Champions Fighting Secrets Tip #2: Control The Line of Attack

In other words, keep yourself out of line of your opponent’s attack. This is only necessary when you are in your opponent’s striking range. This is a very simple concept to understand however to pull it off practice is needed.

But let's go a little bit deeper into the concept itself. Imagine you want to throw a sidekick with your front leg. You line up against the target. You position your body the same way you have positioned your body thousands of times before. So that you can move your mass in line with a kick. Accelerate the kick and let the kick penetrate the target, which is right in the path of your projected force.

All of a sudden the target moves, a little bit to your left, a little bit to your right. Can you still throw the sidekick the same way that you were standing? No, you will turn a little bit to your left or you'll turn a little bit to your right, to adjust to that line that you've been practicing so that you can attack in straight line.

No imagine yourself as a target and someone is lined up to kick you if you move they have to move in other words if you move your opponent has to move this is different than sidestepping or angling from an attack you're not doing this when the attack already started. You’re doing this before that attack started, when your opponent is just getting into the proper range to strike you.

There's a nice added bonus of psychological factor, when you do something like this. If you know how to do it and you do it a few times your opponent begins to get really frustrated, and it's fun to watch your opponent get frustrated. Because now they're not even sure if they should set on the target anymore because they don’t know if the target is going to be there and that’ll very much soften them up.

From the energy point of view. This forces your opponent to lose a lot of energy. While you, if you prepare for this, are able to conserve your energy when doing this. A good example of this would be the following: Imagine someone sits down to eat dinner. There’s a plate with food directly in front of them. All of a sudden someone takes the plate and puts it on another table. Now this person has to get up and sit at another table. Now imagine that this repeats several times. As soon as this person is about to eat, someone takes the plate and puts it on another table. After a few times this person trying to eat is going to get angry, frustrated, out of control. Their muscles will tense, up nerves tense up, and they begin to use a lot more force in their movement which leads to access energy loss.

The other interesting thing that you would notice if you start practicing this, is your opponent stance begins to change. From the attack stance, their stance goes into this, side to side, “which way do I move? How do I follow?” kind of stance. And it's pretty easy to attack your opponent in that stance.

Now, a great thing about this is that your opponent must follow you. Your opponent must adjust, they cannot not follow you. Because if you move to the side and they don't follow you, you now have a line of attack against them that they don't have against you. In other words you can hit them at will and they cannot hit you. Nobody wants that. Thus your opponent will follow you.

However, in some cases, people can get so frustrated, that they simply, after trying to line their weapons up with you several times, they simply just don't move, you move and they don't, because if you like you playing games. That you don't really want to attack, you’re just changing positions all the time. And that moment when they did not turn to you, you are free and clear to attack them at will.

Of course there are many other applications here. One application is to fake. In other words if you change position a few times, especially in the same direction, but it can work if you do it in different directions as well. If you change position a few times and fake like you are about to do it, your opponent will turn. For example, if they have their left leg forward and you fake like you're going to go to the left, and they turn, then they partially turned their back to you, and you can attack and they cannot defend, not properly at least.

As you get good with this you will learn that if you can move so fast that your opponent is still moving while you are already set in place, you can attack them while they are still changing position. And it's extremely difficult to properly defend when in between positions. This is a very specific skill which takes a lot of practice. But it is very rewarding when you are able to move that way, and you begin to feel your opponent’s center of balance, your opponent’s position and also your opponent's intent, which partially depends on what you lead them to do.

I teach this concept and many of its applications in the ElasticSteel Champion’s Fighting Secrets Online Training Course.

And I do have to tell you that I've done this first in slow motion. Against sparring partners that helped me adapt to this, while I helped them. But once I've mastered this skill, it became a very big confidence builder. And another great tool in my toolbox that allowed me to know that I can score on my opponent while preventing them from scoring on me, which is the goal of any confrontation in a ring or on the street.

In a nutshell, it is a 15 lesson journey into everything that champions of different styles of hand to hand combat and commanders of
conquering armies used to win the fight or the battle.

Any Martial Arts Master will teach you how to kick or punch, but almost no one will teach you how to win, how to get those kicks and punches to your target, while easily making sure your opponent is defenseless against you.

My research into ElasticSteel Champion’s Fighting Secrets started many years ago when I noticed that champions are not the fastest or the strongest people, but are those who know something that others do not, and use that knowledge to score and win.

Let me tell you right now that ElasticSteel Champion’s Fighting Secrets Online Training Course is not about positive thinking or about believing that you are the best (No offense to Tony Robins) .

As a teenager training in martial arts, I was an excellent technician. I had explosive and powerful kicks. I had fast and devastating hands. Yet, there were some fighters that I just could not beat. I could not beat them in point fighting; I could not beat them in full contact.

I did all that I could and sometimes would get a kick or a punch in, but most of the time I would lose the match. Forward a decade later. Now having an education in the science of human movement, having access to high speed equipment and cameras, I had decided to answer the questions I had once and for all. No one else was going to answer it for me, so I decided to do this myself.

At first I would watch many champions in slow motion sometimes dozens of times over and over again, trying to figure out what they did. Exactly how much their front foot moved when they made an angle, exactly how much weight was on each foot. I studied the timing of their attack, the distance they were from their opponent, and the maneuvers they used to control their position and distance.

After a few months of spending hours in front of the screen I began to get answers. I also began to try them out in the ring both as a fighter and as a trainer. The more I got into the strategies of top fighters, the more I began to realize that many strategies begin five, ten and sometimes even thirty seconds before the punch or kick makes contact. Sometimes the set up for one technique would take one or two rounds. Everything was very subtle and a very tightly kept secret.

Trying to apply these strategies to my trainees and myself, I realized that, some things can’t be done by everyone. Certain footwork or
fakes required specific strength, balance or speed not everyone had. Those modalities had to be developed. I began experimenting with different kinds of conditioning and transfer-over exercises and finally, after finding the right ones all of a sudden, the impossible strategies became possible!

The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn. The next big hurdle I had to tackle is the applications of different plays in relations to different fighters. Some fighters are too short, some are too slow, some are too big, or small to pull off certain strategies; what works against one opponent, doesn’t work against the other one. After thousands of trials and errors I finally began to see what plays to recommend for one type of fighter against the other.

Amazingly I began to score on what I consider to be more experienced opponents. Scoring turned to dominating. After all, I don’t spend 5-6 days in a ring, since I write, research and teach a lot. Compare this to people who train at least 3 hours a day, almost every day of the week.

Having not sparred for a while, I began to enjoy it more and more. I also began to participate in many specialized competitive drills with top athletes. Hey, when you can easily out-spar the person who is faster, stronger, more agile, and younger than you, just because of your superior combat analytical ability and specialized training, the game becomes so much more fun.

Armed with years of experimentation, experience, and research, I set out to put together a seminar that would blow anyone’s mind, even the most experienced of masters. Over the last year and a half, I conducted small group, private seminars to the most advanced masters of combat strategies that I had contact with.

Two things came out of this. One, I was happy to see that most of the information I presented was new to people who I truly consider my superiors in martial arts. Two, despite having armed myself with large amount of knowledge, I got to learn many interesting bits and pieces, that I did not already know. I also got a ton of a high level informed critique on the information that I presented.

Fast Forward another 10 years. After having done many revisions, I finally molded the ElasticSteel Champion’s Fighting Secrets Online
Training Course into a form that I am happy with. It’s my privilege to say, that I am truly convinced that this is the best training course that I have put together so far.