Taking Stock

I've never been one for New Year's resolutions. Not that I don't have a lot of room for improvement -- I obviously do. It's just that the idea of New Year's resolutions doesn't motivate me.

Nevertheless, this time (the 7th & 8th Days of Christmas) is good for taking stock. I want to do an inventory of my own warrior readiness. Perhaps you'll join me.

Warrior Fitness

How fit am I compared to this time last year? Better, but still not where I want to be. My body composition has improved -- a lot more muscle under the "fat suit". Also, Laura noticed last week that I was wearing a shirt which I used to have a hard time keeping buttoned around the middle. The change is subtle, and it has been so gradual that people who see me from week to week have not even noticed.

Over the past three years or so, my endurance has gone from extremely poor to poor and now to fair. My general condition really deteriorated during the year I spent chained to my desk writing, but if I take the intensity of my workouts up another notch, I think I'll be satisfactory or better in another year. That's still not where I want to be, but I'm not 50 anymore, and as long as I'm improving, I won't complain.

What about you? Are you moving in the fitness direction you want? If not, make just one small change in the right direction. Make it tiny, but make it a change you can live with for the rest of your life.

Warrior Techniques

I have a lot of techniques that I've picked up from my martial arts training. But do I have three techniques that I've developed and honed to a level of mastery? I've really worked on striking with my knees. I can generate power & speed, and I have practiced the technique straight ahead and to either side.

I haven't worked as hard on my palm heel strike. I've done some slow motion practice (which is one method of developing speed, believe it or not). I think I'll concentrate on generating power and on using it from various positions, including seated.

I love the judo chop. It's fast & powerful, and it's most versatile. I think I'll duct tape some padding to our oak tree to practice this technique a few times every day. A little extra padding would allow me to also use it to practice the palm heel strike without hurting my shoulders.

Do you have three good, versatile techniques you could use in a violent encounter? If so, how about adding a fourth? If not, why don't you start by learning one or two and practicing them?

Warrior Body Skills

I have just started working on some balance drills from the AttackProof book and video. My balance has always been poor, and now I'm finally doing something about it. It took me several practice sessions just to do the Ninja Walk and Vacuum Walk the wrong way. Now I have to work on improving to the point where I'm doing them correctly.

Maybe your balance is acceptable (even great), but you may have other body skills that need sharpening. Do you need to work on agility, coordination, timing?

Warrior Weapons Skills

I need to spend more time dry firing both handgun and long gun. At this time, my knife skills are not what they ought to be. My training with a blade was good, but rudimentary and too short. I am thinking about one knife fighting system which utilizes a technique that looks just like one of my favorite empty hand strikes. Perhaps I'll get a hold of some of their training materials this year. In learning to use a knife, I also hope to learn how to better defend against one.

How are your weapons skills? Is this the moment where you decide that you will become master of one type of weapon? Or if you've already reached that level of competence with one, how about adding another type to your repertoire (e.g., if you're a rifleman, become an archer or a knife fighter)?

Scenario Based Training

Maybe this will be the year I find a dedicated practice partner. It's a matter of prayer. I'd like someone with whom I could practice spontaneous reaction drills and do some scenario based training to aid in adrenaline stress conditioning.

Et Cetera

There are other areas where you can take stock, like Warrior Philosophy, Warrior Mindset and Warrior Strategy, but you get the idea. I've tried to be brutally honest about where I need to improve as a warrior, How about you? I'd like to see some comments on your own inventory and steps you've taken or are about to take to improve in just one specific area. Your comment might be just the spark some fellow Christian Martialist needs take his own training program to the next level.

WWII Combatives

During WWII, W.E. Fairbairn taught British, Canadian & US elite troops some of the most simple, efficient and brutal combat methods. I have tried to capture and pass on this wisdom in my book 12 US Military Combat Techniques That Could Save Your Life.

Here is a link to some rare wartime footage of Fairbairn's training camp in Scotland:
Fairbairn's Unarmed Combat Training

Here is a video clip of Fairbairn teaching at an OSS training camp Note the Lone Ranger masks worn to protect the identities of the participantants. The OSS was the forerunner of the CIA. Here's the clip:
Fairbairn Trains OSS

Here's another link to a WWII era US Marine bayonet training film. It illustrates the principle that unarmed skills transfer to the use of weapons:
Bayonet Fighting

Warrior Fitness -- Posture, 5

The gentle curve of your lower back allows your center of gravity to rest above your legs. Without it, maintaining your balance would be a constant ordeal. You would have the same problem as dogs & other animals trained to stand in an upright position, for whom it is neither easy nor comfortable nor natural.

The curves of your upper back and neck keep the head and thorax positioned above your center of gravity. Over time, however, you have probably let your head sink down "into" your neck, turning that gentle curve into an acute angle. It was to this problem that Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869-1955) directed his attention.

The Alexander Technique (as I understand it) seems to focus its efforts on these vertebrae with the idea that if you correct bad habits in this region, corrections in the lower spine will follow. While I only endorse Mr. Alexander's ideas reservedly, I think the upper spine is a good place to start, and I will borrow one of the techniques associated with his system.

Stand or sit comfortably with your back unsupported. Now, visualize a strong steel wire or cable attached to the center of the top of your head. Let it pull your head straight upward as you relax your back and shoulders. This upward pull will restore the gentle curve to your cervical vertebrae that God designed them to have.

Shoulders should hang loosely, and you should not think of this posture as a rigid one that you must maintain at all costs. It is simply the home position from which your spine departs according to the demands of mobility, and to which it returns at rest.

I wish I could tell you that I have mastered this technique, and that it has become a habit, but I have not yet reached that place. When my back is sore or tired, though, I often recognize my poor posture and correct it with this visualization. It usually brings immediate relief.

Controlling Adrenaline Stress: The Battle Cry, 2

Continued from "Controlling Adrenaline Stress: The Battle Cry"

The battle cry is THE traditional means of controlling and channelling adrenaline stress. Through history, warriors who knew nothing of adrenaline -- but a lot about stress -- adopted a common technique to help them master and use their adrenaline rush in battle. We call it a battle cry. The battle cry is a decisive, purposeful, aggressive action.

• Decisive -- a battle cry has the psychological effect of strengthening your resolve by letting every level of your being know that you have made a choice and commitment to fight rather than to freeze or to cower;
• Purposeful -- a battle cry bristles with purpose, and its very presence focuses all of your energies to the end of absolute conquest of the foe;
• Aggressive -- a battle cry is fueled by adrenaline, and by its very nature, feeds the aggressive mindset you need in battle;
  
• Action -- a battle cry is an action in and of itself, which mobilizes you to further action.
  

The battle cry has another, more curious aspect: in many, it transforms fear into something that can only be described as the joy of battle. As a bonus, it often demoralizes and confuses the adversary. The "rebel yell" and the "Apache war whoop" are just two examples. These battle cries channeled adrenaline stress to increase the warriors' own ferocity while, at the same time, making their enemies' stress self-defeating.

Ferocity that is fueled by adrenaline and supported by a battle cry can occasionally be so daunting to an adversary that he retreats before actual engagement. This may frustrate you because, after you'd done everything you could to avoid a violent encounter, you finally decided it was necessary and opened the flood gates. Now the enemy is gone, and you have nowhere to direct the torrent. It's tough on your system (I know!), but it's better than what you risk in an actual violent encounter.

Oh yes . . . and happy Stevenmas (2nd day of Christmas) or the "Feast of Steven" as it's called in Good King Wenceslaus (a Stevenmas Carol).

Controlling Adrenaline Stress: The Battle Cry

No doubt you've seen the use of the battle cry for controlling adrenaline stress portrayed on the screen. I'm talking about those movies about battles of old, where both sides are lined up against each other? Then, as one side advances, a few warriors begin to emit a sound that spreads through the ranks. As the sound grows, so does their momentum, until they come like thunder upon the opposing force.

What you see in scenes like these is an age-old method used to bring adrenaline stress under control and to make it work for the warrior rather than against him. Like the startle response, your experience with adrenaline is based upon physiological realities.

Also like the startle response, your adrenaline rush happens automatically. But unlike the startle response, you can learn to exercise control over it. Experience and breath control, for example, will allow you to determine, to a remarkable degree, the intensity and duration of your adrenaline rush -- the less intense, the longer you can make it last.

Studies conducted by the US military have shown that too much adrenaline can immobilize you (sometimes described as frozen with fear). It can give you tunnel vision, cause you to repeat ineffectual moves in a behavioral loop, or make you just plain freeze on the spot. When an experienced orc sees the signs of your adrenaline stress, he may count on your having just such responses. At that time, you need a technique to channel your adrenaline into solving the problem at hand.

More about that in Controlling Adrenaline Stess: The Battle Cry, 2.

The Best Self Defense System, 5

Most fights last from 2-4 seconds. If you're dealing with multiple attackers, and you're good enough to fight your way out of the situation, it may last several seconds. That's all. All your training, all your preparation and all your forethought come down to a moment of truth measured in mere seconds.

Among the grim realities associated with that brief span are the adrenaline rush and the sheer chaos of the moment. I've already discussed the need for adrenaline stress conditioning in a previous post (and I hope to write more about it). Adrenaline will help you deal with the chaos of the moment, but you also need to train for it.

When I speak of training to deal with the chaos of combat, I refer to what takes place after that split-second startle response. The startle response is spontaneous, and you should train so that what follows is as well.

Spontaneity is the ability to react appropriately to your adversary's unexpected & unrehearsed (by you) moves. There is no time to run through a mental catalogue of techniques and select one that is appropriate to the moment. Your actions need to be extemporaneous, and they need to be right.

Here is where I feel a lack in my own personal self defense. My previous training stopped short of giving me that spontaneity. Goshin Ryu Jujitsu puts a heavy stress on learning many techniques. Before my training was cut short, I began to see that the techniques were tied together by certain underlying principles. It dawned on me that I was supposed to internalize these principles so that in the right moment, the right technique would just flow out.

I believe that approach would have worked, but my training was cut short. In the intervening years I have not found a practice partner who would stick with the training, so I never completed the internalization process. In fact, the one drawback of this approach is that it takes a long time before it clicks, and you become truly spontaneous.

Since then, I have discovered another approach. It is used by two systems that I know of, and -- to a certain degree -- by individual instructors, like Keith Pascal. One of the systems is the Russian martial art, Systema. The other is Guided Chaos.

Both systems teach and train principles, but they also train students to respond to unchoreographed attacks right from the beginning. One of the methods used by both is slow motion sparring. An advantage of slow motion sparring is that you can practice moves that might seriously injure a practice partner at full speed.

I own some of the Systema videos, and, while I found them enlightening, they were of limited training value without a partner. The Guided Chaos material has some training material aimed at those training solo. I bought their book Attackproof some time ago, and more recently obtained their conditioning video. While I do not expect these to entirely ready me for the exchanges of combat, the drills are designed to lead to balance, body unity, sensitivity, looseness and economy of motion.

These are all building blocks of spontaneity in combat. I plan to work on these until I can find a committed training partner. I will let you know how I am progressing in future posts.

Warrior Fitness -- Posture, 4

The backbone of balance and mobility is the . . . uh . . . backbone. Your spine is a marvel of engineering and a testimony to the great wisdom of Him who designed it. And, contrary to a lot of evolutionary propaganda, back problems do not stem from the fact that humans walk upright.

The spine is designed to carry you in an upright position. As just one example, God designed the human woman's spine with a wedge-shaped vertebra in the lower back which neither men nor apes have. This, in conjunction with pelvic design, helps a pregnant woman adjust her center of gravity to keep her balance. This is fulfills a specific need for creatures who walk upright, and monkeys don't have this structure because they don't need it.

(Sadly the humanistic community can look at this marvel and still see evolution rather than God as its origin.)

The major cause of back pain is that humans don't know and/or don't care how God designed the spine and what He intended it to do. Cultural conditioning and lack of discipline, have contributed to the way we mistreat our backs. Ignorance ("What's wrong with the way I lift?"), pride ("It's not too heavy for ME."), emotional stress and cumulative minor traumas finish the job.

For that reason, you must repent of ignoring your Designer and begin to cooperate with His structural design for your back.

P.S. In a previous post, I mentioned signing up for the "12 Days of Fitness". Here's a link to an audio presentation from that promotional that will teach you something about the structure of the back, benefits of good posture, and some of the muscles that need to be strengthened.