A Ducal Re-post

Duke Sean recently posted his thoughts on "Aggressive" fighting on Facebook and I felt the need today to re-post it here. Passing along the insights of an individual who has had such great success in our sport is important to me, and I want those who haven't had the opportunity to read them yet to take the time to process his thoughts.



"I often hear people talking about how they need to become more ‘Aggressive’ in their fighting. I find that the use of this word comes with an indiscriminant component that I think does not create the proper focus in a fight. To me, being more aggressive means putting more lead down range. Aggressiveness in our fight involves throwing more blows with the hope that eventually you will get ahead of your opponent and wear them down with the shear ferocity of your fight.

When you fight with pure aggression you are trying to force your will into the fight. You are trying to make the fight go to certain targets, at a certain tempo and often to a pre-determined outcome. I find this type of fight to be mentally and physically exhausting. And with much less positive end results than one would hope for.

The Offensive Mindset is a razor-thin balance between Passive and Aggressive. It is a state of mind where you are comfortable enough to allow the fight to develop organically as it is intended to, without having the fight to happen *to* you. This is a mindset where you are more prepared to attack your opponent than you are simply to defend against their blows.

When you function with an offensive mindset you can allow targets to show up anywhere because you are not expecting targets to be at any particular location. Your body is in a position where you can throw any of your blows. You don’t worry about where a target will be because you know that a target has to present itself. And by allowing the possibility that those targets can come from anywhere, you are better able to respond to those targets as they develop.

The calm, comforted approach of the offensive mindset allows you to make better decisions about the blows that you are throwing because you are responding to what is actually happening in the fight. Rather than what you want to happen. Or what you wish would happen.

Martial combat between two free-thinking individuals is a very fluid process. You certainly can influence the flow of the fight. But, it is always easier to get your opponent to do what *they* want to do then it is to get them to do what *you* want them to do. With the offensive mindset you are always prepared to take advantage of the opportunities provided by your opponent. But, you are settled enough and calm enough to have the vision to see those opportunities.

Razor thin edge between passive and aggressive."

Read More

Deep in Thought

I took a weekend to myself.  A real shocker let me tell you, but it served a true and ready purpose.  I simply took the time to think.

Becoming a squire is a step to becoming a knight. It signifies the choice to begin the journey to knighthood by swearing fealty to a knight who will teach you, train you, and guide you on and off of the field. When I wear my squires belt, it represents my desire to become a knight.  It does not only carry my honor but the honor of my knight, my squire brothers, my lineage, and my kingdom.  It is mine and I am theirs.


When I look at my knight, I succeed
When I look at my brothers, I pull them up beside me
When I look at my lineage, I stand beside them
When I look at my kingdom, I fight with a fierce pride

 A view of some of the questions I asked myself and discussed with my knight later in the week.
 

"Do I want this? Do I actually want to be knighted?"
 "Can I represent my kingdom, can I represent my royalty, can I represent my self and my peers with honor?"
"Would I want squires of my own some day?"
"Can I teach other fighters?"
"Besides prowess what else can I offer? Skills? Community? Household?"
"Am I a part of the community? how can I integrate more? What can I offer?"
"What does this belt, my squires belt, mean to me?  What will having a white belt mean to me?"
"Do I want the responsibilities knighthood comes with?"

Read More

Strategium: OODA Loop

I had not thought of this previously but when my Knight talks to us about plans in a fight he is talking about the OODA loop This theory was developed by Colonel John Richard Boyd, (January 23, 1927 – March 9, 1997), a United States Air Force fighter pilot and later Pentagon consultant, whose theories have been highly influential in the military, sports, business, and litigation . According to Boyd, decision making occurs in a recurring cycle of   observe-orient-decide-act. If an individual or organization can process this cycle quickly, by observing and reacting to unfolding events more rapidly than an opponent,  they can thereby "get inside" the opponent's decision cycle and gain the advantage(1).

Since decision-making occurs in a recurring OODA loop cycle, this strategy allows you to continuously move from one loop to the next. Recognition of an evolving situation and by quick adaption of a strategy along with an obscuring of your intentions, by making them unpredictable to your adversary, will allow you to operate at a faster tempo.  This enables you to generate some element of confusion and disorder which forces your adversary to clarify his intentions, (i.e forces them into an offensive maneuver).  By allowing some chaos and confusion to enter the situation, the use of this strategy throws chaos in the direction of your adversary thereby giving you control of the encounter.

A notable piece of advice:

Fear comes from not being in the moment of here and now. It is thinking too much of the past and extrapolating it into the future, that creates fear and distorts reality. There is no room for fear or deception in the immediacy of here and now. You either deal with what is coming at you or accept it.

References

(1) Osinga, Frans. Science Strategy and War, The Strategic Theory of John Boyd. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-37103-1.

Read More

Study Into Human Behavior

As quoted by my squire brother:   "Guess I should stop smiling before and during fights."

This article is a valid read for everyone that ends up on the field primarily because it goes to show that nonverbal behavior is powerful simply because it affects people on a subconscious level.  While this study focuses on the cause and effect of facial expressions and their predetermination of fight outcomes, it brings into question how serious a competitor needs to be to find success on the tournament field.


http://www.krauslab.com/UFC.Emotion.inpress.pdf


Naturally some discussion started, so here is the break down. Human behavior/psychology is a wide field, please add in if you have something to contribute

• U: I think this paragraph is more pertinent, "Consistent with the researchers' predictions, fighters who smiled more intensely prior to a fight were more likely to lose, to be knocked down in the clash, to be hit more times, and to be wrestled to the ground by their opponent (statistically speaking, the effect sizes here were small to medium). On the other hand, fighters with neutral facial expressions pre-match were more likely to excel and dominate in the fight the next day, including being more likely to win by knock-out or submission."
  because I believe either smiling or snarling probably indicates a bit of inability to focus or lack of training to focus the mind.
  
  Also, this study makes a false cause and effect relationship. All they established is there may be a correlation between facial expression and success rate.

  
  
• K: I scanned the PDF of their study. It seemed to me they correlated smile intensity to not only win/lose, but also effectiveness of their fighting. They even make a note that the fighter who smiled less actually ended up preforming better. Possibly because they perceive their chances as better against a less aggressive opponent. I thought their win/loss chart would show only a slight change, but it looked to me to be significant.
  
  The nice thing about the way this study was conducted is it used data (pictures and statistics) that were already available. They only needed to rate the fighter's smile. The sample size of 152 fighters seems small.
  
  So even if you like to smile in front of an opponent, doing so may end up giving them a real advantage you don't really intend.
  
  http://www.krauslab.com/UFC.Emotion.inpress.pdf

  
  
• U: I still don't think the cause and effect is shown, based on your description. I think it much more likely that losing and smiling are symptoms of a root cause. So as a indicator for chance of success it may be fine, and as a tool for training it may indicate an issue with the trainees confidence, and it may be as you say a bad subliminal queue to the opponent but that is pure speculation and not indicated by the information. If I am correct and one falsely believes it is all about the smile and not about a root cause one is likely to lose anyway.

  
  
• U: This covers all the bases I think. People respond to smiles and smiles could indicate many things other than "Hi, glad to see you."
  
  6. People smile when they're happy. People smile for all sorts of reasons, only one of which is to signal happiness. Ekman describes many kinds of smiles, from the "felt" or true smile to the fear smile, the contempt smile, the dampened smile, the miserable smile, and a number of others. Daniel McNeill, author of The Face: A Natural History, says, "Smiling is innate and appears in infants almost from birth....The first smiles appear two to twelve hours after birth and seem void of content. Infants simply issue them, and they help parents bond. We respond; they don't know what they're doing. The second phase of smiling begins sometime between the fifth week and fourth month. It is the "social smile," in which the infant smiles while fixing its gaze on a person's face."
  
  Whatever their origin or motivation, smiles have a powerful effect on us humans. As McNeill points out, "Though courtroom judges are equally likely to find smilers and nonsmilers guilty, they give smilers lighter penalties, a phenomenon called the 'smile-leniency effect.'"
  -- http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3123.html
  
  So we need to knock the smile out of you, not just get you to focus on not smiling.
  
  I think a study would also show that the person who is concerned about their opponents well fare, apologizing for illegal shots, or stopping to chat during competition is even more likely to lose.
  
  
  
  

  M: Throwing in some basics from animal behavioral and human physiology courses I’ve taken over the past few years.   

  
  

  People try to assert their dominance in many different ways; their nonverbal behavior is powerful simply because it affects people on a subconscious level.  It is not resisted as much because it’s less noticed than verbal aggression.  Primate behavior is a good indicator of how human hierarchical structures work as well, which is why that study that dealt with multiple chimps attacking an alpha leader was such an odd behavior for a wild primate group.  By this I mean there is no gain to attacking in groups because it injures all the most dominant, group protecting males.  Though it does show a nice dichotomy between instinct and intelligence, in relation to adaptive behavior.   

  
  

  I know the study focused on facial expressions, by I’m curious about the individual’s body postures as well.  Common dominant human behavior includes physical positions that take up a lot of space or make a person look bigger.   For instance, stretching arms out to one’s sides or placing your hands on your hips; extending legs or widening knees in standing or seated positions; and standing or sitting on a table while other people sit lower down.  Also to tie it back to facial expressions, angry like eyebrows drawn across the face in a long, thick line.  Think of military recruitment posters and the serious faces of the soldiers in gear. Do the fighters in this study tend toward any of these postures pre-fight or are they all staged, making the fighter respond to other stimulus and thus respond unintentionally to non-verbal behavior from other sources rather than their opponent.

  
  

  Submissive displays vary from head tilting, bowing, and nodding to demurely crossing ankles or pressing knees together are also an awesome look at expected female behavior.  The dichotomy here is that it’s not a dominant move for women to sit with their legs wide.  When men display these traits it incites more aggressive dominant behavior from other males.  Weirdly enough crosses arms isn’t always a good behavior either since depending on the situation arm crossing is perceived as submissive because it makes a person look smaller and self-protective.  I’m not sure on this one because it does make you look smaller and less outwardly aggressive, but I guess this is also where the facial expression would definitely matter.  

Read More

Headspace

Student: "How do you fight such an opponent?"
Teacher: "With heart, faith, and skill.'


There is a mental shift that occurs where focus on the small things, like individual fights, is replaced by a broader more over-all view of the sport.  Defeating an opponent comes from an ability to adapt your techniques and skills to any situation within a fight.  At practice you train and learn how different strikes feel, and what situations to use them in.  These actions need to become first nature so you can be engaged physically and disengaged mentally, allowing you to feel and adapt during an exchange of blows.

Attitude when approaching a fight will also contribute to its outcome.  When fighting opponents of a greater skill level, fight them.  Don't assume they will beat you 10 times out of 10 solely based on reputation.  If you go into the fight thinking you will loose, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage.  It doesn't matter if you loose, it matters that you make an impression.  Their overall experience may overwhelm your skills, but the fact they had to work for the win will give them something to remember you for.

A little update to this post.  A good informative video, focusing on female fighting, that is well worth the time to watch from The Modern Medieval .  

Read More