• Archive through July 31, 2000 July 31 - 07:05 pm [20]

• Archive through May 09, 2001 May 09 - 09:05 pm [20]

I agree with Tim. A little paranoia goes a long way. You have to practice many repetitions to make a given physical movement a conditioned response. You must also do the same with your mental awareness techniques.

I also agree with Duong. After a practioner has developed sound physical responses in a controlled enviroment the next challenge is mental toughness.
I like to look at death in this respect. You have to be comfortable with it. Whether it is your death or that of your opponent. You have to be willing to go that far. Use mental rehersal or visualization. I also feel that looking at death helps us to appreciate what/who we have and live a more fulfilled life.

Just one more comment, in regards to the above posts (about becoming mentally prepared). No matter how much you practice your techniques with your friends or training partners, unless you have experience applying them in stressful situations (like hard contact, non-cooperative sparring or under the pressures of tournament competition), you will most likely not be able to use them at all in a real life fight. You need to, at least occasionally, train and spar in situations of greater intensity which trigger adrenaline and the fear response.

Hey guys, thanks a lot for the great responses. Mental toughness and skill always go together if you train smart. I'm surprised no one adressed the moral dilemma. Aside from the necessity to be mentally or strategically prepared for potential violence, when do you make the conscious decision to place yourself in a situation where you may have to use lethal force to get out of it in order to protect someone else?

Here's another story and another important point. Gwion, 22 year old former ameteur lightweight Rings (shootfighting) champion of England, myself and Matt were out shopping one day when this stocky foreigner (A) walks up to Matt and says "I like your hat". Matt says "thanks, I like it too". "You're gonna give it to me, or I'm gonna take it." We couldn't smell alchohol but he may have been drunk. At first I thought he was joking as there were 2 of us (Gwion was in the 7-11 buying something) and only one of him. I start trying to talk the guy down. I felt that he thought he was intimidating us and wanted to let him know we wouldn't be as easy a mark as he thought so maybe he should back off. I didn't get to finish. Gwion came up and squared up to the guy. (Side Note: Gwion had been studying Muay Thai for 2 years and had just won his first professional fight by K.O.. Hardest round kick and elbow strike I've ever felt) "Wot's th' trouble mate?" he says to A. "Your friend's gonna give me that f*%#ing hat - MATE." Gwion slammed a right elbow into the side of his face so hard that he was out cold before he hit the ground. It even made that "SMACK" sound you hear in the movies. The 2 Thai police officers standing near the 7-11 were laughing and giving him the thumbs up. I later told Gwion I thought we could have talked him down. "Aw, I dunno. E' ad it comin' I reckon. E was lookin for a fight so I thought I'd just give it to 'im and get it over with."

Aside from having a good laugh over it we talked about it for a bit and came to the following conclusions:

1. You can take an as*#$ole like this personally, get pissed off and fight him.

2. You don't have to take it personally, try to avoid the fight if possible realizing that he's the as*#$ole and it doesn't have to mess up your day, clothes or the fun you'll have later on tonight.

3. You don't have to take it personally, stay calm and collected, and fight him anyway.

Gwion percieved a threat, knew it could go either way and chose #3. I chose #2. Sometimes it's the other way around. The guy was a little obnoxious but neither of us felt threated or that this was a case of self defense. What are your thoughts? Thanks.

Side note: After writing the earlier posts about recent incidents I decided to see if I could locate one of the victims for a chat. Found the Aussie that had a bottle broken on his face. Really nice guy. His name is Mike and he suffered a broken nose and 14 stitches around his upper lip and left cheek area. He is a purple belt in BJJ at a Brazilian Gym (run by and filled with Brazilians) on Manly beach in Sydney, Australia. I am trying to pick up a few techniques from him while he's here.

Hey guys,

Great discussion. Tim brings up some excellent points on situational awareness. After ten years working plainclothes security and four in law enforcement, I simply DO NOT GO to places like that anymore unless I am "on business."

Awareness "projects," and will get you out of a lot of situations that otherwise you might be wrapped up in. Now, the plain idiots, like the guy that wanted the hat and the guy that obviously did not want a new beer will not be dissuaded, but the punk thugs will often be simply if you project confidence and awareness.

Many, many situations are "sucker punches." The verbal altercations at least give you advance notice. Even with a verbal altercation, the punks will often wait 'til you turn to look away before they take a shot. I have responded to countless assaults where some guy never saw it coming, although when I interview them all the cues were there. They simply were not prepared for physical violence to erupt and were far more caught up in the posturing stage.

TIm is also dead on right about martial arts skill being only useful if you are conditioned to use it. My work has conditioned me to it, though it took two periods of adjustment; first when I did security and second when I got into law enforcement and had a lot of weapons on my belt that I had to be concerned with. Now I am the one that likes to strike first if the guy makes ANY kind of physical cue that he is preparing to run or fight. Martial arts allows me to see a lot of that stuff developing, but only through EXPERIENCE have I developed the ability to ACT on it.

Serious resistive training is a good first step (a la rolling, free sparring with strikes and takedowns to control), tournaments and "matches" with people who aren't your friends is the next, but for the total picture you have to do it for real (bouncing, law enforcement etc.) to start getting used to it.

Kit

Kit brings up another good point. If you are confronted and there is no way to either de-escalate the situation or escape without a fight,
you will almost invariably fare better if you attack first, especially if you have practiced fast and efficient 'preemptive' techniques.

Hi Tim,
You no doubt know of Peyton Quinn and Tony Blauer and their respective systems of "adrenaline response" training. I know that IMA are supposed to leave you calm in the face of danger but how does this work in the real world of practical self defense? Have you found this adrenaline training in your studies or is it all left up to "calm" training?
Buddy

If you're in law enforcement you have to be real careful about making the first move. Look at that recent case in Cincinnati where the cop shot the 19 y.o. If you don't move to preemptively take someone out you may lose your life. If you do move first, even in the most favorable of circumstances you run the risk of being the defendant in a civil rights lawsuit. Peace officers are in a constant predicament when they're on the job.

Tim,

I'd be curious on Buddy's comment as well. I remember being taught certain meditations that were supposed to get your adrenalin flowing and get your body feeling a stress reaction, and then bring you down through further mental training.

I have found that repeat exposure to the chemical stress of impending physical/armed altercation tends to lower the effects, but they don't go away. For me this has been a combination of dealing with the real thing and Simunition F/X round training where real guns are used with marking rounds for Force on Force training. The level of stress in such scenarios can sometimes be WORSE than dealing with real situations because you get stressed about how you are performing and all your buddies and department trainers are evaluating you.

In the field, it seems to me that I get a worse stress reaction if there is a big build-up to an altercation I.E. extended challenges and posturing. If the situation is resolved without a physical encounter, it seems to linger more. In the stuff that just explodes in your face, or does not allow such build-up, I perceive less chemical stress, maybe because the mind goes on auto-pilot and the body simply reacts without deliberation and doesn't allow the stress to build up. I guess that is where Internal Martial arts ultimately wants to take it.

Technically, Xing Yi seems tailor made for action under stress. The movements may be subtle but they are simple, gross motor movement fighting tactics and are predicated on an aggressive response. I don't think it is any surprise that Xing Yi has a reputation as the "fighting" Internal art.

The stress will always be there, but if your training realistically prepares you for it, and if your art is structurally geared toward action under the effects of stress (and not just training in a well lit, smooth floored guan), the effects can be mitigated and will not effect combative performance. Ideally, it will be enhanced.

Kit

Buddy,
I think it's important to understand the relationship between being 'calm' and the adrenaline response. The reason that people need to train under stressful conditions, at least occasionally, is so that they will have a better chance of remaining calm when they get an adrenaline dump. I have heard people say that IMA techniques won't work in a "real" fight because adrenaline makes you tense. Adrenaline doesn't make you tense, your reaction to adrenaline makes you tense. Andrenaline makes some people turn to jelly. It depends on your past experiences with adrenaline and how you are trained. Like Kit said above, the more you are exposed to stressful situations, the better able you are to handle them.

Real IMA training is geared toward conditioning automatic actions and reactions into the muscle memory, developing sensitivity until it is on the same level as intuition, and cultivating the ability to remain relatively calm and focused under stressful situations. Contact sparring and full-bore submissions wrestling, combat sport competition as well as other drills which elicit the adrenaline response are necessary to develop skills that will be available in a real fight.

Skills are developed and refined best with calm, cooperative training. Then there needs to be stressful, non-cooperative training to develop the ability to access the techniques under real pressure. Finally, it is also important to realize that with stress and adrenaline, movements and techniques will revert to the basic and simple.

This is a great discussion. I've been lurking here since December 2000, and am amazed to see many of the same types of experiences and training strategies that I've been using are being practiced by other internal stylists. Namely Tim and his students.

I submitted some excerpts from my school's Tai Chi Chuan training manual on another board last year (Oct. 2000) which uses the word ballistic to describe the pro-active application of ward-off, double ward-off, press and push. Then there was a debate on a mma board about such tactics being invented/innovated by its resident SD expert. My own contention with the people who dismissed the CMAs approach to these things was that there is nothing new under the sun.

Anyway, one of the posters mentioned Tim's use of the same types of tactics (Diving in the water/pool?) and that's what led me here.

Tim, after reading one of you articles where you mention of the term 'ballistic' to describe the applications of what I assume are the pro-active hitting involved with Teng-no and Shan-chan torso methods, I've been meaning to post here with a question: How would you translate or interpret the terms Teng-no and Shan-chan as used by Wu Yu-Hsing and/or Li Yi-Yu in their writings on 13 Torso Methods? Are they simply tactics or do they also intend to impart the proper attitude/mind-set which one must embrace in order for the proper commitment to be incorporated into their application/s?

I'll reserve my own comments and perspectives until I've read your response. Thanks in advance.

Bruce

Bruce,
In his book, Hao Shao Ru says that Teng Nuo ('teng' literally means to leap or soar up, and 'nuo' means to move or transfer something from one place to another) is "to have the intent to move before moving, and the attitude of being prepared to move." Hao defines Shan Zhan ('shan' literally means lightning and 'zhan' is the word for 'battle') as "the mutual coordination of the body, hands, waist and legs, all moving in harmony as a single breath, issuing power outward. The jing (trained force) is issued as if shooting an arrow, as quick and furious as thunder, no enemy can stand before it." (the above translations are mine)

I would infer that Teng Nuo and Shan Zhan include elements of both tactics and attitude/mind set.

Tim, thanks a lot. We are speaking the same language then.


From my own experiences, and what I was taught:

On the ideas of 'pouncing' (teng-nou) and 'blitzing' (Shan-zhan), I've been showing these applications to be catalysed by our natural flinch response in one respect, and to a lesser degree as a pro-active interception during the opponent's lag-time between their intention and their action (sensitivity/ting being the essential element of discernment). Basically a matter of timing on both counts, but moreso in bridging offensively.


Tactically, these are the vehicles by which covering, entry, and CQ strikes are delivered. In the case of Shan-zhan, the idea of body-checking/Kao is the root method of delivering more specific hitting as in hip-check, shoulder-check, elbow, head-butt, w-o, double w-o, press, push, etc.


One's emotional and psychological investments (indifference/prejudice) are the essential intangibles to the efficacy of any survival tactic. TCC's approach to forging these qualities is often misunderstood by modern combatives people who dismiss the notion that good TCC training does address the ÔattitudeÕ for fighting. Anyway, IÕm preaching to the choir.


Thanks again, Tim. Much appreciated.


*back to lurking*

speaking of street fights....
http://www.break.com/index/turkish_man_fights_mob.html

what I said was ' no, it's GREEK COFFEE'

who knew?