We've all heard that old saying about giving someone a fish and teaching that someone to fish.  The first feeds the person for a day, while the second feeds that person for a lifetime.  This is the intent behind Coach Scott Sonnon's Arthrokinetics, the "science of submission fighting."  Coach Sonnon, in the course of this seven-volume video collection, teaches the viewer the physiological concepts of joint manipulation as a general body of principles.  Using these, it is his hope that you – like the members of the ROSS team – will then be able to "explore, improvise, and innovate" to create your own joint locks and submissions in the course of your own sport fighting and martial arts training.

I've reviewed a lot of Coach Sonnon's instructional videos.  What his Fisticuffs did for upper-body striking, his Leg Fencing did for lower body manipulation,  and his Immovable Object, Unstoppable Force did for takedowns, Arthrokinetics (AK) does for joint locks and submissions.  Scott refers to this body of ideas as joint manipulation, which more accurately encompasses the scope of what he's trying to show you.  Like his Flow Fighting, this collection seeks to impart principles rather than a list of tricks and techniques.  The AK tapes, however, are easily the most conceptual of any of the RMAX work I've reviewed.  This is a body of theories built on sound (and complicated) physiological analysis that can be used by the viewer to improvise joint manipulations no matter to what martial art or school of submission fighting that practitioner adheres.  In this way, RMAX rightly bills its mission as "performance enhancement" for the athlete and martial artist alike, helping everyone engaged in conflict with resisting opponents to do what they do better.

Production values of the collection are adequate, with good lighting in a gym environment whose polished wood floor makes it easy for Scott to scoot and rotate and move his training partners around while explaining AK principles.  The white wall that forms the backdrop boasts posters as needed, such as "The Amazing Hip," "The Amazing Knee," and "The Amazing Shoulder."  Sound is adequate too, though I had to turn up my television a lot to be able to hear the entire collection;  the recording level was obviously lower than is the average television's comfortable volume.

Scott and his instructors don't take themselves too seriously in AK, either.  The opening credits (reproduced across the collection – there is a prepackaged conclusion that is similarly copied to the volumes) feature his assistants poking fun at themselves.  Look closely;  Coach Sonnon deliberately imitates a character from the Mortal Kombat games.  There is also some end footage of "Drunken Dwarf Gong-Fu" on more than one tape that isn't quite what you'd expect and will make you chuckle.

To analyze and catalog everything described on all seven volumes of AK would result in a review so long that no one would read it.  What we'll do, therefore, is take a look at the principles and concepts explained in the first couple of volumes before summarizing the contents of the remaining tapes in the set.

Coach Sonnon explains that Arthrokinetics is the internal architecture of joint manipulation – literally, the "science of submission fighting."  What he means by this is that he intends to teach you the physiological operation of the body's joints, both in upper and lower limbs, so that you'll be able to approach the manipulation of joints (and therefore the creation of submissions when engaged in grappling with a resisting opponent) scientifically. 

This characterizes all of the RMAX work I have reviewed.  Scott applies his considerable knowledge of the human body and how it operates to the topic in order to produce groundbreaking results.  He speaks more than once in AK of the problems of "stylistic training" – the passive and decidedly unscientific approach of many fighting styles to creating submissions, wrongly pushing for pain compliance techniques, and attempting to force joint locks rather than simply understanding how the body operates in order to bend it with its function to one's will.

Arthrokinetics, Scott elaborates, is not a style.  It's a map – an amalgam of bodily knowledge and bodily wisdom that will help you develop and improve whatever combat method or sport in which you engage.  I will warn you right now that if AK has a "weakness" it is that it is burdened by a great deal of physiological and anatomical nomenclature.  Scott will hit you with an overwhelming degree of verbiage, throwing at the viewer an endless succession of terms and labels and theories.  This turns off some viewers, who find Coach Sonnon's work hard to follow as a result.

"Martial art," Scott explains, "in its highest form must be a study of anatomy and physiology."  He goes on to say that "AK is for those brave enough to step outside the box... Emancipate yourself from slavery to stylistic training."

Don't let the complexity of the narration put you off.  Over successive viewing of the tapes, you'll come to understand just what Coach Sonnon is trying to teach you.  Initially, however, it isn't vital that you understand every term or try to memorize every anotomical definition.  SImply follow along as Scott explains, watch him demonstrate and elaborate with his training partners, and absorb the physiological principles he is explaining.  That is what all this verbiage comes down to, after all:  moving the body in ways that make the opponent submit or neutralize his intentions.

Scott goes on to explain what he means by the "somatic engineering of combat."  You are, in applying the principles of AK, hoping to achieve the intentional disintegration of the opponent's breathing, movement, and alignment.  Viewers of some of Scott's other work (or readers of my previous RMAX reviews) will be very familiar with that trinity – breathing, movement, and alignment.  Working together, they make you the most effective physical and mental operative you can be.  When disintegrated, their disharmony leaves you vulnerable to your opponent.

Scott explains in detail how breathing works and how to control it.  He demonstrates how to disrupt respiration, too.  We then look at alignment, at controlling the opponent's structure, at length.  Those who've seen Immovable Object, Unstoppable Force (IOUF) will find the discussion of controlling the opponent's center of gravity (to distort his natural alignment) very familiar.  Scott talks about the solar and lunar plexii, explains the difference between open and closed kinetic chains (kinetic chains figure prominently in his recent book, Body Flow), and the means through which we increase our ability to predict what the opponent is doing or will do by sensing his intent through his body.

Capping the trinity by discussing movement, Coach Sonnon explains that our strategy in terms of AK is biomotor interference.  We are interfering with the ways in which the opponent's body operates in order to manipulate him by manipulating his joints.  Biomotor interference is the process of closing the kinetic chain, making the opponent's movements more predictable.

The somatic engineering strategy, Scott says, is to use the opponent's intention to control his structure (which is his launching platform and therefore his "opportunity") to control his ability (his "movement"), which is why biomotor interference is closing the kinetic chain.  Scott completes this discussion by describing six degrees of freedom and how these six degrees figure in AK.

Scott illustrates his points using a simple table on a chalkboard.

Through this grid you can apply the "ROSS way" to everything you do, which is the "performance enhancement" goal of RMAX and Coach Sonnon's body of work.

These explanations, which Scott does without a script and without prompts (which I consider an impressive display of physiological knowledge) continue as Scott demonstrates with his training partners the physical principles he's been discussing. (I should pause to insert a final production note here, which is that Scott intermittently wears the striped Spetsnaz t-shirt for which I criticized him in previous reviews.  The tight vertical stripes of the shirt are a little visually distracting on camera.)

"Accept the offering, don't seek the bounty," Scott quotes as the first tape comes to a close."  This is about flow – not technique.

In the second volume of AK, Scott explains the four strategies for manipulating joints.  These are:

• Hyperfunction:  active infliction of kinetic energy.

• Immobilization:  infliction of pain only when the subject resists.

• Submission:  infliction of pain

• Dysfunction:  active infliction of injury.

Hyperfunction, as viewers of IOUF will recall, is the manipulation of anatomical or "true" axes, rather than mechanical axes.  It is a means of manipulating joints in the ways they are meant to operate.

Scott goes on to describe the four characteristics of joint integrity – brittle, ductile, resilient, and tough – before discussing the structure and operation of joints themselves.  He states that joint manipulation tactics derive from the type of force we can apply to the joint and goes on to define four of these:  tensile force, compressive force, shear force, and torsion force.  He differentiates between stress (what is induced) and strain (what is produced by stress).  He then contrasts uniaxial, biaxial, and triaxial joint structures.

There are two types of joint operations, Scott teaches.  These are "close-packed" and "loose-packed."  The first is what we associate with "joint locks," while the second involves sinew separation and facilitates the manipulation of other joints.  It is the rotary nature of the loose-packed position that lends mobility and makes the manipulations possible;  a joint in its close-packed position is more stabile and less susceptible to being manipulated.

Understanding these theories, Scott explains, bringing together what he has been trying to teach the viewer, we can improvise our own joint manipulations at a technical level.  He states this rather casually, but it's the whole point of Arthrokinetics.  By learning the principles of joint operation as explained in AK, you can create your own joint manipulations and therefore your own submission when engaged in whatever type of grappling you do.

In the following segments we learn about the three types of muscular tension, the concept of active insufficiency (the diminished ability of a muscle to maintain tension – the more you bend your wrist, for example, the less your fist can clench), and using "active insufficiency" to capitalize on the length-tension relationship in muscle tissue.  Scott explains the three types of muscular action, progressing from most energy cost to least, as eccentric, isometric, and concentric.  Eccentric involves a lengthening of the muscle, while concentric involves shortening of the muscle. 

Isometric becomes very important, therefore, because it is in this muscular action that tension keeps motion at zero, at equilibrium.  In the remainder of the AK volumes we come back to this concept again and again as Scott explains how to use isometric muscular action to defend yourself against joint manipulations.  (The term he'll use in discussing this is reciprocal inhibition.)

To sum up the three types of muscular action, Scott states plainly that you can hold more than you can resist and you can brake more than you can hold.  To lift, then, requires the most energy but develops the least tension.  He explains the relationship of speed and tension and its implications for what we're trying to learn.

The following segment is a discussion of nerves, the receptors in muscle tissue, and the fact that a percentage of the population is largely unaffected by pressure applied to nerves.  Scott demonstrates this on one of his training partners, who is largely unmoved by Scott's efforts to affect the partner's nerves.

The tape concludes with a discussion of the four simple mechanical operations of the body's limbs:  the lever, the pulley, the wedge, and the screw.  Those "four machines," as Scott calls them, are the last of the formula you'll need to improvise joint manipulation techniques – infinitely.

The remainder of AK's volumes – five of them, in fact – are devoted to detailed explanations of the functions of the lower limb and upper limb architecture.  The three volumes on lower limb architecture (which, judging from the graphic labels on the tapes themselves, were at one time divided a little differently than they are now in the seven-volume AK collection) explore the function and composition of the hip, knee, and ankle.  The two volumes devoted to upper limb architecture do the same for the shoulder, elbow, and wrist.  The discussion of the function of these joints and the ways in which they work together is followed by what Scott refers to often as a "blizzard of technical demonstrations."

The demonstrations of AK are not meant as techniques to memorize.  That would be antithetical to the philosophy of Arthrokinetics specifically and Coach Sonnon's teaching methods generally.  No, these are examples – samples of the principles explored in AK being put into practice.

Click For More Information

I was greatly impressed by Arthrokinetics.  Anyone who finds value in "joint locks" or "grappling" in general can enhance both what they do and how they approach what they do by exploring AK.  This is conceptual teaching, a philosophical and physiological exploration of how the body works and how we can exploit this operation to bend other human beings to our wills.  While it might at first seem complex and even a bit impenetrable, AK is not inaccessible and it is not difficult to apply.  While you may not find "submission fighting" to be of use, I'm willing to bet you do see the utility in manipulating another person's joints.  That's the whole point – and that's what you'll be able to do conceptually when you've absorbed this set.