part0010

Some of the greatest strategic wisdom every provided about fighting comes from Miyamoto Musashi, Japan’s most famous samurai , who wrote in Go Rin No Sho (The Book of Five Rings), “In battle, if you make your opponent flinch, you have already won.” In other words, never let your opponent march at their chosen rhythm. Disrupt them. Crash the system…

Crashing the system has one goal, to stop the attacker from doing what he or she wants, making them flinch as Musashi wrote. Crashing the system causes disruption for the attacker by creating (1) multiple simultaneous setbacks, (2) creating one intense problem, or (3) creating many intense problems at the same time.

An example of creating multiple problems comes from WWII. The German military built and deployed the most technologically advanced tanks the world had ever seen to support their war effort. Their Soviet adversaries adopted a different policy, however. They built lesser quality tanks, but more of them… a lot more. In fact, by mid-1941, the USSR had deployed more than 22,000 tanks—more tanks than found in all the armies of the world combined, and four times the number of tanks in the German arsenal.

Those Russian tanks were built so quickly, but with such low-quality tolerance, that in some instances a Soviet soldier could insert his finger between plates that formed its armored shell. A quote that is often attributed to Joseph Stalin is, “Quantity has its own quality.” Their unsophisticated designs did have challenges with reliability, of course, but the strategy was to overwhelm the German tanks with superior numbers and it worked.

The impact of one intense problem can be illustrated with the well-known and now classic episode in American business, home entertainment. Blockbuster dominated the home movie and video game rental market for two decades, but failed to innovate. When Netflix and Redbox first appeared, they competed more-or-less on parity, but made inroads since they charged no late fees (which at one point accounted for 16% of Blockbuster’s revenue). Then, along came streaming services and new competition and that broke the equation for good.

It is interesting to note that Blockbuster considered buying Netflix for $50 million at one point, but ultimately blew that opportunity in deciding that the purchase price was too steep. Between 2003 and 2005 they lost 75% of their market value, ultimately declaring bankruptcy by 2010. Today, all of their stores but one have been closed, with that remaining location turned into an Airbnb. Like Blockbuster, we often pass over the opportunity to avoid crashing our own system but only recognize it with hindsight.

The creation of many intense problems at one time can be illustrated with Operation Desert Storm. On November 29, 1990, the United Nations Security Council authorized the use of “all necessary means” of force against the nation of Iraq if it did not withdraw from Kuwait which they had illegally invaded. When Iraqi President Saddam Hussein defied that order, the world responded with a massive US-led air and land offensive, Operation Desert Storm.

Even though Iraq began the war with the world’s 5th largest standing army, their military might was gutted in a bit less than four days, with ultimate collapse coming a month-and-a-half later. You see on January 17, 1991 the US, its NATO allies, and a coalition of Arab countries, some 35 nations in all, used stealth bombers, cruise missiles, laser-guided “smart” bombs, and other sophisticated technology to overwhelm the Iraqi forces. By the time a cease-fire was declared 42 days later, the Iraqi forces had all either surrendered or fled.

When he was World Heavyweight Champion, “Iron” Mike Tyson was definitively the best boxer in the world. Tyson could hit hard, but so could other greats like Ernie Shaver, Evander Holyfield, George Foreman, Hasim Rahman, Ingemar Johansson, Lennox Lewis, Manny Pacquiao, Muhammad Ali, and Tyson Fury. Every boxer has their individual style and we can see a record of it. Nearly everything about boxing is recorded in some way, statistics like each fighter’s height, weight, reach, handedness, win/loss records, knockouts, decisions, proclivities (e.g., affinity for throwing jabs, uppercuts, etc.), and the like is dutifully recorded.

Whether the boxer is orthodox or unorthodox, what they prefer to do in any given situation, whether they are they closers, or jabbers, even their stamina, it is measured. All of this information is recorded in a book of statistics. Consequently, when preparing for a boxing match every boxer and his/her coaches have plethora of information to rely on, insight into their forthcoming opponent that can help them up their game.

In self-defense situations, however, no such textbook exists. We cannot pre-scout our adversary and ascertain his or her tendencies. We cannot know for certain how many assailants there will be, when or where they will attack, or by what means and methods they will strike. However, broad assumptions can be made and we are able to act upon a combination of our assumptions and observations to be as prepared as possible.

Regardless of the predicament we find ourselves in, our ultimate strategy must be to deny the other person or persons whatever they want to do, while doing what we want to do, during the fight. Whether it’s boxing, other combative sports, or simply a game of pickup basketball, the principle remains the same. Never let your opponent march to his or her chosen rhythm.

Denying an adversary what they want to do is where crashing the system comes in. Crashing the system is a way of disrupting the other person’s plan. Crashing the system is about making the adversary have to stop what they want to do and respond to whatever it is we’re throwing at them. Crashing the system takes our opponent out of his or her game. It knocks the threat back on his or her heels so that they have to respond, reset, or readjust. In other words, it makes the assailant do what they don’t want to do.

Crashing the system involves no dancing around. There is no grab the wrist, spin it this way, turn here, pivot there, tap the back of the knee, and then do the hokey-pokey to make the other guy fall down. Crashing the system is flat out aggression designed to deny your opponent whatever they want to do.

A great example of this was Bruce Lee’s straight blast (straight punch). His style, while very much his own, was rooted in wing chun , a Chinese kung-fu system that emphasized fast hands and attacking the adversary’s centerline. Striking the centerline as fast and as hard as he could, Lee was able to disrupt and disable his opponents.

Judo is one of the few sports that can be easier to perform blindfolded than sighted as practitioners are trained to sense their opponent’s micromovements, shifts in balance, direction, or center of gravity, when determining the best course of action to disrupt their designs and win the match. Sensitivity to tiny postural changes is key. Our judo sensei , Kenji Yamada, used to say crash the system in a different way because his context was sport rather than combative. His admonishment was, “Grip-and-go.”

Grip-and-go meant that we were supposed to grip our opponent’s gi (uniform) and before they could sense our initiative we would immediately launch into our technique. This immediate action would oftentimes preclude an opponent’s ability to counter. Straight blast, grip and go, they’re both examples of crashing the system in a martial arts context.

Crashing the system is not about elegance. As the quote says at the beginning of this chapter states, “Inelegantly thrown acid is still thrown acid.” It’s about function, whether it succeeds more-or-less as planned or flat out doesn’t work. Crashing the system is not about the perfect move, the elegant, picture-perfect act, it is about getting something on the adversary to change the moment. To enable us to prevail…

Win pretty or win ugly and it’s still a win. But if we allow the pursuit of perfection to keep us from acting decisively, we are almost certain to lose.

Everyone tends to develop a “go to” technique, something they’re comfortable with using under pressure. It could be a straight blast, grip-and-go, or something completely different such as an elbow strike, finger whip, eye gouge, or as the illustration above shows, an uppercut. Clearly punching a hard chin in this fashion is going to hurt, possibly even break a bone or two in your hand, but if it knocks the other guy out, we’ll call it a win.

Crashing the system is about working big to small, finding a way to stop the attacker from doing what he or she wants to do and then making every effort to exploit that moment and in doing so achieve victory. We cannot worry about pretty. We must not concern ourselves with perfection, save for in the sheltered confines of the training hall. Train for perfection but in practical application strive for effectiveness. On the street, that’s all that matters.

Every person has a built-in system, an attack system and a defense system. These methods are often untrained, buried in our brain’s fight, flight, or freeze response. Some are more effective than others, and some can even be outright dysfunctional, but everyone has an instinctive system. With training as martial artists, our systems become quite a bit more sophisticated than ordinary citizens. We spend hours training defensive and offensive movements, leveraging the strategy and tactics of our martial styles.

While martial styles contain a wide variety of applications, unarmed fighting systems tend to fall into two big buckets, striking-centric systems (e.g., boxing, karate) and grappling-centric systems (e.g., wresting, jujitsu). Irrespective of tactics, the focus on these two divisions of hand-to-hand fighting systems is to create problems for any threats that practitioners face. This is why trained practitioners tend to perform better than untrained individuals in in real-life fights. But, fighting skills alone may not be enough.

When choosing a martial system for self-defense, it must be fit for purpose. While an art designed for sporting application likely can be utilized for self-defense, more often than not it will fall short of optimal. In other words, we must be able to remove any baked in pressure release, compliant participants, or fragile complexity (as we discussed in Chapter 2) such that we can physically stop a threat. And then, we need to crash the system to make it happen.

Further, if what we study does not cover the full range of pre- and post-event management, things like awareness, avoidance, de-escalation, creating witnesses, dealing with law enforcement, and navigating the legal system in addition to fighting, we will find ourselves underprepared. By training holistically and realistically we are best able to crash the other guy’s system rather than our own and ultimately prevail.