Tea Isn’t For Drinking

Few things are more pathetic than a martial arts teacher who was once famous for dominating others. He goes from a low status job to martial arts school owner, to having a few schools. For perhaps a decade he dominates students until eventually they dwindle and leave. He’s left with chronic pain and no health insurance. He eventually dies in poverty and loneliness

It is truly a life wasted on feeling powerful rather than being powerful.

Martial artists can avoid this sad and predictable fate by learning to pour tea.

The point of tea is to fill people’s cups when they are getting low in such a casual way that it doesn’t feel like you are filling them. It is to serve that which is essential for life without them feeling the weight of the gift. It is a path to nurturing community through acts of service.

It is not about dominating the supply of water. If you were thirsty and having tea with someone who was making you jump through hoops to get the next pour, you would leave quickly. This would be an obvious perversion of culture. No one would put up with this type of predatory behavior.

This sharply contrasts with the subculture of martial arts both in East Asia and abroad.

Masters dress their students in branded uniforms with their name written on them. They make students purchase large photographs of the masters face to prominently display in their schools. In some cases senior students are encouraged to get tattoos with their systems logo on them.

To varying degrees this is typical in martial art circles. Martial arts serve as an escape from low status lives. The dojo is a place to experience ascension through a make believe dominance hierarchy.

With enough time, money, and obedience they can become dojo fabulous. Eventually they go onto become instructors who experience relevance by how many students they can control.

The weight of their dominance is repulsive to anyone who isn’t desperately in need of a father figure or cult leader. This leaves them surrounded by a network of needy devotees they feed off of for a temporary dominance high.

With a perspective shift toward using martial arts to serve others, the quality of their social capital would grow and and as a result their lives outside of the dojo would flourish. It could be a tool for personal and community cultivation. It would give them a happy and fulfilling life.

Use tea to serve people and it becomes a practice of nurturing friendship and community.

Use martial arts to serve people and it becomes a meditation on death as a path to a fearless life.

The way your view it will drastically change your quality of life.

Choose wisely

Vertical and Horizontal Rings

Think of the sight on a gun. Generally speaking it is based on a circle with a cross at it’s center. It’s a very efficient framework that has been used to help humans make sense of chaos. It’s how we find our sense of direction with a compass along the four directions. This framework is found in every culture on Earth. For upper body defense you can use this same concept to simplify combat. The circle your arms make in front of you is the general circle. If you are holding a weapon, the circle is still there. If you turn the weapon you are alternating your arm circle along a horizontal or vertical axis. This is how you get a sense for where your space is and how to divide the chaos of combat along horizontal or vertical planes. Keep these concepts to get a sense for range and how to divide off attacks. Avoid training fancy preset techniques. Everything valuable in real life combat is found within this circle and the x and y axis. If you learn a technique, put it into this frame of reference so that you will be able to realistically use it under combat stress. You want to limit variables and reduce decision making to speed your response time. This applies Hick’s Law which states that increasing the number of choices will increase the decision making time logarithmically. The more choices you have the slower you will respond.

When clearing a room using a firearm you want to inch along seeing into the room frame by frame rather than all at once. This is serving to control the variable of the horizontal plane so that you only have to consider the vertical plane. You can apply this same concept to unarmed combat by using footwork to get past the outside of their knees and elbows. Once at their side you can keep your attention on the vertical plane. With one less variable you can use your attention span for greater situational awareness.

Opening and Closing The Arm Ring

Under combat stress when your heart rate is high you will lose fine motor control of your arms. Meditation and breath work practice will delay this, however in the reality of melee combat your heart rate will climb and you will naturally do one of two motions. You will either adopt the infant startle reflex or brining both arms up or you will cover your face and ball up into a fetal position. Rather than fight nature, it’s better to make use of this and adapt these. When your arms are up in a circular posture this is called the open guard. It should form a circular structure that you can use for attack and defense.

A closed guard is based on protecting the head, you connect your forearms together and cover up. Generally the open guard is seen in grappling while the closed guard is seen in striking arts. Its important to train the open and closed guard structures so that it doesn’t matter if you have a sword, a knife, or empty hands. Every effective martial arts technique will fit into the natural startle and cover instincts. You should be able to use these concept flexibly and apply them along horizontal and vertical planes so that you occupy a complete sphere of combat and can be effective in both armed and unarmed melee combat.

Because fine motor coordination is unreliable as heart rates climb into the grey and red zones, footwork is essential. Broadly speaking we divide footwork into angles and circles. You want to freely enter and exit and step where it is inconvenient to be attacked.

Combat Types

Tactical formations

Tactical Formations: These originated in phalanx formations and shield walls. The use of pole arms requires larger and more stable stances to provide a platform for the extended weight. Shield walls also require more stability than mobility so stances tended to be wider. These arts tend to emphasize breath work and use explosive power. Formation arts tend to be the oldest and most widespread as they were taught to thousands of soldiers at once. These styles tend to have very few movements. Instead there is greater emphasis on the details of the power expression. These arts required the most repetitive movement and tend to engage the entire body. Riot police still use shield walls and even utilize roman shield wall tactics in modern skirmishes. The central intent of formation training is to maintain formation. Most formation based martial arts died out in a practical sense as the cost of mass produced firearms rendered them antiquated. They maintain relevancy in the modern world within the context of crowd control and riot police who still use shield walls. The entire formation advances slowly to rout an enemy. Tactical formations are also used within mafia groups in China particularly if they are going after a skilled melee fighter. Typical formations include attacking in a Y formation with two frontal attacks coming in at a 45 degree angle and a third line of attackers coming from the flank. This formation works to reduce the advantages of side flanking. The goal is to bring the opponent down and then surround them while stabbing and kicking them before dispersing.

Melee

Melee arts make the assumption that one person will have to fight many others without the benefit of a formation. This is also known as a skirmish. This demands a high degree of personal mobility and relies heavily on footwork. The central intent of melee training is to get to the backs of others while not letting them get to yours.

Dueling

This is one on one fighting. Dueling is found as a stage of both melee and formation training typically with less lethal wooden weapons or with unarmed combat and protective gear as a combat sport. It started to develop rapidly both in Europe and East Asia in response to the widespread dissemination of cheap and efficient firearms which rendered long weapons antiquated. With increased public safety this gradually evolved into combat sports. Modern fencing and fight sports are examples of dueling arts. Dueling arts make use of formation and melee techniques and adapt them to the context of a sport or one on one altercation. The central intent in dueling is to overcome an individual. MMA and fight sports have advanced quickly in recent decades and have relevancy. They are much safer to pressure test.

Context detrmines efficiency

Within the context of a formation, breaking formation to overcome an individual is still a loss as it puts the entire formation at risk. Locking horns in a prolonged wrestling match is a great tactic in a duel, but will make you highly vulnerable within the context of melee combat. Even groin kicks that are so useful in dueling must be reconsidered. Clasping legs can cause entanglements that can cause you to “win” while still forfeiting your objective and greatly adding to your risk by limiting mobility. Training for hand to hand combat in the context of dueling or sport is a foundation from which we can build upon with melee or formation skills. Over reliance on the reactions and strategies that make dueling effective can get you killed within a different context. Dueling is an excellent morale booster and is indispensable training. It is the safest way to pressure testing the core skills required for combat. Still it should be viewed as stage in training with the ultimate goal being to fight in either melee or formation.

Training in one of these martial art types will all carry overlapping skills but specialization in them will also cause you to become weaker or even vulnerable in the others. Once I was alongside a friend who practiced a dueling based grappling art. We were rushed by a group of mafia bodyguards in China. He “won” the duel with the first guy who rushed at him by putting him in a rear naked choke. My friend was completely vulnerable as a few others rushed him. I disabled them using more melee based martial art techniques. In the context of melee, his art was useless. When grappling in a dueling context his transitions on the ground were incredibly smooth and he could submit me. Was his approach to training superior or was mine? The answer changes drastically depending on the context.

The Laws of Melee Combat

1. Stay in motion. Movements must be done while in motion with the assumption that you are constantly being flanked by another person. Techniques must take place in the time is would take to swing an axe at you from behind. Stationary position either standing or on the ground will get you killed. Kicking to the opponents groin may allow them to clamp their legs shut trapping your foot reducing your mobility. For a one on one encounter this momentary delay may not be a significant consideration, but with blades coming for your back, you must reconsider techniques which can slow you down. Getting knocked to the ground is a death sentence so keep kicking low and to a minimum. Melee combat is not the place to get overly fixated on a single person. You may not have to kill them. The person in front of you may not be your target and locking onto them too much may blind you to the overall flow of the crowd. You may only need to disable them or compromise them so that they next person can finish them off. The primary goal is to get them to give up and run away. Routing them and demoralizing them is the primary goal.

   2. Cut them where they are can’t cut you back using positional hierarchy. The best position is behind them. The next is to the side of them with their arms controlled. The third best is in front of them, and the worst position will be on the ground, horizontal, or otherwise rendered immobile.

   3. Use your enemies for cover. Your primary shield after footwork are your other enemies. Ruin their armor so you can save your own. Its better to block with their arms and their swords than your own. This also makes it difficult to become the target of ranged attacks or long weapons as they will be afraid to hit their own man. The heart of melee combat is mobility.

   4. Rout them. Your end goal is to control the crowd itself and get the mob to lose their will to fight, retreat, or surrender.

Every Step is a Kick

Every step is a kick, every kick is a step

For melee combat we need to look past kicking as we think of it in combat sports. A kick is also a step for footwork as well as a take down or a throw. When it comes to removing threats, kicking is not as effective as a knee and a knee is not as effective as striking with the hips and body. Striking with the hips can easily knock someone to the ground where they can be kicked in the back of the head as you run toward your next target.  Attacking with your own knees is very effective, but picking up the leg compromises your balance and is not often worth the risk. Consider using knees as part of steps. There is a time and place even for high kicks in melee combat, but it is rare. The highest frequency leg attacks incidental knees while moving. Another useful tactic is to kicking behind their knees from a crouch to pull them closer as your rotate your leg. This can expose their back while and stomp the back of their knees into the pavement while attacking their neck from behind. Don’t assume a kick or leg attack will do any harm whatsoever. Don’t rely strikes of any kind as the end goal. Sometimes they miss and sometimes people are tough and keep going anyway. Human can keep attacking even while fatally wounded. Don’t underestimate the power of adrenaline. Instead use kicks as part of your overall movement pattern. The best time to kick someone in the head is when they are already horizontal and dazed. The second best time is whenever you can get away with it.

Fine Motor Control in Combat

Dan Grossman, a police and military trainer writes in “On Combat” that meditation and breathing can help keep warriors in a sweet spot of reaction time and mental cognition, however as their heart rate starts to climb beyond a certain point reactions tend to come bilaterally. It is similar to the way a startled baby will bend and raise both arms. It also has unfortunate consequences in combat. A police officer with his finger on the trigger of his right hand may grab a suspect with his left. With his heart rate high the action of grabbing and squeezing with his left hand will cause his trigger finger to squeeze as well. Breath work training, cardio, and meditation training may take the edge off of this, but even the best stress inoculation will not prevent this bilateral response from taking place. Mantis fits well into these scenarios as most of the core movements are bilateral in nature and take place with the entire arms so they can be done while holding weapons.

Keep it simple

Grossman also describes how adding even a single step in a high stakes movement such as handcuffing a resisting criminal can dramatically reduce the effectiveness. Stress inoculation is mostly conditional and that which has been trained. The more there is to train the less effective they will be at any one skill. As Laozi described, “The more you know, the less you understand.” This sentiment was echoed in the 20th century with the Hick’s Law which states that the more choices you present your users with, the longer it will take them to reach a decision. More is not better. Collecting more slows down your decision making which can be fatal in combat.