HOW DO I PRACTICE GUIDED CHAOS IF I DON'T LIVE IN NEW YORK?
Even though we outline a strategy below, it is vital that you plan to come to NY at some point (earlier rather than later) because GC has a unique "feel" and you can set yourself back years by not understanding what it is you're striving for in your solo practice.
Our book has a comprehensive solo training program and drill finder for all the Guided Chaos principles. Learn Close Combat first (Part 1). Close Combat was taught in 8 hours back in WW II to our soldiers preparing to ship out for the jungles in the Pacific and it remains the simplest, most devastating short form of self defense available to this day. Guided Chaos defeats Close Combat, but is much, much more esoteric and takes many years to master. DVDs help: the Companion Series (companion to our book) mirrors the book's layout and is an essential training aid that packs in far more info than most self defense instructional videos. Read the DVD guide for more info. Subscribe to our Newsletter for in-depth articles and join our forum for feedback from others who have alreeady been down the road you're on.
Get yourself a training partner. You can register to search our list from our Contact page. Second, find a school (Close Quarters Combat, Defendu or American Combato) based on Applegate, Fairbairn & Sykes. The best example of this is a superb organization run by professor Brad Steiner in Seattle. Here you will learn simple basic strikes, like palm heels to the face, eye gouges, edge of hand chops to the neck, head butts, knees, and low kicks. Train them as fast and hard as you can against various targets, from every angle, in every combination, and combine it with completely free-form "play" with as many different partners as you can (without hurting each other!!). Add a course in basic self defense awareness and confrontation de-escalation. Finally, you can TRY and find a Tai Chi school that teaches REAL combat tai chi and incorporate internal energy principles (like softness and "cold power") into your close combat. This is very hard to do.
It might be practical to take ROSS (Russian Martial arts or Systema) as long as they offer some opportunity or forum where you can practice free form fighting as opposed to regimented fighting (as long as it's not a bunch of psychos who go home bloody every night). This way, you have a place where you can work in Guided Chaos principles and see what happens. This can be helpful because GC principles can work with any art--GC is not about techniques--it is a WAY of moving. Russian Systema has a fairly free-form practice system. Barring this, if you can find a Tai Chi PUSH HANDS class, you can make some great progress if you have some open-minded workout partners. You just work in deadly striking movements at SLOW push hands speeds along with the typical pushes, brush backs, etc. Another possibility is to join a Jeet Kune Do school because they tend to be fairly open-minded. Again, you could try out some GC with an open-minded partner and try to develop that way.
Organize a local seminar and we can bring our training to you (while you make some $ in the process). We stress again that it's important at some point to come to NY to feel what GC feels like from Master Perkins or a senior instructor to verify that you're on the right path. That "feel" takes seconds to understand (but longer of course to master). We so far have 3 black belts who live far from NY and mostly trained themselves using the above strategy.
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