TAPE 2:  WEAPONIZE YOUR ARCHITECTURE

The tape begins with the same stylized pair of sequences on Tape 1.  To weaponize your architecture, Scott explains, is to use your entire body as a weapon.  Circumstantial spontaneity overrides the application of techniques.  You don't need a catalog of techniques.  Such an approach will lead to your downfall against a fighter who understands that improvisation is one of the most critical skills in hand to hand fighting.  Suspend the notion of specific techniques, Scott urges.  Look, instead, at the process of integrating your breathing, movement, and alignment.

Each exercise on the tape, Scott warns, is not intended as a set of movements to memorize.  Use them to help you understand the importance of constant motion and improvisational weaponizing, but improvise similar drills for your own practice.

Following what is by now a predictable sequence -- the foundation for good instructional curricula, as far as I am concerned -- Scott works through horizontal and then vertical infinities with his arms, striking pads worn by a training partner.  Keep moving, he urges.  You are vulnerable when you "reset."  When you're throwing your arms and working through these movements, any damage done should be incidental.  This is part of a non-technique focus.  You are getting out of the way of your flow and letting the damage happen as you stay in constant motion.

Working forward and then back, dropping his upper frame to his lower frame and screwing the force out to come back in a tight infinity pattern, Scott explains that force comes from the natural range of motion without stopping.  The gap between techniques will be your undoing, he repeats.  "Circumstantial spontaneity" should be your goal, he says.  "Performance is prior to precision."

Keeping his hands open, Scott touches on the erasure of the distinction between striking and grappling.  With your arms in constant motion and your architecture "weaponized," you can use anything available to you against any and all targets nearest you.  This is the key to the entire tape.

Scott also refers to the "trinity" concept, in which not one but three strikes are delivered.  You wish to overwhelm your opponent, push him into the "vortex," the downward performance spiral that is the focus of tapes 3.1 and 3.2.  There is real consistency here, as this discussion could come from either Flow Fighting or Leg Fencing.  Scott's material can be absorbed individually, but taken together his works form a web of training that build on and enhance each other.

Scott explains the three main tactics for delivering force to the opponent:  projection, whipping, and casting.  Projecting is linear delivery.  Whipping may look powerful, but really doesn't have all that much power behind it.  Casting is the best method, recruiting the most joints and using the body in a relaxed way while delivering force through a smooth, integrated movement.

An extended discussion of collapsing and folding your architecture, and how this applies to impact delivery, follows.  This was introduced in Tape 1 and is very important.  Scott demonstrates how to deliver blows around the axis of the opponent's hold -- you can see him "flowing" as he does this -- and how to use what he gives you to work around, through, and with his movement.

Every part of your appendage, and every part of your body, can be "weaponized," Scott says.  He demonstrates how to use different portions of your body in the clinch, spending time on the elbow pit, the inside of the elbow, the outside of the elbow, and the forearm.  The discussion of the forearm was particularly of interest to me, as I have always been fond of forearm smashes and have thought -- as Scott says on the tape -- that the forearm is neglected in much martial training.  (The forearm is not a "lazy elbow," Scott points out, but a screw that pops outward.)

In these sequences, Scott is amazing to watch.  As he demonstrates flowing and delivering damage to the opponent, we start to really see what he can do.  He is both fast and fluid and obviously knows what he is doing.

There is a good segment on fear reactivity, the emotional arousal that is the enemy of flow.  There are three elements to fear reactivity:  sensitivity (how much you detect), irritability (how quickly you react), and contractibility (how much you react).  Get your opponent's fear reactivity rolling, Scott explains, and you can "push him into the vortex."

Density, a byproduct of fear reactivity, involves the heart rate, the breathing rate, and muscular tension.  It is comprised of the internal distractions that occur due to perceived or real errors, detected threats, and the unexpected.  You can use this density in fighting your opponent, Scott explains.  If you cause emotional arousal, you create, for example, muscular tension -- density -- that can be manipulated.  This discussion reminded me very much of chi sao, a sensitivity exercise in Wing Chun in which any tenseness in the opponent works against him and provides the lever against which you move to defeat his or her guard.

Scott goes on to discuss trigger points and the difference between them and pressure points.  Trigger points cause motor action and can be used to create openings.  Pressure points, by contrast, are used to inflict pain.

Your opponent's fear reactivity can work to his advantage, however, so you must be aware of this.  His intention creates an opportunity which creates the ability to attack.  If he is very irritable, for example, he may react quickly to counter your attack.  You can use this, however, because fear reactivity disintegrates the integration of  your opponent's movement, breathing, and alignment.  You wish to be in the zone -- proper integration of those three elements --  while you push him into the vortex.

Fear reactivity has three types, based on physiology.  These are concentric (flinching), isometric (defensive bracing), and eccentric (resisting).  Eccentric is the strongest muscular action of these three, so be aware that your opponent is most powerful when experiencing this.  Manipulate the different types of fear reactivity to maximize your efficacy.

The setting of the tape shifts to a boxing ring in which Scott demonstrates holds, ties, and reversals with the help of a pair of training partners.  One of these men is wearing another of those striped tank tops and has elaborate tattoos on his arms, which is visually distracting.  (It's not a big problem, but I did find myself looking to see exactly what the tattoos depicted, which prompted me to rewind to see what I'd missed while I was doing that.)

Focus, Scott urges, on force vectors while viewing these demonstrations.  He and his partners work through a number of wedges, single and double underhooks, neutral ties, and levering.  There was one sequence that I really liked in which Scott deftly reverses a hold applied to him, smoothly and very quickly placing his opponent in the same position.

The boxing ring segment of the tape goes on for quite some time and is worth more than one viewing.  I cannot really do it justice here.  A wealth of information on dealing with certain clinch tactics is imparted relatively quickly.  (If I have any real complaint about this portion of the tape, it is that the lighting is very yellow, especially compared to the stark white look of the rest of the tape.)

Wrapping up the tape, Scott returns to the first setting to discuss the three strategic interfaces for fighting.  These are proactive (addressing directly the opponent's intention and inhibiting his motor launch), counteractive (dealing with the opponent's delivery system) and retroactive (being tougher than the opponent, through habituation or sensitization).

The Fisticuffs series continues with Tapes 3.1 and 3.2 on the Flow State Performance Spiral.

Read my review of Fisticuffs, Tape 1

Read my review of Fisticuffs, Tape 3.1