The Martial Touch - Part II

“Also, by training you will be able to freely control your own body, conquer men with your body, and with sufficient training you will be able to beat ten men with your spirit. When you have reached this point, will it not mean that you are invincible?”

       • Miyamoto Musashi, “The Book of Five Rings

So, I’m going to begin this post with some questions because it goes to the heart of why in my view you train in a martial arts system.

So, here’s the deal, if you had to fight for your life or your loved ones my only question is how efficient would you want to be able to apply your skills?

How quickly would you want to be able to end it?

Given that virtually anything can happen in a real life and death encounter how deceptive and creative would you want to be?

In my view these are the only questions that matter, so regardless of what you do, what you study whatever you train the key is being as good at that thing as possible.

“One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.”

       • Leonardo da Vinci

“This” is a big part of what developing your touch is all about. To be clear, “touch” is the essence of creativity / deception, for deception is a created thing, also it places the who, what, when, where, and why into context and allows you to connect the dots.

It is from there where you can develop the ability to deceive your opponent and bring them to a swift death. Now, as I’ve discussed in numerous blogs posts in the past people actually do this stuff all of the time but because they are unaware of the significance of what it is and how it works it is lost on them.

Warrior Flow as a system is in our view the art of the possible for, we focus on concepts of how humans move and interact with one another within how the universe works. I realize there are a number of concepts that we teach often confusing for some because I believe for many people these are things that do not seem possible or real, however, you only need to go on YouTube and you can see people do things at speed that people aren’t supposed to be able to do, yet they do them all of the time.

"Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true."

• Julius Caesar

As an editorial comment and I’ve made this before, but it needs repeating, at the root of this mentality is because many of the detractors who claim certain things are not possible is either because they cannot do these things themselves or they are not capable of teaching others how to do them. Granted there are certain things we are not capable of depending on our physical abilities, however, a large part of it is if you already throw things into the “too hard to do category” before you even try you’ve already doomed it to failure. It’s been my experience in the martial arts that most people fall into the latter category. They have already determined what cannot be done or known so they never try to see whether it is even possible, even worse they aren’t even interested in learning it.

I’ve discussed these concepts before, so I won’t go into any detail on them but merely to further the discussion. Just understand, whether I stop time, slow time, disappear on people, or lead and pace them to the wrong place, all forms of deception by the way. What is important to understand is there is a touch to how these things are done but in order to do them you must first know they exist, know what they are, and how they work. Then you can begin the process of “refinement” in order to develop the touch to do these things even at high speed.

Touch is All About Control and Refinement

“It is difficult to realize the true Way just through sword-fencing. Know the smallest things and the biggest things, the shallowest things, and the deepest things.”

• Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings: Miyamoto Musashi

The key is as you refine your movement the more refined it becomes the more you feel you can improve upon; it never ends nor can become too refined. It’s like making a cake, the more you stir the batter the smaller the lumps become but the smoother the mixture becomes the more lumps you find even though they are getting smaller, you still see lumps in the batter. It’s the same thing with refinement of touch, the more refined your touch becomes the grosser or crude your previous movements felt. This is the essence of how subtle muscle control and perceptual awareness are really one and the same and how they complement each other. It’s just that way.

Touch is An Internal Feel     

"All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.”

       • Leonardo da Vinci

Touch is mostly internal which is why people don’t develop it, it is because is cannot be seen per se. when people learn a skill or a technique one of the issues that I see often is they learn how to do something. They may even learn the purpose of a technique, but they rarely learn how it actually works in the body. As a result, they can never take it as far as they possibly can because in order to practice effectively you have to understand beyond the mechanics of the technique and focus on how your body actually does it. What your body is actually doing at the time when you are performing a task down the marrow of your bones so to speak. Understand that no skill is just one thing but actually many skills seamlessly stitched together. Also, in order to develop your touch in whatever you endeavor to do you have to either know what it is first or at least have an idea of what it is you want to accomplish before you can train it. The reason is because touch is both a perceptual and an “internal feel.” Above all, when its good, it's good.

In other words, when its good… you know it's good. While that may sound flippant the reason, I say that is because only you know for sure how something feels to your body when training, as an instructor I can only offer guidance based on how I know things work and what it feels like when you do something right based on my own subjective experiences when practicing the same skills.

"When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come."

       • Leonardo da Vinci

Touch starts in the mind but is expressed through the body so when you make contact with someone or an object in order to develop the level of touch you desire. You have to understand that when you make contact whether throwing a punch or a kick or trying to execute a throw or step to reposition your body. Whatever you are in contact with, the person, the ground, etc. You experience and feel several things externally and internally at the same for even when touching someone “you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come.”

“Perception is a tool that is pointed on both ends”

• Hannibal

This ability to perceive several things at once is important to understand because it also has a cause-and-effect relationship on the other person you are engaged in mortal combat with. Whereas your perception of what you are experiencing will drive your actions, and theirs. In other words, when you make contact with another person you both have the same information at the same time therefore it becomes a matter of who recognizes the advantage soon enough to do something about it. Also, before I forget to mention it, your perceptions also allow for you to experience multiple possibilities simultaneously. In which if you can recognize the pattern or shadow impression in the other persons movement or the relationship between their body and your body soon enough where you arrive to the future position. Because you are ahead of their movement you are able to anticipate possibilities and probabilities in their actions where multiple opportunities to strike exist for you.

At that point, no choice you make is the wrong choice because it is your future. From there you are just creating what you need as you proceed in the battle making it up as you go connecting the dots through your experience being creative through touch. The other thing is because you are creating as you go, since you don’t know what you’re going to do from one moment to the next, they cannot follow what you are doing because you don’t even know yourself what you are going to do and can only appreciate it after the fact.  You won’t know until you get there and when you do, each subsequent action alters the next potential future action.  So, even if they know the right thing to do, they cannot accomplish it because there is not enough time for them to do it.

Yes, that hurt to even type that…

How to Practice Developing Your Touch

"He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.”

       • Leonardo da Vinci

I’m going to be up front here, if you want to develop this you have to put the time in and most importantly you need to focus on what you are doing. Without focusing your attention on what you need to develop you just never get there. This is more mental than physical. It’s just that way.

Oh, I need to point out a few more things before I move on. Part of the problem with a lot of martial training is people train to want to do things but do not place enough focus on developing the muscles in the body that allow for the technique or skill to work in the first place.

Sure, people exercise to develop strength, speed, and endurance and those are all good and, in my view, necessary things. I mean what’s the sense of training to protect yourself and not do everything within reason to also have a functional body. The last time I checked unless you’re going into the fight with your astral spirit you need to take your body into the battle. But what I’m talking about here is developing the agility, the fine motor skills, and most importantly the control over your body where your body is responsive to what you desire it to do. Because the time to figure it out is not in the heat of battle.

Every martial artist in whatever they do wants to improve their punching power or develop lighting fast kicks, grapple with the smooth suppleness of an anaconda, and move in their body with the grace and power of a panther. I’m all about it! The whole concept of the animal forms in the martial arts at least in my mind embody an understanding, not to teach you how to fight like a snake, a panther, or a monkey (I’m all about monkey kung fu). Nor is drunken fist about fighting when you’re shitfaced drunk but serve as representations, an ideal of a type of natural movement worthy of aspiring to.

Part of the problem is we tend to do the obvious things but never really delve into the more salient points of skill development that divides the truly gifted fighters from everyone else who are just muscling through it. We learn how to do things but rarely delve into developing the mechanisms down to the micro level of how things work in the first place. In other words, to develop your touch, you have to focus on how we actually do things beyond the obvious things we know need to take place to execute a technique. Remember no skill or technique is just one thing but many smaller (even micro) skills seamlessly meshed together to from one fluid contiguous movement, with no discernible beginning or end, just one effortless flow.

When developing our touch in Warrior Flow there are some overarching concepts we employ.

1) try to move as little as we need to accomplish what we wish to accomplish 

2) move as smoothly as possible even at full speed

3) develop the perceptual awareness and subtle muscle control to move or respond appropriately within the context of what we perceive is going on

4) get ahead of the movement of the other guy before their actions become a problem for us

5) Oh yeah, and "kick that ass!"

"Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.”

• Leonardo da Vinci

This is just a simple way to practice this and is only limited by your imagination, but it is a start. The key is to focus on the steps and the process until it becomes second nature. For it is the process of how this is done that you are trying to develop because this is a different way of looking at how you train to refine skill. Touch is the essence of that refinement I spoke too earlier.

I’ve presented this in other writings however, now I’m going to present it with a different focus because the key to this is not in just doing the exercise but how to focus your mind on what it is you feel as you perform it.

First.

• You want to first start off with one foot forward and one foot back almost like a boxer’s stance. Start off placing most of your weight on the rear foot and keep both feet on the ground relatively flat.
• Keeping your hips level and raising your hands in front of you as if you are protecting your head in a relaxed manner.
• Pushing from the rear foot shift your weight forward.
• As you do this and this is crucial, focus on feeling the muscles in your feet and leg engage as you push from the rear foot.
• Feel the weight of your body as you push and shift your body forwards without leaning and shift your weight over the forward leg.
• As you shift to the forward leg feel how as the weight lightens on the rear leg and feel the muscles in your forward leg begin to engage.
• Ensure that your knee does not go beyond the toe and feel the foot actually push back in the opposite direction as it decelerates your mass preventing you from over traveling.
• Then push back to the original position ensuring your back side does not go past your heel.
• Focus on feeling how the rear foot begins to push back in the opposite direction preventing you from moving too far.
• Do this back and forth and switching foot position until you develop a smooth even transition from one foot to the next controlling the overtravel in your body.

Key points for the beginning movement:

• Just do this thing that I am describing and nothing else.
• Don’t laugh, don’t cry, don’t fart, don’t do anything but this.
• Don’t do anything else but this and only this until you gain comfortable control over your body.
• If you get tired, then stop and rest.

Next…

• Once you’ve beaten that dead horse do the same thing only now focus on keeping your hips as level as possible.
• Concentrate on feeling it in the hips, feel the smoothness in your hips. There shouldn’t be a lot of movement in the hips in either direction.

Next, next…

• Now move back and forth concentrating on not leaning in any direction as you go back and forth.
• You should feel your whole body at this point has a floating feeling to it. It should feel as if your body is moving all by itself without thought.
• You should feel in your body like the waves on the beach rolling in and out.

Now... I want you to do the same exercise only this time concentrating on keeping your arms in a bent position in front of you sort of like a boxer, hands relaxed, not limp!

• Without moving your arms at all, do the same movement keeping them perfectly still as you go back and forth.
• Once you’ve done it with one foot in the lead then switch off to the other foot.
• If you feel your hands wanting to move forward or back as you do this concentrate on ensuring they do not move.

Do not, do not, do not, go on to any other exercise in this series until you can accomplish this, or you will burn in Hellfire.

Focus!

Now, you may be asking why I didn’t cover the arms earlier?

This is because the goal here is to help you learn how to focus on refining the movement in the parts of the body and are all integral to developing your touch.

The dynamic coordination starts in your feet when standing and is the genesis of controlling your body. You cannot develop your touch if you cannot control your body because your touch works off of all of the other parts of the body and is essential to the focus of your “will.”

Please re-read what I just said there because it is the number one reason most people in anything never develop the level of skill they desire. Whether swinging a golf club, throwing a football, or lifting the foot off the ground without hesitation and unnecessary preparatory motion to wound someone in the stones so that they know you mean business.

The inability to control one’s body is the primary sin people commit that prevents them from enjoying the level of freedom in the body their body was designed to do. Thus, all that talk about burning in Hell.

Now.

• I want you to do the same exercise only this time as you concentrate on your arms as you move forward. I want you to extend your arms forwards and when you shift back retract your arms to the original position in that bent position in front of you like a boxer, again hands relaxed, not limp!
• Once you’ve done it with one foot in the lead then switch off to the other foot.
• You want to feel as if your hands are floating as they move forward and back. If they start to get a sort of wave like movement as you move that’s okay just ensure you stay in synch with your body. Do not straighten your arms out when going forward and do not allow your arms to fully contract as you move backwards. You want them to sort of float within that space.
• Think about as you move for every 1” inch of movement with your body to have no more than 3” inches of movement with your arms or hands. This ratio will keep your arms and hands in synch.
• If you feel your hands wanting to move too much concentrate on ensuring they do not move for a bit until you can get that under control.

Now…

• I want you to do the same exercise only this time as you concentrate on your arms place them out in front of you about ¾ away from you at about eye level.
• As you move forward, without moving your hands I want you to shift your body forwards not moving the hands at all.
• Concentrate on keeping them, if possible, in the same place throughout the movement.
• As you shift forward you should feel the arms collapse a little and as you shift back to the original position you should feel them expand.

This is actually one of my favorite exercises because it really forces me to concentrate on feeling what my body is doing while learning how to develop a higher degree of control in the body as I move. More importantly it teaches me to appreciate what is actually going on in my body as I move and allows me to focus on any unnecessary movement and correct myself.

Well, that’s it for this installment in Part-III I’m going to jump right in on how you can then take this same idea from this same basic movement progression to refine your touch and focus within your hitting.

Hope this helps.

Thanks.

LtCol Al Ridenhour, USMC (Ret) 

Creator, Warrior Flow