Using deception to attack

We channeled the wisdom of military strategist Sun Tzu in last night's boxing class. Sun Tzu stresses the use of deception when attacking an enemy. If  the main target of your attack is the enemy's water supply, first attack his ammunition supply with a diversionary force. Once the enemy's forces are busy protecting the ammunition supply, then you attack the water supply. In boxing class we practiced jabs to the body. It's not a great punch, but it is a great diversion. Our main target was the head, so following Sun Tzu's advice we first attacked the body, drawing the enemy's attention low and then attacked the head with a straight right.

Born around 544 BC, the knowledge
found in Sun Tzu's "The Art of War"
is still used today by modern military powers.

I say the jab to the body isn't a great punch because it leaves you wide open for a counter. When throwing the jab to the body it's important to keep your chin tucked in and for the right hand to cover your face. Now, that said, the fact that jabbing to the body leaves you wide open for a counter is also one of its strengths. The counter is predictably going to be a straight right from your opponent, so by throwing the jab to the body your setting up your opponent for two things: your straight right to the head if they drop their guard to protect their body, or, if he counters with  a  right, you're countering his  right by using a shoulder roll and pivoting right which places you in a position where you've now outflanked your opponent and are facing the side of his body where you can deliver blows to his kidneys and head.

This idea of setting up your opponent for your future moves is like, as Mr. Stuart says, "playing chess." This is entering a realm of advanced strategy and it will take me a while before I can fully incorporate it. For the foreseeable future I'll be sticking to the game of checkers.

Need some aggro? Books and movies to quench your thirst

Allergies rendered me into a snot factory on Sunday and Monday and made it impossible for me to attend combat fitness and Haganah on March 19. So instead of working out, I watched “13 Assassins,” a movie loaned to me by a friend at the gym. It was a pretty cool Samurai flick with some good sword play and the always compelling code of the Samurai, or bushido. After watching Assassins only a day after the season finale of “The Walking Dead” that featured a hooded, sword-wielding stranger  decapitate a zombie, I have a strong urge to learn how to use a Samurai sword. But that urge will have to wait, first I’ll get proficient with just a knife, then I’ll  move onto bigger edged weapons. What doesn’t have to wait, though, is the watching or reading of fictional characters whoop ass with their fists and feet and all types of weaponry. If you have the urge to watch or read some good agro, here’s a short list of my favorites in no particular order:

Hannah - This movie came out in 2011 and features some awesome hand-to-hand combat between a teenage girl, her father, neo-nazis and covert government henchmen.

This is One-Eye from "Valhalla Rising." Think you could
beat a guy who is tied to a post? Think again.

Valhalla Rising – Weird. Violent. Beautiful. Meet One-eye, a slave used to fight other slaves in the Celtic Highlands way back in the day. Chained to a post and sometimes fighting two men at once, One-Eye comes up with creative ways to kill with rope and arrowhead.

Any of the Jason Bourne movies – Yeah, the storylines get a bit unbelievable, but the one-on-one fight scenes are still good.

Eastern Promises – Good flick about the Russian mob featuring Viggo Mortensen. The fight scene in the steam bath is great, and not because Viggo is naked. But the idea having to fight naked on a wet tile floor against two dudes with blades is absolutely horrifying.

Those are the only movies my brain can think of at 9 a.m., but here are a few books:

Anything written by Cormac McCarthy – This is the guy who wrote the apocalyptic tale of survival “The Road” and the narco-thriller “No Country for Old Men.” But these two books, which were made into movies, pale in comparison to his work “Blood Meridian.” If you like blood … lots of blood with top-notch writing, go get this book today. I shouldn’t even call it writing. This book is literature at its finest and yet it’s so chock full of scalpings, beheadings, shootings, neck breakings and skull crushinings, that you don’t go more than five pages without something horrific happening. This story is based upon factual events that transpired in the mid-1800s with a group of scalp hunters commissioned by the Mexican government to rid their land of Indians. Here’s a sample of the McCarthy’s writing from page 4 of “Blood Meridian”: “They fight with fists, with feet, with bottles or knives. All races, all breeds. Men whose speech sounds like the grunting of apes. Men from lands so far and queer that standing over them where they lie bleeding in the mud he feels mankind itself vindicated.”

The Dune Series – The first six books of the Dune series will change your life. If you ever feel like you’re straying from the path of constant training and physical improvement, these books will set you straight. Taking place thousands of years in future, you meet Paul Atreides, heir to House Atreides. In this society full of double crosses, palace intrigue, espionage, traitors, poisons and assassins, danger lurks everywhere. The writer, Frank Herbert wrote the first book in 1965 and spares no details in the relentless physical conditioning and combat training that the main characters undergo to be able to face an attack at any moment. If you are a guy, you’re going to wish that you could be House Atreides swordmaster Duncan Idaho. If you’re a girl, you’re going to wish that you could join The Bene Gesserit and learn their finely tuned killing skills that are matched only by their cunning and physical beauty.

Shogun – this epic novel by James Clavelle takes place in feudal Japan during the heyday of the Samurai. This was a time when Japan was virtually closed off from the rest of the world and the only contact they had with Europeans came by way of Portuguese missionaries, until Blackthorne, an English captain of the sea becomes shipwrecked with his crew. This book is so detailed you’ll learn some Japanese and learn lots about the Samurai. It’s long, around 1,400 pages, and it is very slow in some spots, but if you can power through the lulls you’re rewarded with some sweet sword fights, ninjas, and even some good sex scenes. Seriously, if you like Samurai and their code of honor, this is a must read.
Fight – this book by Eugene Robinson is so well written it’s hard to believe that the writer is also a fighter who has been hit repeatedly on the head. The real title of this book is Fight: everything you ever wanted to know about kicking ass but were afraid to ask because you thought you would get your ass kicked. It is a non-fiction account of Robinson and how he got into fighting through underground boxing clubs, his band Oxbow and the early days of MMA. It also includes interviews with famous fighters, killers and jailhouse assassins. Did I mention that it’s incredibly well written?

Just relax. That guy's only trying to kick you in the head

There are a couple of things that seemed illogical to me when first learning to fight: you move toward your opponent's punches, not away from them; you punch with your feet and legs, not your hands; you have to stay relaxed in order to fight effectively. This last one has been the hardest for me to wrap my head around. Stay relaxed while fists and feet and knives are moving toward my face at great speed? Are you nutso?  I'm high strung. I'm a worrier. Relaxation at the best of times is a foreign concept to me, so the idea that I could stay relaxed when someone is trying to hurt me seems kind of silly. But, like many other seemingly illogical ideas surrounding fighting, I'm starting to see the light on this one, too.

The simplest reason for staying relaxed while fighting is that tension makes you slow and vulnerable. Example 1: When in your fighting stance, don't ball your hands into tight fists. This contraction of the muscles and the tension it creates slows down your punch. Only turn your hands into tight fists the moment before your hand hits the target. Example 2: This might only apply to me, but tension sort of gives me tunnel vision. If I'm tense or nervous I tend to become fixated on one particular threat. So I might only focus on my opponent's punch and not his kick, or I fixate on trying to hit him with a kick when he's really inviting me to hit him with a jab. Example 3: You can't be tense and also have fluid movement and if you don't have fluid movement you ain't dancing and if you ain't dancing you ain't fighting your opponent, you're fighting yourself.

Movement is critical when fighting. I'll say it again, movement is critical when fighting. I'm just starting to grasp this concept but it's importance isn't lost on me. The first few weeks of doing the light sparring in boxing class was reminiscent of the way naval battles used to be fought when the ships would pull up broadside to one another and start firing thier cannon from a static position until one ship couldn't fire anymore. Incorporating movment into the fight eliminates this squared-off style and creates a style where you're keeping your opponent wondering, forcing him to move where you want him to move and as he tries to follow you, opportunities are created where you can strike.

I know that my footwork now is anything but graceful, no floating like a butterfly yet, because I've yet to learn how to properly relax and rid my body of tension. I know that I can amass all the skill in the world, but if I can't stay loose during a fight that skill won't do me any good. So this week I will keep one thougth in the forefront of my mind, I can see it there in blazing, neon orange letters: I will stay relaxed and loose and I will not remain static.

Corporeal dyslexia & thinking with my feet

Corporeal dyslexia. This is my own homemade term to describe my predicament of how I can perform a certain combative when the attacker is on my right side, but cannot perform it when the attacker is on my left side. Same attacker. Same attack. Different result, with that result being failure. I call it corporeal (body) dyslexia because I tend to reverse my movements when facing an attack from the side I’m not accustomed to. Here’s an example: last night we practiced avoiding the right-handed straight punch. To avoid it, we step to our left and punch to the body with our right hand. OK. All well and good doing that. I’ve been doing it right for three months. Then, we switched to avoiding a left-handed punch. We’re supposed to do the exact same thing, move to our left and punch to the body with our right, except that I couldn’t convince myself to keep stepping to my left. Over and over again I continued to step to my right and found myself in a no-man’s land where I was entirely out of position and had no clue as to what I should do from there. Had I done that in a real fight, I would have to call a mulligan and ask the guy to please try and hit me in the face with his left-handed punch one more time.

In this instance I have an idea why I was getting it wrong. Dodging the left-handed punch Haganah style conflicts with dodging a left-handed punch boxing style.  In boxing, avoiding that left hand would mean slipping to my right. I can understand why I’m getting backwards, I’m confusing the two fighting styles. But with the other moves I get backwards … that’s just me being confused.

One thing I’m not confused about anymore (OK, really only less confused about) is how to maintain proper form when punching rapidly. “Think with your feet.” This sage advice from Mr. Stuart has greatly simplified the process. Punches start in your feet, so let your feet guide you. Punches don’t start in your hands, so just keep the hands out of this.

Cleared to spar

I might come to regret it if I get my bell rung, but I've been given the green light to do full-on sparring and I'm pretty excited about that. It'll mean getting to the gym on a Friday or Sunday, typically my days off, and finding people around my same weight who also want to spar. The idea behind sparring is you want to go against people better than yourself. That shouldn't be difficult for me.

Last night's boxing class (March 13) was a good one. We spent more time on head movement and punching form. The most memorable thing from last night was the extended "rest" period we had. "Rest" tends to have a different meaning in boxing class than it does in the outside world. "Rest" during boxing class means that in between a round of throwing and blocking punches you get a break by assuming a squat position so your thighs are parrallel to the floor, back straight, butt out and arms extended straight out in front of your chest so they are also parallel to the floor. Then you hold it for a minute. It burns. It really, really burns.

Dialing up the speed keeps it real

Last night’s combat fitness (March 12) featured another round of code x. This is when our normal rest period between stations on the circuit gets eliminated and replaced with more exercise. Hooray for more exercise!

Haganah class focused on proper punching technique. I could practice this for 8 months and still not get it down completely. What I can do slow, I cannot do fast. I understand the mechanics of the jab and straight right, but when it comes time to start throwing them fast, my form deteriorates.

Staying with the same concept of being able to do things slow but not fast, I’m trying to make the Haganah drills more realistic by speeding them up. Last night we practiced avoiding a slashing attack from a knife. To avoid the attack you step to the side and seize the attacker’s knife arm. Practicing slow a few times is good, but to keep doing it slow doesn’t teach much. One of my biggest deficiencies is speed and speed and accuracy are certainly needed to seize an arm bearing a knife. My partner was up for it so we started slashing at each other in real time while not remaining static. We circled each other, threw some faints in and then slashed with speed.  It was realistic and way more fun than doing it slow.

Just how doing the drills in real time helps develop speed, the accuracy of punches does the same thing. When we’re practicing avoiding the straight punch, it doesn’t teach us much if our partner isn’t punching fast and directly at our faces. Yeah, you might get punched in the face if you’re not fast enough, but it is a fight class. If you’re taking a cooking class you can expect to cut yourself while chopping onions and burn yourself on the stove. If you’re taking a fighting class you can expect to get hit in the face. Partner preservation is always a top priority, but that doesn’t mean we need to sacrifice reality. You’re doing your partner a disservice if you’re throwing fast and accurate.

P.S.: Based upon the reactions of my friends in the gym, shaving my beard was a bad decision. I pretty much realized it was a bad decision as soon as I did it.  Fear not, the beard will return!

Medicine ball babies & softly spoken attack commands

During Saturday's knife fighting class we tried to stab babies ... sort of. Ok, there were no babies in the gym and no babies were stabbed in the making of Saturday's knife class. Allow me to explain. During some of our sparring sessions one person had to hold a medicine ball and shield it from their opponent as if it were their own child they were trying to protect from a knife-wielding maniac. Believe it or not, I performed better while I was holding my baby. I guess it had to do with staying on the defensive and only countering when my opponent committed himself to an attack. When my opponent held the baby, he tore me up, filleted me. It was like I became so intent on trying to stab his medicince ball baby that I forgot all about defense. I think the medicine ball baby demonstrates two things: one, when we have  a little bit of motivation, even made up motivation of protecting a medicine ball, we perform better, sort of like the momma grizzly coming out in us; two,  having a more defensive-minded approach to the fight makes you more cautious, less willing to attack, but ready to exploit your opponent's mistakes.

This was my bouncing baby boy during
knife sparring. We had to cradle  the
medicine ball as if it were our own child
while fending off an attack.

Knife class also featured the use of voice commands and conditioning. This is how it worked: We had color-coded commands. Yellow meant do nothing. Red meant slash the hand and stab. Green meant push and slash. When the instructor said a color, we had to perform the appropriate action. Sounds easy, right? It is pretty easy when you pay attention and the volume of the commands stays consistent, but just when you become accustomed to the commands being yelled, the commands would be given at conversation volume and then at an even lower volume. The idea here is to be prepared to fight even if your sensory input does register threat. Your opponent probably won't announce his attack with a war cry and his attack may even come during a seemingly benign interaction when there is no yelling. For example, a guy might stop you on a street and ask if you have a light for cigarette. He's not yelling, the tone of his voice is neutral and the volume is low and then he's coming at you. So the varied volume of the instructor's voice commands forced us to ignore yelling or softly-spoken commands and focuse on what the color meant we should do. Just because there's lots of noise in a certain situation doesn't mean you lash out with an attack, and just because there's no noise it doesn't mean that all is ok.

Combat Fitness
There's code blue - 15 seconds rest during each station on the circuit. There's code red -  no rest between stations on the circuit. Now there's code x - exercise between stations on the circuit. Saturday's combat fitness (March 10) class debuted code x and it injected the circuit with a heavier work load. So instead of having rest or no rest between stations, we did mountain climbers, jumping jacks and a bunch of other exercises for 30 seconds between each station. It sucked while it lasted, but it made finishing the circuit all the more gratifying.