Mixed Martial Arts Has No Intention Throws

Mixed Martial Arts Don’t teach this thing called an Intention Throw.

An Intention Throw is that throw which is done without muscles. It is effortless. With all the work on muscles and ground and pound and all that sort of thing, the normal cage fight or similar mixed martial arts fight just won’t go into this technique. Different beasts, you understand.

The first time you see an intention throw, especially if you are a mixed martial artist, the thing will appear to be mystical, and there will be a lot of talk about ‘well, that won’t work in a real fight! It is, however, the apex of all fighting styles, and no artist can stand against somebody who has mastered the Intention Throw.

To get to the heart of an Intention Throw, and to get it to work in a real mixed martial arts fight, we must cover a lot of ground. We must define the martial arts from start to finish, and do so in a succinct manner that refuses to be sidetracked.

Intention Throws, over the years, have been the property of great masters. Specifically, they have been manifest by the great personalities of Aikido and Tai Chi and Pa Kua Chang.

Other arts, the best martial arts, have had Masters who could perform Intention Throws, but they have been exceptions. Aikido and Tai Chi and Pa Kua, because of certain concepts inherent within those arts, have manufactured martial arts masters who could perform Intention Throws every time.

I first became aware of Intention Throws back in the sixties. I would read stories of mystical old men who could throw people, almost without touching them, solely through the use of their ki. Over the years I researched diligently, practiced regularly, and made slight inroads.

The first article I ever wrote dealt with striking with Intention. To sum up the article, I had noticed that under certain conditions a person could barely touch his opponent, and his opponent would fly away, drop, or etc.

At the time I was twelve years in the arts, twelve hard years, and I had been practicing Karate forms pretty extensively. There weren’t any mixed martial arts training back then, but there was a high degree of reality in the martial arts training nevertheless.

In the times since then, however, I have tried to apply the principles I had uncovered to the other side of the art, the soft side of the art, that portion of the art which deals in throwing.

The principles which I described, in that long ago article, were pretty basic, and representative of nearly all arts back then, but not that many arts now. This, by itself, unfortunately, is an interesting statement of how the art have swung around to the mixed martial arts viewpoint.

The first principle is that one should be well grounded. Simply, a machine must be bolted down to do the job properly, and when launching a perfect strike one must consider the body a machine.

The second principle is CBM, Coordinated Body Motion. This is when all parts of the body support one intention. This includes breathing. CBM is especially important because once one starts to use CBM in their strikes Intention starts to manifest.

A word about Intention: determing an action or result; the end or object intended; purpose. The very important point to be understood here is that you are not deciding to do, you are deciding to accomplish. If you can understand this one point then you are at the head of the class and should continue reading.
The third principle involves relaxing when striking. Here I must get technical.
When there is going to be a fight there must be two terminals. An explosion occurs at one terminal, which launches a strike across space, and is intended to cause an explosion in the second terminal.

There is more to a strike, however, regardless of all mixed martial arts workouts you may have had, than meat and bone impacting upon meat and bone. There is weight and mass and velocity. In other words, there is physics.

To separate these concepts, meat and bone are First Level phenomena, and dependant upon having a frame. Physics are Second Level phenomena, and dependant understanding the physics of energy.

To be concise, when a strike is launched, the first level is da fist or da foot hittin da udder guy.

On the second level, however, there is an explosion of energy (from the Tan Tien), a flow (direction) for that energy, and the explosion of impact should that energy connect.

Here is the point: if the fist is tight the energy is stopped.

Simply, closing the fist results in stopping the strike.

And, therefore, stopping the energy of the strike.

The phenomenon resulting from closing the fist can easily be observed: when the fist hits the body as much as fifty percent of the energy returns up the arm.
This doesn’t cancel Karate as an effective art. In fact, if you can understand what I am saying it should open Karate up. Focus as a tool can better be utilized, and you can develop mixed martial arts training methods which will go beyond focus.

To go beyond focus one should practice certain visualization techniques when striking. Visualize a beam of energy extending from your arm through forever.

When you block, visualize the world being cut into two planes.

When you move towards somebody visualize yourself as a wedge, or a wall, or whatever construct would support the type of energy you are creating, or whatever strategy you are pursuing. Guaranteed, you make this work in an MMA fight, like Anderson Silva does, then you are in another realm!

At any rate, this is really an open ended procedure, and there is no end to the geometrical configurations one can imagine to help oneself summon and use energy, and therefore grow and develop Intention.

And that brings us to the Third Level, and the purpose of this article: the Intention Throw. (And, hopefully, how to make it work in Mixed Martial Arts.)

If there is a Perfect Strike (an Intention Strike), there there is a Perfect Throw (an Intention Throw). The problem is that the Perfect Strike comes from the initiation of Energy, and the Perfect Throw comes from the acceptance of energy.

In other words, the Perfect Throw must ‘absorb’ the energy of the attacker.
And, if you follow this concept, you will understand why it is the rather sole property of soft arts, such as Tai Chi or Aikido or Pa Kua Chang.

And, why it is so hard to make work in Mixed Martial Arts, whose training methods are based more on muscle against muscle than flow accepting muscle.

Simply, hard arts launch energy, soft arts handle incoming energy.

Here I want to make a point. If one practices the Perfect Strike, one will eventually be able to see back along the line of attack, back along the flow of Intention, and percieve the thought behind the strike. This is a very Third Level perception.

If one can see the thought behind the action, then one can predict the action. Simply, the action cannot occur before the strike. The strike can happen only after the thought, and this is an absolute.

Understanding this, one comes to the fatal flaw in the soft arts. The soft arts, because they don’t throw enough strikes, take longer for the practitioner to get to the point where he can see the thought, and predict the action.

The obvious solution is to study the hard art until one can see the thought, then transfer to a soft art.

So, to describe an Intention Throw: to perceive the direction of Intention and agree with it.

That’s all it takes.

If you read mystical explanations, they will probably be understandable by this definition.

Let’s take the Intention Throw apart.

The attacker explodes, launching a flow. The defender moves and manipulates to face in the same direction of the flow. He adds an ounce, which unbalances the attacker and makes him fall.

Do you know how hard this is to do? This is incredibly difficult. It is one of the simplest concepts to understand, and one of the hardest to accomplish.

Let me give three examples of how this works.

Aikido

The attacker steps forward with the right foot and punches with the right hand.

The defender steps forward with the left foot as he hooks in with the left hand.

The defender steps behind his left foot with his right foot, turning to face in the same direction as the attacker. The hook becomes a slight pull, and the attacker falls forward.

The defender turns his body to make the attacker circle further, then reverses the circle of his hands and body and executes an outward wrist twist.

Pa Kua Chang

The attacker steps forward with the right foot and punches with the right hand.

The defender steps forward and to the left with the right foot as he circles the right arm over (and deflects) the attacker’s arm.

The defender takes another step with his left leg and circles his left hand around the attacker’s neck. He reverses direction and torques the attacker’s spine and various other body parts.

Tai Chi Chuan

The attacker steps forward with the right foot and punches with the right hand.

The defender steps back with the left foot and lightly brushes the attacker’s punch across his body with his left palm.

This causes the attacker to unbalance forward, and when he tries to regain his balance, the defender shifts forward and presses the attacker’s body up and away.

 

These are three ‘simple’ techniques that represent their arts. And they will take years to get right.

The Aikido and the Pa Kua technique require exquisite body movement.

The Tai Chi technique requires exquisite timing.

As time, and practice, proceed, however, body movement becomes less, and timing does become exquisite.

As I said before, however, time spent learning these martial arts techniques can be cut severely if one understands how to punch from the punching side of the art.

At any rate, if you are going to become cutting edge in your art, if you are going to proceed beyond the realm of mere mortals, if you are going to find a pure fighting discipline that can actually be used in mixed martial arts, then you must understand physics, and you must practice until you can see the thought behind the strike.

I know there will be a lot of disagreement about this Mixed Martial Arts training concept, so leave a comment and let me know what your objections are.