LEAN INTO IT

I’m once again going to tap into my first “love” of martial arts/combat sports (which, for those that are interested, I’m over 1 year strong in Tang Soo Do now, competed in a tournament and won Silver in open hand forms and am on my way toward testing for “4th Gup”, so I’m a huge deal) for this one, because, as is often the case: lessons transfer across mediums.  For those of you out there that haven’t been in a fight since elementary school, the idea of “leaning AWAY from the blow” makes a LOT of sense.  When someone is taking a swing at you, you want to escape it, so you lean away.  You try to get away from the attack so that it can’t hit you, you try to dodge, you try to evade, you try to NOT BE THERE.  Because really: who WANTS to get hit?  But anyone that has ever fought in any capacity understands that, when you flee, you lose your power.  When you are standing still, steady and strong, you are rooted and braced and ready to absorb impact, but when you are back peddling and fleeing, you take away that strong connection and are now suddenly at the mercy of your attacker.  Which, a GOOD fighter, will capitalize on and strike you AS you flee, such that they catch you flush and “the blow you don’t see coming” knocks you out.  This is why those who fight know about this dirty little secret: they don’t lean AWAY from the blow, they lean INTO it.

Within reason, of course

 

Once again I offer my standard “mea culpa” that I am a student of politics and philosophy, not physics, so I’m sure I’m screwing this up but I’m ALSO sure I don’t care: when we lean INTO a blow, we rob the attacker of their power.  A punch, thrown with violent intention, reaches full power at the full extension of said punch.  The attacker has an intended trajectory that they aim to hit with their attack, and your chin or liver is at the end of it.  When we lean AWAY from the blow, often, this results in MORE power being generated: the blow gets to travel even FURTHER.  BUT, if we lean INTO the blow: we STUFF the attack.  We cut it short, we intercept it partway through its trajectory, it never gets to achieve “full force” or realize its potential, because its course was interrupted.  And, if we are TRULY “with bad intentions”, we are now CLOSER to our opponent, and, to paraphrase 7th United States President Andrew Jackson upon letting his dueling opponent shoot him first so that he could take time to aim: “you’ve had your chance Sir, now it is MY turn”. 

 

 And in that regard we understand the difference between the two: fear.  Fear compels one to flee the blow, whereas there needs to be an absence of fear to lean into it.  There needs to be an understanding of “this is going to suck, but it’s going to suck MORE if I DON’T do it”.  And that’s how we rob the opponent of their power: we rob them of their ability to EMPLOY fear.  Mike Tyson was ferocious, he fought with absolute “bad intentions”, and had insane punching power BUT, in truth, almost every fight he won was won BEFORE he fought, because he had inspired SO much fear in his opponents that they were looking to ESCAPE rather than fight.  The few fights that Mike lost were against opponents that did NOT have that fear.  They withstood the shots, leaned into the blows, and fought a smarter, more effective fight.  They conquered the fear, and it let them conquer the man.

To be clear: fear wasn't an unreasonable response

 

This has been a long climb for this slide, but this lesson DOES hold true to the process of physical transformation.  Those that lack the “fighting experience” often lean AWAY from the blow when it comes to physical transformation. When losing fat, they desperately seek methods to mitigate hunger.  When conditioning, they try to figure out how to make it NOT feel like their lungs are going to escape through their throat.  When gaining, they want to know how to NOT feel constantly full and bloated.  When training heavy, they don’t want to feel like they’re getting crushed, and when getting in reps, they don’t want to feel like they’re dying. 

 

Folks: those are the blows.  Your own body is throwing them at you.  Your body IS the opponent: it is RESISTING your efforts to change it, and it’s doing so “with bad intentions”.  You try to lose fat, so it makes you hungry so you’ll eat.  You want to get better conditioned, it produces lactic acid to set you own fire so you stop.  You push hard, it gets injured so that you quit moving.  And all we need to do is NOT FEAR the body and its bad intentions.  Instead of leaning away, we lean INTO the blow.

This is how you say "f**k you body" with Polish sign language

 

You’re losing fat and you feel hungry?  Lean into it: see how long you can push that hunger feeling, and once you DO eat, eat sparingly: don’t binge.  You’ll find that, the longer you do it, the further out you can set your hunger tolerance (hey, isn’t that the whole “ghrelin/leptin hormone thing” people talk about training?).  Feel like you’re gonna die during your conditioning workout?  Excellent: do 2 more rounds.  You keep leaning into that feeling and your conditioning WILL improve.  Injured?  MOVE THE DAMN THING!  Get blood flowing INTO the injured part so that it will HEAL: don’t give it rest so that it stagnates and dies.  You’re gaining?  Go read some 2008 Dave Tate articles and embrace that bloated, sick and swollen feeling, KNOWING that every calorie you take in is directly fueling you achieving your goals.  When I ran Super Squats, I could legit feel myself GROWING bigger and stronger with every sip of milk I took. 

 

Lean INTO these blows and rob the power from your opponent.