How to find strategic relaxation

We talked about ‘relaxation’ for a couple of weeks. Everyone knows the advantage to be able to relax. The concept and criteria seems to be so simple but realistically, it is hard to achieve when under stress. Therefore, I think the topic do deserve a little more time and hopefully this will help fast track your progress a bit.

While achieving relaxation during combat is hard, do understand that you are not alone – it used to take years before practitioners even realizes what is productive relaxation. To achieve productive relaxation, the first hurdle to overcome is “To Believe”. Yes, you have to believe to cause changes within yourself. You have to believe that perseverance, patience are key ingredients to make it happen. Furthermore, you have to understand and believe in the principles behind the skills or it won’t work for you. As an example, for a plane to fly, it has to rev up to a certain speed – you cannot slow the plane down to see if the plane can fly because then for sure it won’t!

Ways to find strategic relaxation:

• dangle, wiggle and drop – You use these type of exercises to isolate specific muscle groups and train on the ability to cause motion with minimum tension. This is more of neuro training than physical training.
• poses / postures – You have to give time through slow motion and/or poses to feel unproductive tension. Whether you are sitting, standing, doing form, waiting in line for a bus or whether, take a moment to consciously relax muscles that are not involved in maintaining the specific pose. For example, when you sit and type, some people have a habit of tensing up the shoulder. Try to see if your shoulder can ‘sit’ in a more relaxed position.
• getting past self imposed limitations – this can be physical or mental. Increase the mobility, flexibility and range of motion for every joint. Every day’s movement vocabulary is very limited for most people. Do stretch, experiment, explore and feel comfortable with new positions and movements.
• active motions – as in hits using any part of your body. Try to find when and what muscles you can you relax and still produce similar effects. Experiment with different direct and indirect engines!
• response motions – this is the art of taking hits, protecting yourself, streamlining the response so that you can reduce the damage your opponent can cause and interrupt your opponent’s intention with the least effort while doing it.
• psychological – pain avoidance, fear of getting hit, fear of death, being too zealous, need to win, ego, fear of losing, feeling the pressure from “all the eyes” watching, pressure, etc can all contribute to unnecessary tension. Visualization, frame of mind, desensitization can all help.
• time pressure – when the clock is ticking, you feel the need to rush and eventually your mind freezes up and you perform less than your full potential. Efficiencies, reduction, simplification and proficiencies help in this area.
• bad habits – until you can overcome the habits with enough visualization and repetitions, your reflex will always go back to whatever you are most familiar with. You need to spend time to kick some of those bad habits.
• choice of tactics and strategies – be prepared for the worst as well as surprises and you will be rewarded. Aiming for perfection in a fight is the wrong frame of mind because you will get you uptight when things don’t go as planned.

Remember, relaxation as used in combat is quite counter-intuitive to most people. Relaxation is only one of the means to a goal – conflict management where combat is one of the many options. You need good partners to give you feedback, reproduce situations and let you try different things out. As Winston Churchill said, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” In the training hall, learn to relax and don’t let frustration rob you of possible of future successes. With patience, you can!

Exercise

• Experiment with each of the above points and check to see if you understand. All of the above points are applicable to other areas of your life besides fighting. Describe your experiences.