Aug 22 • General discussion
Episode 5 Thoughts
The second of the twelve recurring principles brings us to the three triangles: surface, structural, and mental—and underneath all three sits an older concept that I find incredibly relevant to the way I train: metsubushi.
To me, metsubushi is about disrupting what someone is able to perceive and process—physically, structurally, and mentally—before you ever need to rely on strength or even make significant contact. It’s taking away their ability to clearly understand what is happening.
And that connects directly back to kyojitsu. If kyojitsu is about controlling what someone believes is true, metsubushi is about disrupting what they can actually perceive. Different concepts, but the same underlying idea: control the information they are receiving, and you influence the response that follows.
This principle is especially relevant to me because I’m small. I’m not the biggest person in the room. I’m not the strongest person in the room. In fact, most of the people I train with are twice my size and could physically overpower me if I allowed the encounter to become a contest of strength. So I have to approach it differently.
Whether I’m training in the dojo or thinking about an actual threat, I have to understand how to use the nervous system to my advantage. Because regardless of how physically capable or highly trained someone is, there are fundamental human responses that don’t simply disappear because you’ve earned a black belt or spent years lifting weights. The nervous system still responds to disruption. Vision changes. Breathing changes. Balance changes. Attention narrows. The brain has to process new information. And when you can interrupt those things, even for a moment, you can change the entire equation.
For me, the three triangles are about disrupting force, structure, and the mind. Vision, breathing, balance. Take away their ability to see clearly. Disrupt their breathing. Take away their base. Get into their structure. Take away their focus, their purpose, and ultimately their willingness or ability to continue the confrontation. And then you have a choice: eliminate the threat or escape.
The answer isn’t always to stay and finish the fight. Sometimes the smartest martial arts technique is the one that allows you to leave. The question becomes when think through all this: how much of yourself are you willing to devote to the situation in front of you to resolve it? Do you need everything? Or can you create just enough disruption to change the outcome?
This is where the element of surprise becomes incredibly powerful. You don’t necessarily need more force. You need to interrupt the expected response. That unexpected stimulus can create a moment where the nervous system has to stop, reassess, and reorganize. And that moment matters, especially when you’re the smaller person.
This also brings me back to the 1% of force principle. You aren’t necessarily trying to move someone ten feet across the room. You’re looking for enough to unbalance them without giving them the opportunity to simply take a step and recover. That tiny disruption can be enough.
And I think this is where our understanding of technique inside the dojo can sometimes become backwards. We spend so much time practicing the technique as though the technique itself is the objective. We see the throw. We see the takedown. We see the lock. We see the strike. And we think, “That’s the finish.”
But what if that isn’t actually the beginning of the process? What if that technique is simply what happens after everything else has already worked?
The disruption happens first. You interrupt the nervous system. You disrupt their perception. You affect their breathing. You take away their base. You move them that tiny one percent off balance. You remove their ability to predict what’s happening. And suddenly, the technique you were trying so hard to force may simply present itself.
Sometimes it almost feels accidental. But it isn’t. The work happened before the “technique.” That’s something I continue to remind myself in training: don’t chase the finish. Create the conditions where the finish becomes available.
Because when we train only to reproduce the final technique, we can become dependent on cooperation, timing, and a predictable response from our training partner. Real movement isn’t that clean. The body doesn’t always give you the exact response you practiced. So I want to train the principles underneath the technique.
I want to understand what happens when I disrupt the nervous system, their base, interrupt their focus and create enough uncertainty that their body can’t immediately organize a response. And then I want to be able to recognize what presents itself.
That’s the part of martial arts that continues to fascinate me. It’s not necessarily about forcing someone into a technique. It’s about understanding the human body well enough to disrupt what it expects—and then being prepared to act on whatever that disruption creates.
For someone my size, that isn’t optional. It’s the practice. It’s the study. And it’s one of the reasons I continue to train.
Because the more I learn, the more I realize that effective martial arts isn’t always about adding more. Oftentimes it’s about taking things away. Take away their vision, breath, balance, certainty and their ability to predict what happens next. And when you’ve disrupted enough of the system, either eliminate the threat—or leave.
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Episode 5 Thoughts
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