Why Scenario Training - Part III

 “At the still point in the center of the circle one can see the infinite in all things.”

— Chuang Tzu

Philosophically, this is the essence of the Warrior Flow mindset with regards to training. This speaks to our school of fighting, the way we train, to move our bodies at maximal efficiency and enter flow―wherever we're at in space and time, we're always centered. 

So, in this blog post I’m going to cover this and add in some stuff about how the body works and how one can go about improving their training regardless of what they study.

People in general have a perception in their minds of what they think works or what something is, these preconceived notions create mental templates or structures as to what something is often before we examine what it is or if it is even feasible. 

Returning to the Scene of the Crime

“Do nothing which is of no use.” ―Miyamoto Musashi

To reiterate what I discussed in Part II, regarding movement, we really need to define what we mean when we talk about gross or fine motor movement because if we do not define them, we tend to focus on the wrong things. In other words, we need to define things at least in our minds, when teaching as to what a person should focus on in order for them to develop the skill or attribute they want to develop. For example,

Basketball, football, hockey, violin, piano, calligraphy, painting, drawing.

What do they all have in common?

1) they require some level of talent both mental and physical

2) you have to practice them

3) you have to have focused purposeful practice to get the benefit out of them

4) the practice needs to be practical and make sense

5) the activity must have “meaning” and answer the question "To do what?"

The reason for pointing this out is if you cannot meet this criterion when devising scenario or situational training, then you are just dabbling and wasting your time. When you dabble all, you do is learn how to do something poorly but "very well."

The Mind of the Body

“Do not let the body be dragged along by mind nor be dragged along by the body.” ―Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings

So, in Part II I discussed that one of the problems with gross motor or fine motor movement in the way many understand it is this binary way of thinking that it has to be either or. The idea that we use all of our body all of the time is beyond most people because they are not thinking of it in the proper context and framework.

In order to move your body, the way you want it to move you have to train your body to do it. Meaning whatever that is, you have to train the muscles and not just the movements to develop the proper timing and control and neural pathways in order to do it. Then you have to practice doing it at speed or under duress to develop the proper control and timing and micro muscle movements to prevent over travel.

In this next part rather than doing the thing I criticize other of doing and make stuff up I’m going to add some stuff here from the good Dr. Riggio and let the horse speak for itself.

“Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie.” ―Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings

One of the things that I often discuss with The Professor (Dr. Riggio) as I call him is this thing, we call ability or talent. This is a hard subject to discuss for most because there are some truths out there where people are not comfortable with coming to terms with because it goes against a common myth we are brought up with. The myth goes like this,

“Anyone can do anything they want if they put their mind to it and work hard at it…”

This myth, though well meaning, along with the belief in Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and that Bubble Yum is made with spider eggs are things we are brought up to believe. So, while the jury is still out on what Bubble Yum actually is made with along with the true origins of bologna (my father told me when I was a kid it came from the noses of cows where I would later learn the truth was far worse). At some point we have to come to terms with the truth and that is for a variety of reasons the idea that we can do anything we put our minds to is just not true.

By the way it is this myth that we cling to that is at the heart of why without critical examination so many wanted to believe and still do in the 10,000-hour rule. In defense of Malcolm Gladwell, though I believe he misrepresented the data for his book Outliers, and I have read all of his books, so I don’t believe it was intentional. Gladwell, by the way, never said “10,000-hour rule.” He only inferred that after that many hours something happens where people seem to attain a high level of expertise at whatever it is they endeavor. 

So… Oh, you know where this is going.

People being people took that idea and ran with it creating a new rule out of whole cloth. So, on the one hand we have people running around looking to “get their hours in” or people becoming discouraged at ever trying something because this stupid rule becomes a barrier to them ever even trying something because they don’t feel they can ever create that amount of time to study anything.

Anyway, the point I’m making is there are just some things people are not going to be able to no matter how well a certain skill is taught. There are just certain physical attributes that if you do not possess them there are things that either you will not be able to do or you can only advance but so far at them. Doesn’t make you a bad person it’s just that there are limitations to what can be accomplished.

This is a fundamental aspect of Warrior Flow which I’ll delve into more later on where we focus on training people to the best of their ability in those skills, they are capable of doing in the body they have right now. Now if they during their training get stronger or faster, it’s all good.

Now here’s the other hard part, just as a person can have only so much physical ability there are for a variety of reasons where mentally, psychologically, there is a place where people just cannot get to for varying reasons. For example, the ability to make split second decisions both consciously and subconsciously while prized is not an easy skill to develop and in truth one that some people will never develop to a high degree. Again, I know in this world of participation trophies this is practically sacrilege to say because of the realm we live in but… ah... no.... it’s just not going to happen. Also, most of us can only develop this ability to a point because that’s just the way it is.

This is the reason why in the military soldiers are put to the test at the indoctrination level of training to weed out people who cannot make decisions and quickly adapt or anticipate danger in an ever-changing situation. This way of thinking is what can be referred to as mental agility. Understand, mental agility is more than just quickness of mind this is where we are able to recognize danger, think on our feet, solve problems, and or be creative.

Why this is important is because when doing any sort of martial training it is just as important to develop a person’s mental agility as best as possible. The reason I frame it in this fashion is because just as some folks don't have a lot of physical ability some also don't have the ability to make the mental leaps in thought to intuitively make decisions.

I get it however, as an instructor all you can do is train people to the best of your abilities and within what they can realistically do to improve their movement and skill where these things become reflexive.

This is also why deception is critical―to attempt to level the playing field―even in that however, there is a level of mental agility you have to get to in order to pull it off.

"If men make war in slavish obedience to rules, they will fail."

―Ulysses S. Grant 

In other words, if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying.

As The Professor has offered in our Facebook exchanges,  

“The only rules are the immutable laws of nature. Everything in between is fair game. This goes to fundamental training principles and philosophy.”

He goes on to explain in the following manner:

“Let’s make an assumption to begin… when you are training someone for combat (as you might say, “Fuck that softening phrase ‘self-defense’.” If it comes down to fighting it’s more useful to think in terms of combat, self-defense is what happens before a fight.) … you are training behavioral responses, and you need them to happen without inhibition (as Grandmaster John Perkins would say it, “without thinking” and coming from an empty mind in the Zen sense of that phrase).

More simply, you want to move in real time to deal with a situation as it’s emerging, not seconds, or even fractions of a second after the fact. A delay of any amount, even fractions of a second, are enough for a trained fighter to make a world of difference. (An aside: IMO opinion when I’m training people I emphasize the mastery of time - not just timing - as the key to all mastery, but that’s for another post entirely.)

Going back then, most of the kind of scenario training you’ve pointed to comes after the fact, when the event has already happened. This means that what’s being trained, or intended by training, is a behavioral response after the fact.

This is a flaw in 99% of all martial arts training. You and I have discussed this concerning Close Combat training, (i.e.: training behaviors to instigate behavioral change.) Yes, it works … as long as everyone remains on script, and the practice is properly choreographed. On the street this will get you killed against a ruthless opponent.

So, what needs to be trained is perception first (the principles of awareness and sensitivity). Only then can a response that makes sense be formulated and executed, and that won’t look or be choreographed at all … in fact it often appears to make no sense at all from the outside, but within the “eye of the storm” it not only makes sense it’s a dance of emergent perfection.

Moral of the story: Train the brain first, and that begins by training perception.”

Couldn’t have said it any better.

This Thing Called Touch

“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

The reason for all of the science is to place things in the proper context because you see. One area of situational or scenario training that is lost is people do a good job of teaching the techniques and they even get into the mechanics of how to do the technique, the leverage, the physics, all good stuff.

However, where I find most are remis, not all but most, is that they don't get into describing what the person who is applying the technique should be experiencing in the body where much of the learning takes place.

This is because they do not place enough emphasis on how to develop a person's body to execute these techniques but also one of the most important aspects and that is developing this thing we call "touch."

“Nobody is strong and nobody is weak if he conceives of the body, from the head to the sole of the foot, as a unity in which a living mind circulates everywhere equally."

―Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings

No matter what you do if you are to engage om mortal combat you have to take your body along for the ride and training just in techniques is not the same as training your body any more than just doing exercises to become strong or fast. While they are important there is way more to it that just developing those things.

Touch is a different thing, and it is something that in every physical endeavor people discuss yet and as a part of my criticisms when it comes to martial combat. In training and application, we act as though it doesn't exist.

Touch as with context is everything. It is truly that elusive quality that separates people when we are truly defining what we call skill. This is where you take two people of equal ability in every aspect, can teach them the same things and yet the discrepancy between their skill is as night from day.

The reason? There is a mental aspect to touch and talent that is directly related to mental agility and cannot be ignored. The truth is you cannot develop touch without developing your body and too many people focus too much on the tool and not on the skill to wield the tool.

Now, as I discussed previously these differences in the physical ability and differences as to how people think make all the difference as to how far a person may be able to go within their given ability.

The key is and a major part of the philosophy of Warrior Flow is if a person who comes to us, we try to train them within the best of our abilities based on what they can do in their body. Recognizing that there is a place where some people cannot get to in their mindset. Or they for whatever reason are just not capable of the ability to develop the "mental agility" necessary to do certain things. Like I said before, it doesn't make them bad people if they can't get there it's just the way it is. So, the goal is to make them more capable at whatever they wanted to learn than when they walked through the door and if we can do that our job for the most part is done.

Also, we start from a premises that if a person walks through our door and has read through our literature that on some level, they are seeking what we have to offer. If they don't show up well then, they've self-selected themselves out and that works for us as well. And at the sake of sounding arrogant, we don't want to teach people who don't want to learn from us, and whatever they're looking for I'm sure there are plenty of schools out there that offer what they seek. If what we offer is not what they are looking for then they should go elsewhere. No problem, we understand what we offer is not for everyone.

“You people will listen and listen, but you will not understand. You will look and look, but you will not really see. Yes, the minds of these people are now closed. They have ears, but they don’t listen. They have eyes, but they refuse to see. If their minds were not closed, they might see with their eyes; they might hear with their ears; they might understand with their minds…”

―Matthew 13:14-38 ERV

I can remember when I worked as an advisor to Law Enforcement observing some hand-to-hand training at a police academy in NJ.

I was just there as an observer and as I watched the training there were some things that were glaringly obvious to me. Now the instructor he was skilled of that there was no doubt. Obviously, his skill went far beyond the basic techniques he was teaching, you could just tell by his movement. What to some extent bothered me was not what he taught, but that whenever an officer was having trouble executing a technique. He would walk over and literally point out not just what the officer was doing wrong and correct him, but he would then describe to the officer what "he" should be feeling and experiencing as he executed the technique.

Now, because I was there just as an observer, and it wasn't my training I kept my big mouth shut.

But what bothered me was not his corrections they were fine, it was the fact that he didn't see (because it wasn't in his mind) how every time he corrected someone where he described what they should be feeling/experiencing, or how the other guy behaved to the application of the technique. Within minutes how it dramatically improved the trainee’s ability to apply the technique because it literally changed the way their body moved.

This is an aspect that I find missing in a lot of training in general. It's not just the development of technique but touch.

In contrast, I remember recently attending a workshop from Brazilian Jujitsu Master Carlos Machado. It wasn’t just his ability that was impressive, I would expect no less from a master of any system. It was his ability to affect the minds of the participants where they didn’t just practice techniques, they understood them in the body. Something he always emphasized in his teachings was developing timing, feel, and touch.

He never taught a technique without describing what the learner should be experiencing, and when he laid hands on them, he ensured they experienced it. Not in a malicious way, but in a way where they understood the purpose of the technique and how it actually worked because of what their bodies were experiencing and what it should feel like to apply it as well as have it applied on them. In other words, he was more focused on helping them develop their touch than just going through the movements of the technique.

Folks, people are not machines we are not mechanical in that sense. We are organic and as a result while there is a physics to how things work, there is way more to it and how we do things than just moving and performing something or what I call moving for the sake of moving.

Okay I’m going to cut it off here and in Part IV I’ll get into a little bit more of this from the mental aspect because there’s some stuff that I ripped off from The Professor that I want to incorporate, and I need to put the time in to explain it correctly.

Thanks.

LtCol Al Ridenhour, USMC (Ret)

Creator, Warrior Flow