The Martialist: The Magazine For Those Who Fight Unfairly

I was more eager to review
Scott Sonnon’s


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 3.1:  FLOW STATE PERFORMANCE SPIRAL
“Enter The Zone and Impose the Vortex”

This is a conceptual tape, in which Scott speaks at length about
performance spirals, psychodynamic profiling, flow state characteristics,
the “zone,” and the “vortex.”  If you are
confused, don’t worry.  Those unfamiliar with Scott’s other work may
be intimidated by the lengthy lists of complicated terms presented, but
these terms comprise what are ultimately simple concepts.  Those with
fighting experience will be able to relate to these concepts almost
immediately.

There were no production issues on this tape, apart from some
intermittent buzzing and audio fuzz during one brief segment.  The
chalkboard Scott uses is not as visible as is the white board to which he
turns at one point, but I generally didn’t have much difficulty taking
notes from the material.

I will start with the larger picture of what Scott is presenting. 
Those of you with martial arts experience or who’ve done any significant
sparring or fighting will know precisely what Scott means by “the
zone” when I tell you that he’s not really using the term differently
than any of us do.  Think about it. When you’re fighting or sparring,
when you’re in the zone, you experience a feeling of being on,
the “mind of no mind.”  Seeing everything and focusing on
nothing individually, feeling as if you need not think about what you must
do before you do it, perhaps not even really looking at your opponent, you
are on, simply there, confident and dispassionate and
dominant in the exchange.

Sound familiar?  I know I’ve experienced this before in
full-contact sparring.  It is also the basis for
my
teacher Dave’s emphasis on the meditative aspects of the martial
arts.  It need not be anywhere near so mystical-sounding,
however.  Scott breaks down the components of the zone — the upward
performance spiral — and explains in scientific and physiological terms
how to gain, regain, or remain in this state of
flow
while pushing your opponent into the vortex, the downward
performance spiral.  

You are an integrated fighter, whose breathing, movement, and alignment
work together, free of focus on technique, of intentional and conscious
effort.  Your task is to remain this integrated fighter while
disrupting your opponent’s effort to be the same.  Some speak of
taking the initiative in a fight, which is what Scott is teaching
you to do — but it’s more comprehensive than this, more involved than
simply having more momentum.

Think of the vortex as that sensation of total loss of control and
helplessness that comes when you are overwhelmed by an opponent.  If
you’ve ever sparred or fought someone who was suddenly all over you,
forcing you to cover up and hang on for dear life, you have felt the
vortex.

Scott uses a simple grid to explain psychodymanic profiling, the
process of evaluating your opponent’s awareness.  This breaks down as
follows:

External Focus, Broad Concentration = “Attending”

External Focus, Narrow Concentration = “Intending”

Broad Concentration, Internal Focus = “Strategizing”

Narrow Concentration, Internal Focus = “Fantasizing”

In fighting, you wish to have an attending profile.  Your
broad awareness and external focus enable you to be aware of what is
happening and to react automatically to it with a minimum of
distraction. 

When you are intending, you have become vulnerable in a fight,
because you must recover from that intention to be able to do something
else. Intention thus blinds you to what is happening. When you are strategizing,
you are likewise engaged in an activity that may leave you vulnerable. If
you’re focusing on a given strategy you may be distracted by it, by the
need to accomplish the end goal of that strategy. Focus on the process,
not the product, when fighting, Scott repeats.

(In a great example of the emotional arousal that can hinder flow, my
Shanliang Li
green sash test
culminated in a single command from my instructor:  “Okay, put
me on the ground.”  Focusing on the need to accomplish this
task, the desire to be successful in this end goal, could quite easily
have distracted me from the process of fighting properly.  A good
fighter must overcome that emotional arousal or risk entering the vortex.)

Fantasizing is the exact opposite of what you wish to experience in a
fight, and corresponds to the vortex, the downward performance
spiral.  An opponent who is trapped in fantasizing — about what he
must do, or about how badly he is performing, or about the different
techniques he must consciously apply in order to overcome your capture of
the edge — is yours to defeat. 

Force your opponent out of attention and into intending, Scott
says.  When you force him to think and internalize what is happening,
you move him downward into that fantasizing stage.  His emotional
arousal interferes with his flow and creates density — the tension, both
psychological and physiological, that you can manipulate to your
advantage.  You are, after all, seeking to manipulate his fear
reactivity through somatic profiling.  (Remember that
somatic profiling is determining whether his fear reactivity is
concentric, isometric, or eccentric.  Is he flinching?  Is he
bracing?  Is he resisting?)

Scott, using a whiteboard, speaks of the relationship between
psychodynamic profiling, somatic profiling, and visceral profiling. 
Your visceral profile consists of the physical manifestations of your fear
reactivity — an elevated heart rate, accelerated breathing rate, higher
blood pressure, and so forth.  These are the internal distractions
that lead a fighter to the vortex.

Your performance in a fight, Scott explains, is inextricably tied to
your psychological, somatic, and visceral orientations.  What is your
state of mind?  What is your state of fear reactivity?  How is
your muscular tension, your heart rate, your breathing?  

Your primary strategy is to move your opponent from the broad
concentration of attending to the narrower concentration of intending. 
The performance spiral, therefore, can be expressed as a strategy for
combat.  It can be expressed in terms of flow state
characteristics.  This is not as complicated as it sounds.  When
you flow, you are doing
precisely what you must do to be in the zone.  Scott explains
the flow state characteristics in detail:

Perception of control.  Your ability to seamlessly
transition from one aspect of awareness to another, to match your psychodynamic
profile to the task at hand, to broaden or narrow your focus internally or
externally as needed, gives you a sense of control of the situation.

Predictability. This is the natural outcome of your broad
awareness and your ability to respond automatically to what is offered.

Indistractability. This is perhaps the most important
manifestation of the upward performance spiral.  When you are not
easily distracted, your recovery time from the unexpected and from
perceived errors is minimized.  The longer an opponent is distracted,
the greater is his reactionary gap.  As Scott says repeatedly,
performance overrides precision.  Focus on recovery time to increase
your toughness, your ability to gain and remain in the zone.

Time warp.  In times of stress our sense of time becomes
distorted.  Our sense of time likewise changes when we broaden our
focus and become aware of as much as possible around us.  When you
see more, when you are aware of more, time seems to slow.  Your
opponent, who — in the downward performance spiral — is aware of less,
experiences a sense that time is moving faster and that he has less time
to react.

Pre-conscious processing.  This is a difficult abstract
concept for some.  I tend to think of it in Eastern terms;  that
is, the mind of no mind, the state of awareness and of immediate doing
associated with flow and with a non-technique, non-intentional focus.

Scott goes on, appropriately, to speak of non-intentional striking —
the ability to deliver force without focusing on specific blows.  Our
strategy is one of attentional saturation, accounting for all
variables and behaving almost proactively in acting
automatically.  Pre-conscious processing is the ability to respond
instantly.  “Fast isn’t soon enough,” Scott says. 
“It has to be instant.”

Psychospatial acuity.  This is the sense of looking at
nothing while seeing everything.  It is the difference between, say,
focusing on the opponent’s hands, or his shoulders, or even his center,
and seeing all parts of him while focusing on no one portion.

Performance expectation.  This is something with which I
grapple often.  When my preconceived notion of how I will perform
does not match my actual performance, I become distressed and
distracted.  A fighter in flow state has realistic
expectations of his or her performance.  In the zone, your
performance exceeds your expectations, whereas in the vortex, your
performance comes up short compared to those expectations.

Scott next defines the vortex, the downward performance spiral, in
detail.  A mistake or the unexpected triggers a narrowing of
focus.  Visceral arousal results in internal distractions, which
prompt the fighter to apply conscious effort to overcome them in executing
techniques.  Psychospatial and psychotemporal distortion cause the
fighter to develop an inaccurate picture of what is happening and how
quickly it is happening.  This results in the fight becoming
unpredictable, which produces anxiety, worry, doubt, fear, and other
negative emotions.  This in turn triggers further narrowing of focus,
and the downward spiral continues swirling into the depths of the
vortex.  It’s a negative feedback loop.

You can halt the downward performance spiral, Scott explains, by
letting go of distractions and mistakes.  Broaden your focus to bring
about visceral control.  When a fighter in the zone experiences a
mistake or the unexpected, he or she broadens his or her focus.  This
leads to visceral control and indistractability.  These, in turn,
permit pre-conscious processing and psychospatial/psychotemporal
acuity.  The result is that the exchange is predictable, which
produces confidence and courage.  This leads to a greater broadening
of focus, and the upward performance spiral continues on.

Wrapping up this lengthy discussion of the theory behind peak
performance pugilism, Scott compares the zone to the vortex:

Aggression — intention — prompts a fighter in the vortex to find an
opening (an opportunity) and, using his delivery system, apply a specific
weapon to it using conscious effort.  He is tense, experiencing
density.  A fighter in the zone, by contrast, is aware and
relaxed.  He or she is capable of determining what is and is not a
valid threat, neutralizing whatever is presented.  The integration of
breathing, movement, and alignment leads to plasticity, the state
of fluidity attainable by human beings.  (We have articulated
skeletons and therefore cannot be completely fluid, but we can be plastic
rather than dense.)

This simple comparison sums up quite well the difference between what
Scott describes as the zone and the vortex.  It is the difference
between being distracted and being aware, between being tense and being
relaxed, between being defensive and being confidently dominant.

The Fisticuffs series concludes with Tape 3.2.

Read my
review of Fisticuffs, Tape 1

Read my
review of Fisticuffs, Tape 2

Read my
review of Fisticuffs, Tape 3.2