Vulnerability Strategy No.3 - Target

3. Target Strategy

Definition: Everyone is vulnerable to something, find his Achilles heel

Everyone is vulnerable to something - No matter how tough someone appears to be they have a weakness whether it is physical, mental or emotional. Physically – know your targets; eyes, nose, jaw, chin, temple, throat, solar plexus, abdomen, groin. Any part of the body can be hurt if it is hit with enough power especially if there’s no time to defend.

Find his Achilles Heel - Mentally your opponent might be stupid, ill-educated, or gullible making him easy to trick. Emotionally you can find his weakness by insulting or threatening those he cares about. Sun Tzu and Musashi both recommended that you target an opponent emotionally by insulting his family or threatening his children. Remember also that your enemies will try this on you. Never let your emotions be used against you, be as inscrutable as a sphinx.

In assisting others don’t let them step into vulnerable situations; counsel them in the face of insults or demoralisation. Keep them from reacting emotionally.

Thank you for reading

Tony Higo

Chief Instructor

AEGIS Martial Arts System

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Invulnerability Strategy No. 2 - Make an Example

Definition: Show them you are not to be taken lightly. Sacrifice someone close to them to convince them of your intent

The ancient Chinese called this strategy ‘Point to the Mulberry, Berate the Pagoda’. It means that you demonstrate the lengths you will go to in the face of failure or deceit of one’s subordinates. There is an old story that the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu was presented at court and the emperor said ‘if you can make an army of my concubines I’ll believe that your skills are indeed formidable’. However, once presented the concubines could not be brought to order adequately so Sun Tzu ordered that several of them be publicly executed after which the remainder paid very close attention to his instructions. The emperor though sad to lose the concubines was convinced that Sun was the right man to get things done. On occasion one has to demonstrate to others that you will not be trifled with and that your orders must be obeyed.

Another way to use this strategy is by using oneself as the example for instance in training leaders the adage is that one must ‘lead from the front’ and the strength of this is that one’s subordinates see that you don’t ask them to do anything that you wouldn’t, or haven’t done yourself.

My father taught me when I was young that if you are faced with having to fight several opponents that you should if you can call out the biggest and toughest looking and if you can beat him his comrades will think twice about taking you on. Of course the strategy needs that you pick your target well. Part of the strategy is to make it impossible for your target to back down without appearing to be a coward. I have used this more than once and whilst I risked a lot it was a case of being between a rock and a hard place and taking the lesser of two evils. If it went badly then either way I’d get a beating, thankfully I was lucky on both occasions and managed to escape reasonably unscathed.

If you can set the example by showing one opponent what he will suffer by beating someone else you can take a significant psychological advantage. 

Part 3 coming tomorrow - don't forget to subscribe for more information on strategy and the martial arts

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Best wishes

Tony Higo

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Invulnerability Strategy No.1 - Manoeuver

                                Definition: A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss

The Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - The law of base states that ‘a tall building needs a deep foundation’ and without a foundation it’s difficult to think or take action. Without a strong foothold we can’t generate power in our strikes and we become like a fish out of water. If you can keep your opponent moving when he doesn’t want to you prevent him from gaining leverage with which to attack you. You make his inability to settle into your advantage. Keep him under pressure, pick at him constantly. Take pot shots that cost you little but hurt him a lot.

The Spanish guerrillas in the Napoleonic wars could not hope to face the massive French army in the field, very few armies of the day could so the guerrillas would hide in the mountains and forests and do damage to the French army is it travelled by sniping at its soldiers and officers. Whilst they didn’t beat the French directly with this tactic it served to demoralise the French and no doubt added a layer of vulnerability to their ranks.

Mohammad Ali used the manoeuvre strategy throughout his early career, the Ali shuffle and his ability to punch whilst going backwards made him a difficult target to hit. Few of his opponents had his skill in manoeuvrability allowing him to pick them off with fast jabs and crosses until he wore them down to a knock out or a points decision. The brilliant Ali also reversed the strategy when he fought George Foreman, standing his ground whilst using foils, fakes, feints and draws (see Martial Arts Illustrated April 2013 issue). Ali’s skill was to do the opposite of what his opponents needed or expected, which is the very core of all strategy.

If your opponent is a flat footed powerhouse puncher then ‘get on your bike’ and manoeuvre around him. Following Ali’s famous rhyme ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see’. If he is a great mover then don’t fall for chasing him, instead play the waiting game with a tight defence using foils and draws to nullify his attacks, tiring him sufficiently to allow your own targeted attacks.

look out for my next blog on Invulnerability strategy no. 2 - The Example Strategy 

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Best wishes

Tony Higo

www.nat-mac.co.uk

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The 5 Strategies of Invulnerability

Part 3 of Tony Higo’s FLITE or Fight Strategies

Last month we continued our examination of the FLITE stratagems looking specifically at the 5 Leverage Strategies of: Tire them out, Recruit them, Isolate them, Align with them and of course to Depress or in other words, overwhelm. I hope at this point that our analysis of strategy in both combat and life has given at least some pause for thought on how strategy can be used not only in combat but also as part of one’s game plan to improve one’s life.

Invulnerability strategies deal with vulnerability and provide us with the ‘I’ in the acronym FLITE which is the mnemonic we use to remember the strategies. One thing to consider with any goal is that every goal has some part of it which is most vulnerable, like the Greek warrior Achilles whose mother sought to make him invulnerable by immersing him in the river Styx, however the heel by which she held him was not immersed and was therefore the only part of him that was not rendered invulnerable. Consequently he could only be killed by striking his heel and which his enemy Paris did exactly that with a poisoned weapon.

The point is that any goal at the outset can appear invulnerable to our efforts to achieve it but every goal can be made achievable through the proper application of strategy. As martial artists we must consider what we hope to achieve through our studies to set and monitor the purpose and validity of our goals. One thing to consider is always, how will the achievement of this goal improve my life? It’s important to always keep in mind this question when setting meaningful goals but for now let us examine a couple of reasons we might choose martial arts as a tool to achieve in our lives.

Self-defence may be one reason and one would normally choose an art which is practical for wherever you feel most vulnerable, be it the street, neighbourhood, or through an occupation which might put one in danger. One must find where one is most vulnerable in order to remove that vulnerability.

Competition success might be your martial arts motive and if that is the case then moving through the ranks of competitors in your journey to the top needs that you must find the vulnerability in every opponent you meet. Sometimes your skill may be sufficiently high to achieve this but as you rise higher in the ranks then so will the skill of your opponents. This being the case then your physical skill can only make up part of the strategy and like so many greats before you the discovery of each opponent’s vulnerability will be an essential part of your strategy for winning.

Whatever your hot button for achievement in the martial arts, in your rise through the ranks of mastery one must understand how strategy applies to your success. Strength, speed and physical skill alone may not be enough to get you what you want and it is the limited achiever who sticks with the same strategy over and over and one that has confined many a budding fighter to the junior ranks when a deeper knowledge of, and skill in the application of strategy could have been the tool they needed to achieve martial arts stardom.

In order to achieve in life we must seek new goals. In order to move forward and progress we must compromise our balanced position, and utilisation of the same strategies because we don’t have a full grasp of the strategies that are available to us leaves us like the law of predictability ‘if you keep on doing what you do, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve got’. In order to progress we can only keep doing what we do if it keeps working. But if it is not we must change what we do ‘if you want something you’ve never had before you must do something you’ve never done before’. Both of these adages are positive guidelines we need to push us forward. With this in mind, let’s take a look at the 5 vulnerability strategies so that we can add them to our arsenal of weapons with which to achieve our goals in life and the martial arts.

The first of the 5 vulnerability strategies is the strategy of manoeuvrability

Part two of this article coming tomorrow

Best wishes

Tony Higo

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Standing Stretch 2

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RingCraft Priority and Basics of Fakes

Sparring can be really fun if its done properly but too many schools allow students to spar without teaching them how to attack, defend, move and use strategy first. If you don't learn the basics first you can have a seriously bad experience. In these series of clips you will see some of the strategies I use to teach students how to get the most out of sparring.

AEGIS Driffield

Remember

Today I an reminded to remember and everything I can say today is in the verses below: 

REMEMBER

Dare to be different, swim upstream when everyone else
Seems to be going with the flow and Never do what is expected
Unless it is also what is right.
Develop rhino skin against false friends and fools
As they are everywhere and often difficult to recognise.

Remember those who help and support you, especially those
Who have the courage to disagree with you.
Be big enough to forgive them for saying their truth as they see it.

Remember to never judge anyone on hearsay,
Give everyone the chance to be right
Before you Decide that they are wrong.

Accept criticism but don't believe it unless you have examined it
And found it to be true and if it is true then act upon it without
acting too hard on yourself.

Remember your journey is your journey
And though some will join you for a while their destination
Cannot be the same as yours.

Remember all the problems you face today will one day
Not be important enough to be remembered beyond a few weeks
And most of the fears and worries that haunt you
Exist only in your imagination.

Remember to never let your emotions, thoughts or body rule your life,
Keep them in balance and remind yourself constantly
That you will be remembered for your actions more than
Your words and that your greatest gift is that invisible,
immeasurable spirit within that is the real YOU.

                                                                                                               Tony Higo

Thank you for reading...

Leverage Strategy No. 5 - The Depress

The fifth and final strategy of the leverage strategies is the Depress. Whereas the Tire strategy sought to utilise the opponents own energy by getting him to blindly overexert himself the depress strategy is not allow him to exert himself enough. In ground fighting when we have an opponent in side control or have the top mount position, part of our strength, our leverage, is the weight we can physically apply without using much strength. A good lock applied to a down opponent who is held down by our bodyweight on top of him can be an easy ‘tap out’ unless he has especially good grappling skills.

In boxing or kickboxing we can depress our opponent through overwhelming him, imagine in a full contact competition you manage to ‘tag’ your opponent with a good shot to the jaw; his knees wobble and his eyes glaze over slightly, he is stunned but not downed. What do we do? We press our attack hitting him with everything but the kitchen sink! We feel the fight is close to being finished so we leverage every bit of energy we have to end it there and then. If we manage to overwhelm him, monopolising his vulnerability we take the trophy and end up the winner.

The opposite side of the coin is that we don’t manage to finish him by him, either being tough or us not targeting our shots well enough. This can turn the tables on us and end up with us being defeated by being burnt out, in effect if we misjudge or misuse our moment we can apply the first leverage stratagem against ourselves by tiring ourselves out. I use this to demonstrate that strategy will not always work which is why we need a range of them in order to get what we want more often.

These then are the FLITE strategies of LEVERAGE; Tire, Recruit, Isolate, Align and Depress. We use the mnemonic T.R.I.A.D. to help us recall them more easily. Study them, observe them and apply them to learn how to better use the techniques and methods you have. Observe others and how they use them and whether they know they are using them or not. Leverage is as I said earlier the key to all strategy, to get what you want with less effort. Remember that they can be applied against someone else or in cooperation with another and that you might also be using them against yourself without realising. Strategy is a fascinating subject especially when it starts to bring results. 

Thank you for reading today's message

Best wishes

Tony Higo

Chief Instructor National Martial Arts Colleges UK

8th Degree Black Belt

www.nat-mac.co.uk

0800 092 0948

Leverage Strategy No. 4 - Alignment

In combat martial arts we create leverage in our techniques by aligning our bodies to create more force for less effort. For instance on a lead leg side kick we can multiply our body weight in the delivery of the kick by aligning our head, hip and heel. If we make contact with these three body parts in a straight line from the kicking foot to the hip and to the head we can generate more force for less effort. 

On a right cross or left jab we do the same a strong and bio-mechanically correct technique creates force not just through speed and strength but by aligning the body in such a way as to deliver the most body weight we can. The difference between a heavy puncher and a light puncher in a boxing match is not their weight differences as there isn’t much of that but in how they apply the technique. If you examine the position of a fighter delivering a knockout technique you will often observe that his fist, elbow, shoulder, hip and both feet are closely aligned to maximise his leverage or force.

In life we can align with others who have similar aims such as a political pressure group, an association or organisation. Consider here the similarities between these first 4 leverage stratagems. Recruitment is you recruiting others to create leverage, tiring them is you persuading the opponent to use all his leverage, isolation is the opposite of recruitment and alignment is effectively joining someone else’s army. To fully understand strategy and how to use it you must consider how the different strategies contrast and compare. Without this you can never fully master them which if you think about it removes the leverage that you could have exerted had you studied them well enough.

Best wishes

Tony Higo

8th Degree Black Belt

Chief Instructor - National Martial Arts Colleges - UK

www.nat-mac.co.uk

0800 092 0948

Leverage Strategy No.3 - Isolation Strategy

In application against an adversary we can de-leverage him, that is; to remove what leverage he has and one stratagem is to isolate him, send him to Coventry for instance, meaning to isolate him from communication or assistance. 

In these terms it means to cut him off from his friends but it could also be used in competition by ‘cornering’ him as in boxing or kick boxing when we press an opponent into the corner of the boxing ring. The smaller space affords him little room to move and therefore removes part of his army which are his techniques. If you face an opponent who is a good kicker but not too good at boxing you can virtually cut off his legs by trapping him in the corner where he has no space to use them and where you can leverage your position, having de-leveraged or isolating his weapons.

In warfare we can surround our opponents or separate one section from their army from another destroying this force before we move onto another section, gradually isolating and defeating the target section by section. 

In wildlife programs we can often see where lions or some other type of predator will hunt a heard of buffalo harrying them one way and then another, then they target a weaker individual, probably a bull calf and work to separate it from the herd. Once they can separate it its leverage of safety within the herd is removed and it becomes an easy target. 

Leverage Strategy No. 2 - Recruit Strategy

In an earlier article I discussed the difference between a warrior and a warlord and how the warrior lacks leverage as he can only utilise his own energy or skill whereas the warlord has progressed to his lofty position by utilising the energy of others. The warlord recruits an army to fight for him and so can achieve bigger results. Imagine Lord Sugar for instance; how well known would he be today if he had never leverage himself up by recruiting his own army of staff to take on the tasks that he had no time to do. We would never have heard of him as he would have remained a warrior instead of promoting himself to the warlord status. 

I have deliberately used a non-martial arts example to demonstrate that though we learn these strategies through the martial arts, they are by no means limited solely to the martial arts. When we understand this we can leverage our skills into more areas of our lives which is why the ancient masters encouraged us to deepen our knowledge through practice in order to more fully understand our art. To fully understand means to recognise that our martial arts skills can be put to much more use than just fighting. Even the great swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, though he never built an army or aspired to progress through Japanese society as he no doubt could have still leveraged his skills. We know him as a sword master victorious in over 60 ‘death matches’ but he was also a gifted poet and extremely gifted artist. He mixed with some of the most powerful families in feudal Japan socially because he leverage his skill to recruit an army of friendly but powerful people who he could stay with or work for as and when he needed to. His fighting skill was leveraged to advance him socially which gained him the support of people who could assist him when necessary.

As with all the 25 FLITE stratagems they can be used in many situations if we take the time to study how we can apply them. Sadly I do not have space here to explore them in detail but you might wish to keep your eyes open for my upcoming book on strategy which will be available later this year if you want to study the subject in detail. 

Best wishes and have a great day

Tony Higo

Chief Instructor

National Martial arts Colleges UK

www.nat-mac.co.uk

080000928948

Leverage Strategy No. 1 - Take the Wind Out of His Sails

The first leverage strategy is concerned with utilising your opponents’ energy so that he wears himself out. Like the bull fighter against the bull, the animal has greater strength, weigh and speed plus sharp horns so on the face of it he has the best chance of winning but the matador creates targets for the bull to charge again and again so that it becomes exhausted. Once it is exhausted its natural gifts of strength, weight and horns are nullified as it no longer has the energy to utilise them, it then becomes more malleable and becomes an easier kill.

This strategy also works by getting ones enemy to exhaust his resources; getting him to waste his money, spreading himself too thin or overextending himself financially. The strategist calculates how to encourage ones target to think that his time, money or resources will solve the problem and like the charging bull he thinks only of attacking and not of the consequences.

Once we understand leverage we can observe how others waste their energy running around like headless chickens thinking that working harder or faster will accomplish the task when their experience should already have told them that it is not working. A self-employed contractor may have freed himself from the chains of his employer only to find that he has chained himself to having to do everything now in his new business. Long hours, heavy work and having to do all the tasks of the business can soon wear him out unless he can recognise that this strategy of doing everything his self cannot work indefinitely. When he recognises this and starts to leverage the help of others to help him achieve his tasks he may initially find that he is earning less but has more energy and a more balanced view of his business with which to make it grow.

In competition and faced with and strong, muscular opponent that we cannot match for strength we can be elusive and annoying, hitting and running, refusing to be drawn into a war of attrition, exchanging blows that will get us damaged and instead getting our opponent more and more frustrated so that he chases and chases until like the bull he becomes exhausted and an easy target for our best shots and giving you a seemingly easy win.

The 5 Leverage Strategies

Last time we discussed the first 5 strategies of the FLITE stratagems. You might remember that over the last couple of weeks we have looked at how martial artists need to understand strategy at a deeper level than is often taught in class.

My goal in my schools is to not only use strategy but to understand it as deeply as possibly; like the number of repetitions of technique it takes to begin to understand a technique the practice and application of strategy will over time reveal more subtle levels of comprehension and understanding. My contention is that martial arts is not about winning, but about getting the results we want. What do I mean by that seemingly contradictory statement? Well, let me explain:

It’s easy to set a goal for something in life whether it is something material like a bigger house, emotional like the partner of our dreams or physical like the body of an Adonis. At the beginning we attempt to achieve our goals and the goal itself gives us direction but it is the journey that reveals the most to us. In our quest and pursuit of the goal we learn about its achievement through the strategies we use to achieve it but along the way we are acquiring valuable skills that we can use in the pursuit of other life goals too.

So even if we don’t achieve the exact goal or if we do it doesn’t matter as much as the knowledge we acquire on the way. Just as when we first enter the dojo because we want to do ‘a bit’ of martial arts or to get fit or to learn to defend ourselves, the initial goal gives us a direction but for some of us we realise that what we came for is not the real goal but the journey of discovery of ourselves using the martial arts as our tool. Winning trophies in competition might be another goal and you might win many or lose them all. The winning or losing though in the long run doesn’t matter as when you are older and perhaps wiser you look back on your tournament career and see that the acquisition of trophies matters little as no one really cares about your past, but the important things is what you have gained along the way: friends, skills, practice, conditioning and experience that will serve you for the rest of your life.

Martial arts study is like polishing diamonds, when the rock is lift from the ground it is shapeless, grubby and dirty like any rock but when the polisher begins his work on polishing and shaping the rock, beneath all that dust emerges what it really is; a lustrous, beautiful diamond.

The martial arts; through sustained and dedicated study, reveals the diamond that is us; at our core it reveals our true values and shapes our futures. So the consideration or mind-set of the ‘win’ becomes irrelevant when compared with what we have become, all the so called wins and losses fade away when compared with what we have gained on both sides of that coin and ultimately we have gotten what we really wanted – knowledge or ourselves and our purpose in life.

So it is with the martial arts that we can think beyond the simple win or lose scenario and in so doing consider how to get what we want quicker, easier and with less pain. Without strategy we can be like the poor bulls that face the bull fighters of Spain; simply charging forward with huge power and strength, all of which is simply controlled and manipulated by a tiny human with a fraction of that strength but who knows how to use strategy to get what he wants. Sadly with bull fighting the humiliation of a bull seems to me to be at best a waste of good strategy and at worst a torture of a proud animal. So my goal in these articles is to encourage you to consider the various tools that are available to us in the form of strategy so you are not simply charging forward like the bull who utilises the same strategy over and over again only to be easily controlled and shortly killed.

Last time we discussed the first 5 stratagems which are the focus strategies using the fake, feint, foil, draw and doubt. These work very well in combative opposition and are most easily understood. Over the next few blogs I want to cover the next five stratagems which are the 5 Leverage strategies.

All strategy uses leverage at some level to get what we want but the 5 leverage strategies are more heavily focused on understanding and utilising our available leverage. The combat law of Leverage states ‘achieve more with less’ and refers to how we can find in every situation an easier way to achieve our preferred outcome.

I look forward to discussing this with you in more detail.

Tony Higo
Chief Instructor
National Martial Arts Colleges - UK
www.nat-mac.co.uk
0800 0920948

Focus Strategy No. 5 – The Doubt

The fake tricks your opponent into going the wrong way, the feint in taking too seriously or not seriously enough the danger, the foil nullifies and confuses an opponent physically and mentally, the draw offers oneself as a target, the final focus strategy tricks an opponent into focusing within. 

Self-doubt is often down to a lack of confidence and many competitors compete to overcome self-doubt or feelings of a lack of self-worth. In combat if one can destroy an opponent’s confidence you can win before he even steps onto the tournament floor. When a fighter doubts that he can win he is often already beaten for instance if you are novice fighter and you step onto the mat against someone you know is a world champion then immediately you experience feelings of self-doubt. 

As a strategist using the stratagem of doubt you must convince your opponent that it’s no use trying because he can’t win. This can be by getting into his head before the fight to undermine his confidence 'psyching him out' or getting your team to do so. 

If the fighter doesn’t know you, you can get your team to befriend him and tell him stories such as ‘he hasn’t lost a fight in the last four years’ or the last guy he fought isn’t out of hospital yet. They can be pretty cheap tricks but if you goal is to win then you might employ them. 

In the film ‘Pumping Iron’ many years ago you can see a young Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen psyching out the huge Lou Ferrigno undermining the confidence of Ferrigno as a relative new comer to the big leagues where Arnie had been for many years. Did it work? Well Arnie won. Was it worth it? Who knows but if you want to be a master of strategy you must consider how far you will go in order to get what you want. 

Focus Strategy No. 4 - The Draw

The draw works hand in hand with the first 3 strategies and they are often compounded together to complete a strategy. The draw differs from the other 3 in that it comprises offering oneself as a target like the boxer who taunts his opponent by sticking out his chin and when his adversary takes the bait and tries to hit it he finds himself set up for a well-planned counter attack.

Fighters skilled in the draw will make deliberate mistakes to tempt in an unsuspecting opponent leaving themselves uncovered such as dropping their guard and uncovering a juicy target like the chin. A favourite in boxing is to drop the lead hand as you edge closer exposing the left side of ones jaw. The opponent must believe you haven’t realised your error and is set up to hit you with a right cross, however as he throws the cross you slip right so it misses and goes over your shoulder left shoulder. This miss over commits your opponent whose momentum brings him close enough so that you can counter attack to his exposed chin with a short right uppercut. It’s a painful shot at best and often results in a knock out if delivered correctly. 

Once again you should study the draw carefully and how it interacts with the other focus strategies. If you find your opponents are not tempted by your draws then perhaps you are not convincing enough in the target you offer or your position is not strong enough to pull off the counter attack in time. A fighter who can skilfully combine these first 4 focus strategies will be very hard to beat. 

Focus Strategy No. 3 – The Foil

The fake focuses on sending an opponent to defend a fake attack, the feint focuses him on not believing the attack; the foil strategy seeks to stop him focusing by creating confusion which is the inability to think or take action. A foil strategy can occur when you hit your opponent hard, stunning him or causing such pain that he cannot focus but in general the foil is more strategic.

In boxing and continuous fighting such as boxing, kickboxing and MMA the foil can be used widely in tying up an opponent so he cannot fight back effectively. In boxing I was taught to spoil which is the name my father (who taught me to box) used to refer to foil tactic. 

An old tactic in boxing was to put something on ones gloves that would burn the opponents’ eyes so he couldn’t focus. 

Others are the controlling and clinching to foil the opponent’s attempts to get off a clean punch. Muhammad Ali used the foil extensively to lift the Heavyweight title from George Foreman in one of the great fights we know today as ‘the Rumble in the Jungle’. This fight is a classic example of the foil in action. Muhammad Ali the consummate strategist completely nullified everything Foreman tried to do. Foreman was frustrated constantly; he couldn’t think straight or launch effective attacks as Ali, spoiled, intercepted, clinched, trapped and turned him. 

If you want to study spoiling in action I highly recommend watching this fight. 

Focus Strategy No. 2 – The Feint

The Americans call the feint a fake, it’s only in Europe that we use the word feint because it’s a French word and probably stems from our Norman ancestors. I tell you this because most people consider the fake and the feint to be the same thing and that only the words are different but I have separated them to define two similar but different concepts. 

The fake sends an opponent the wrong way whereas the feint lures an opponent in a different way by either getting him to over respond or under respond; either way is against what is right for him and is exactly right for you the perpetrator. The fake tricks an opponent into going to defend a fake attack which is directionally based whereas the feint seeks to lower or draw the opponent’s guard. A feint is not based on the direction but the action. A feint draws a defence but also tempts an opponent to not respond. For instance you shape up to an opponent and throw a jab at him, but you pull up short and back away. You do the same thing again and get the same response. Now the opponent stops taking your attack seriously and when you throw you jab again he doesn’t bother to defend it and this time you follow through and hit him with it. The feint draws a response but the trick comes in when it tricks the opponent into not responding or responding too much. There are many subtleties in the feint that you should study well. In terms of the phrase I’ve used I don’t want to get into semantics about the meaning of fake and feint, suffice it to say that I have separated them to define the stratagem, the words used are less important. 

The great thing about the FLITE strategies is that they are based on laws and laws always apply. Unlike techniques which though valuable are only applicable when the occasion is right, such as trying to kick when you are in kicking range. The laws underlie both technique and strategy and in strategy something you’ll notice is that they have polar opposites, that is in many situations an opponent who doesn’t over react can be just as vulnerable as if he did react because you position yourself for the attack anyway so if he doesn’t respond at all you just hit him anyway and if he responds too much you hit him anyway again. The skill is in always being ready to switch tactics mid-flight so your position is always important. (See Warrior Wisdom on Base, Balance, Set Up and Launch Point for more details.)  

Focus Strategy No. 1 - The FAKE

The Fake

The first of the focus based strategies I want to examine is the Fake. The fake is epitomised in the phrase ‘send him left to go right’ and is concerned with sending the opponent the wrong way, making him believe that you are attacking him high when you are really going low for instance. We can see the fake in almost every sport and see it often in tennis where an opponent is sent the wrong way as the ball hits on the opposite side of the court or in Rugby or football where the tackler is sent the wrong way allowing a player to pass as he gets closer to the goal.

In martial arts the fake can be attacking the head only to switch the attack to the legs when the opponent responds or throwing a punch to left side of the head when in fact your real target is the right side. The fake is such a common ruse that we often don’t think twice about it, it’s so natural that often we don’t even have to be taught it. As soon as we begin sparring and realise that our opponent can thwart our direct attacks that we soon learn that trickery works better to help us hit the target on our opponent without getting too banged up in the process. It’s worth pointing out here that if more instructors understood strategy and how to use it better they wouldn’t lose quite so many students who quit when they begin sparring and realise that it’s not as much fun as it looks and it fact it hurts! Too many instructors let their students figure it out for themselves causing high attrition in student numbers. 

Focus – The 5 Strategies of Mis-direction 

My research has resulted in defining 5 key types of strategy which I term FLITE which is an acronym of the elemental laws that they respond to being: Focus, Leverage, Invulnerability, Timing and Expectation and this month I want to share what I’ve learned about the 5 strategies of FOCUS.

I mentioned last month that I would cover the 5 Key strategies in my next article so here they are. FOCUS – the combat law of focus says ‘what you focus on becomes your reality’. This means that you can only focus in one direction at a time and whatever you focus on becomes all you can see. The philosopher and scientist Abraham Maslow once said ‘give a child a hammer and the whole world suddenly looks like a nail’.

Focus strategies deal with controlling an opponent’s gaze that is, seeking to control what he looks at with a view to making that thing seem more important than anything else at that moment. Conjurors do it all the time with their illusions, making us believe one thing when in fact something quite different is the truth. If we can control where our opponent sets his gaze then it’s pretty sure you can claim his entire attention if only for a moment, as long as it is long enough for you to achieve your purpose.

There are 5 focus based strategies and it may be worth explaining here how come I batch things into 5’s such as the 25 elemental laws and the 25 strategies, well it’s not on purpose it’s just that in life and especially martial arts the number 5 does tend to appear a lot. Musashi’s ‘Book of 5 Rings, the number 5 appears frequently in the number of guard positions, stances and of course the 5 Rings that make up his chapters. Yagyu Munenori, Musashi’s contemporary and sword master to 3 Shoguns in feudal Japan also details numerous references to the number 5 in terms of stances and guards and the most famous of them all – Sun Tzu in ‘The Art of War’ contains many references and lists numbering 5. So often has the number occurred in my own study and teaching that I use the number a lot, not on purpose necessarily but because it appears so often that I now look for it. However  I want to stress that I only use it when it fits well. My study of strategy came naturally to 5 because that’s as many as I could discover. Traditionally Chinese strategy details 36 stratagems and I studied these but found that several were just variations on the same strategy, what I would call techniques rather than true strategies. True strategies are based on elemental laws as we’ll find out next. Read on tomorrow ;)