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Fisticuffs: Peak Performance Pugilism
A Product Review by Phil Elmore
I was more eager to review
Fisticuffs: Peak Performance Pugilism set than other tapes I’ve
reviewed for these pages. That’s because Fisticuffs deals
with a topic I think most of us find more intuitive: striking with
the hands. Something about hitting someone or something with your
fists just resonates more with the average person, I think. It’s
hard-wired into us. In the Fisticuffs series, Scott does for arms
what he did for legs in the
Leg Fencing
series.
TAPE 2: WEAPONIZE YOUR ARCHITECTURE
The tape begins with the same stylized pair of sequences on Tape
1. To weaponize your architecture, Scott explains, is to use your
entire body as a weapon. Circumstantial spontaneity overrides the
application of techniques. You don’t need a catalog of
techniques. Such an approach will lead to your downfall against a
fighter who understands that improvisation is one of the most critical
skills in hand to hand fighting. Suspend the notion of specific
techniques, Scott urges. Look, instead, at the process of
integrating your breathing, movement, and alignment.
Each exercise on the tape, Scott warns, is not intended as a set
of movements to memorize. Use them to help you understand the
importance of constant motion and improvisational weaponizing, but
improvise similar drills for your own practice.
Following what is by now a predictable sequence — the foundation for
good instructional curricula, as far as I am concerned — Scott works
through horizontal and then vertical infinities with his arms, striking
pads worn by a training partner. Keep moving, he urges. You
are vulnerable when you “reset.” When you’re throwing your
arms and working through these movements, any damage done should be incidental.
This is part of a non-technique focus. You are getting out of the
way of your
flow and letting the
damage happen as you stay in constant motion.
Working forward and then back, dropping his upper frame to his lower
frame and screwing the force out to come back in a tight infinity pattern,
Scott explains that force comes from the natural range of motion without
stopping. The gap between techniques will be your undoing, he
repeats. “Circumstantial spontaneity” should be your goal,
he says. “Performance is prior to precision.”
Keeping his hands open, Scott touches on the erasure of the distinction
between striking and grappling. With your arms in constant motion
and your architecture “weaponized,” you can use anything
available to you against any and all targets nearest you. This is
the key to the entire tape.
Scott also refers to the “trinity” concept, in which not one
but three strikes are delivered. You wish to overwhelm your
opponent, push him into the “vortex,” the downward performance
spiral that is the focus of tapes 3.1 and 3.2. There is real
consistency here, as this discussion could come from either Flow
Fighting or Leg Fencing. Scott’s material can be absorbed
individually, but taken together his works form a web of training that
build on and enhance each other.
Scott explains the three main tactics for delivering force to the
opponent: projection, whipping, and casting. Projecting is
linear delivery. Whipping may look powerful, but really doesn’t have
all that much power behind it. Casting is the best method,
recruiting the most joints and using the body in a relaxed way while
delivering force through a smooth, integrated movement.
An extended discussion of collapsing and folding your architecture, and
how this applies to impact delivery, follows. This was introduced in
Tape 1 and is very important. Scott demonstrates how to deliver
blows around the axis of the opponent’s hold — you can see him
“flowing” as he does
this — and how to use what he gives you to work around, through, and with
his movement.
Every part of your appendage, and every part of your body, can be
“weaponized,” Scott says. He demonstrates how to use
different portions of your body in the clinch, spending time on the elbow
pit, the inside of the elbow, the outside of the elbow, and the
forearm. The discussion of the forearm was particularly of interest
to me, as I have always been fond of forearm smashes and have thought —
as Scott says on the tape — that the forearm is neglected in much martial
training. (The forearm is not a “lazy elbow,” Scott points
out, but a screw that pops outward.)
In these sequences, Scott is amazing to watch. As he demonstrates
flowing and delivering damage to the opponent, we start to really see what
he can do. He is both fast and fluid and obviously knows what he is
doing.
There is a good segment on fear reactivity, the emotional arousal that
is the enemy of flow. There are three elements to fear
reactivity: sensitivity (how much you detect), irritability (how
quickly you react), and contractibility (how much you react). Get
your opponent’s fear reactivity rolling, Scott explains, and you can
“push him into the vortex.”
Density, a byproduct of fear reactivity, involves the heart rate, the
breathing rate, and muscular tension. It is comprised of the
internal distractions that occur due to perceived or real errors, detected
threats, and the unexpected. You can use this density in fighting
your opponent, Scott explains. If you cause emotional arousal, you
create, for example, muscular tension — density — that can be
manipulated. This discussion reminded me very much of chi sao, a
sensitivity exercise in Wing Chun in which any tenseness in the opponent
works against him and provides the lever against which you move to defeat
his or her guard.
Scott goes on to discuss trigger points and the difference between them
and pressure points. Trigger points cause motor action and can be
used to create openings. Pressure points, by contrast, are used to
inflict pain.
Your opponent’s fear reactivity can work to his advantage, however, so
you must be aware of this. His intention creates an opportunity
which creates the ability to attack. If he is very irritable, for
example, he may react quickly to counter your attack. You can use
this, however, because fear reactivity disintegrates the integration
of your opponent’s movement, breathing, and alignment. You
wish to be in the zone — proper integration of those three
elements — while you push him into the vortex.
Fear reactivity has three types, based on physiology. These are
concentric (flinching), isometric (defensive bracing), and eccentric
(resisting). Eccentric is the strongest muscular action of these
three, so be aware that your opponent is most powerful when experiencing
this. Manipulate the different types of fear reactivity to maximize
your efficacy.
The setting of the tape shifts to a boxing ring in which Scott
demonstrates holds, ties, and reversals with the help of a pair of
training partners. One of these men is wearing another of those
striped tank tops and has elaborate tattoos on his arms, which is visually
distracting. (It’s not a big problem, but I did find myself looking
to see exactly what the tattoos depicted, which prompted me to rewind to
see what I’d missed while I was doing that.)
Focus, Scott urges, on force vectors while viewing these
demonstrations. He and his partners work through a number of wedges,
single and double underhooks, neutral ties, and levering. There was
one sequence that I really liked in which Scott deftly reverses a hold
applied to him, smoothly and very quickly placing his opponent in the same
position.
The boxing ring segment of the tape goes on for quite some time and is
worth more than one viewing. I cannot really do it justice
here. A wealth of information on dealing with certain clinch tactics
is imparted relatively quickly. (If I have any real complaint about
this portion of the tape, it is that the lighting is very yellow,
especially compared to the stark white look of the rest of the tape.)
Wrapping up the tape, Scott returns to the first setting to discuss the
three strategic interfaces for fighting. These are proactive
(addressing directly the opponent’s intention and inhibiting his motor
launch), counteractive (dealing with the opponent’s delivery system) and
retroactive (being tougher than the opponent, through habituation or
sensitization).
The Fisticuffs series continues with Tapes 3.1 and 3.2 on the Flow
State Performance Spiral.
Read my
review of Fisticuffs, Tape 1