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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