{"id":2304,"date":"2021-03-21T13:14:05","date_gmt":"2021-03-21T17:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=2304"},"modified":"2021-03-21T13:14:05","modified_gmt":"2021-03-21T17:14:05","slug":"victory-not-survival-war-not-fighting-a-look-at-warrior-flow-combatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2021\/03\/victory-not-survival-war-not-fighting-a-look-at-warrior-flow-combatives.html","title":{"rendered":"VICTORY, not SURVIVAL: War, not “Fighting”–A Look at Warrior Flow Combatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legion in the martial arts community are those who spend no small measure of time in venues and on forums of various sorts debating over what, if any, is the superior<\/em> art.<\/p>\n

By \u201csuperior,\u201d it\u2019s critical to grasp, is meant something like most conducive to winning<\/em> against an opponent<\/em> in a real street fight<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There are undoubtedly some skilled martial artists and seasoned street fighters who make insightful contributions to these conversations.\u00a0 Yet the fact that they would spend a fraction of a second paying this question the slightest thought exposes a profound, elementary flaw in their training\u2014irrespectively of the art in which it is they happen to train.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be blunt, for this topic is, quite literally, a matter of life or death:<\/p>\n

The topic that commands the attention of these practitioners of the martial and pugilistic arts on their forums of choice is utterly irrelevant to the only question on which they should <\/em>be focused.\u00a0 If they are instructors, they do their students a grave disservice by preoccupying themselves with bullshit <\/em>concerning whose karate and Kung Fu is best.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMartial\u201d means of or pertaining to war<\/em>.\u00a0 The martial arts, in their historical, truest sense, are the warrior arts.\u00a0 And warriors don\u2019t \u201cfight\u201d against \u201copponents\u201d with an eye toward besting them.<\/p>\n

Rather, that for which warriors train is nothing more and nothing less than the annihilation<\/em> of the enemy<\/em> from the land of the living.<\/p>\n

Annihilation. Of. The. Enemy.<\/p>\n

So, the ultimate question, that to which all others must be subordinate, is this:<\/p>\n

Does my training prepare me, at a millisecond\u2019s notice, to kill, unapologetically, with all of the brutal efficiency that the human imagination can conjure, any and all two-legged predators that wage war on the lawful?\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Talk of besting \u201copponents\u201d in \u201cfights\u201d is the talk of sport. Implicitly, <\/em>even if not explicitly, those who engage in such talk are subconsciously conditioning themselves for confrontations on the streets that they continue to conceive as analogous to sporting matches, the adult\u2019s version, say, of the proverbial schoolyard scrap. \u00a0Nor can this subconscious conditioning be avoided, for as practitioners of Neuro-Linguistic-Programming (NLP) and other scientists have long established, the language we use shapes and reflects our beliefs, which in turn shape our behaviors, which in turn shape our language, and so forth and so on in a perpetual, self-reinforcing loop.<\/p>\n

Hence, those who think in the terms of a sports lexicon will train for sport.<\/p>\n

Many of the comments made during the course of these discussions regarding ground grappling, wrist locks, joint manipulations, arm bars, leg sweeps, pressure points, choke holds, and, in general, the virtual infallibility (to judge from their descriptions) of all MMA fighting, boxing, and wrestling techniques make this point in spades.<\/p>\n

My thesis regarding the fundamental flaw in the training paradigm within which contributors operate is further supported by the experiences that they share.\u00a0 They will recount, for example, confrontations in which they were involved that were preceded by either eye fucking, shit-talking, or any number of other signals that should\u2019ve been spotted and addressed so that the confrontation could\u2019ve been preempted.\u00a0 Or some will refer to the techniques that they applied to some \u201cwise ass\u201d or \u201ctough guy\u201d after <\/em>the latter did or attempted to do something to them.<\/p>\n

The problem here should be obvious: \u00a0There is no \u201cfighting\u201d for students of the warrior arts.\u00a0 As veteran combat instructor Bradley Steiner memorably insisted: \u201cSelf-defense is war <\/em>in microcosm.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is worth considering two other quotations from Professor Steiner that are especially germane to the topic at hand:<\/p>\n

\u201cMany who resort to violence at the first slight hint of what they think of as \u2018disrespect,\u2019 or a challenge to their manhood, or as a need to quickly beat someone\u2014before he beats them, etc. do so because they are not skilled enough<\/em> to feel the inner confidence that comes from being genuinely prepared<\/em>\u201d (emphases added)[.]<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026In fact, it is the person who lacks<\/em> skill and confidence in his abilities who is the most likely to become needlessly volatile, and get into avoidable encounters with others\u201d (emphasis original).<\/p>\n

To further make the point, he once shared a quotation (by a Charley Reese) in his monthly newsletter that cut to the heart of the matter:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truly dangerous man dresses inconspicuously and is soft-spoken.\u00a0 He walks away from most confrontations.\u00a0 The only time you learn that the truly dangerous man is mad at you is a split second before you die, for he never fights<\/em>.\u00a0 He only kills<\/em>. The truly dangerous man knows that fighting is what children do and killing is what men do\u201d (emphases added).<\/p>\n

The only justification for real world violence is the protection of self and those innocents within the self\u2019s orbit against the aggressions of predators.\u00a0 And then\u2014then\u2014<\/em>when violence is warranted, the use of that violence must be instantaneous, overwhelming, and at least potentially homicidal<\/em>.\u00a0 Whether one thinks that the choice to kill the enemy is the best choice will depend upon one\u2019s intuitive assessment of the unique circumstances within which the confrontation unfolds.\u00a0 If, though, it is<\/em> the best choice, then by all means the defender, the Warrior, should extinguish the enemy\u2019s existence without further ado.<\/p>\n

And if there are multiple enemies? Then, as Master Al Ridenhour<\/a>, founder of Warrior Flow Combatives, instructs his students: Under no uncertain terms, all attackers must all die. <\/em><\/p>\n

They. Must. All. Die.<\/p>\n

Warrior Flow Combatives, from what I have gathered, is indeed unique among the warrior arts inasmuch as its training modality, in both its physical and, crucially, mental aspects, is predicated upon the assumption that self-defense is war and, thus, those who train for war train to become lethal warriors.<\/p>\n

Students in Warrior Flow do not train to fight. They train to reduce predators to prey, to become the incarnation of the enemy\u2019s worst nightmares, to paralyze the enemy with the same terror that the enemy exists to induce in others.\u00a0 Students train so that, through sheer will, if and when they must, they can, in effect, nuke the enemy to kingdom come. And if they choose to spare his life, he will be forever haunted by the trauma that he suffered at their hands (and their arms, elbows, feet, legs, and\/or whatever other extensions of their natural weapons with which they may opt to bludgeon him).<\/p>\n

This<\/em> is the mindset that Warrior Flow Combatives inculcates in students.\u00a0 It should be the mindset of all students of the martial arts.<\/p>\n

Regretfully, those who are fixated upon determining who can kick whose ass in class, in a bar, or even on the streets, and who concern themselves with figuring out whether a guy who trains in Tae Kwon Do can beat a trained Mixed Martial Artist, a boxer, or a student of BJJ have not only got their priorities ass backwards. They are preventing themselves from becoming as good as they can be in order to prevail in the only \u201cfight\u201d that ultimately matters: the \u201cfight\u201d of and for their lives.<\/p>\n

This oversight, needless to say, can get them killed.\u00a0 Worse, if they are instructors, their oversight can get their students <\/em>killed. <\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost incredible that any of this needs to be pointed out.\u00a0 Those who undertake any martial or pugilistic art do so because they believe that in so doing they will acquire the skills necessary to protect themselves against violent attackers.\u00a0 This being so, it should go without saying that to achieve this end, they must acquire the physical and psychological virtues necessary to go scorched Earth on the violent.\u00a0 If the art doesn\u2019t supply these skills, then it is not a genuine martial art, for unless one goes Hiroshima and Nagasaki on predators, predators will do just this to those upon whom they prey. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the governing philosophy of Warrior Flow Combatives. \u00a0It restores the martial to the martial arts. More will be said about its training modality in a future article.<\/p>\n

For now, though, I end this article by reiterating its thesis, a service announcement to all martial artists: Focus on what matters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Legion in the martial arts community are those who spend no small measure of time in venues and on forums of various sorts debating over what, if any, is the superior art. By \u201csuperior,\u201d it\u2019s critical to grasp, is meant something like most conducive to winning against an opponent in a real street fight. 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