Jake Ross, one of Matt Furey's disciples, has a similar business built on the idea of teaching you hand-to-hand combat. I've mentioned that I like the Furey exercise program, which works and works well. Somehow I've gotten on Jake Ross' mailing lists, and I have to say, I have my doubts about his program.
He sent an email out yesterday, one of many he's sent, but a particularly bothersome one:
War is very simple, but the simple things in war are very difficult.I'll start by answering the question he proposes: What happens if you hit a guy as hard as you can, and he doesn't fall? Answer -- hit him again.
To quote a famous 18th century soldier.
And what is a street fight but a war, one guy at a time? So, it's
important that we focus on what makes the biggest difference in street
combat.
Let's think about hunting. The whole point of shooting the prey is to
kill it cleanly. The smaller the weapon, the lesser the energy, the
more difficult the kill. While this may add a certain panache to the
hunt, it's not the intelligent, high percentage way to hunt. So, we see
hunters using weapons powerful enough to kill the prey, with a decent
shot, without taking the chance of a wounding, but not a non-killing,
hit.
So, when you're discussing street defense, the question is always
there, in the back of your mind, like the scent of an old cellar. "What
happens if I give him my best shot and he doesn't fall?"
What, indeed.
So, you need to learn to strike with real power. Enough power to
really damage the person you hit.
Let's talk more about this later,
Jake Ross
The body has several natural defense mechanisms to pain and blows. There are endorphins, adrenaline, reduction of blood in certain areas likely to be affected, and so forth. These mechanisms have developed over millions of years, to make your body able to take a pretty stiff blow without stopping you from doing what you need to do.
However, they do have operational limits. Sometimes, a particularly powerful blow can overcome them -- which is what Mr. Ross is selling. He wants to teach you to hit harder. Good on him, if he can.
But you can also overpower these defenses by hitting more than once. If your best isn't good enough, your best twice or three times could be.
You can test this yourself. Take a hairbrush with a hard back. Hit yourself on the leg with it, hard as you can. Now do it again, same spot. Now a third time.
As you can see, your body's ability to shrug off the pain diminishes quickly. You can take the first blow, and it's a shock. By blow number three, you're not resisting the pain any more -- you get it all. The same principle applies to defensive blows.
(An aside: The Chinese say that life force -- qi -- flows through the body in channels, which flow can be disrupted by strikes along those channels, or at particular points on the channel. Leaving aside the question of whether or not qi really exists or functions as claimed, qi theory also agrees with the multiple-blow thesis. By the third blow, my teacher told me, all the defense is gone, and the body is receiving full damage from the strike. Since it's possible to verify the basic idea empirically (e.g. with the hairbrush), I pass along the information.)
The same idea is at work with firearms. Some people -- like me -- prefer a heavy caliber that hits harder, a .44 Special or .45 Colt. Other people, though, achieve roughly the same result with a light caliber that allows them to deliver multiple shots on target. The body may be able to (temporarily) overcome the shock of a .38 Special wound, but it is not likely to overcome the shock of four of them.
The point here is this: if your enemy doesn't fall to your best shot, that doesn't mean you can't beat him. You can. Hit him again, just as hard, in the same spot if you're able.
This brings me to what I really wanted to write about today.
In every fight between men, there are really three contests going on at the same time: a contest of bodies, a contest of minds, and a contest of spirits. Of the three, the spiritual contest is the one that matters most. The mental contest is second. The physical contest, though not unimportant, is really the least of the three.
The Jake Ross method seems to be focused on the physical. He scorns the importance of the mental contest -- see how his letter is satisfied with citing "a famous 18th century soldier." The source of that quote, readers of Grim's Hall know well, was Clausewitz, whose On War remains one of the most important texts of military science ever written.
If you're serious about teaching people how to fight, you have to teach them how to think about fighting. You have to take that aspect of it seriously. The paraphrase of Clausewitz refers to his doctrine of friction, which is one of the most important ideas ever recognized by military science.
The spiritual aspects are even more important. Mr. Ross is selling by suggesting that you should be afraid -- 'what if he doesn't fall'? That's the wrong attitude to take to a fight. The right attitude is, "Whatever it takes, he's going down."
Mr. Ross wants to teach you to hit harder. Well and good, but it's not the real answer. The real answer is to learn to keep hitting. It's the area of the spirit in which contests are won, whether fights between men in the street, or wars between nations.
Consider the conflict in Iraq, if you doubt it: there is no way that the enemy can defeat the United States physically or mentally, yet it could still win if it exhausts the spirit of the nation to see through to victory. It has always been the case, from the beginning, that the only place where we could be defeated was in our own national will.
By the same token, the United States can clear the field of its foes every time they raise their heads. Yet the real arena of victory has always been the hearts of the populace.
Another of Clausewitz's theories was the culminating point of victory, that point at which a fighting force is excused by the populace for whatever it does, because the populace identifies with it. In Iraq, in spite of the continuing difficulties, we are approaching that point. The population wearies of the militias, of the kidnappings, of the constant danger hanging over their heads. Sunni and Shi'ite alike weary of these things. The Iraqi Security Forces have just promised to handle security nationwide by the end of the year. The people are increasingly placing their faith in those forces, and turning against the militias. When we cross the tipping point on this one, we will at last have stability in Iraq.
The opposite is happening in Lebanon. Israel began with attacks on civilian transportation infrastructure, from naval blockades to attacks on the airport. This, combined with the deaths of Lebanese innocents caused by Hezbollah's dishonorable tactics of hiding among civilians, has led to a resurgence of support for Hezbollah. For the moment, at least, Lebanon identifies with Hezbollah. Israel may be able to achieve strategic goals in the area, as for example reducing the number of rocket launchers and perhaps creating a buffer zone. It will not be able to win an existential fight with Hezbollah at this time, however: for now, Hezbollah is safely across the point at which many of the people of Lebanon will protect and shelter them, and even aid them out of a sense of identity.
(Another aside: this idea of a buffer zone is a doubtful strategum, it seems to me; if the UN sends a force to secure such a zone, as it says it may, why wouldn't Hezbollah simply carry on attacking from that zone? Does anyone think the UN will really be able, to say nothing of being willing, to stop them? If Israel needs to respond, it won't be attacking merely the sovereign territory of Lebanon -- it will be attacking territory guarded by the armed forces of several nations, each of whom will then be interested in reprisals. Hezbollah will be given a safer haven than it has now.)
It is the realm of the spirit that really matters. This echoes through the writings of the greatest martial artists and military scientists alike. Napoleon said that "Morale is to the physical as three is to one." The Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote that "seizing the enemy without fighting is the most skillful." How to do this? Either you have out-thought him, so that there is no point to his trying to fight you from the inferior position into which you have put him; or you have convinced him that he cannot win, and thus defeated his spirit without having to fight his body.
Then there is Clausewitz again. In his writings on what he called the 'trinity,' he said that there were three elements that governed success in war: National will, political strategy, and the sum of the ways that the various skirmishes and other conflicts worked out on the ground according to the wager of battle. The first was the most important, he wrote.
And what is that trinity, but a restatement of the same idea? National will is the realm of the spirit; politics and strategies the realm of the mind; and the conflict itself is the physical realm. The first and most important is the will -- it is the spirit. If we find ourselves flagging, that is what we must turn ourselves to reinforcing.
So, if you are approached by a man you think you may have to strike in self defense, do not fear that you can't knock him down even if you hit your hardest. Resolve, rather, that you will.
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