The Way of Guided Chaos

Everyone would like to know how to defend them self. It would be difficult to find anybody who wouldn’t say yes if a magic genie offered to instantly make them a master of the martial arts. That is why so many ‘get tough quick’ schemes are so popular. That is why so many people fall for ads that claim to be the one true undefeatable way of fighting. That is also why there are so many discouraged people who just can’t find which martial art style and school is best for them. Let me be the first to say that my book is only one man’s approach to self-defense training. In the search to find the ultimate martial art, keep in mind that styles do not fight each other, people fight each other, so the ultimate art for you may not be the ultimate for me or for someone else.

All of us would like to have the confidence and discipline that comes from dedicating oneself to years of martial arts training. All of us want to be able to defend our loved ones and ourselves if the need arises. So . . . why do so few people train in the martial arts? The most common reasons are simple; people just don’t have the time, money, energy or level of commitment needed to become proficient in the art of self-defense.

That is the reason I decided to write this book. This book will help you approach self-defense much like an individual planning to travel to a foreign land would train in order to learn enough of the particular native tongue to be able to survive.

Imagine that in three weeks you have to take a trip to Japan. You don’t speak a word of Japanese and you are expected to make the journey on your own. The first thing you would want to do is learn as much of the language as you could. You would also have to be very selective in what you wanted to learn. It’s obvious that you couldn’t learn the entire language in three week. If you tried to learn too much at once you would become overwhelmed to the point of mental overload causing you to forget everything you had been trying to learn.  Knowing you had only three weeks to prepare, it wouldn’t make much sense to start your training process by learning the alphabet, proper sentence structure, proper grammar, noun and verb recognition, etc. You would want to learn a few key phrases that would help you survive your stay in the foreign country. Phrases like: “please help me”, “where is the restroom”, “call the police”, “I don’t understand”, “how much is this”, or “two beers please”.

Now imagine that you are told that in three weeks you are going to be attacked, you have never been in a fight and have never taken a self-defense class. Like your situation with the trip to the foreign country, you need to be selective in what you decide is important to learn. You would not want to prepare for the upcoming fight by going to a martial arts school where you would spend three weeks learning the history of your new art, all the stances, and proper breathing. You would want a few adaptable, universal, practical and effective defense techniques against the most common attacks that are likely to occur.

In both of these illustrations you’re goal is not to master the given discipline, but rather to prepare enough to survive based on time constraints. In this type of preparation you are also laying a foundation for future development in either endeavor. In the case of language you aren’t focusing on proper grammar or proper sentence structure, but by learning the pre-assembled phrases you are being introduced to proper grammar and sentence structure. Also, with the attack scenario you are learning the ‘grammar’ of self-defense by practicing pre-assembled fighting moves.

By studying the techniques and principles in this book the majority of you are taking a crash course in preparing for a self-defense situation while building a foundation for future learning. For others already skilled in the martial arts you may find that by examining self-defense from a standpoint of simplicity and practicality that you build upon, rediscover, or uncover crucial missing or less obvious elements in your own arsenal of self-defense techniques.