The End of Martial Arts

By Lor Mun Mak

This book focuses on advancing martial skills that develop a more instinctual way of fighting off multiple attackers. The first blind spot is, Martial Artists tend to spend most of their time learning techniques from a traditional viewpoint. The second is the return to competitive ring fighting, focusing on a two-person competition. In both cases the persuasion is a battle to overcome the opponent’s resistance and be the victor. The promise is, learn Martial Arts and control your attacker. The arenas are abounded with gladiatorial winners. There is no argument, they are good fighters, hence a delusion of omnipotence created by the marketers.

What is being proposed is there is also the Energy World that opens the mind to consider another way to deal with attacks. My approach is to focus more on group attacks as this is the area that confronts the best of fighters. Uncontrolled violence requires a different set of skills and understandings that run counter to what is need in the ring. The Energy World offers a set of strategies that deals with the realities of multiple attackers in real time. By reading the book, you will sense it could be the End of Martial Arts as we know it, the resistance world, replaced by Energy World strategies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lor Mun Mak
• Release date: Apr 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301040339

Lor Mun Mak

I have never considered myself special in the Martial Arts world; never wanted any accolades that I could use to promote and market my credibility. In truth, I did not want to be in the limelight. Even so, I still attracted my fair share of unwelcome challenges. My drive was directed to unravelling the accepted illusions created by Martial Artists. When taught, it is like watching magicians performing a magic trick on the unsuspecting. The spin is as diverse as the number of techniques that support the rhetoric. I am sure many devotees would not agree but are ready to justify their success with a good story. I am writing this book to get people to look beyond the blinkered view of media output. There is always a lot more to be discovered than the current loudest noise.I found during my travels that Martial artists could not allow for unexpected events. They always needed to be in control, so they can dominate the situation. Any suggestion of a random attack was treated like a stage play, leaving no room for error. Interestingly they could not imagine a violent group attack where the little kid with a knife could take the best of us out. The Question I asked, are you ready to experience the freedom of thought needed to survive such a chaotic situation? To me this was obvious that you can be caught out of your comfort zone. So, my focus in the arts shifted from fighting skills to surviving a group attack. What I discovered was not in the bounds of the fighting arts.Like most martial artists, we all have too many techniques. Much of what we learn is waist. I also became a control freak, making each technique so valuable to an unsuspecting student that they believe the spin wholeheartedly. I must have spent years perfecting these teaching strategies. It was worth it, the enthusiasm paid the electricity, but it was a real time waster. All I personally wanted was a way to deal with the chaos of a non-staged group attack. I had enough of social fights, like facing unwanted challengers and ring fighting. I noticed my thoughts shifting from fighting to survival, so I spent more than forty years following the stories of great fighters and self-defence stylists, only to be disappointed that most of them wanted to show their prowess by having a fight. Even with the most delicate inquiry resulted in a mismatch of what they said and did. As frustrations grew, they had to ask, “do you want a fight?”To me these people have developed fragile personalities, trapped by technical delusions, and will fight anyone to prove their point. I concluded, ‘I must be talking a different language’. My issue was an uncontrolled group attack, while their perceptions was only on a two-person fight. I did not like their desire to dominate or to be their door mat. I treasured life. It does not take a martial artist to beat up on people. Today, streets are much more like the wilds where unskilled people cause death and injury even to good fighters.This book aims to promote survival skills as an alternative to the social organized fighting approaches that suppress people’s instincts to deal with multiple attackers.

Book preview

The End of Martial Arts

By Lor Mun Mak

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Lor Mun Mak

ISBN: 978-0-9875052-0-0

http://endofmartialarts.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

Warning: It is strongly recommended that children and adults who are not experienced in martial arts should not attempt application of the principles of this book unless under the supervision of a currently certified instructor/coach in the fighting arts.

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Preface

Walk the same path as everyone else and you are likely to end up at the same destination. Walk a different path, what the ancients referred to as ‘between the stones’, and you may learn something new.

In martial arts, the implicit promise made by teachers to their students is ‘follow me and you will get the skills to allow you to do the job’. There is no incentive for a student to stray from the path laid out before them and they are likely to be disciplined if they tried, as their teachers would see it as a lack of respect.

By luck I ended up walking between the stones. What I created did the job, but what I found it was not that easy to articulate the differences to my fellow marital artists in the seventies. It was decades before I realised my inability to express the ideas came from attempting to use traditional concepts as common ground to explain what a different approach it is. A new language, or more so, a new paradigm was needed.

I always imagined that there has been another exponents that developed similar skills but I doubt anyone has described it as we have here.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - The Two Worlds

Chapter 2 - Group Attack

Chapter 3 - Fully Energised

Chapter 4 - E-Theory & the Mass Effect

Chapter 5 - Freedom in Real Time

Chapter 6 - The Flak Zone

Chapter 7 - Affecting Your Opponent

Chapter 8 - Advanced Group Attack

Chapter 9 - Two Man Battle

Chapter 10 - Non-Grab

Chapter 11 - Freedom & Survival

Chapter 12 - Self Defence Strategies

Chapter 13 - Training & Development

Chapter 14 - Where To From Here?

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Introduction

Martial arts have captured people’s imagination with the idea that a smaller individual can defend themselves against a larger person or even against multiple attackers.

The possibility of defeating a larger opponent has better odds if they are less skilled, but what happens when both exponents have similar skill levels? Then the person with the advantage in power, strength, and fitness will usually overcome the weaker opponent.

I do not accept the notions that a skilled larger opponent has an advantage over me, or that I would be easy prey for a group of antagonists. Tales of the abilities of masters of old indicated that something extra existed in the arts that could overcome any disparity in strength and power between opponents.

This sparked my imagination and I set out to make the martial arts promise to the smaller person a reality. It began with developing skills to defend against a group attack, and it was here that I discovered how to harness all of my potential and created the concepts and insights into what now is called the ‘Energy World’. In the end it proved more than enough.

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Chapter 1 - The Two Worlds

I am no fighter, I do not even look like a fighter; challengers would just walk right past me, looking for a person that better suited my reputation. I’ve faced many opponents much bigger and stronger than me, and whether they challenged as individuals or in groups it didn’t seem to matter. What made me different was the ability to be fully energised in battle, to make full use of my accelerated mass. This allowed my mind and body to act as ONE. I had discovered an approach to the martial arts which I have called the Energy World.

As I developed the Energy World strategies, the way I fought began to dramatically change. I removed from my battle repertoire anything that resulted in a struggle with an opponent’s resistance. I no longer used what many considered the staple of martial arts such as combinations of strikes, kicks, grasping, throws, holds, wrestling, ground fighting, grappling and submission, as these were too slow, particularly when there were multiple attackers. Full energisation was only possible with an accelerated mass and any strategy that stabilised or locked me to the ground was discarded.

I had started out in the arts like everyone else, locked into the belief that I had to defeat the opponent in front of me. Larger opponents or multiple opponents only ceased to be a problem when I stopped trying to overcome their strength and power, or match their weaponry of strikes and kicks.

As I trained Energy World strategies, I developed footwork that enabled me to move rapidly in any direction, allowing me to make full use of my mass and create lots of energy. I also had very effective weaponry that resulted from my accelerated movements. As a consequence I was able to put my opponents under pressure that most could not handle, and they got no respite until they either gave up or I could get away safely.

With full energisation you have a much greater chance of being able to stress your opponent in a very short period of time. This gives you the greatly increased probability of getting your opponent to experience the typical response to overwhelming stress, which is submission. My experience was that when I put opponents under Energy World pressures, a surprising number of them quickly abandoned their immediate intentions for battle. There was a gulf between what I was producing in battle and what my opponents were producing, and it highlighted to me the untapped potential in my challengers.

It has been decades since I last faced a group attack, but the past battles still elicit strong memories. What stays with me most was the effect I had on the challengers. A prime example was a day when four people made their way into the club demanding proof that I could in fact deal with a group. The rumour mill caused me a lot of grief in those days even if it did bring in prospective students. As always, I approached the situation by trying to talk the prospective challengers into leaving as there is no point in taking chances if you don’t have to. On this day, one of them did something to spark my reactions. Onlookers told me later that I disappeared with that person into the group and accelerated at such a pace that one of his companions was also trapped and slammed into the wall with him.

The only thing I can remember clearly was after the event finished, and that was seeing the look of total shock on the faces of the two challengers who weren’t involved in my response. It was obvious their security and intentions had been shredded and they were only too happy to get down the staircase when I asked them to pick up their friends and leave.

Full Energisation as a Stress Response

Full energisation is not a concept we suddenly invented. In fact we all naturally have the ability to maximise our body’s energy output in order to save our self during a life-threatening situation. This is the survival response of fight / flight. To activate this mode we generally require a sufficient threat that reduces our choice to either life or death.

During the fight / flight response the body goes into over-drive in order to maximise the chances for life. Every fibre of our being is concentrated into the effort, and distractions that could interfere or distract the body from its task of getting to safety are shut out as the primitive mind takes over during the crisis. This is the reason why no-one really remembers what they did in a survival response; it’s because we are left in what could be described as ‘sensory darkness’ for a few moments.

The survival response is the best indication of what happens in the Energy World where full energisation is possible. If I am forced to participate in battle, there are no half measures; I fully activate, or switch on to such an extent that I mimic aspects of the body’s natural flight / fight response. This means my opponents get everything I am capable of, a response usually reserved for those occasions when it’s ‘do or die’. In some instances people are able to do incredible things when they have absolutely no other choice, and on occasion they give an almost superhuman response to the situation. There is a deep and extraordinary well of energy that can be tapped into when circumstances allow.

Of course this is all only a simplified view of the survival response. Other elements, such as the ‘freeze response’ where a potential victim tries to avoid triggering an attack by a predator, are not recommended as a good option when facing a group attack. It’s a big gamble to put your life in the group’s hands. It’s much safer to always consider your own freedom and what’s required to ensure it.

Where to Begin the Journey

The Energy World was developed to deal with worst-case group attack scenarios. When I say worst-case, I am not referring to those typical demonstrations, where the members of the group tend to attack their victim either one or two at a time, while the rest stand back awaiting their turn. A serious group attack is a much more dangerous place to be, especially if weapons are involved, and it’s even worse if the group can act cohesively. Think about a wolf pack bringing down its prey and you begin to glimpse what you may have to succeed against.

Whenever I spoke to new students about defending against group attacks, they always wanted to know if one person can actually thrive against a well coordinated group, rather than just survive. The answer is ‘yes’ and the logic to back it up is simple. Individuals within a group know that they can be lazy; they don’t have to give everything they have to the battle. They know that many attackers will generally overpower the one victim. What they rarely come up against is an individual who can fully energise and has the skills to accelerate through the group, as if their numbers count for nothing. Groups expect to succeed, and when they don’t their cohesion can rapidly evaporate.

The Resistance World

The Energy World is similar in nature to a survival response; it’s where you fully energise and give everything you have for a few moments, with the end goal of getting rid of resistance and achieving safety. Obviously this is not our normal state of being and against this is an alternative approach which I have called the Resistance World. For most of our lives we are competing, struggling against barriers put in our way, and seeking to gain yet more accolades, respect, material possession, etc. We are forever trying to get ahead, to engage with and overcome any resistances put in our path, be they from others or from our own insecurities.

The resistance we feel swells up from what we do socially, where we interact and communicate with each other according to the myriad of rules and conventions instilled in us by a lifetime of living with others. It is human nature to want to be somebody, or be the best at something, to be needed and believed in. It is why we devote our energies towards achieving acceptable performances in relation to others, and why we behave as we do in front of them.

It’s what we do socially that entangles us in a world of barriers and resistance. This has shaped and developed traditional martial arts and has some major drawbacks when contemplating an encounter against multiple attackers. It is our personal struggle with resistance that defines how we approach our martial arts. The traditional methodologies of strikes, wrestling and ground fighting have a focus on either winning against or manipulating the presenting resistance, and while this may work against a single opponent, it lacks effectiveness when facing a group attack. Multiple opponents require something extra, something that can be found in the Energy World.

In fact, the Energy World was developed to take an opponent through the complexities of a group attack. The development of these concepts was a way to understand what you have to do in a time strapped environment when facing a group attack. Time cannot be wasted, as time can either be your asset, or your enemy. A well-armed group of attackers is a life and death affair; there is no time to indulge in endless technical solutions.

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Chapter 2 - Group Attack

Movies are a strong contender for influencing our imagination of how we perceive a group fight. The fight scenes have to be filled with believable action and good fighters that are able to control the onslaught of well armed multiple attackers. Even though the vision is distorted by exceptional choreography and clever camera angles, it does spark our imaginations of a wonderful fighting persona or hero. If only we could be that lone hero that magically discovers the courage or superhuman powers to win the day, only to look a little battered, and then walk off into the sunset to fight another day. However, in the real world, life is a little tougher on the body. Movie skills have their place, but have no real value when it comes to facing multiple attackers.

To be involved in a group attack from all sides is no picnic. You are more likely to be taken down to the ground and kicked senseless. By now you are thinking of your kick-ass prowess and ground fighting techniques and so on. Maybe everything will go well for you, but if you add a mix of weapons into the foray protecting your life becomes a lot harder.

Many people, who have little or no experience in group attack situations, imagine they can take an opponent out with a single strike and deal with the other attackers one at a time. Don’t believe it; I used to train up a group of beginner students in a few weeks to take down any challenger that presented themselves to the club. The lesson for my students as well as the challenger was ‘Be careful of delusions of grandeur’. I’ve seen many different strategies to combat multiple attackers, from rolling around on the ground, to trying to punch one attacker and kick another at the same time, to attempting to manipulate some attackers to use as shields against other attackers. In reality, once the group members become activated, they are not easy to deal with. You only need to give the victim a white shirt, and the group members black felt tip markers as pseudo knives, in order to see how motivated the group can be.

In thirty plus years of martial arts I only saw a handful of people who could successfully handle a basic group attack scenario against experienced attackers. It was a little disconcerting that most well-trained exponents would display an over-abundance of confidence only to be pounded to the ground by the group. The obvious fault was that they essentially based their strategies on one-on-one fighting skills. No amount of testosterone, ego boosting bravado helped them when they faced a well-motivated group attack. To make things worse, I saw less well trained fighters do better than some more reputable exponents.

Comparing a Group Attack with Two-Man Battle

The two person battle is the dominant focus in martial arts. In every teaching hall we see a vast array of strikes, kicks, take downs and holds. This is taken to the next level in elite competition