Introduction

This article on the knockout first appeared as part of a thread on the Fighting Arts Alliance forum.  Now that the forum members have read it, I thought this material might be of some interest to those who read my blog.  The article is long and will appear in two parts. 

But first, an introduction covering the main reasons why I posted this piece on the forum in the first place.

For over thirty years I’ve been trying to explain to those who could be bothered to listen the importance of moving the head in various ways.  This can be done to support the dynamics and direction of body movement, or it can mean that the head is used as a weapon and even as a 5^th limb (as in head fighting).  The head is also the major target in a fight, one which will be attacked and needs to be defended.  At the same time, your opponent’s head needs to be attacked in various ways with strikes and controls.  All of these uses of the head are important.

When I read about the movement of the head in martial arts/SP circles, I note that some have placed great emphasis on the importance of the head in movement, and are aware of the head being a major target.  However, these same advocates of ‘using the head’ haven’t as yet, it seems, understood how to use the natural movements of the head to support the bending, extending, flexion and twisting of the spine.  There doesn’t seem to be an understanding of how to use the head to set the direction in which the body and its mass needs to move in response to a given situation.  There doesn’t seem to be an understanding of how the head of one’s opponent needs to be moved in a particular way so as to gain greater control, inflict pain, or most importantly of all, produce a knockout, whether sustained, transient, or stun (i.e., proprioceptive or vestibular disorientation).

Unfortunately, much of the discussion I read online about the use of the head is one-dimensional.  It lacks awareness of the specifics of how to move the head so as to support the dynamics of a particular skill, and of how to attack the head so as to cause a specific effect—for the purposes of this article, a knockout. 

Interestingly, the way you move your head so as to produce the dynamics of a shot is often the same way your opponent’s head ends up moving.  Outside of boxing and Muay Thai, when I look at what passes for the best examples of the dynamics of how to hit a guy in the head (or body for that matter) the main focus seems to be on how hard can you hit him with one single shot—or, more often, how hard can you hit a static substitute, say a bag or a pad.  These examples often lack understanding of the specific effect you need to cause by hitting, and they certainly show an inability to repeat the process if the first shot fails—as, inevitably, it often does. 

In the same way that the dynamics of a tool are designed to cause a specific effect, so should be the dynamics of, say, a shot to the head.  But unless you know what those specific effects are and the best ways of achieving them, you could be running blind.  This is particularly true if, unlike a professional boxer (for example) you never get the opportunity to learn by trial and error how to knock guys out.  So, if you are not training in a live fighting environment, this article is primarily for you.  But even if you are training in a ring/cage environment, there may be some pointers here, particularly in the clips.

*

About professionals 

The article was written in response to a comment made by

randomflow

I have made similar observations over the years with regards to how professionals use tools to do work--including the 'tools' that are built into the body.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRX5BlsU3ac
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcR28Yqt4mY

It is noticeable how an expert with (for example) an axe uses the body so as to let the tool and often gravity do much of the work, thereby gaining a multiplication of force or speed from the design of the tool. By contrast, when you observe most people doing work with a tool they are unfamiliar with, they put more into the effort of using the tool than they are getting out of it.

That’s why I always look to tried and tested professionals to see how they do work specific to their trade, whether they're skilled craftsmen or construction workers using a simple tool such as a hammer, axe, saw, or spade (for example). Take a professional blacksmith. He has learnt his trade by performing his specialized work day in and day out for many years. He hasn't spent his life talking about what he is going to do with the hammer if he ever happens to meet a horse. He's been doing it for real, making mistakes and correcting as he goes. You can't bullshit your way around putting a shoe on a horse.

You can probably guess where I'm going with this one. In the martial arts there's a lot of talk about tools and arsenals and toolboxes. But when I look at the performance of the men who are doing the talking, I can't see any of the expertise that the tradesman displays in the clip above. Regardless of what they may have to say about tools and biomechanics, most martial arts instructors use the tools of their body like a rank amateur. It shows--to me, anyway.

The professional fighter, on the other hand, employs the principle of the body's tools in action in a way that's clearly effective. If the job didn't get done, he'd be out of work. That's the definition of a true professional. That's why when it comes to fighting, whether in the ring or street, I always take my measure of an 'expert' by comparing what he does and says against the world's leading professional fighters and trainers, both past and present. Personally, my money would be on the professional every time.

The dynamics of tools

Now, on to the tools. Fundamentally, I've been a labourer for most of my life. And I've been learning from how workmen use tools for many years. During the twenty years when I managed a 200 acre estate, I was not only engaged in plenty of physical labour myself, but I came into contact with many workmen skilled in using axes, two-handed saws, spades, picks, you name it. You can learn a lot by watching a workman who knows what he's doing, and I always had my eyes open to pick up on the nuances of their skill.

The reason I am interested in the dynamics of tools such as the hammer and their skilful application is that they have often provided me with an insight into how the body might better be applied when doing work both internally and externally. In the context of a fight, this type of insight means being better able to deliver enough force to knock a guy out or stun him with a shot to the head, or drop him with a body shot, or even break bones with a blow.

And the truth is, there are many ways of executing, say, a punch so as to produce sufficient magnitude of force to take a guy out. I've probably tried and had some success with them all, including the chambered or cocked type punch of karate--something I'll be including in my next post. Each of these shots is mechanically different, and has a different potential application within the context of a fight. Any can potentially cause a knockout depending on the context. But it's understanding the various principles of the delivery and impact of the shots that gives you the edge, and that's where an understanding of how tools work can help.

The hammer, like the majority of our biomechanical levers, is a third class lever.  When a hammer drives a nail into a piece of wood, the wrist acts as the fulcrum or axis, the mechanical effort of the arm is applied through the hand, and the load to be overcome is the resistance of the wood. This type of leverage is capable of producing great speed of the hammer head and its impact force (see 'The Physics of Hammering' near the bottom of this link .

Indeed, the human arm from the scapula to the hand is a third class lever. Here's a quote from 'Training the Shoulder Complex in Baseball Pitchers: A Sport-Specific Approach' by Jeffrey J. Jeran, MS,CSCS, National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health Wellness Center,Morgantown,West Virginia and Robert D. Chetlin,PhD, CSCS, HFI, West Virginia University School of Medicine,Morgantown,West Virginia.

'Inappropriate scapular kinematics may be further illustrated by the biomechanical principle of levers. Throwing a baseball involves thirdclass lever action, where the glenohumeral joint acts as the fulcrum, the baseball acts as resistance opposite the axis, and the muscles responsible for delivery are located between the fulcrum and the resistance. Imagine that your arm, shoulder, and scapula form a type of catapult (a classic third-class lever), where the scapula forms the base (i.e., the fulcrum or axis), the shoulder, upper arm, and forearm provide the desired muscle action (i.e., the effort), and the basket (i.e., the hand) holds the ball (i.e., the resistance). If the scapula or base is weak, or not tightly fixed, and you have the strongest arm in the world, the law of acceleration assures that your unstable base (i.e., scapula) will be difficult to control, resulting in improper mechanics, inaccurate throwing, poor velocity, and increased susceptibility to injury. Therefore, we believe that a strong base (i.e., the scapular fixators) is vital to both skilled performance and injury prevention. The scapular fixators, therefore, should be trained as diligently as those muscles that are directly involved in accelerating the ball.'

Being a third class lever like a hammer (which includes club and sledge hammers), axe, baseball bat, tennis racket, catapult, sling, billy jack, club, and even a mouse trap, the arm can be used in similar ways where moving the load at great speed over large distance is an advantage, in that the distance moved by the load is greater than the distance moved by the effort. And since this motion takes place in the same time frame, the load moves at a greater speed than the effort.

In other words, third class levers move the load quickly over a large distance by applying a large effort over a small distance. So if we can find ways of increasing either the length of the load or resistance arm, or increasing the applied effort, or both, then we can increase the speed of the delivery of the fist to the target.

Something else we can play around with is torque, or the magnitude of twist around the centre of rotation, which as a formula is equal to the application of the force multiplied by the perpendicular distance from the centre of rotation to the line of application of the force. Torque can be seen both in relation to the application of force by way of the muscles and tendons to the bony levers of the body and the joint axis about which they rotate, as well as in the application of force to the target and the major axis about which the rotation is taking place; i.e., the hip or the spine. And because torque is the product of the force and length of the moment arm, it can be increased by increasing the magnitude of the force and length of the moment arm.

Although having an understanding of those numerous factors that influence both linear and rotary motion can improve your performance, such an understanding is not essential and sometimes it's better to draw on analogies such as throwing your fist like a rock or a ball, catapulting it, whipping it in like cracking a whip, using it like a club or a hammer and even spring-loading it like a mouse trap when describing the different ways of punching a man in the head, for example. What's important to remember, though, is that unlike a catapult or hammer, the human arm can be applied from various positions, levels, ranges and angles. The hammer, for example, is by its design limited to do work within more specific planes and environments. The human arm, on the other hand, can be adjusted and forcefully applied to the target in many different ways.

Important to the success of this third class leverage system of the arm is the scapula, whose supportive structures must be developed in a way so as to provide a dynamic base from which to launch the arm and sustain the impact. And so this area has to be developed and strengthened by exercises specific to what the scapula has to functionally do in a fight. That’s why shrugs/rolls with weights in various positions, isolated scapula pull-ups, press-ups, dips, etc. are important. Most important is testing the dynamic stability of the scapula on the heavy bag.

Applied scapula

Two great fighters who clearly show scapula and shoulder development as well as how to use the arm like a catapult, hammer, or club to strike with the fist with tremendous force are Rocky Marciano  with 43 knockouts out of 49 wins, and Mike Tyson with 44 knockouts out of 50 wins .

Just watch the clips and you will see how explosively the arm, from the scapula, shoulder, elbow, to the fist is able to move through various planes of movement from any position. Too many guys when they punch are either too tight in the scapula and shoulder region, so they end up punching with just their elbow, or too loose, so they end up punching in a disconnected or floppy way.

Naturally, the elbow is important in the delivery of force to the head or body as it is the last link of acceleration development in the kinetic chain from the feet to the hand. In over-arm, side-arm, under-arm and push-arm patterns the elbow can greatly enhance the acceleration of the fist and subsequently the follow through. However, irrespective of how the elbow is used to finally accelerate the fist (there are a number of ways), just prior to the contact of the fist with the target there should be a sense of the summation of all those forces generated within the kinetic chain (including the scapula and shoulder) being used to drive the elbow rather than the fist into the target, irrespective of the blow or position. It's rather like focusing on driving the hilt of the blade of a knife into a man instead of focusing on driving in the blade. Following through with the elbow in this way greatly enhances an accelerated follow-through of the fist.

I remember once hearing Tyson talking about how shrugging his shoulders was the key to his big hitting power and how, as part of his workout, he did shrugs with weights to enhance this process. I've been a great believer in scapular and shoulder development ever since. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0ONHZmsFec

I often tell guys that by dynamically shrugging or rolling at the shoulder when they punch, or at the hip when they kick, they can generate and impart to the target a greater magnitude of force for a longer period of time than if they don’t use the shoulders or hips in such a way.

Some points about the knockout specialists

Marciano at just over 13 stone really knew how to throw a shot, and the effect of his blows were often described as being hammer-like, having rocks thrown at you, being hit by a billy jack or a baseball bat. These are analogies I've always tried to emulate and I've encouraged others to do so. Funny enough, Marciano's first sport was baseball and it was only after failing to make it as a professional baseball player that he turned to professional boxing. His baseball background might partly explain why his opponents likened his shots to having rocks thrown at them or being hit with a baseball bat. Although he often missed the head, which was his major target, he nearly always made up for it by hitting other parts of the body, usually the shoulders and arms, hard enough to cause damage or break his opponent's alignment or disrupt their balance in some way. And when you consider the relentlessness of his attacks (he was throwing 80 to 100 punches in a 3 minute round) that’s a lot of damage to sustain as an opponent. It was also requiring of an unbelievable destructive determination and stamina on the part of Marciano.

Hitting with this kind of power and relentlessness, it's not surprising that Marciano's opponents were always instinctively trying to get away from him, but only six opponents out of Marciano’s 49 fights and 49 wins ever succeeded. Something else about Marciano that’s worth noting is that he had pretty good timing and defensive skills, and the stories about him having to take a shot in order to give one are nonsense. When you consider he was throwing over 80 punches a round, if he'd had to take that many shots he'd have been beaten to a pulp. Just watch his fights and you'll see what I mean.

When I watch Marciano and Tyson hit guys in the head with their full weight behind their shot and with so much explosive bad intent, I often wonder if it was their intention to see if they could detach their opponent's head from his body and see how far they could propel it into the crowd. Tyson and Marciano were seriously big hitters, so if you want to knock out guys or seriously hurt them, then emulate the best--forget the rest.

Something else that should be remembered about knockout specialists like Marciano and Tyson is that when they climbed in the ring it wasn’t their intention to dance around the ring trying to score points or wait for the opportunity to throw a counter punch, but to knock the other guy out as soon as possible. The only reason they didn’t do that in the first seconds of the first round is because their opponent was not some rank amateur but a skilled boxer/fighter, often of world class level, who knew how to neutralize their knockout attempts and who often had the intent and skill to try and knock them out as well. Let's not forget, their opponents had the whole ring to try evade the pursuit style of Marciano and Tyson. If they had fought in a smaller ring, their knockouts would have been occurring much earlier in the fight because being able to crowd their opponent and working in restrictive pace suited their style.

And this is a style that could easily be transferred to the streets. So for those who say that boxing wouldn’t work on the streets or in some other kind of close combative situation, I'd answer that it rather depends on what type of boxer we're talking about.

More about the hammer and its applications in my next post.

If you look at the photographs in this link, you’ll see examples of the natural throwing pattern as adapted for baseball pitching.  You can see that the legs, pelvis, trunk and shoulders are engaged so as to produce a dynamic stretch of the serape muscles running diagonally from the shoulder to the hip.  It’s the muscles involved in this group that are responsible for the development of the internal forces that transfer momentum to the arms or legs in throwing or kicking.

http://www.sportsci.com/topics2/presentations/Throwing_Doc_Presentation_ISBS99/mthrow.htm

http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/strength-training-improving-your-trunk-strength-will-improve-your-throwing-and-striking-40845

http://www.femaleathletesfirst.com/article.aspx?navid=9&articleid=13&animation=off

http://functionalpathtraining.blogspot.com/2005/09/more-core-serape-effect.html

The reason why I put Rufus up recently is that there is a strong similarity between the way he stretches the slingshot from both ends simultaneously, and the way that somebody throwing a ball double-stretches the serape muscles.  This is the shoulder-hip separation referred to in the first article.

This double-stretching not only engages the serial elastic component of muscle, but also the muscle spindles embedded within the muscle.  The faster you can initiate this stretch, the more powerful the contractual force that is developed as a consequence. 

So the trick is, how do you get this double stretch effect? 

In pitching you see a very exaggerated example of the front leg stepping forward while the rear shoulder pulls back.  In fighting, naturally this principle has to be adapted to the time frame and tactical situation required, so the movement won’t look obvious as it does with the pitchers.  However, in some form the double-stretch when present will enhance the force development of your shot. I used to tell Richard La Plante when he asked me how I got my power that I’d simply refined the process of throwing a stone.

I’ve been talking about the serape muscles and the importance of their engagement across the diagonal of the torso for thirty years, although I think I was mispronouncing the word 'serape' on the videos made in the late 1990s.  There’s nothing new in the concept; it’s been around since 1922 in Logan and McKinley’s Kinesiology.  I picked up the idea in the kinesiology books I bought in the early 1970s.   

Have a look at the photos and at Rufus.  Don’t get caught up in the detail, but get a feel for the separation and double stretch; i.e., stretching from both ends simultaneously and engaging as many muscle groups as you can in the kinetic chain.  No passengers.

I’ve spent most of my life looking for ways to raise my game as a fighter, and one key element to this is power development. In the 1970s I found I’d reached a plateau. I was over 16 stone (225 pounds) of solid muscle. I’d done all the powerlifting shit. I was into the Chinese martial arts methods of force development. But I wasn’t getting more out of myself, and psychologically I felt discouraged because I knew that I should be able to go forward. I was seriously bad news to anybody who had to fight me around this period, but inside myself I wasn’t satisfied with my performance.

I looked everywhere I could think of and I wasn’t getting any answers. I was on the verge of quitting martial arts. David Dubow was going to send me to America to go to University—he knew I wanted to improve myself, and being an alumnus of NYU and Columbia himself, he’d always supported the idea of higher education. That was the plan. 

But, like most of my life, something happened. In this case, the source of the trouble came from a ginger tom cat called Gallagher. He fell off the top of a wardrobe and I noticed that he twisted his head and the body followed so as to land him on his feet. In that momentary impression of Gallagher falling, I’d seen something that would be a clue to where I was going to go next.

Up until then I’d been using my head to lead the action, but not in any conscious way. In fact, when I did karate and Wing Chun I was expressly told not to move my head. But when you look at the cat falling, you’ll see that his eyes and his head orient to the ground, and sequentially the rest of the body follows. You can see the rotation of the spine. 

I took that imagery to the bag and bang! Up went the power. 

I hadn’t yet made the connection between the head posting over the foot to create an axis; that would come later when watching 100m runners coming off their blocks. But for now, it was enough to make me cancel the plane ticket to America. And, as Foyles bookshop was just up the road, I paid them a visit and asked them about cats. Unfortunately, the cat books they had did not help me! But, I persisted, and eventually I found myself in the kinesiology section. 

Then I was a kid in a candy shop. The rest is history.

Here’s a clip of a cat who does somewhat resemble Gallagher. You can see him in slow motion as he falls. Pick up on the way the head leads the action and how it fixes on its target (in this case, the ground, but in your case, the man’s head). Try and internalise the concept.

Here’s another clip which shows you how the head initiates the rotational action of the spine, but in this case it’s a shaking action. This should be of particular interest in the context of the Fujian systems and their derivatives. Again, try and internalise what you see here. The clip will show you the biomechanics in action in a natural context. This is how the body is designed to work. 

Use it, but don’t turn it into a motor-oriented action where you shake for the sake of shaking. You have to have an objective, and that is the production of force, first applying it against a dead target like a bag, and then against a man within drills, and then against a man who’s acting as a hostile adversary. 

For me, the next clip is a personal favourite: the cheetah. Again, it’s not that you’re going to go from 0-60 in a couple of strides. It’s picking up the impression of the intensity and rate of the movement of the spine in a bending and extending pattern. The head is involved, but only as much as is needed; the cheetah still has to keep its eye on a target that is trying to evade it. 

This is where I get this cyclonic sense of movement and repetitive action. Here’s a representation that is alive, and it works, and it’s teaching you directly how to move. You’re not getting a second-hand (or third or fourth hand) representation off some master. You can see something that the ‘ancient masters’ never could see, because of the technology that brings the cheetah right into your room. 

To me the best way of teaching is by representation. I work so hard when I teach because I teach by example. I can break it down, but the breakdown is never going to be as good as what I can do, and it’s too left-brain. These representations might be only videos, but if you make the effort to get into it, relate to it like a kid would. Empathy is a strong tool. Use it. Don’t be inhibited about it. 

I have one more clip for today. I always had a problem with how to breathe. Do you breathe through your nose? Through your mouth? Do you make a particular sound? Do your teeth close? Do you tuck in your tongue? The only information I could find was based on what other martial artists were doing, and often I was unconvinced that they knew what they were talking about. 

At Bourne Hill I had a Saluki mix called Jed. He took it upon himself to guard the yard where we had all the horses. I learned a lot from Jed over the years, but here’s one thing that was very important to me. I noticed when he barked that the bark seemed to come from his whole body. In fact, he’d more or less lose contact with the ground on every bark. The sound seemed to be initiating this sudden, explosive shift of his weight. And the head was again involved. You could see the total body movement in the bark. 

That told me something. The sudden, explosive contraction of the rectus and the diaphragm supported a sudden and explosive sound for Jed; but I also realised that I could use the same means to support a sudden and explosive release of power through the limbs for myself.  The involvement of the core muscles in the barking ensured that any movement was interconnected from the feet to the head. Everything was involved. It wasn’t just about making a sound.

Also, he didn’t get tired. The nature of the effort facilitated repetition over and over. And the closer the perceived threat got to Jed, the higher the tempo and the intensity of the barks. And here’s another thing: the rhythm wasn’t regular. The barking was expressive.

I’d seen the same sort of barking behaviour in baboons. Unlike many of the sounds that come out of the martial arts, this was a way of vocalising aggression that I could relate to. When I talk about vocalisation, the barking of the dog is a good representation. There’s emotion, there’s purpose, there’s intent all expressed and integrated in a physical way.  The bark supports the bite.
 

We had some amusing discussion at Primal regarding Tai Chi wall bouncing. Rob Dick couldn’t get his head round it, so Rob, these clips are for you. 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QAHcjW6QSb8

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KGhkZduM39E

And below, you can see masters applying Tai Chi plyometrics.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WKtK-ifyasc

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7DfVzj55wXw

After that we got on to some serious training, in which things don’t remain academic for very long! It was a really good session, and I know that because Rory said so. Rory’s a kind of hard guy to please when it comes to violent satisfaction. 

One thing that I discussed was timing, or what I term ‘perception of interval of time.’ Most people haven’t developed or trained an awareness of interval of time. It’s an area that isn’t often emphasized in martial arts. You can learn timing holistically within the context of drilling and fighting, but sometimes in order to get off a plateau the issue of interval of time has to be addressed directly and in a specialized way.

We all have a sense of interval of time; otherwise we’d never be able to cross a road, catch, throw or evade a ball, merge with traffic, walk through a revolving door, etc. But the interval of time in a fight, both for the development of force and its opportunistic application, is a whole different thing. 

I look at some guys and the way they develop power simply takes too much time.  The guy might as well put a stamp on it and give it to the postman to deliver.  They operate as if their big shot is an absolute solution. Many ‘big hitters’ (especially those who haven’t been challenged by an equal) have a power delivery that is full of what I’ll call ‘time holes’. A time hole is an interval of time within or between the development, deployment, and recovery phases of the shot, where an opponent could easily take advantage, and sometimes this time hole is big enough to drive a truck through. These guys either have time holes because the fight has always gone their way and they’ve never been punished for it, or because they aren’t aware that the hole is there. They don’t have a fight-specific sense of interval of time. 

 It’s no coincidence that those who work routinely in synchronized, regular beats are more vulnerable to having time holes. The synchronized training, where the rhythm is predictable, doesn’t enhance your awareness of what’s happening before or after the beat and so it tends to reinforce a sense of time where there’s a dead space between one beat and another. 

In the knife and stick work that I do, I have a number of drills derived from the Filipino arts that address synchronization and syncopation. They teach the basis of improvised syncopation. Also, without you even being aware of it, they enhance the ability of your CNS to not only respond within a reduced time, but also to be coordinated in a way you may never have experienced before. Most of the guys I trained at Horsham in the stick and knife work experienced a surprising shift in time perception. You become able to do two or three things within the same time period.

We don’t normally do the stick and knife work at Primal, although I will be including some in the end-of-the-month open courses. But here’s something you can do at home, without instruction.   Get out your music. Go in a room alone and experiment with moving. Let the music do the work for you. The body’s got a natural way of organizing itself if you get out of the way. Start just by moving and feeling the beats and the way the body parts can rhythmically interact and express the rhythmic variations in emphasis in the music. After that you can start to make your movements more combative. In the beginning, don’t worry about what you look like. 

It sounds bizarre, but it’s the way in. If you have difficulty in expressing syncopation—say you only ever train to straight rock/metal music, for example—then you need to change your perception of timing and rhythm.

This brings me to the choice of music. This is crucial. I’ve written before that African-influenced music is of much more value in training than your Queen or Nirvana or Iron Maiden--or any other typical rock/metal music where it’s a steady 4/4 synchronized beat. The latter can be great for emotional inspiration or for helping you to keep going when you’re tired, but as a training tool for timing--forget it. 

Personally I like the Black Eyed Peas but there’s a lot of hip hop out there as well as Latin music and other up-tempo, syncopated stuff—the key is to go for the faster-paced beats. You want something that is supercharged and that will challenge you in trying to move to it. 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=F8VwQOGjhR8

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gDfKCzMuLMc

Trish just pulled up those links for me and I’m already jumping around...some of you big shots in the martial arts/SP might want to let your hair down (if you’ve got it) and try it. Learning to move to a syncopated beat could be just what you need to break you out of your rigid, military approach. After all, in a fight the opportunities don’t occur in a regular or predictable way. You can’t be playing off a score; you have to be able to improvise.

I’m going to put up some stuff to read on interval of time, but don’t get caught up in the theory of it. The important thing is to sense it. And the best way to do that is to play music and do your shadow fighting or your knife work or whatever, to that music. You can read about the subdivisions of a beat, but it’s more important to feel those subdivisions and their emphasis. Once you can feel syncopation, you can then see it when you watch fights, and more importantly you can begin to employ it offensively, defensively and counteroffensively within the fight.

http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/outil_rouge07.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_/ai_18051349?tag=untagged

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9400EEDC1338F937A15750C0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

http://www.vetscite.org/publish/items/002570/index.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9853910/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncopation
 

Of all the human faculties I consider to be the most important to a fighter (though often taken for granted if not totally ignored) is the ability to instantly interpret sensory information and process it to produce either a plan of action or a tactical physical response.  This processing takes place primarily on a sensory and unconscious level. 

Even in ordinary life, to function I must be able to form an internal representation of the situation based on what I’m seeing, hearing, and touching, such that I’m able to grasp its implications and develop my responses on an automatic level.   Fighting requires specific extensions and enhancements of both sensory and processing faculties that can only be acquired through experience or through training designed to bring them out.  In the same way that the CNS of a racing driver, for example, is trained through practice and competitive experience to be able to perform in a specialized way that is beyond the ability of the average person, so can the fighter’s CNS be enhanced in ways specific to the demands he faces.

I must emphasize that the best way to train a fighter’s CNS is to give him experience of the fight.  However, as with many other sports, when we’re looking for that competitive edge, we need to break down the faculties required of the athlete and perhaps train some of them outside the context of the fight, or through fight drilling that addresses the enhancements we’re seeking to produce. 

When seeking to train specific faculties for the fighter, we must first identify what they are.  In this post, I’ll be concentrating on visual skills, which include visual anticipation and reaction, visual concentration on target, dynamic visual acuity, eye tracking, scanning, eye dominance, fusion flexibility, peripheral vision, depth perception, eye/head/body/limb coordination, visualisation, and visual memory. 

I’ve been interested in visual training since my experience with watching speeded-up Betamax movies in the 1970s, which showed me that I could improve my dynamic visual acuity simply by watching.  Now I have a number of drills and training methods that I personally use, but before I go into those, I’d like to offer you a sort of primer on this topic.  So I’m going to put up some links and some clips which reflect some of what is going on in sport in general with regard to visual training. 

I’d like to emphasize that these clips are not necessarily representative of what I’m doing.  Fighting is its own game.  What I’m providing is an opportunity for you to get up to speed a little bit with some of the concepts that I’m talking about.  Then in a future post, I’ll be offering you some tips.

Links to provide an overview of the subject

http://www.sportsci.org/news/ferret/visionreview/visionreview.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade

http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.bridgeman.html

http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0157.htm

http://www.fitnessvenues.com/uk/sports-vision-training

http://www.aoa.org/x5337.xml

http://www.dynamicedge.ca/football.html

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ozmlwFhTmTcC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=visually+tracking+a+bullet&source=web&ots=7qRIsoBAxy&sig=uPzgbZvSZIkjqkCdEVznU_h1r_8&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result

A selection of clips (you can easily find many others)

It might take me a day or two to reply to comments, but it's worth checking the posts because I've put up a couple of substantial replies on the comments sections of recent entries.

Yesterday at Primal I took the idea of the repetitive drill we’ve been talking about on this blog and instead of simply repeating the general skill pattern and then pausing for the big shots, I got the guys to focus on various components contributing to the action.

For example, I’d make them do the drill just concentrating raising their aggression level throughout.  Or, they’d focus just on the vocalisation of the intensity of the tempo.  Or, they’d concentrate on a leading component, say the clavicle and scapula for a right cross.  Or, they’d concentrate on the reverse side of that action, the left body action for the right shot. 

If I was telling them to concentrate on the head motion for the shot, in the next frame I’d get them to work on the tailbone action of that shot.  So that in time they come to appreciate how all the components work together. 

In this way, the guy isn’t reliant on me standing there and saying, ‘Use your tailbone,’ or ‘You’re not aggressive enough.’  He gets his own sense of these components and then he can emphasize them at will, and if he’s letting any of the parts down, he’ll be able to sense that and make an adjustment.

Within that, I’d also get them to reduce the time of the stretch cycle; i.e., the interval of time between eccentric and concentric phases of a move.  By reducing this time, we get a bigger bang.

Another productive weekend.  Saturday I was doing some teaching in Kent, and Sunday we did Primal in Birmingham. The main theme again was trying to understand how the head initiates the activation of the spine, which everybody seems to get.  However we continue to have a problem with the involvement of the reverse action, or the ‘other side of the move’.  Within the movement of the head, there is ‘another side’ in the flexion, bending, extension and rotation of the head itself.  In the same way, the spine moves in a complementary way to the head.  And in particular, the dynamics of the tailbone are crucial to both the transference of force from the legs through the spine to the upper torso/arms (and vice versa) and to the generation of force itself, independently.

The action and alignment of the tailbone is a hard one to see.  And it can be a hard one to feel, because it’s not something people are normally aware of.  People can only concentrate on one part at a time, and usually this leads to an overconcentration on the part they’re thinking about, which occurs at the expense of the whole movement.

One solution I’ve found over a period of time is that once we’ve implanted the idea of the dynamic (this double action of a moving part, be it the head, the tailbone, the hip, whatever) I need to then get the students to rapidly repeat a skill pattern involving all the aspects of the movement.  This rapid repeating of the whole process allows the eccentric/concentric phases of loading and unloading within the movement pattern to occur naturally without conscious interference.  It also allows the neural imprint to become stronger.  You get far more repetitions within a given period of time than if you just did the movement a few times.   

The rapid loading/unloading also preps the CNS.  It acts as a rapid plyometric, so you get more motor recruitment and a higher rate of firing. 

What arises out of this process is a training pattern that forms the essential representation of a sudden, rapid loading and unloading.  Out of this pattern, when you add the emotional content and greater intensity, you can derive your single shot with tremendous power. 

So after I’ve ‘tricked’ the guy into achieving the pattern I want, I then tell him to pause momentarily.  Now, without thinking about it, he has to hit the target as destructively and as violently as he can, maybe two or three times.  The pattern has now become instinctive and he’s able to unload a big single shot.

The neural impression that results from all this is the one I want him to keep.  Now, when he wants to fire more than one shot, instead of hitting the way many guys hit, which is with one shot ‘piggybacking’ off the last and with little power in each individual shot, he has built in a way of firing each shot like a bullet, with no loss of power.  Each shot in a series is a separate shot.

This way of training allows you to build up the intensity of your delivery over maybe 8-10 reps until the CNS is really geared up, so that when you make that pause, you are delivering the shot just as it should be delivered in a fight.  Performing in these intense intervals (and you can do it with any skill, on the bag/pad or shadow-fighting) raises your anaerobic threshold into the bargain. 

When I see guys’ faces, it’s obvious that they’ve never hit that hard before, and they’ve surprised themselves.  And some of the guys were big hitters in the first place.  This is what I mean when I talk about taking you to another level.  I have a lot of ways I can trick the system into performing better.

Some guys get caught up in the detail of all this, rather than just taking it as a tip.  Your main purpose is to hit the bag—and in turn the man—harder and more destructively.  That’s what you’ve really got in your mind when you’re doing this; you shouldn’t be thinking about fulfilling the details of a training process.  Don’t lose sight of your objective, and that is: to hit harder. 

Let me worry about how to get you there.  That’s my job. 

Back in the 1970s David Dubow used to acquire for me via his international connections a large number of Super 8 films on various martial arts.  I used to watch them on a mechanical Super 8 editor that allowed me to wind the film forward and backwards at any speed I wanted.  In this way I was able to scrutinize a particular move in fine detail. 

One evening when I was doing this, I was winding the film backwards and suddenly I got an idea.  I was watching the guy move in reverse motion, and this sparked the thought that within every obvious movement pattern there must be a reverse movement pattern that’s not so obvious.

Let me clarify, because this doesn’t mean what you might think at first glance.  I’m not talking about literally moving backwards.  I’m talking about the coupling of forces within the body, and the way that the parts of the body move in opposition so as to create a dynamic equilibrium of change. 

What this imagery of movement in reverse prompted me to do was to experiment with my own movement keeping the idea of reversed action in my mind.  I would first walk forward, heel to toe, and sense that pattern.  Then I’d reverse it and walk back, toe to heel.  I then merged the two into one action.  So that, for example, when I was training a punch, I’d use a heel-to-toe pressure against the floor with my right foot as if I were walking forward but not actually taking my foot off the floor, and at the same time, I’d use the toe-to-heel backward movement on my left foot, as if I were taking a step back.  It’s a subtle thing, visually, but biomechanically it allows me to deliver the shot with double the force, because I’m involving both sides of the body in the same action.

I demonstrate this on film on NHB1 and probably some of the other films, too.  Round Kick Clinic addresses this principle.

The way you involve the action/reversed action principle will vary depending on the skill you need to perform. 

A lot of guys when they train a skill, they only train the obvious ‘side’ of the skill.  When you don’t understand the ‘opposite’ part of the skill, then the parts of the body associated with that ‘reversed’ aspect of the skill will do one of two things.  Either those parts will be passive, and not contributing to the generation force.  Or, those parts will actually act as a brake on the action. 

In the second case, depending on the skill in question, the delivery and dynamics of the force can end up being directed into the joints (knees, hips, and spine, typically) and over time this will have an adverse effect that is irreversible.  And I’ve seen a lot of guys in the martial arts over the years who are really fucked up with their joints because of this phenomenon. 

And when these guys are instructors, they are unfortunately continuing to advocate the biomechanics that have personally fucked them up.  They’re passing it on to the next generation, because they don’t know any better. 

This phenomenon of joint damage, especially to the knees and hips, is particularly invidious when you are training on mats.  You’ll see the phenomenon in judo and wrestling, and it’s starting to become apparent in MMA, because the mat creates additional friction against the foot.  So if you are doing a move—a throw, a strike, whatever—where you are using one foot/leg to post and facilitate an action on the opposite side of the body, then the mat forces that posting foot to remain in position when you’re trying to move it. This additional friction throws the force into the joints of the axis side of the body (in this case). 

In MMA, you can see it happening when guys are training the round kick.  They don’t know how to free the support foot, and with the ‘stickiness’ of the mat, they’re getting bound on that side. 

The easiest way to avoid this happening is to get the foot off the heel to start with and angle it for its firing position just prior to making the shot.  Or, jump the foot fractionally as you kick, because this will allow you to rotate and free up the ‘backward’ movement as the kick is coming forward.  In this way, you ensure a dynamic axis, not a static one.

This reminds me of my classic old analogy about slamming the door, and I’ll elaborate in another post.

Couple of e-mails seem to suggest that some of my description was a little hard for people to visualize and be sure they were doing the same thing that I was talking about when they went to try it out.

The thing to say that the head isn’t moving as the result of the body moving, as in whiplash.  It’s the complete opposite.  The head is initiating the action and giving direction to the forces generated by this initiation. 

The head activates the spine through bending, extending, flexing or twisting, and the spine responds in the same manner.  Because the spine is the major axis through which and about which movement takes place, its operation is central to anything that the limbs are going to have to do. 

And the whole process is done very rapidly.  It’s like a bullet.  It’s very sudden. 

The head, by changing its position, not only activates the spine, but also shifts the mass of the body in a direction to support the dynamics of the shot.  To make the latter effect possible, the head must point in a direction that facilitates the angle and position needed for the movement (particularly with regard to the posting of the axis about which--or through which--the movement is going to take place). 

There’s a problem with many people in understanding what’s termed the ‘double hip’.  The easiest way to understand it is to take a pen and hold it firmly at one end between your thumb and forefinger.  Now, with your other hand, pull back the free end of the pen, creating an equal and opposite pressure in the holding hand, and let it go.  The tighter you hold the one end of the pen, and the faster you pull back and release the other, the more explosive the release.  Usually when you see examples of the double hip being demonstrated in a martial art context, the interconnection of the body is very loose, and the movement is sloppy.  You’re not going to be able to perform that long, disconnected process in the context of a fight.  The natural double hip is a very rapid, tight loading and release.  It’s visible in lots of striking and throwing sports.

All joints can work this way.  You can take the pen as representative of an elbow, hip, spine.  When you pull and release the free end, you are dynamically loading against tension. 

Understand the concept, and then try to apply it with regards to the joints and the limbs. 

For example, if you hold the pen vertically and fix it at the bottom with one hand, and pull back and release the top with the other, you’ve got an analogue of the spine and head.  The tailbone is being held in position by the core muscles.  You can also twist and flex the top of the pen to simulate the twisting and flexing of head.

I wanted to go into more detail about the pen, and I also wanted to describe how you can see the principle of connectivity and the double-loading of muscle using an elastic band, but Trish is refusing to work with me on putting it into words even though I’m standing here with my rubber band, as many people have seen me do, demonstrating.

Tommy P, about the ‘acceleration’.  The way I train it at Primal, I’m trying to get the guy to understand that you carry the impression of the last thing you did (the intensity, the dynamics, the explosiveness, the biomechanics all wrapped up in a holistic neural package) into your next effort.  So it’s like climbing a flight of stairs.  You’ve reached a landing, which is the impression of your maximal effort.  Now you’re going to go up the next flight.  You don’t go back to the bottom.  The CNS is learning to work off progressive impressions of successful results.  You’re trying to train it to keep recruiting more motor units, keep increasing the rate of firing, in a specific way. 

This past weekend I did a private for Andy Dunne at his home, plus my usual Primal session at the new venue in Lea Hall.  The lessons were very productive, in that Andy and his son, Stephen, Rob Dick, Rory Kilpatrick and Dan Smith all demonstrated that they finally understand what I mean when I talk about using the head to initiate and lead movement so as to enhance the generation of maximal force in minimal time. 

A lot of people understand the idea of the head leading the action, but what they don’t get is how the head initiates the action through the activation of the spine vertically, horizontally, and through various planes in between. 

Rory didn’t quite get it until I said, ‘Imagine I threw a ball to you so you could head it.  Ten to one, if you wanted to head that ball with any force, you’d momentarily pull the head away from the ball so as to reconnect with it.  You’d intuitively know that this would give you a greater advantage in the development of force than if you just moved the head towards the ball without pre-loading.’ 

In the same way that the head determines the direction of the force to be developed, so does it also initiate the development of those forces. For example, if you wanted to strike down, you could simply drop the head in the direction you intended to hit.  This will lead the drop of the body and therefore increase the momentum going into the strike.  But to increase momentum even more, if you momentarily lift the head (float, if you like) in the direction opposite to that of the intended release prior to dropping the head, you’ll get an even greater development of force. It’s critical that this momentary ‘lift’ is directly coupled to the ‘drop’, so that the interval of time between the lift and the drop is almost imperceptible.  It’s in this way that the eccentric loading of the muscles will facilitate the maximal generation of force, and in this case, the utilisation of gravity as well.

This principle of changing direction (up, down, forward, back, left, and right through a variety of planes including the diagonals) is key in learning to develop explosive power.  Before you go up, you go down.  Before you go left, you go right.  And I’ve already discussed the idea of eccentric loading. Namely, the faster a muscle fibre is stretched, the greater the serial elastic component of the muscle invoked, and also the spindles embedded within it will be activated so as to cause a greater contractile force in the muscle in which the stretch originates.  The latter occurs through the myotatic reflex. 

The way this head movement is used is very subtle.  It’s perceptible if you know what you’re looking for, but it’s not terribly obvious.  Now, as in training any reflex/behavioural pattern, it always needs to be exaggerated somewhat in the beginning in order to get a handle on it.  But from my experience of teaching guys, even suggesting that this use of the head exists, tends to result in an overexaggeration in movement.  This isn’t what we want, because as a fighter you must always be tracking (through the vestibular system), and maintaining dynamic visual continuity with your opponent.  Any overexaggeration of the head movement will not only detract from your performance, but you’ll lose track of the target and make yourself more vulnerable to being hit yourself.

The different ways that the head supports movement (punches, kicks, knees, throws, etc) through the leading the direction were pretty obvious to the guys.  What they had the difficulty with, until this last session, had been the problem of understanding how the head pre-loads the move, particularly with regard to the round kick.

You can get an idea of how this is done if you go and watch Buakaw.  Now that you know what to look for, you’ve got a good chance of noticing the way the head can be used as an important factor in the initiation, development, and direction of the release of force.  

I sometimes say to guys, ‘Biomechanically speaking, there are a lot of balls to juggle within the framework of a skilled movement pattern.  But if you concentrate on using the head, you’ve only got to juggle one ball.’  The head orchestrates in a natural way these reflex and behavioural patterns that I’m always on about.

But...there’s always a but...this is the way the body’s been designed to work in nature.  That doesn’t mean the process completely takes care of itself.  For me as a natural athlete, I was using my head effectively and then just simply observed myself doing it and tried to pass it on.  Through research I’ve understood exactly what’s going on in that natural performance. 

Passing it on to someone else is another matter.  When I teach, it’s not enough just to say, ‘The head will lead the movement,’ and hope that the rest is going to take care of itself, because with many individuals, it ain’t gonna happen that way.

That’s why I have to explain to them how, skeletally, the parts of the body (head, spine, clavicle, scapula, ribs, pelvis, limbs) all work as levers to produce a mechanical advantage.  I will use a pen or pencil, or a stick, to illustrate how the various levers of the body work.  I even show a more natural illustration of what the ‘double hip’ is really all about—one that applies across the board in terms of athletic performance.  I then use an elastic band to illustrate how the muscles operate, particularly with regard to taking out the slack and double-stretching the band to get a more explosive release.

One way I’ve simplified the process of leverage is to get the guys to rapidly repeat a pattern.  Say a punch or a kick or a knee.  Through that rapid repetition, not only is the pattern reinforced, but you naturally involve the eccentric loading that I talked about before.  By reducing the time interval between the end of one move and the beginning of the next, you force that loading process to take place.  In this way the higher percentage of fast-and-super-fast twitch fibers are recruited, and their rate of firing is raised. 

You could use the repetitions tactically (so as to keep hitting the guy in the head, for example).  But the main reason I want guys to train the pattern in this way (high intensity, rapid repetition) is that I want to establish the preload as a given part of the shot, even though in context it may be fired as only a single blow.  You get in the habit of automatically preloading, and the more you do this, the less perceptible this preload becomes.  Eventually you start to preset the reflex response of the spindle so that the slightest stretch or no stretch at all will initiate the myotatic reflex. 

That lets you fire off a powerful blow, apparently out of nowhere. 

When the guys are working on the repetitions, I’m always asking them to raise the intensity as they’re performing.  Then I stop them, only momentarily, and then they have to produce two or three shots with the greatest force they can possibly muster. 

Now they’ve tricked the CNS into a high level of recruitment and firing.  It’s just like when I do dynamic tension or isometrics.  They then need to qualify that high level of recruitment in a specific way, intended to knock a guy out: this is the two or three final blows at the end of the series.  Those shots are the 'proof' of the higher level of CNS arousal and muscle recruitment.

So, say I’ve got them doing multiple repetitive round kicks.  In order to repeat those round kicks, they have to be in position, on the ball of their foot, using their arms, head, etc. in order to facilitate the repetition of this move.  When they’ve reached the peak, that’s when they pause and put two or three really big shots in.  These ‘big shots’ now become the new benchmark, upon which the next set of repetitions will be based. 

The neural impression is always being pushed up to a higher level. 

Mark Porter didn’t get it at first.  Then I had him run across the gym and at a given point, I told him to go faster.  Now he has a perception of accelerated speed, so I make him start at that point, and then tell him to go faster again.  That’s the principle I’m applying to bag work, padwork, or any work in the gym. 

I’m always trying to train the CNS to recruit more than what seems to have been available before.  That’s why my guys make such big progress. 

The principle I’ve laid out here seems obvious, but it’s not quite so easily applied or implemented.  You do need somebody like me both to act as an example, and to correct you as you go along.  So I feel confident spelling it all out on an open blog, because I know that you still need me in the equation to make this one work.  And boy, it works.

Going back to this past weekend, the best bit for me was seeing Andy’s son Stephen (who is about 16) pick up on this idea of using the head.  By the end of the session, his performance looked totally different.  And by the expression on his face, he knew it.

Always on my DVDs I end up with a ‘PS’ because, like life, my instruction isn’t scripted.  So I forgot to mention something on the pads and bag.

As I said in my last post, the pads are a great way of hitting your training partner at full power, but only if he acts as a realistic partner.  He has to hold the pads at the proximity and the angle which will address the power line of the shot.  You see all too many guys holding pads out to the side, which takes the fighter out of line of his opponent.  When you do pads, like any one-on-one practice in the open position, you’ve always got to be looking at the guy’s eyes.  So if you’re holding up a pad for a right cross, you’ve got to hold it in alignment and position so that it encourages that power line to develop fully, whilst still maintaining your combative body position, so that the fighter feels he’s hitting you, not just hitting a pad.

The positioning with the body protector is a natural one, because the body protector provides for hits to the liver, the spleen, the plexus, and the lower abdomen and bladder.  So there’s no work involved for the pad man. 

But in the low round kick, you often see guys holding the pad around the back of the thigh, when the delivery of the shot isn’t to the back of the thigh, it’s down onto the quad and into the bone.  The pad man has to position the pad to facilitate that. 

Also, as part of the fight, the pad man has got to adjust his position, by moving forward, back, sideways, and around, so that the fighter he’s training has to use natural footwork to adjust to that changing position, and deliver his shot from positions that are not always optimal.  The pad man himself has to move fluidly and naturally, and with timing, around the fighter. 

Within real padwork, there’s never going to be a perfect execution of a skill; you’re just looking to hit the target from wherever you are, as best you can for the situation.  Wherever you find that your hands are when you’re recovering from a shot, you’ve got to be able to operate from there, offensively, defensively, or counteroffensively.  It is real pressure work, and you really are testing your skills in a way very close to the way it will be in the fight.  Of course, this is all dependent on the pad man knowing what he is doing.

If you are a professional fighter, pad work is a much better way than heavy sparring, because in heavy sparring you can get injured, and as a fighter that’s your livelihood.  Sure, you can get injured in pad work, but the risks are reduced.  For a professional fighter, your real experience comes in the ring.  If you're not a professional fighter, then you will have to have some form of high-intensity conditional fighting to give you the sense of the fight.

I've seen some stuff over on Self-protection.com regarding plagiarism.  I was interested to note that a guy called Karl who trains people informally has been getting slagged off for allegedly ripping off people's work without giving due credit.  Specifically, they bring up a Mick Coup instructional clip in which Mick holds a replica gun to the side of his opponent's head, the implication being that the hook shot is being fired from the side.  And the complaint seems to be that Mick has originated this idea and nobody else should be using it without giving credit to him.  Well, guys, take a look at this clip from my NHB 1 video shot in 2000, which is widely available in the martial arts community.

There are a lot of ways to do a hook.  I've been doing this particular one for over thirty years.  And it works. 

Here's the thing.  If every time somebody went on about 'Uzi mentality' or 'slamming the door' or 'nail gun principle' or 'startle reflex' or 'using the head to lead the body' or 'using the head to post' or--god there are so many examples I've lost track--if every time that happened, I got upset, I'd be upset all the time.  If I got upset every time somebody nicked one of my drills, ideas, training methods, moves such as the head cover that Keysi have now apparently got a patent on, or even rhetoric, then I wouldn't have time to move  forward.  If there was such a thing as litigation on this sort of thing, I'd be taking people to court all the time.  The truth is, I do still get upset but I reckon I'm still ahead of the pack.  As long as I'm ahead of the pack, I'm happy. 

As far as Karl goes, I'd rather see a guy teaching with apparently no qualifications but every intention of trying to take himself and others to the next level, than listen to some of the total shit that comes out of the mouths of some of the 8th, 9th and 10th dans around, heads of large organizations who know nothing.  Who made them god?  Those are the guys I've always been challenging. Fuck the establishment, especially in the martial arts.  It has no grounding in reality.

Over on self-protection.com it really is like dogs on meat.  They get the scent, and in they go.  A few weeks ago it was Geoff Thompson, before that it was Skillen, I think Morrison was caught in the mix as well, and now it's Karl--I mean, who is he a fucking threat to? 

I think in physical terms he might be a threat to quite a few on that forum.  But I don't know, because so few of them have actually come out from behind their screen names and posted clips the way he has.  I don't know the guy from Adam,  but I've got more in common with him than I have with any of the so-called authorities.  All the grades and titles I got weren't worth a shit.

(and I accidentally embedded the clip twice and can't get rid of it, so here it is again)