There’s a long-standing fault line cleft through martial arts to separate them into Dead and Alive. So for example if you were to look at the tiny group of martial arts that are actually useful in a fight (and it’s nearest proxy where it can actually be tested – the MMA cage) you’ll see they all share several factors in common. Before you scroll down, just consider for yourself the commonalities between boxing, wrestling, judo, sambo, muay thai, Brazilian ju jitsu. Look at any decent MMA fighter and you’ll find they specialise in one or two of these arts. Outliers are extremely rare.
So what do they have in common?
- A rule set that allows full-bore competition against an opponent who is trying to beat you… without incurring serious injury.
That was Jigoro Kano’s revolutionary idea that led his tiny judo club to destroy all the ju-jitsu schools in the famous Tokyo Police competition. Remove the deadly techniques and leave the safe ones. While you can still kill someone with a BJJ choke, still knock someone senseless with a boxing left hook you can also control the environment so nobody is lethally injured in training. You cannot seriously train eye gouges and windpipe ripping without quickly running out of training partners. Kano made judo come Alive. Boxing was always alive. Fencing is alive. As is Kendo. The arena of competition (and sparring) inserts universal Darwinism into the fight game.
Back when Japan produced real badasses
Now consider the worthless martial arts…. Krav Maga, Karate, Ninjutsu, Aikido, Tae Kwon Do. What they all have in common? They are Dead. There is no serious competition (or in the case of TKD so removed from anything that resembles fighting it is simply the Dance Of The Foot Fairies). Dead martial arts fossilise. They have rigid grading hierarchies where senior grades don’t have to prove themselves. The respect for teachers is fake. It’s a bunch of guys who never get good at techniques that are never tested. It’s Bullshido.
So why the long preamble?
Martial arts are simply one example of incorporating compliance as a principle in your life. I uses the term in a specific manner to mean one of two things:
- Enticing another person to freely associate and cooperate with you.
- Imposing your will onto another person in free competition.
It’s free-market capitalism in the social world – people are either willingly cooperating in your enterprise or your enterprise is outperforming theirs under free competition. Anything else is socialism*. Now let’s apply that to your personal life. Are you avoiding the free market?
There are many activities that can be stacked into a weekly routine that do not require winning compliance from other people nor besting them in honest competition. When you sit down in front of your Xbox that’s just you and the games machine. The developer has even deliberately and painstakingly crafted an experience to make you feel like a hero. When you wank off to porn you are being guided along a sexual experience that does not require any compliance from a girl. When you read a book, even an intellectually challenging one that will improve your knowledge of life, you simply add it to your Amazon basket and send the money. You are living in a bubble where no-one needs agree with you.
Extortion and socialism, yesterday
Modern society has been crafted to allow people to live in bubbles of non-compliance. When they want something they pay for it, demand it from the government, or guilt-trip someone into giving it up. This is unlike traditional society which always had exams to pass, extended families to manage, neighbours to befriend, a neighbourhood to work with. We now live isolated lives where entire support systems exist to feed our delusions. We live in worlds where compliance is absent. A world where we don’t need people to freely associate with us because they like us and want to.
- Unemployment and housing benefit for those too inept or lazy to work
- Socialised healthcare and pensions for those too unept or selfish to save
- Prostitutes and porn for those men too unattractive to find women
- Video games, movies, books for those too socially awkward to have friends
- Gym machines for those too lazy to do real exercise
- Martial arts for those too pussy to fight in a ring
- MGTOW ideologies for those too far into denial to turn around their life
There are plenty of upsides to this societal change but a major downside is you are removing sources of external feedback from your life. You are not getting that vital ping with the reality to find out where you stand and how good you are at being a man. In economic terms, without a market you don’t have a price discovery mechanism. You don’t know your value. Usually it’s because you don’t want to know your own value because deep down you suspect it’s lower than your ego can handle.
My apology for springing a picture of pillow-biters on you above
Married guys are especially susceptible to this. Thinking they’ve escape the sexual marketplace, locked into a daily routine of boiling the frog, they are blissfully unaware of how they are degenerating and losing their SMV. Until divorce. So ask yourself are you a capitalist or socialist in your personal life? Are you seeking to avoid the marketplace, head in the sand? Just count off the activites that fill your week. How many of them require you to enlist the freely-given cooperation of others or for your team to best another team in honest competition. Examples of compliance / capitalism in action….
- Going out drinking with a bunch of friends
- A road trip with buddies
- Dating a hot girl
- Sparring at your boxing / BJJ class
- Winning an argument
- Having your work colleagues ask you to lead a project
Many activities which are good for your self-development and good for life-enrichment are also non-compliance / socialist activities.
- Reading / studying
- Writing a blog
- Travelling solo or always with the same friend
- Being disciplined about your nutrition
- Hitting the gym
Be careful with them. Its good to have a few but if you find you are always staying home to “work on my philosophy” rather than joining your friends at a party then you might have just life-weaseled yourself. Seek the feedback….. and what is the best possible source of feedback?
Daygame
When you step up to a girl and hit on her she will give you a comprehensive and accurate reality check. Daygame is your masculine mirror. When you are doing life right, the girls’ responses improve. There is no quicker way to rebase yourself than trying to get compliance from a girl you are trying to fuck. In daygame you can’t bully her with your seniority at work, you can’t buy her, you can’t out-maneouvre her in office politics. The only way you’ll get her to come on that idate with you is if she wants to. Free association… the building block of prosperous societies.
* socialism widely construed as an attempt to avoid free association and honest competition, and to replace it with violence, guilt-tripping and denial of reality.
Krauser PUA 
July 13, 2013 at 4:05 pm
Agree with everything except re the martial arts.
Couldn’t give a toss about the others, but knocking Krav Maga, explicitly designed to be as brutally efficient as possible in deadly situations, is ridiculous. You can’t judge a fighting technique until you’ve been doing it seriously week in week out for over a year with a top instructor.
Having done years of Judo and Taekwondo previously (around 25 years of judo), with only 2 years of Krav Maga, it has already helped me in a number of sticky and potentially very dangerous situations.
One involved a lunatic swinging a wooden bar stool at me in a baltic shithole that resulted in him being pinned down to the ground getting choked until someone called the police and I legged it. Only 2 years of practice had me automatically executing a lunging block followed by a crotch throw to the floor and then a floor pinning choke. All of that Krav Maga.
Next time I’ll ask him to slow down a bit while I go for his lapels and try to execute a Tai Otoshi (judo) – don’t fancy much my chances of not eating that wooden stool in the face first.
Yes it is impossible to practice all the moves on your training colleagues at 100% realism(eye gouges, testicle crushes etc) but we train in full contact padding with helmets and I can tell you it is brutal. Our group is made up of policemen, security forces, military guys and weirdos like me who want to suffer twice a week. No bowing, no grades, no cunting around with arcane japanese names. Just pure brutal efficiency to disable the other man as quickly as possible. [I’ve heard all this before on MMA blogs. Just link a video or two that prove its alive. K.]
July 15, 2013 at 12:22 am
“Next time I’ll ask him to slow down a bit while I go for his lapels and try to execute a Tai Otoshi (judo) – don’t fancy much my chances of not eating that wooden stool in the face first.”
Do you even train Judo or are you just trolling?
Judo involves a lot of clinch work and trips from the clinch. Judo is extremely effective no-gi/street clothes.
Here are some examples of Judo trips from a clinch:
July 15, 2013 at 8:02 pm
D&P – There’s certain people I respect in the community, and you’re not one of them.
I know fully well what Judo is capable of. Judo is a very fine martial art indeed – did I not mention that I was working my way through the grades when you were still at the anal fixation stage. I was making black belt at my local dojo in Southfields, London when you were still inventing your internet back story on a piece of paper in high school.
You should stick to blogging and pushing herb supplements/steroids – oh I forgot, you no longer blog.
The rest of my brothers in arms here, who I respect. Try Krav Maga, you won’t regret it.
July 17, 2013 at 2:08 am
Your claimed Judo background is a fraud. It would never occur to a real Judoka in such a situation to go for a lapel choke.
In the situation you describe, an actual Judoka would go for an osoto gari or what in wrestling is called a head and arm throw.
Krav Maga is like Dungeons and Dragons – fantasy, just like your story about a bar fight in the Baltics.
Incidentally, if a guy is swinging around a bar stool, I’d just wait for him to overcommit. The Graice Jiu Jitsu paradigm of: 1-close the distance (for example with a push kick to the knee), 2-clinch, 3-takedown, 4-submittion would work just fine.
And Gracie/Brazillian Jiu Jisu unlike Kung Fu, Krav, and other such silliness has been proven in the ring time and again.
I know you’re trolling so the post isn’t for you. It’s for the guys who may not understand Judo’s power and might get sucked into your WOW/D&D/Krav nonsense.
July 13, 2013 at 5:06 pm
I get what you’re saying. Another great article but, please, remove Krav Maga from your dead list, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
July 13, 2013 at 5:21 pm
sheisse! I was just headed to the gym when I read this.. Shortly thereafter the text from my daygame crew came out to meet today. I’ll do both.
I’m gonna say this – Wallenda’s grandfather said that “Life is on the wire – everything else is just waiting” and i’m finding the same sort of thing with daygame. Some of our crew heads out during the week and I get their texts when I’m at work and I look around my office and I’m like “what the f%&* am I doing here?” like my friends are off at war and I’m home doing paperwork.
July 13, 2013 at 5:36 pm
The banking sector in my country are doing their best to avoid competition and getting state financed gurantees for the customers deposits. So are they socialists? [Closer to fascism, which is basically national socialism. K.] Your Ayn Rand inspired politics and ideology is out of touch with realities, antiquated and rather childish…. [Don’t be spiteful, child.]
July 13, 2013 at 5:37 pm
Solid analysis. I tend to find that I’m always seeking that balance between the two…. for example, if I have a day or two filled with passive activities (Writing, reading, studying, etc).. I’m just itching to go out and meet people and engage with groups of people.
July 13, 2013 at 5:54 pm
Isn’t this a little blue pill without describing a model of female compliance?
Of the unnatural aspects of society described above, the biggest one is letting women decide for themselves what is good for society.
Vox hit the nail on the head in this post:
http://alphagameplan.blogspot.com/2013/07/why-feminized-societies-will-fail.html
The teacher, an authority over the girls in the story, could so transparently manipulate the expectations and direction of the girls’ interactions with the boys, how could you rationally suggest that women deserve freedom to decide anything? [This should be a comment on a completely different post. You’ve missed my point. K.]
July 13, 2013 at 6:20 pm
Good post and insightful even though I disagree with what you said on the political side of the matter based on my historical perspective of human history. You have a brilliant, creative mind which is the offspring of the great English literary tradition.Shelly, Keats, Byron have their travels and you have yours. Now there is an obvious polarity to your 2 sides which are battling each other: one is creative which draws out inspiration from the grand of sand like William Blake’s poem and and another one is that of contempt toward some matters. One embrace, connect, and going into a grand picture. Another one criticize, fragmentize, and isolate. These characteristics are present in many of the Shakespearean characters like Hamlet and others. Ultimately there will be an unity since it’s the law of nature.
July 13, 2013 at 9:23 pm
Any advice for non-compliance lovers like me? Living a compliance life never brought me happiness. I actually prefer being alone over People most of the time. It’s just draining energy.
July 14, 2013 at 2:11 am
Good article overall, but Krav Maga doesn’t have “competitions” like other martial arts because Krav Maga isn’t for sport. It’s for killing people and breaking their shit.
July 14, 2013 at 2:46 am
I agree with your conservatively minded analysis. I also agree to those defending Krav Mega, a martial art that has evolved through a combat ridden atmosphere. I like how you ruffled up the feathers of people who disagree with your comparison of “free markets” and “self worth”. I thought it was brilliant and I’d have to say to Noger Nogerson or whatever the fuck his name is that Ayn Rand was more in touch with reality than the inflationary practices of the other.
July 14, 2013 at 3:19 am
This is the best post I’ve read since Ive found game. You speak so many truths. About the martial art part: you’re correct. Maybe some Krav Maga schools can teach how to defend efficiently but the most important thing is to learn how to fight, not just learn some dirty tricks. If you do that is just like learning pick up lines for Game. There are some people who do teach solid self defense(search guys like Mick Coup, Hock Hochheim,Steve Morris NHB who is basically a MMA coach).
July 14, 2013 at 11:00 am
Great article, but i spent 6 months in the I.D.F and Krav Maga is the scariest shit you will ever learn. To be honest though I don’t know how it’s taught here or in the UK. You might have gotten the wrong impression… [I think all you Krav Maga nuts miss the point of Dead/Alive. When you teach deadly techniques with weapons you simply cannot practice with the regularity and intensity to become genuinely good at those techniques. You also don’t get a genuine experimental environment where techniques are refined or thrown out. There’s no way at all that the top Krav Maga guys are as good at their art as the top judoka / boxers / wrestlers etc are at theirs. I’ve seen a few Krav Maga classes and coaches and my experience has been they teach it like ninjutsu / aikido. Just a bunch of skinny gammas doing three-step sparring and awarding themselves pointless belts. No actual fighting or pressure testing. It’s a Paper Dragons Club. The other thing with KM is it teaches you to fight guys with no skill, with one guy in the role of dumb attacker and the other as skilled defender. This is a classical martial arts conceit, just like the slow-motion-right-hand-puncher you get in aikido. Alive martial arts have two equal combatants striving to win. Now, I’ll grant that some KM guys somewhere will gear-up and have-to with vim and gusto. Those guys will do ok. And comparing that training regime to not training at all, I’d pick the former. Might as well have some weapones trainer. I’d still pick a good judoka or boxer over them in a bar fight. Perhaps KM isn’t worthless, its above Dim Mak and Wing-Chun, but its 2nd tier compared to the truly alive arts. And BTW “scary” means nothing. Knocking someone out with a right hand on the jaw renders them utterly defenseless. If you’re truly sadistic you can still gouge their eyes out and stamp on their bollocks afterwards, rather than trying to do it when they are still an active threat. K.]
[Edit: This is the kind of Krav Maga instruction I’ve seen. Totally bullshit. Attacker does ridiculous telegraphed moved and then just stands there to receive a barrage of sloppy unfocused weak blows before falling over obediently. K.]
July 15, 2013 at 12:43 am
you should do a couple more martial arts centric posts Nick, this is probably the most interesting post i’ve read all day. [2years wing chun, quit at uni when i realised there was no real sparring and it was all bullshit, lots of gym work, now post uni looking to go back into martial arts again, i was thinking of western boxing and bjj]
July 15, 2013 at 4:09 am
I’ll second the KM hype. The KM school in my area doesn’t even have open sparring on the schedule! It’s basically a workout class. KM nuts basically “drink the cool aid” . They buy the ideology forwarded, namely that KM is a superior art, takes the best techniques from all other martial arts, and focuses on efficient easy to learn deadly moves, yadda yadda ya. It’s so deadly that KM can’t be compared to other named arts because…well their opponents would die. Bullsh*t.
Oh, and the KM that is sold to the lemmings is a far cry from what is taught to IDF forces.
http://stephiblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/most-krav-maga-is-watered-down-2/
July 15, 2013 at 1:32 am
Completely off topic, but in your post “Daygame Allstars” you ranked some of those you considered to be the best daygamers around at the time (2010). Almost three years later, I’d be interested to know if you would amend your rankings? I think there are a few who have made immense progress in that period, notably your pal Tom Torero.
July 15, 2013 at 3:18 am
Wut?
July 15, 2013 at 4:17 am
Krav is for building confidence for the masses of soldiers processed through IDF who most likely will not have to fight hand-to-hand with a determined adversary. It accomplishes the goal of building confidence superbly, as you can see from the above posters.
Combatives, as taught to organizations that have close-quarters fighting as their primary mission generally takes the form of sport arts (judo and boxing are good places to start), performed while wearing full combat gear, with certain techniques removed and some specific ‘spice’ added. In essence, they make someone comfortable with the timing and body mechanics of ‘sport art’ and sparring while in full kit, and add instructions to avoid certain positions, and add a little bit of ‘spice’ to certain techniques. The ‘spice’ essentially boils down to ‘do everything on the banned techniques lists as often as possible’, and the ‘avoid’ is ‘if you lose sight of his hands, or show your back, you’re doing it wrong’.
July 15, 2013 at 3:52 pm
I completely agree with this article.
There’s only so many things you can learn and do to prepare yourself for ‘real life’. But ultimately, the only way you can ever really experience what it’s like, is to put yourself into the fire and get hurt/rejected and learn from your mistakes.
My Wing Chun Sifu talks about this a lot and talks with complete honesty about how no matter how much sparring you do at the gym. It will never emulate the psychological implications of someone actually attacking you and trying to hurt/maim/kill you.
In addition to this, if we all agree that fighting requires no ‘martial arts’ skill but by mainly getting involved with thousands of bare knuckle street fights. All you need to do is to be willing to fight loads and improve in the actual ‘real world’.
If you took an experienced street fighter and put him up against a martial artist. The experienced street fight would simply wipe the floor with him.
It really depends on what you’re training for and why you’re training. If you’re doing it as a hobby, then that’s fine, but don’t expect to compare yourself to the MMA guys who train exclusively to fight and win bouts.
My sifu actually write a brilliant article about this very thing, so it’s perfect timing that you wrote this article:
http://www.londonwingchun.co.uk/mixed-martial-arts-and-wing-chun
In reference to what my sifu discusses. Martial arts on a basic level can never compare to actual ‘real life’ combat where timing and cadence comes into play. That’s why our association puts a heavy importance on ‘sparring’. The Wing Chun community often accuses us that we don’t train in wing chun as it’s very fluid and non traditional.
But at a higher level. I believe most martial arts are close and comparable to each other since a punch is simply a punch.
Here’s a few vids of my sifu sparring in his early days and a few videos of him explaining the concept of how wing chun can be used against boxing which has been massively popular on Youtube:
So to sum up. If you want to be great with women, learn the basics and then go out and talk to loads of them. Real life isn’t fix but fluid and will simply learn to adapt and make different situations work for you with experience. Similar to fight and martial arts where your opponent isn’t predictable, but fluid.
Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do rings a bell 😉
July 16, 2013 at 12:20 pm
Read Krausers response to Jim above
July 16, 2013 at 3:43 pm
Sorry mate but this is a pointless post Wing Chun is a DEAD martial art but go on keep rationalising that it’s the shit, also you’re clearly right up your “Sifu’s” arse!
Real ALIVE martial art….there’s nowhere to hide on the Jiu Jitsu mat.
July 16, 2013 at 10:03 pm
My Sifu is also a Brown Belt in BJJ under the Gracie Barra guys. So before hating on other styles, it’s best you get your facts right first.
July 17, 2013 at 2:13 am
If you’re not in danger of getting knocked out (or at least your “bell getting rung”) or breaking a bone/tearing a joint or being choked out, it’s not sparring.
I used to “slap box” with friends. That’s all those Kung Fu videos are.
Honestly, bro, there are hundreds of “style v. style” fights on YouTube. It’s not secret that TMAs, while great for kids and good aerobic exercise, don’t stack up when compared to fighting arts like boxing, Thai Boxing, Judo, BJJ, wrestling, etc.
It’s a testament to human delusion that any traditional martial adults school remain in existence.
July 18, 2013 at 1:12 pm
I do agree with you.
In fact my SIfu spoke about this a few nights ago that no matter how hard we train. We all have a breaking point before all of our martial arts training gets stripped down to the ‘caveman’ style of fighting. Depending on how hard you’ve trained, your breaking point will be a lot stronger.
But another thing he said is that on the streets, what’s to stop a man from any style to try and gouge your eyes or stamp you in the balls. Just because it isn’t taught in Taekwondo or MMA doesn’t mean you can’t do it. Again a martial art is simply that, an art. We train it to preserve the style and not because it’s a ‘solution’ to a fight. It can be a devastating as a form of self defense. But ultimately, when it comes to fighting. Anything goes. [I’ll trust my straight left and my arm triangle choke over some barroom hero’s biting and gouging any day of the week. I’ve trained simulated biting and gouging at the outcome is always the same…. the guy with the better core skills (particularly positional advantage) wins. He gets to gouge from mount. K.]
July 15, 2013 at 9:48 pm
The point is to interact with people in a real way; full contact social interaction. This is why on line stuff should be limited to a minimum.
July 16, 2013 at 6:50 am
Where is Kook sool won in the hierarchy?
July 16, 2013 at 11:58 am
It’s at number 39, just below chicken chow mein.
July 16, 2013 at 12:21 pm
A real ALIVE martial art…
July 16, 2013 at 10:22 pm
I think what a lot of you miss is what it means to be a ‘good fighter’
If you’re talking about getting inside a ring and having it out with another skilled opponent, then it’s still effectively flawed since it contains an element of control and rules that simply doesn’t exist in a real life street fight.
Its sad that many of you have jumped on the MMA bandwagon purely because it’s what’s considered ‘popular’ in today’s culture. The fact is. You try getting on the ground on the streets and you will get your head kicked in by a stampede of guys who will likely to be the mates of the guy you’re trying to get into a choke hold. It’s simply not practical.
There’s a big difference between competition based fighting and fighting to defend yourself on the street. The realistic thing is to finish the fight quickly by nullifying your attacker and exiting without getting hurt, because the longer you’re in it, the more potential danger you’ll face and the higher chance of getting hurt.
Again it all depends on how you’re training and what you’re training for. There’s no such thing as a bad martial art, only a bad student. There’s something to be learned in every style.
July 17, 2013 at 2:22 am
How many street fights have you actually been in?
In “The Streets,” guys don’t magically fall to the grown after being hit with “deadly” Krav Maga or Kung Fu “throat strikes.” Most people pumped up on adrenaline can take quite a few hard shots to the face and body.
Unless you get a clean punch, the guy is going to keep rushing at you and the fight is going to go to the ground (unless you have the grappling skills to keep the fight standing).
I realize that it’s hard to rid one’s self of delusions. A guy with 10 years in Kung Fu has basically wasted his life.
But there’s a “red pill” for everything.
When it comes to fighting (in the street or the ring or cage), BJJ/MMA stuff is best, followed closely by real fighting arts like boxing/Thai Boxing.
Kung Fu, Krav, etc. are all blue pill.
July 17, 2013 at 5:39 am
Nothing you’re saying has anything to do with Krausers post I think you’re completely missing the point.
Basically what he’s saying is are you actually being tested on a daily basis out in the real world or are you living in some fantasy land with a lot of buffers around you… porn, xbox, not approaching women, alcohol, dead martial arts KM WingChun Aikido Taekwondo etc..
July 17, 2013 at 12:26 pm
there is most definitely a thing as a bad martial art. [if the manosphere taught me anything its that meritocracy definitely exists and not all people are ‘equal’ in a aptitude, skill, or any other sense as socialists and wimins lib would have you believe. some people are good at things, some people are shit at things and some skills are better than other skills]
lets go back to the etymology: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/martial_art
The first point of contact for a martial art is that it be used for unarmed or armed combat.
I posit that if an art or a style cannot systematically work to best ones opponent in a fight where one has to win and one has to lose, it can’t be called a martial art.
Krausers point in the article was that all the ‘deadly move’ arts are pointless because they have kill/break moves that are not used or trained with often or at all, so how the hell are they going to be able to use them proficiently. If i am correct, he inferred that those martial arts lean on their unused ‘kill moves’ as a crutch to prevent and shore up weaknesses in their arts that can be exploited by alive arts [where one person is trying to best another in free competition]
Judo joined the ‘alive arts’ because of the disposal of ‘kill/break moves’ enabling them to spar a lot more often and approximate something like real fighting often. This honing and discarding of the unused/fancy/irrelevant is essential to being called a ‘martial art’
what the problem is with most gung fu/kung fu/wingchun/ windscreen wiper type arts is that they favour ritual and ‘honour’ over pragmatism.
they neglect a lot of ground work. they favour stances that need to work in a certain way or a certain position to work. they cant deal with ‘messy fights’
the alive arts are all about messy. Ever seen a BJJ fight upclose? supremely humbling experience.
I say this as someone who practised mostly window washer arts for years now.
Dont get me wrong i like the centre line work and solid stances in wing chun and all but if you dont get involved in messy fights/sparring where the point is to win than being preconditioned to fail out of ritual and honour, you’re going to have a bad time.
July 16, 2013 at 3:20 pm
This sounds like the rant of a fucking 13 year old.
July 18, 2013 at 2:28 pm
Your not trying hard enough it seems 😉
July 17, 2013 at 4:25 am
I love the point of this article. I especially love the whooshing sound it made as it flew over most of your heads. I’m very new to this site but from what I’ve read of Mr. K, he goes to great pains to find novel ways to make his salient points. Krauser seems to have ruffled the feathers of more than a few martial arts enthusiasts who now feel honor bound to defend their respective styles/schools. You all hope to get one over on each other by engaging in an intellectual debate over the finer points of your respective arts but with the anonymity and safety of the internet and the absence of the real-life octagon, your premises are conveniently unassailable and the videos you post must do the talking for you. Is this compliance or non-compliance? I assume that this thread has come to the point where Krauser has likely lost interest but I thank him nonetheless for his efforts to write on not only how to be successful with women but also how we as men can better enjoy ourselves as men.
July 18, 2013 at 10:08 am
Wildly insightful K. A nice kick in the right direction towards domains that offer feedback (preferably immediate) over those which dont. One of the necessary and oft-avoided components of flow-state activities, as well as “deliberate practice”, the difficult bits where you see the most progress. Pros specifically seek out this type of activity to get better.
July 18, 2013 at 10:05 pm
Although the comparison to martial arts was spot on, it did seem to cause the message to be lost on many people here due to the your style vs my style debate which has ensued. A shame, because the message is a great one.
This post has lead me to realise that I don’t engage in many activities in my day to day life which require me to gain compliance from others. This is in part due to the fact I’m strongly introverted, but I now believe I have been sheltering myself from these activities because deep down I believe that I won’t get compliance and that will lead to my ego being harmed. It’s all about stepping up in a way which will expose exactly how good you are in a certain area. You may turn out to be not as good as expected. While this will bruise the ego it will also force you to adapt Darwin style and get better.
An example is at work. I don’t really push for meetings about pay / my progress / career progression for fear of being told I’m not worth promoting / more money. This is something I will have to change. If I’m not worth promoting I need to find out why and make changes, until I am.
It’s the same with expanding my social circle. I need to be much more proactive about this, but I think I’m scared others will reject me, and use my lack of time / money and introversion as an excuse. I have a plan in this area, which I’m starting on next month. It will involve me trying to organize social events, something that requires compliance from others. Also thinking about taking up boxing. It’s been far to long since I had some direct man on man competition.
July 19, 2013 at 9:57 am
Hello Nick,
I only recently discovered your blog through daygame.com. I am very fortunate I was pretty much blank page in terms of pickup knowledge when I found daygame.com and immediately knew this was it, as it went much deeper than other styles.
I’d like to ask what you think of continuous learning on the internet/from books alongside practice vs strictly focusing on practice and abandoning all the distracting sources when you know 90% of theory anyway. I think many guys use daygame videos, podcasts, articles as just another buffer, me incuded. That said, there might be some good knowledge from the top sources. But now, my plan is to use pretty short condensed list of principles I made based on Tom Torero’s Daygame book and just get better through daily repeated actions and re-reading this short list every day and pushing boundaries. I actually do this with everything, including gym, studying…focusing on daily repeat of habits I have written down in my phone, different for different days. Do you think it may be better to fully disconnect from the community, or does it still have something valuable to say, even though not strictly for pickup, but for general personal development? Or is it all about individual yourney?
For example, this artice about compliance was spot on. I already threw out playstation, tv etc. before, and I also saw the danger of no-compliance activities even though most of those in my life are “noble” – gym, reading, studying – and many are necessary. When there are no activities that require compliance – like when I study (medicine) in the garden for days without meeting many people – I feel like shit anyway, you become this self-improvement junkie.
So, did this article help me? I am now able to see this problem of compliance more clearly, and would be able to articulate it better to persuade my friends, but I am not sure it really lead to any improvement that would justify staying in the community. Other than obviously I am addicted to reading this stuff:-) [The game is played in the field. You can’t learnt to swim without getting wet. K.]
July 19, 2013 at 10:13 am
Examples:
Diet and exercise:
It’s pretty much “eat real food most of the time and do some progressive strength training”. You could read about benefits of coconut or dangers of high potassium content, nutrient timing, philosophy of your diet, perfect exercise form, underlying mechanisms of recovery…but too often one is up at 2AM at the computer reading about new scientific study which examined longer rest intervals in sprints, or dangers of lack of sleep.
Productivity:
Again, you could read review of the new Moleskine diary, or Omnifocus app, or article on how to plan your year in detail, time-management, motivation…
But the only thing that works is a better set of work-related habits that are repeated, outcome independence, increasing work capacity and revitalizing cognitive source, facing the specifics of your job in practice.
So, do you think it’s better to educate yourself to a certain degree, implement stuff to enrich your life and then forget about it? Or is this in itself limiting yourself and are there dangers in this approach?
July 19, 2013 at 12:47 pm
Mr. K – I see ‘hitting the gym’ on your list of things that are non-compliance/socialist activities. A lot of what people do in the gym is, but some of it is definitely not. This occurred to me yesterday when I tried to repeat my max on the bench press and came out 10lbs short. My workout partner/spotter did like 40lbs more than me, then I look across the room and there’s another guy doing 30lbs more than my max but 10 reps – humbling. Plenty of feedback from the ‘market’ as to where your value is within that realm: the weights don’t lie and like other solo sports you can’t blame your lack of success on a teammate. Running is similar in many respects.
BJJ appeals more to me for actual defense – Unleashing the full force of a bare kunckled punch into a guys face as a full grown, very strong man, because of some unpleasant verbal exchange (probably alcohol fueled) even if he throws the first punch….I’d rather learn to wrestle someone into submission. I’ve had this view ever since I saw “The Dirty Dozen” when I was a kid where they were introducing the dirty dozen – they ask one big guy (I”ve always been big) what he’s in for (they are getting out of jail to do an impossible mission in the war) and he doesn’t want to reply. The guard says it for him “He punched a guy so hard he pushed his jaw up into the guys brain”
July 19, 2013 at 2:27 pm
Great post. Applies to many things. Men have been pussified to the point where we don’t want to twist any arms physically or mentally to pose our will. BS it’s the natural way of things
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