Warrior Mind Flow Exercise (For Those in Exile...)

"Day by day, what you do is who you become."

    ― Heraclitus

First Things First – The Warrior Flow Mission

To revolutionize the way people move in the body they have regardless of size or physical limitations to defend themselves and their loved ones. By offering people a realistic modality of training to help them achieve their self-defense goals through the Combative Movement. We achieve this by developing them through concepts within the laws of physics of how humans move. Simply put we teach people how to fight.

Five Steps to Learning to Be Good

Okay, you really need to read this because it is going to set up the framework for how you’re going to practice over the next 30-days, (40 minutes a day over 4 weeks).

The process of learning is not difficult people just make it hard, the key when learning to focus on a skill using this guide is we’re removing all of the frustrations and obstacles that get in the way of us digging down and doing the work.

We're shaping our behavior in such a way that we will actually see results from the time and attention we're spending improving on something. It is common sense but not common in practice. We already do it but we have a choice we can do it the hard way or the easier strategic way.

In order to learn something new and be good at it requires (from all the research I’ve done as well as learned through training people and myself) a focused strategic effort invested in something you care about and doing something that is going to be rewarding to yourself and to your life. For us, it’s martial skill.

Learning is a uniquely human activity we do it all of the time. Now, if you can learn one thing then you can learn another. Think about this, at one time in your life whatever it was you learned, you didn't know the first thing about it, and then you knew. Then you learned the next related thing in the process, and knew the next thing and so on. But also, and this is extremely important repetition is key, (i.e., doing it over and over in a progressive manner) is vital to any learning because you need to train the body and mind. You wouldn’t be reading this or know how to count and a million other things you do every day if this were not true.

The key is and what people fuck up all of the time because they don’t know how to teach, is it must be progressive in nature and must increase in difficulty in very small increments no more than 3-5 percent. Otherwise, we become overwhelmed.  How long it takes depends but it doesn't happen any other way.

Generally speaking, and you can find all sorts of books on this saying it takes about 21 days to form a new habit. Now, whether it takes 21 days, 20 days, 24 days to me it’s a moot point, the main thing is you need to put the time in because what we are talking about here is building in a habit or what one of my masters used to call “purposeful habits”.

So, in this guide what you are going to do is commit to at least 20-hours of practice or 40 minutes per day for a month. You can even spread it out and do the exercises for less time and just extend out the number of days you practice or you can do an hour per day but, I recommend no more than 40 minutes, since human concentration and focus wanes after 20 minutes for passive activates such as sitting in on a lecture and 40 minutes when we’re active.

This is why even in sports there are breaks not just for the body but for the mind as well. Remember, the body and mind are one so it’s all the same thing. Get it in your head right now, no matter how frustrating, the greatest leap in your ability, from what I've seen, is in the first 20 hours. By pre-committing towards 20 hours of practice, you are guaranteeing you're going to make it through those frustrating early hours.

Trust me nobody, I mean nobody, is good at anything when they first start out. I’ve been training people for over 30 years and I have yet to see someone master any of the concepts I teach the first time out. It is not possible because I’m talking about a complete rewiring of their body and how it moves on the quantum level.

By the way, 20 hours is not magical it's just a line in the sand a marker to guarantee you'll commit to practicing long enough but not so long that it's a barrier to that practice itself. 

By doing this you're guaranteeing you'll push past the hard part and if you follow this method I guarantee you’ll see dramatic results. I know this for a fact because I have done this for myself. Even though all those many years ago I did not know this is what I was actually doing. It was only after I researched it that I came to this understanding.

My point is this is extremely important especially when it becomes challenging. Do not “dabble” or you'll cheat yourself. Do not be like these folks who I used to train who were not happy with their lack of progress but when I would ask them about their personal practice they would tell me that they didn’t do it on their own. My answer to them was like, “Well no shit!”

Once you’ve developed a skill you desire whatever it is, then do something else but related to it that you want to learn for the next 20 hours, and the next 20 hours over and over to continue to build skill on top of skill, piling effort on top of effort. By this method and way of thinking you can learn basically anything. But you must layer it over and over. (i.e., by rote method)

As Yoda would say, "Do or do not do, there is no try..."

One more thing we learn by doing, even when we are thinking about it we on some level are doing. Also, “fail soon and fail often” in other words, don’t be afraid to fail, the faster you fail the sooner you learn what doesn’t work for you in the process and the faster you can self-correct, and learn faster and faster.

Do not be afraid to go fast as soon as you can. This is a major misconception and one that I even once taught and that is you must always remain slow.

Bullshit!

True you have to go slow at first in order to train the muscles, body, etc., but once you have a reasonable level of smooth movement and skill you want to start increasing the speed until you reach for extremely brief moments full speed or the optimum speed. Speed changes all things and the movement in the body. This forces the part of the brain that controls speed to develop and learn faster as well as control the over-travel in your movement.

Speaking of speed, remember there is both acceleration and deceleration and they both work off of each other and the two for proper dynamic coordination cannot, I repeat, cannot be separated there is a plurality of movement that must always be considered. There is no control without the ability to decelerate. Period.

When you train your body to move in as smooth a manner as possible no matter what you do, never move to the end of your natural range of motion in any direction. This will build in the proper movement habits right upfront to prevent you from reaching the point where you cannot change direction or move your body freely. This is a terrible mistake people make all of the time in martial training.

My rule is to never move more than 90% of the range of motion for your joints to include the rotation of your joints in any direction. Your joints should always feel free, unencumbered no matter which direction you move. This is the essence of how you want to develop the Quantum Sphere Concept in your training. This also forces you to move your whole body all of the time. There is no smooth movement without using your whole body it is not even possible. So when you train to be fast, also give consideration to learning how to control your over-travel by learning to decelerate your motion.

Adumbration - this movement, this adumbration is where we get this “foreshadowing” of a person’s movement, this “listening” to their bodies, feeling their impressions, their intent, their direction and speed, their adjustments to your movements.

As Dr. Riggio describes it,

“…it’s also about developing a specific kind of intuition to notice for what is present but unseen, including the emergent future possibilities — something I refer to as adumbration or the art of foreseeing the immediate future that’s unfolding in this moment.”

The ability to feel how they react to our movement in real-time where you change your movement to alter their perception of what they think it is you are doing long enough for you to take advantage of their confusion. It’s all about using the Shadow Impression to get ahead of movement and deliver strikes at supernatural speed.

(I would also like to point out that in all things when dealing with human movement there is a pattern or as we prefer to call it an “impression” of people’s bodies as they move. This is the reason we are able to get ahead of their movement when we do the Warrior Flow Exercise. However, it is not so much that we feel and recognize the patterns it is that we begin to recognize the “shape” of what it is to become. This is a different thing altogether and explains much as to why some folks can get ahead of others even if they have been training for less time. It is their ability to make this mental shift focusing on recognizing the shapes thus “adumbration”.)

Like Modeling, it is a calculus and the very means in which we get ahead of another person’s movement to the future. Adumbration also has an internal feel to it within your joints, muscles, center of gravity, sense of equilibrium, etc. where it governs how you just know to move within your body just enough with the right amount of movement at the right time. This is the ability that all practitioners of Warrior Flow need to strive for in all they do when performing the Warrior Flow Exercise. We do not strive to follow people although at times it cannot be avoided but we strive to lead them.

Anticipatory Movement – This is the thing you do before you do the thing you are going to do in the body and has both a physical and mental aspect to it or what we call Anticipation, which is the ability to foresee and regard as probable or possible; expect or predict. This is what we in Warrior Flow refer to as the 6^th Dimensional Aspect of Combat. This is where you are able to anticipate possibilities and probabilities to a high degree. Remember our brains are always, always, always anticipating. You cannot not do this just as you cannot not think.

 

Modeling – this is one of the skills you want to learn to develop during this period of training. Modeling is a calculus where if you understand the relationships of things you can predict what people will do even in situations they've never been in. This is the same as studying tendencies in sports. (This is not mimicking as some people have incorrectly described it. Mimicking is just that “mimicking” a behavior but there generally is no understanding or wisdom when you mimic so the knowledge is lost on people).

From there you can predict the "arc" or outcome of a certain pattern of movement, thought or whatever. This is also how "intuitions" are structured. This is the part of the talent that I call the "intellect". The part that allows you to "transcend" your physical limitations. (Adumbrations? I believe yes but that the adumbrations are a part of the intuitions or the part of the intuitions for movement of how the body finds the space between space, movement between movement, adjustments between adjustments). This "arc" (I call this the "Arc of Predictability"), "the future", the "Anticipation", the 5th and 6th-dimensional aspects of combat. 

This is how we gain glimpses of the future and can see the lines, the space in between, the "dimensions" which allows for creativity. The "secret" I believe to "creativity" (7th-dimensional aspect of combat) which as I've said is a process because there has to be a basis or foundation in order to be able to tap into our knowledge and experience. But also based on how we know things work in "the known universe" in order to piece together things like a good musician who knows how to improvise. We are then able to extract information and experience and "run the calculus" and fit things together that we know "have-to-be-true" (I.e., the "theorem") and connect the dots as we go along.

Arc of Predictability - this "arc" we develop through modeling or as I call it the "Arc of Predictability", "The Future", the "Anticipation", the 5th and 6th-dimensional aspects of combat. This is how we gain glimpses of the future and can see the lines, the space in between, the dimensions.

WARRIOR MIND FLOW

 

As Yoda would say, “Training for you I have…”

 

Question:

 

How do you train both mentally and physically in order to take your skills to the next level?”

 

Answer:

 

You need to begin to “feel” what is happening before another person can get their stuff off. This includes whether you have “physical contact” or not.

In order to accomplish this, it is where you must now use your “imagination” because this is “part” physical and about 95%-99% mental.

The physical parts are all of the drills that we do to develop the body along with all of their and components of WARRIOR FLOW and of course the Warrior Flow Exercise. That’s the easy part and I think you have that part down the hard part is what we must all strive and continually work at and that is developing in our Mind’s the ability to “feel” what is going on with or without contact and respond appropriately. This is important because more often than not the reason that I am able to move like the wind is because I have developed the ability to be so light that my contact is unperceivable, in fact sometimes (most of the time) I’m not even touching people but merely “feeling” my way through the fight yet knowing where they are in relation to my body at all times. 

This is not a mystical thing but fact and is the same skill as I’ve discussed in my blog posts a basketball player uses when he takes it to the hole through a crowd of players or when a running back shakes, jukes and slips through space to avoid being tackled. Even without physical contact, they are able to judge spatial relationships and if necessary avoid physical contact with other people. This is like I said 99% mental and with the exception of using your senses, it is more internal than external and based more on your perception of what is going on than what you feel through physical contact such as in contact flow or an actual attack. This is also the same skill I use when launching an attack from a distance.

If you will recall in some of my previous blog posts where I have described how we have the ability to judge relationships between our bodies and the physical world. Okay now here’s where it gets weird, by mastering the understanding of this thing called “Viceralization” to the best of my abilities I am able to feel objects in relation to my body without contact however this is more psychological and physiological based on our senses than anything however one can easily see how the ancient fighting masters and their students could confuse this as some form of “Chi” projection.

This is that thing I believe we sometimes refer to as our “Mind’s Eye” that sees and feels things even though it is all in our heads which is why SOLO COMBATIVE FLOW MOVEMENT is so critical to your development to the higher levels of the art.

For example, when you’re about to catch a baseball or football you can feel the object before you catch it however this ability to feel the ball without touching it is in truth 100% mental. It is not real! Only in our heads…

So if it is not real then what is it? It is muscular memory [i.e., neuromuscular], or thought…?

So because you have caught footballs or baseballs before and held them before you know what the ball is supposed to feel like when you catch it. This is also why sometimes you see a receiver in a football game to begin to turn and run before he has actually tucked the ball away, it is because he in truth he has already “caught it” in his mind or “Mind’s eye” which is why we always tell them in football to “look the ball in” to ensure they don’t turn and run too soon. Because the ability to actually catch an object is usually more difficult than to merely make contact with it since it requires just that extra half-second of concentration in order to catch an object, whereas if the intent were to bat the football down as in the case of a defender then the task is much simpler.

This same understanding, I am convinced is the primary reason why “blows” are superior to grappling in a real fight, they just require a lower degree of skill to be effective whereas the act of physically grabbing someone, while not impossible is more akin to actually catching an object as opposed to striking at it.

This same phenomenon I believe happens in fighting as well, where we just seem to know it before it happens thus why people sucker punch folks. This is why you want to develop the ability to get ahead of another person’s movement so they do not have enough time to evade or negate your strike.  

Often times when working with people unless they are adept at doing this even when I’m being hit I have felt it before they ever got their stuff off. However, in order for them to learn to some degree I have to allow them to strike me or else they will never learn to hit for effect because they have to know what it feels like to strike in relation to their body’s alignment when striking.

Anyway…

When I move even without contact as long as I can see you or feel you in proximity of my body even if it is out of the corner of my eye. Once I have seen you because I have touched people before I can in my mind, “feel you” as well and through the proper practice of developing the proper adumbration, I am able to judge spatial relationships especially if you are within my sphere of influence instantly.

This of course coupled with strategy and the concepts of WARRIOR FLOW create the illusion that I know what you are going to do before I do it.  But so can you!

The main point I want to make here is that this is not a difficult skill to develop but you have to practice it.

So with that all said how do you practice this?

Here are some suggestions however I do not for a NY minute believe them to be a panacea for developing this skill but merely the tip of the iceberg. 

So over the next three to four weeks for at least 40 minutes a day, you need to focus on practicing the skills I’m going to discuss. You might as well do it because it’s not like you’re going anywhere anytime soon while we’re under lockdown.

The Exercises

1. SOLO COMBATIVE FLOW MOVEMENT practice. This is also part of what I call “Warrior Mind Flow” as I move doing this exercise I basically move on my own as if fighting an attacker improvising all the way, there is no beginning or end to my movements nor are there any preconceived movements everything is based on what I feel like doing at that moment in time. This same concept applies to Body Washing and Polishing the Sphere as well and in truth is an offshoot of the later. Warrior Mind Flow, is flow without a partner and is a combination of polishing the sphere and washing the body all rolled into one. It is done very slowly to extremely fast with an explosive striking to boot but always starting from moving so slow. Sometimes I strike in one direction sometimes I strike in three different directions balanced on one foot. Sometimes I just move in a manner where I pretend to avoid a strike while stepping to a new root point at the same time, other times I do this while striking as I move. The point is this is as close to total free play as you can get in order to train your brain to think creatively so use your imagination. The byproduct of this is that your mind begins to see the fight and how it is going to go down before you have actually done anything. Also, as you work up to moving fast it prevents you from over-thinking your movements since there’s little time to do so. when you transfer these skills to moving with another person. You begin to see all of the possible openings at the same time and because you are striking with impunity causing them to react to your motion by gaining the initiative for spit seconds in time and space it “fixes” their movement long enough to allow you to strike with penetrating force from seemingly impossible angles. Your body should move as gracefully and smoothly as possible and in the most natural way. This exercise also shows you where to correct flaws in your own coordination since it will become apparent where you are not aligned or balanced, integrating your whole body. When you are over-traveling when you move. You will learn where and when you have to move simply based on where you feel your body is when not properly aligned in order to realign through adumbration to strike with power. How long you practice is entirely up to you but “practice” you must.

 

2. Learn to relax and observe everything. This can be accomplished whether sitting or walking, by breathing slowly deep into the belly and focusing outward when looking while feeling internally the relaxation the muscles as much as possible. At first you begin to notice all of the superfluous wasteful motions and actions of your own body. Once you become aware of them you need to work to limit them only to purposeful movements using only the amount of force and movement needed to accomplish the motion. This is vital in your ability to react since when you have to react to something no matter how aware you are there is always a slight delay. You will through this practice also begin to notice other people’s movements and patterns of movements, this practice will also allow you to begin to judge spatial relationships with others in relation to your own body or movements.

 

3. Your mind throughout this process should be one of total flow and meditation. If you are moving your movements should be graceful as a panther, your walk should be balanced and as surefooted as a cat and light, your step should not be heavy but firm where it needs to be and light where it has too in order to remain adaptive to the lay of the ground. You need to be neither Yin nor Yang in your attitude but neutral. You should feel the sensation as if you are gliding through the air as you move like moving through an aqueous medium. You must begin to see and feel everything so that even in their stillness you can feel the presence of others just by merely knowing where they are and can determine their mass and attitude.

 

4. Calculate and get ahead of the game. Begin based on what you see others do in your mind to calculate how you would avoid them if they were actually moving to strike you. As you begin to judge their movements you want to start wargaming in your mind how you would move to counter their movements this is an internal game that you play in order to see it in your mind. Focus on moving within the WARRIOR FLOW concepts and be as simplistic as possible in your approach. Remember that the more practical the approach and the simpler it is the more likely it will succeed. The more complex the movement is the greater the possibility of failure. Understand that this is the fundamental weakness behind many martial arts and why they fail under real combat conditions. They make simple shit hard.

  

5. “Nice to meet, you’re dead”. This is a game that I play (in the mind, in-the-mind… I just had to say that) often whenever I get within close proximity of people when moving about on the street as people get near me. I imagine delivering some form of a simple strike like a chop to the throat which is usually a killing blow. In my mind, I imagine delivering the strike with such speed and intensity that it penetrates their body like a bullet shot this is all done with a relaxed but focused mind while maintaining my awareness to my surroundings [no sense in getting jacked while you’re training how not to get jacked]. As I advance the game I begin thinking of scenarios of taking out multiple people simultaneously using the same logic. My strikes are simple, my movement purposeful there are no wasted motions within my movements everything including the placement of my feet are all in harmony with the WARRIOR FLOW concepts.

 

6. Master the Way of All Things. All things in life have their own dynamic based on their physical makeup yet no matter how many times people hear this they choose to go the way of the heathen thinking that they can change what cannot be changed. Amazing but true!!! As you’ve heard me say over and over from one of my all-time favorite lines from “The Matrix”, “You do not bend the spoon, the spoon bends you…” Since WARRIOR FLOW is rooted in the laws of physics and human body dynamics you cannot change either one but through the proper understanding as to how they work you can learn to manipulate/use them in your favor, this is why the development of the concepts of Warrior Flow is so critical to our understanding. As I move about or perform Warrior Mind Flow. As I look at other objects to include people and animals I am always considering their true nature. In doing so it reveals to me what I can and can’t do, so, for example, I can run on concrete easily but running in the sand is difficult because of the nature of sand is too loose to gain a firm footing. I can walk on ice but not on water, yet I can swim in water but on ice it is impossible, I can spin a basketball on my finger because it is round equal distance on all sides but it is much harder spinning a box. I might not be able to stop the strike of a stronger opponent but I can avoid him or redirect him changing the vector of his movement while simultaneously cut him across the windpipe sending him to the afterlife. Since I know this upfront and this is important I am able to compensate for it in order to counter its effects or at least reduce their impact. So for example, since I can’t walk on water I swim. Because I know ice is slick I take shorter steps when walking on it and walk slower. Since I can’t stop a freight train I ensure that I’m never in its path and so on, you get the idea. This you must put into practice after a while it becomes a way of thinking a way of life and forms the structure of imagination and creativity.

 

As Miyamoto Musashi once said, “The true way is not in knowing what is unknowable but in understanding the true nature of what is known or knowable and applying good sense…” or words to that effect. The point is there is no magic to it at all and nothing more than simply understanding the nature of a thing and building on it. In doing so you begin to learn how to judge the density of objects too include people based on the fact that you have touched them before without actually touching them. In this you learn where you can and can’t hit and with what tools to strike with and where you need to be and when. Also because you already know where they have to be in order to strike you, you have already cut those angles off from them without thought.

 

7. Develop purposeful good habits and “exorcise” your bad habits. As your ability grows you’ll want to continue to develop purposeful habits so that your guard is always to the best of your ability up without you having to consciously think about it. When you perform SOLO COMBATIVE FLOW MOVEMENT or Warrior Mind Flow [whatever you desire to call it] you must also move in such a manner which causes people to miss you [i.e., not penetrate you] or at least pay a serious and disproportionate price should they strike you. You must become yielding while resilient and strong at the same time. You must be liquid and solid all at once and must work to become a phantom or ghost at all at the same time yet like Iron when necessary. Everything from the position of your hands to the placement of your feet must be in sync with the concepts of WARRIOR FLOW. You must engage your whole body in the fight and not just become focused on your arms or legs or other strikes and their movement must be purposeful. Remember that through SOLO COMBATIVE FLOW MOVEMENT practice the strikes are but an extension of what the overall body is doing and are facilitated by the body. By moving with a purpose developing good fighting habits you’re always on your game because you know nothing else.

 

8. End State. The culmination of training like this is that you develop the ability to begin to cut people off before they ever get started since you already perceive where they want to be before they actually get there this is the ultimate goal when striving to achieve dynamic coordination. By practicing this until it becomes a subconscious competence where you don’t even realize that you are doing it, to an attacker every action they make against you seems wrong to them whereas everything you do is always right. Then when applied to actual combat or combative training, you will begin to feel so much of what they are doing that there is little they can do regardless of speed, that you can’t handle. But in truth because you are so far ahead of the game even if they choose to try to move faster, which is usually an indication that it’s already over. That you can shut them down at will where all they do is get hit. In other words, because you know where they need to get to in order to make their stuff work you cut them off and you just don’t let them do it in the first place and by crushing them…

While this is a Readers Digest version of this and I’m sure there’s some stuff I’m leaving out however remember that none of it is possible unless you have a firm foundation in the principles of WARRIOR FLOW.

Good luck, take care…