I will be in Southern California December 25, 2014 - January 3, 2015. Please contact me if you're in the area and interested in training. Thanks!

Kicking in Guided Chaos is quite different from kicking in most martial arts/self-defense systems.

Guided Chaos kicking, like everything else, is based on balance.If you do not have a good one-legged root, you cannot kick effectively. Your balance cannot be committed to or depend on the kick or its result. Whether you miss completely or connect perfectly with a charging aggressor, you cannot lose balance. Recoil from the impact of the kick is channeled into the ground via the root leg, such that it actually INCREASES your stability and the depth of your root. You drop into your root as you kick to maximize your balance and connection from the ground through your target.

Kicking is analogous to striking with your arms. Just as you do not "throw" your balance at the target when striking with your arm, you do not "throw" your balance into the kick as many martial artists do. You keep control of your root and the kick merely emanates from it.

There should be practically no muscular exertion in your arm as you strike. The power of a movement that contacts the target via your arm comes from the cumulative motion and alignment of your entire skeleton and its pressure against the ground, enhanced by dropping. The arm itself is loose. All the same applies to the leg.

Once you get a feel for Guided Chaos kicking, you're not whipping or throwing your leg at the target via muscular exertion. Rather, feeling your body to be in the right place relative to your target, you're placing your foot or leg on the target in a relaxed and nonchalant way, knowing that your balance, body unity and dropping will be there to supply the penetration and explosion once you connect. This does a lot to "hide" your kick and prevent the telegraphing that most martial artists do when they prepare to kick. Accuracy is key, as is feeling where the enemy's center of gravity is such that you can penetrate him in an unavoidable way, which makes you unavailable to him. It's much easier to be accurate when you're loose and on balance and merely "placing" your foot on the target, rather than effortfully swinging your leg in the general direction of the bad guy, hoping to hit something that will help support your compromised balance! Your retained balance and looseness also allows you continue to use your arms (or anything else) effectively even as you kick. Most people can't do this due to lack of balance and/or imagination.

As you develop in Guided Chaos, you get the feeling that anywhere you can touch with your hand, you can apply destruction if need be, because you're always on balance and moving loosely with body unity, guided by your sensitivity.Hence the practice of "counting koo" or merely touching the available targets while remaining unavailable yourself, as part of the training (not ALL of the training). A Guided Chaos master can do the same, and more, with his or her legs. For an obvious example, note how Master Michael Watson frequently uses his leg like a third arm in contact flow, moving it just as precisely, slowly and unavoidably. The other masters and grand masters can do this too, it's just very visible when Michael does it slowly with his long legs.

Also remember that in his experience and forensic research, Grand Master John Perkins identified many cases of effective kicking in the confined space that many attacks go down in, both from the ground and while standing and bracing against solid objects like walls. This is an integral part of the training, and indeed is one way to introduce kicking to students without much or any experience using their legs as weapons. Free-standing kicking may at first produce tension (physical and mental) and loss of balance. Starting out kicking while bracing against something with the hands or body can help the student's body and mind get comfortable with the idea. I once saw John take a complete beginner in martial arts (albeit a decent athlete) from zero to seriously combat effective kicking in one lesson, and he used a progression that started with leaning against a wall and culminated in the student's effectively stopping charging attackers with kicks from a free standing position, not realizing anything special was going on! Note that some martial artists who have been kicking "experts" for DECADES cannot do this, as they never understood the connection between balance and effective kicking. (Witness the "auto-retreat" feature some sparring competitors have when they kick--which may actually HELP THEM in their particular sports while preventing them from achieving serious stopping power with their kicks.)

Kicking from the ground, as in groundfighting, seems very different but can actually teach good lessons about and enhance your standing kicking. See the blog post from a couple weeks ago about groundfighting.

As different as Guided Chaos is in general from most martial arts, the kicking methods are especially different from those of the most popular martial arts. Learn them the right way and you'll see how useful effective kicking can be in a variety of situations. 

Happy Kicking!!!

These two sentences summarize free-form (or "form-free") training, as in Guided Chaos, compared to most training out there that uses prescribed positions and movements to deal with assumed actions of adversaries.

Pattern recognition is an insidious trap that anyone, even Guided Chaos students, can fall into. A Guided Chaos student must be sure to work with a variety of people moving in a variety of ways. It is important to not ALWAYS do "super-efficient" contact flow, where both training partners move minimally to deal with whatever the other is doing. While this is great for developing efficiency and internal skill, it can set up erroneous expectations if done exclusively. Vary it up with "Long Keech," the contact flow variation where both partners intentionally use big movements and move creatively rather than efficiently, putting themselves in all sorts of weird positions--though still working the five basic principles (balance, looseness, sensitivity, body unity, freedom of action). Forget about combat effectiveness or efficiency when doing Long Keech, just move and have fun and be creative, never clashing nor stopping the flow. It's like doing Polishing the Sphere and Washing the Body but with another person within your sphere whom you must adapt to and move with. Likewise, sometimes flow only at long range, or only at medium range (where most contact flow tends to end up), or only belly to belly, literally maintaining torso contact the entire time. This last variation especially can teach a lot of good lessons that might not be learned otherwise.

This applies as much to weapons training, including gunfighting, as it does to unarmed training. Do NOT train to expect a weapon wielding attacker to move just in certain ways (whether prescribed attacks or even in the "style" of a particular martial art), and do not expect particular movements of your own to apply to every situation. This is especially rampant in the firearms training community, where many trainers are preaching and many students are trying to practically turn into robots with ONE perfect draw stroke, ONE perfect stance and grip, and one way of moving while shooting. This kind of training, while applicable to most styles of competition and certain proactive combat scenarios, is NOT easily adaptable to the realities of close quarters reactive violence, with its attendant movement dynamics and physiological changes.

Train well, and make ALL human movement your element!

I've found that many GC students do not practice groundfighting as much as they should. I suspect the reasons for this include:

1. Especially in the beginning, groundfighting is not easy. The basic exercises challenge you to use the muscles of your body in ways you don't normally use them to achieve balance in positions and movements you don't normally find yourself in. We walk around on our legs all day (well, when we're not sitting on our asses), so the standing exercises are more familiar and easier to adapt to. The groundfighting exercises, however, put some folks into a world they haven't visited seriously since they were infants, and it's uncomfortable and straining at first for many.
2. They believe that either they'll never need it ("I don't want to go to the ground!"), or they'll never get good enough at it ("Look at how Masters Michael and Al move on the ground--I could never do that, I'm not agile enough").

Not only do I think the above excuses are erroneous, but they prevent the student from making great strides in their self-defense capability and internal development, both on the ground AND standing up.

Consider this:

If you think about it, groundfighting was actually the first element of GC that Grandmaster John Perkins developed. As he has related, his official training began at five years old when his father and uncles would punt him across the linoleum floor of the kitchen and challenge him to not allow them to catch him. Over time they taught him some "Injun wrasslin'" and other tricks, but mostly his training was experiential, figuring out how to avoid and counter the attacks of much larger, older men after being knocked down (sometimes "armed" with a rubber knife and sink plunger "tomahawk"). Also, after an older boy viciously stomped John while John was wrestling with friends for fun, John made the decision to never be taken down. This is what led to his discovery that staying loose and uncooperative and balanced made it impossible for even top level Judoka and wrestlers to take him down--and enabled him to strike them effectively during the process. So you can see that groundfighting and countering grappling with looseness have always been integral parts of GC and key factors in its development.

Regarding the difficulty of the exercises, the key, as with all the exercises, it to practice them until your muscles adapt and the exercises become less physically taxing, allowing you to relax with the movement and improve your proprioception, balance and body unity in all positions. For a fairly healthy adult, it's actually a fairly quick process as you're really "waking up" dormant movement and muscle use, not necessarily introducing something brand new.

Regarding the erroneous beliefs, ANYONE can end up on the ground or in a "grounded" position in a self-defense situation. One of John's first major fights as a cop began when he entered an establishment where a huge fight had broken out, slipped on blood and fell flat on his back, with a huge bruiser jumping on top of him. We have had students who went to the ground in self-defense situations, either by accident or intentionally to get their heads and vital organs away from multiple weapons, and to get to cover and escape. Way back when (before I started GC), I was attacked with a baseball bat while I was lying on a bed (long story--fortunately no injuries). You never know what's going to happen and you never know whom you'll have to deal with or in what position. So practice your groundfighting so that you have a chance.

Note that the crazy, fast, wide, continuous breakdancing moves you see Al and Mike perform in demonstrations, while cool and desirable if you can do them, are in most cases NOT necessary for self-defense. Given the confined spaces where attacks typically occur, and given the actual effects of well executed GC groundfighting, you are quite UNLIKELY to have to flip, roll and helicopter kick all over the place to protect yourself. Being able to stay loose and free mid-fall and on the ground will usually enable you to end things or at least turn the tables within seconds, and with far less movement. Even the most basic "roll down and kick like a crazed mule" skills can create a lot of damage quickly, enabling you to roll away, get up and escape. When John demonstrates groundfighting, the simplest, smallest, laziest movements create devastating results--not because of his agility or athletic prowess, but because of the Balance, Looseness, Sensitivity, Body Unity and Freedom of Action (and experience) he possesses both on his feet and on the ground. So don't let lack of athleticism or a perceived inability to emulate the more athletic masters discourage you. Efficient movement on the ground is all about the five principles and getting comfortable with making them work on the ground as well as on your feet.

I find that one big benefit of consistent groundfighting training is that it helps me discover new levels of looseness and efficient movement. On the ground, your available space for movement is cut down a lot by the presence of the planet right up against you. It forces you to do what you need to do in less space and with less resistance. If you resist on the ground you can effectively freeze and even injure yourself very easily as you end up fighting directly against the enemy's full weight and strength. This forces your body to find another way. If you train on uneven and unforgiving surfaces, you quickly learn to keep your body soft and adaptable, otherwise you'll be going home with LOTS of bruises or worse! 

Once you get more comfy and relaxed on the ground, you can begin to fine tune your sensitivity and precision. Some exercises I have done at home include slowly "rolling over Legos" (anyone with kids will understand this one) and "blind ground navigation". (Hey I can make up silly names for exercises too!) In your home, set out some furniture (chairs, tables, etc.) randomly, then close your eyes and slowly roll around the room, feeling your way around and past the furniture without impact or pressure. Put debris (including those deadly Legos) on the ground for more challenge. Do it all slowly, rolling and contorting as needed. Remember to keep breathing deeply. This will improve not only your looseness, sensitivity and balance on the ground, but also hone what John calls your "internal gyroscope," giving you better awareness of where you are in space at all times, no matter how crazy things get. Training like this, in addition of course to various groundfighting contact flow variations and other exercises (see Attack Proof, Second Edition), has improved my basic attributes on the ground as well as standing.

Practice your groundfighting!!!