommendations on how people could improve the security on their base.

I can tell you whenever we were called to a base to investigate how something happened after an incident you’d be surprised how many factors were involved leading up to an attack where if people had known what they needed to know beforehand. They almost assuredly would have been able to mitigate if not prevent an attack in the first place.

Here’s the deal though, and this is key and very, very, very hard for people to comprehend. If you can get far enough ahead of the enemy's action it is not chaos even if they do something you didn’t anticipate.

The reason is once you arrive at the future ‘it’ already happened. This is the hardest part about ‘fighting in the future’ or ‘playing where the puck is going to be’ that people do not get.

The reason is once you arrive at the future position it is not that the other person may not know what to do about it. It’s that they do not have enough time to do anything about it.

This is the problem in my view with most martial training to include weapons training. There is not enough emphasis is placed on the importance of developing the body as well as the proper mindset to improve their timing or the understanding of how time affects what is possible in a fight thus the outcome.

We occupy three-dimensional space and time no matter how relative it is, it is a factor because we control that space and thus have to move that space (i.e., our mass that occupies it).

Everything, ‘everything’ takes time, and once I arrive in the future because it is my future I’m able to anticipate possibilities and probabilities as well as ‘expect the unexpected’.  This is as much a mental understanding as it is a physical ability and the two cannot be separated. Which, is exactly what most people do and is why they can’t gain these insights that stare them in the face all of the time.

They have to change their perceptions of how the universe works if they are to learn to use it to their advantage. They deny the universe and how it works so the universe denies them the ability to manipulate its physical laws.

At that point, I have the ability to shape and lead you to the wrong place because it is my future based on my observation thus I “create” what you experience.

Now, because I am ahead of your movement in the future, the reason you can’t do much if anything about it is because you do not have enough time to deal with what I am doing.

Also, once I reach the future I also reach the state of creativity where you don’t know why I did what I did the way I did it when it did it because I may not know where I’m going to go from one moment to the next because I’m creating it on the fly. So, if I don’t know where I may go next, you damn sure can’t follow and since my movement at that point is influencing your movement. I already to a high degree of probability know where you are going to be ‘because I put you there’.

Now here’s the kicker, everything that I just said happens all at the same time which is why I refer to it as the 7 Dimensions of Combat.

What I am saying here is not a Warrior Flow thing but something that influences ‘all arts’ because it influences all human movement. So since we move and operate within the material universe and until we become ‘spirits’ this is the way business gets done.

One thing I want to point out as far as speed is concerned. True things can happen in a microsecond, but you know what you can move in a microsecond because human movement is faster than people think providing you know how to manipulate the timing of others.

If I told you that I could teach you how to move in a way that alters the perception of time for another person. Where they can be staring you right in the face and you can strike them at will and there is, for the most part, little they can do about it, what’s that worth to you to learn?

That’s what I’m talking about because that’s how you move to remove the ambiguity and thus reduce the chaos of a real fight.

Remember, that speed is relative because it is influenced by time and can be neutralized to a degree if you know how to anticipate and move sooner or are able through deception to ‘fix’ a person in a certain position long enough to throw off their perception of time.

When I get into the concepts within Warrior Flow of how time influences combat and how I teach people to manipulate it in battle. Trust me when I tell you. It’s going to fuck some people’s heads up!

They’re going to realize that in their training they’ve been chasing too many shiny objects and haven’t paid enough attention when performing their arts. On how to move in a way to make it work based on the relationships they share with other people in the battle. And how to move in a way to shape their perception long enough to knock their blocks off.

Yeah… like that…

Anyway thanks.”

   Prof Imoto's Response:

“Everything you explained above and in your article makes sense to me, I have already trained directly with you and I know what it's like to be on the other side of your fists. My question is not about the ability to cause chaos and prevent the enemy from surprising us. I know it is possible to be proactive and to position yourself better than the opposition. Often this alone avoids confrontation by discouraging the opponent who loses the initiative when his/her plans are detected and previously annulled with simple gestures (body language, verbal, harnessing environmental conditions, etc.).

My point is that however skillful, well trained and armed we are, we must always consider the possibility of chance, that is, the ‘luck’ factor. That's why I stand back from the sports like BJJ that give tremendous overconfidence to their practitioners, which in turn put themselves in disadvantageous positions that have caused many stupid deaths.

I know this is not the case with your methodology, but I see no point in dismissing the chaos factor because no one is immune or ‘attack proof’. From what I've been learning from you and Perkins, certain skills will only be awakened when the subconscious mind takes control and flows into the actual world where time and space do not exist. Again we will be entering a very subjective/esoteric/psychic field here that I suspect no martial methodology has yet to fully cover (that is, only isolated individuals succeeded on their own merit, insights and deadly effort and not because of any ‘advanced system’ and sometimes despite them).

I suspect Miyamoto Musashi, Sokaku Takeda, Sagawa Yukiyoshi, Waysun Liao, Liu Chengde, Ben Lo, Dan Harden, Mikhail Ryabko, John Perkins, Tim Carron, and YOU are all examples of what I am talking about: extraordinary people (survivors!) forged by extraordinary situations and trained by other extraordinary people forged by extraordinary situations too (masters are only the last point of an infinity reticence as said a famous swordsmanship).

In my 25 years of experience as a self-defense instructor, it is very rare to find talent (natural gift) and discipline in the same vessel.

But I'm digressing here ...

Glad to have this opportunity to talk about such concepts with you, which is why social media can still help us share knowledge that was once limited to an elite.”

 “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

My Response:

“Everything you said is dead on and yes you cannot rule out the ‘luck’ factor because it what we say is true about human movement and physics. Then even a person who is so-called untrained can get lucky and be right.  

Most of this I know you know so I’m just posting this so that others who follow you can benefit from it. It is actually a part of a future blog post I’m working on.

What I’m going to share here is a part of the philosophical and training concepts of Warrior Flow and how we view training that I discuss and teach all of the time.

Now, on the issue of the subconscious mind, always remember that when learning any new skill, it still starts in the front of your head even if it is a judgment or an observation and then eventually it reaches the subconscious competence level. The idea that it all spontaneously springs forth from the subconscious is ‘bullshit’. It starts somewhere else and then it develops to the subconscious competence level. And whether it takes five years, five minutes or five micro-seconds it still takes some time to process and build in.

The reason people don’t get this is because, the more skilled you become the shorter the learning curve to learn things that are similar in nature or to learn new things that are built on the same foundational skills as what you’ve already developed.

So, even though similar doesn’t equate to being the same, it’s still close enough to generally give you a head start. For example, if you know how to rollerblade it’s easier to pick up how to ice skate, if you know how to throw a football it’s easier to pick up how to throw a baseball, just as skateboarding is to snowboarding, and so on.

So, for the more skilled it seems like they are pulling it from the ether when in fact on some level they have already built-in enough pathways and experiences to not only reach into a deeper bag of tricks but create things on the spot because they can connect the dots faster. Like the 7-Dimensions of Combat in Warrior Flow, it is not a linear process but one of ‘harmony’ where all of the pieces come together in the right place at the right time. 

My point is the subconscious mind is not magic but a real thing every bit as much as the conscious mind and can be trained all the same. Even as I type this there is thought in my head of what words I want to use and what I want to say. Yet I do not have to think about this because I learned to read and write and type to the point where that skill resides at the subconscious competence level. So there is thought but for the most part, it is outside of my conscious awareness.

But because the brains processing speed of words is so fast it seems like it is happening as I am typing this. When in fact by the time I say the word in my head my brain already formed the word 1200 to 1400 times faster than I can say it.

The key is at the subconscious level is where much of the creativity comes from because there are things that we don’t have to consciously think about since we’ve pretty much already built it in upfront. This allows us to focus or direct our minds on other things or allows the brain time to connect the dots. Again you cannot not think even on the subconscious level there is thought. It is just that once again it is a level of thought outside of our conscious awareness.

Behold I show you a mystery…

If you get what I’m about to reveal it’s going to hopefully change the way you think about training.

What you really want to do is:

1) learn in your training, based on how the universe works (i.e., laws of physics, human physiology), ‘to ask better questions’. When you ask better questions you not only get better answers but often you answer your own question just by asking. It is not enough to ask 'how?' a thing was done but 'why?'. By asking better questions often the thing reveals itself and the answers eventually become self-evident. As you said true a fight is about contact but it is more important that you understand the experience in context otherwise you’re just moving for the sake of moving. Folks who do this are just wasting time, burning precious time off of their existence that they don’t get back;

2) understand that if you can make an observation about something based on knowing how it works, and understand the ‘why’ question, you can train yourself to respond in the manner you want to respond and teach yourself to the subconscious competence level to make a better choice in your movement, and on and on. Remember that in all that we do there is thought, talking is thinking, walking is thinking, thinking is thinking, thinking about not thinking is thinking, and so on. YOU CANNOT NOT THINK! It is not even possible. The key is when you are training whatever it is you want to teach yourself how to do to the subconscious competence level. What you are really doing and want to think about is teaching yourself how to ‘think on purpose’ [as a side note this is what I believe Grandmaster Carron was speaking to when he told me that I need to develop purposeful habits] and;

3) understand that anything that you teach yourself how to do to the subconscious competence level, just get it in your head that by the time your body is in motion ‘it’ whatever your body is trying to do already happened. And just as we process words in the brain faster than we can say them we process movement in the body faster than the body can physically respond. This is also the reason that when you use deception by the time the person tries to respond the reason they can’t move fast enough to deal with you is until they stop whatever they were doing before, they are not even capable of doing something else. This is a scientific fact! And how guys fake each other out in sports all of the time.

Now even though I know you know all of this you have to take it to heart and put it into practice every waking moment until it because just the way you move to develop the purposeful habits that serve you. You need to do them when training and teaching so that you can get greater results faster and provide a more meaningful context to your training. This is a major part of the process of teaching people how to see the future in Warrior Flow or what I call ‘Adumbration of Movement’.

Too many people in the martial arts are just going through the motions in their training because they do not understand how people actually learn in the body so in some cases they can’t even teach themselves. They either over complicate it, do things that are neurologically wrong for your body or they frame the process as if it is magic or that it is up to the fate of the gods, and that somehow the skills they desire will come to them through the ether of the universe, the Force or some other nonsense. 

It’s simple to me if you trained yourself to for example, what to do when someone grabs you, you can train yourself how to not let them grab you. If you can train yourself to not let them grab you, you can train yourself to recognize the grab before it happens and so on. The key here is you need to have an understanding of human movement and how time/reaction time/speed really work.

This is an entirely different thought process and one of the reasons why people can’t get there from here. Until they can see it in their minds they can’t see it with their eyes.”

 Prof Imoto’s Response:

"It’s simple to me if you trained yourself to for example, what to do when someone grabs you, you can train yourself how to not let them grab you. If you can train yourself to not let them grab you, you can train yourself to recognize the grab before it happens and so on. The key here is you need to have an understanding of human movement and how time/reaction time/speed really work.

This is an entirely different thought process and one of the reasons why people can’t get there from here. Until they can see it in their minds they can’t see it with their eyes."

It makes sense to me. Do you think is it possible, without directly touching the hands of those who know this, to learn these skills and know-how to transfer such knowledge to real combat?

Effort and individual experiences (before and after) will dictate the results and the fruits, although rational methods of teaching and training can help the disciplined student instead of delaying the results as long his/her instructors has internalized such skills.

 “The secret of getting successful work out of your trained men lies in one nutshell—in the clearness of the instructions they receive.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

My Response:

“Luciano, in response to your great question:

‘Do you think is it possible, without directly touching the hands of those who know this, to learn these skills and know-how to transfer such knowledge to real combat?’

The answer is HELL YES!

But with a caveat…

There is a level of contact that has to be the basis to develop this skill and if explained properly and it is properly framed then yes this is totally doable.

How do I know?

Because I’ve helped people do it. But this is also provided you practice it with a partner exactly as described.  

Now some may ask,

‘If you never feel it from someone who is proficient in this type of movement then how do you know what it’s supposed to be?’

Fair questions so here’s the answer.

We are all human and we all share the same experiences when it comes to things like human touch etc. If and this is a big ‘if’ because I’ve even seen people fuck this up in person because they do not know how to frame things in the proper context.

If explained correctly in the proper context a person as I’ve seen can and ‘will’ develop this level of skill and transfer it to combat because we’re just talking about motion or movement.

I know there are some who will scoff at this but I saw how people did this with the book Attack Proof and the DVDs.

The key is it has to be explained, framed, and basically taught correctly.  

But if they explain it correctly oh Hell yes you can learn it!

This is the reason why most arts that have difficulty with this is because first of all it is not framed correctly so they just don’t know what they don’t know. And they’re not going to know because they have the wrong understanding of how the thing works in the first place. The other reason is they have very little contact in their training or the contact is not trained in a dynamic natural way especially in the beginning.

You need to have some level of contact even light contact to develop not only the proper timing and neural pathways or touch. But also a level of confidence to do this. Without contact, you may never develop this.

You see unless you can get over the fear that causes panic when we interact with another person like this. The panic that people experience when they try to do something for real they have never even attempted before. You cannot get there from here.

The main reason people panic is because their mind and body does not understand what it is they are experiencing. We are all human so this response is normal.

So even though the body can feel what is going on because it does not understand in context what it is experiencing and what to do about it. It causes the panic reflex to kick in. Again this is normal.

But if the proper explanation is presented and the training framed in the right context I can tell you, you can develop these skills big time.

I personally received emails from people who tell me just by reading my blog posts and practicing things that I discuss and teach have improved their skills immensely.

Once again if properly explained in the proper context this is totally doable.

Those who say otherwise don’t know what they are talking about.

Great question.”

I also want to point out here that yes if you train in person with someone who is proficient in this type of movement it can enhance your skill immensely. However, I’ve seen too many people over the years who due to their own initiative and dedication. Have developed a level of skill to the point where you’d think they were regular students in our school.

“The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Again, within Warrior Flow through this understanding, we do not strive to follow people although at times it cannot be avoided but strive to lead them to the wrong place. This is the ability, to perceive and cut things off beforehand that all practitioners of Warrior Flow need to strive for in all they do when performing the Warrior Flow Exercise. 

Well, that’s it, for now, like before I know this was a little long-winded but I felt it was important to share as it relates to Mastery.

Thank you. 

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™

Al Ridenhour is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the US Marine Corps with 28-years of service active and reserve with multiple combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. He has also served as a Law Enforcement consultant to the NJ State Police Special Operations Section, NJ Transit Police Operations Section, The NJ Regional Operations and Intelligence Center, the FBI Philadelphia Bomb Section, and subject matter expert to the US Department of Homeland Security's, Explosives Division. With nearly 40-years of Combative Arts experience, he is recognized as a self-defense expert worldwide and is highly sought out for seminars, workshops, lectures, and special individualized training.  He is the author of "Warrior Flow Mind" (2020), Co-Author of "Attack Proof: The Ultimate Guided in Personal Protection (Human Kinetics, 2010) and the Co-Author of "How to Fight for Your Life" (June 2010).

For more go to https://protectyourself.mykajabi.com/

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