Your Journey Into Fluid Power - PART II

Building on the previous blog post "Your Journey Into Fluid Power - PART I".  I will now discuss the next level toward building this type of fluid combative power and movement. 

Along with the major principles of GUIDED CHAOS of Balance, Looseness, Sensitivity, Body Unity and Adaptation or Freedom of Action. There are what I define as sub-principles or "Attributes". One attribute that you will want to develop is what we call "Smooth Hitting".

Smooth Hitting 

What is "Smooth Hitting"?

Smooth Hitting (sometimes called “Loose Hitting”) is exactly what the name says "hitting smoothly" by throwing strikes in the smoothest manner possible. 

Now before you call BS on this just hear me out because I’m going to explain how this works.

As you will recall in my previous blog post on this the reason smooth movement creates both an "optical" as well as “physical illusion” is because smooth movement is unitized movement, and unitized movement is efficient movement.

As your Body Unity improves you want practice moving faster and faster up to full speed remaining as relaxed as possible all throughout. As your timing and muscular control along with balance, sensitivity, body unity and looseness develop you will not have to move as much in order to strike with maximum and lethal power which, is exactly what you want.

Punches Should Be Felt Not Seen

If you’ve ever read, “The Tao of Jeet Kune Do” one of the statements in the book that Bruce Lee makes is goes along the lines of, “Punches should be felt not seen…”, now at the time reading it I was studying Karate so it didn’t seem to make much sense to me.

Back then the only way I thought such a thing was possible is if you were to develop your speed to the point where your punches were blinding fast.

Those who have heard me tell this story before know of my humiliation. After meeting Grandmaster Perkins’ the first time that idea died quickly. The first time I ever moved with him nothing made any sense.

No matter how fast I moved, no matter how much power I put into my strikes I always seemed a day late and a dollar short in everything I did. He basically started off by saying “do whatever you want” so I did (as an aside anyone who tells you to do whatever you want you need to be wary… “I’m just sayin”).

Pfft… He was hitting me at will!

Years later I would get him to admit that a couple of times I could see him “smiling” right before he hit me.

As if that wasn’t bad enough he then had me work with one of the female instructors only to further add to my humiliation. Personally, I feel I was “set up” that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Anyway…

No matter what I did I got hit it was like the “Three Stooges” or something. Yeah it was that bad. At a certain point “I could feel in my body” that all I was doing was “swinging” like the “Frankenstein Monster” fighting off a torch. I felt like Charlie Brown trying to kick that football only to have Lucy pull it away at the last second while using an “Old Jedi Mind Trick” on me again. It was ridiculous.

What’s important to understand here is that during the whole time I always felt in my body while moving against them, “awkward”. The smoothness of their movement, the seamless transition from one position to another, the efficiency of their strikes and “the power” made no sense. I could see it coming at times then their hands would disappear and I would be hit.

It wouldn’t be until many years later I would understand that the strikes I thought I saw, were what they wanted me to see. I was looking at “where they were” and not “where they were going to be” in “The Future” (that is a whole different discussion).

They were everywhere and nowhere their punches were felt but not seen.

They were moving their bodies in such a manner where though I was faster I was never going to catch up let alone get ahead of them. Like I said I was just swinging.

How It’s Done

What I’m presenting here is just an idea of how you can begin to develop this. There are other things you can do but this I found is a good way to start.

When performing this the goal is to develop the proper neural muscular coordination in your body to move to strike with as little muscle tension as possible. Grandmaster Perkins sometimes calls this effortless kind of striking “Hitting with Your Skeleton”.  

You want to strike using just enough muscular control to lift and move your arms only contracting the muscles for structure in the strike as you penetrate them.

The idea is to train yourself to strike without “tensing up” as you begin to move creating antagonistic unnecessary tension in the muscles or having any “preparatory” movements such as winding up or “flinching” as you throw your strikes, which is a common mistake. 

Many people teach you how to strike but they don’t teach you how to move in a way where you’re not giving it away prior to striking.

If you’re fighting for your life and you going to strike why would you give it away?

The reason people sucker punch people is because it works. You’re under no obligation to fight fair.

Now what if you could sucker punch people looking them dead in the eye?

What if you could sucker punch people while moving in such a manner where the set up to the strike was built into the movement itself, making it indistinguishable from any other movement?

That’s what I’m talking about!

Understand that “Looseness” as defined in GUIDED CHAOS is not the absence of using muscle but the absence of unnecessary tension both “physical” and “mental”. In a nutshell it is the subtle muscle control to move in the most efficient “natural” manner possible.

How It’s Done

1.      First start off standing with your feet parallel to each other no more than shoulder width apart. Relaxed with your arms up in front of you and then begin to mimic the motion as if swimming (Dry Land Swimming) or the throwing motion as if throwing a baseball very slowly as if you are moving in slow motion. 

2.      Ensure you do not lift or move your feet because you are trying to sync your whole body so you need to be able to move in a manner where you can feel if you are moving out of sync as you turn and shift your equilibrium.

3.      Ensure you drive all of the movement from your feet with your knees slightly bent, and not your arms and rotate the shoulders and hips in sync with each other alternating sides so that you develop this ability in each arm.

4.      Next you want to begin throwing strikes in various directions moving in a smooth graceful manner in the same way you started. You want to ensure there are no jerky movements. Your movement should remain as smooth and graceful as possible. Whatever strikes you perform are irrelevant as long as it’s within the natural range of motion of what you can do within your body.

At an advanced level you can perform this same exercise using weighted balls by moving with them in your hands, but I recommend you use balls that weigh no more than four pounds. This will force your body to have to move in a unitized manner driving the movement from your feet in order to control your Balance.

Loose Striking

1.      Next stand as described previously relaxed with your arms in front of a heavy bag or “Bob Fighting Man Dummy” and bring your arms up just as you did in the air. Turn your body in the same fashion keeping your arms relaxed rotating your body toward the bag striking the bag in the center level with the arm. Ensure you do not move your feet or lift them for the same reasons as previously mentioned.

2.      You want your arm at first to remain relaxed and let the hand using a palm strike “run into the bag or striking dummy”. In essence you want your hand to run into the bag as if the bag was in the way of your motion. At first ensure you do not use force or attempt to strike with force otherwise you will begin to tense up at the wrong moment.

3.      Once you have developed the ability to strike with your hand in this fashion you now want to form a palm strike with more structure with hand at the end of the strike. When striking in this manner the hand must remain relaxed and only upon impact with the bag “then” and only then do you want to “form” the weapon. This will prevent you from creating any antagonistic muscle in your arms, which actually reduces striking power since it actually puts the breaks on your motion.

4.      Start off slow and then gradually build in the speed and power into the strike. At first your arms should feel heavy as you move them eventually you should feel the weight of your body down to feet root as your turn and strike. This will develop incredible effortless penetrating power.

5.      Later on you will want to practice this striking from every conceivable position with every conceivable strike you can imagine within the natural range of motion of your body building power and speed as you develop.

Final Thoughts

The key to developing this is that when practicing ensure all of the movement is as smooth as possible and that everything is performed at the same speed. Eventually you’ll want to begin to increase the speed building up to full speed over time.

You want to feel this in every fiber of your being. Your body should feel at first heavy as you feel your weight down into your feet as you learn to move in a relaxed manner.

Over a very short time you will feel as if above the waist your body is floating or feels like “liquid” when moving in this fashion. When you move you should feel as if you are flowing, feeling the air move around your body as if moving through water.

Well that’s it for now I hope you found this useful.

Thanks.

LtCol Al

Senior Master Instructor

Guided Chaos