The Way and the Power
The Way and the Power is a compendium of tactics used by the swordsmen-strategists of the Ittō Tenshin-ryū. Written by Fredrick J. Lovrett in 1987, The Way and the Power organizes and discusses these strategies in plain language, with direct examples from both swordfighting and debating. Sadly, this book is now out-of-print due to the 2018 closure of its infamous publisher, Paladin Press. While used copies are still easily available, this will not always be true, so either get the ebook, or refer to the summary of this book's core ideas presented below.
Familiarize yourself with each of these strategies, and become able to discern when they are being used against you. Life is too short to master all of these strategies, so focus on mastering your personal favorites.
Contents
Distancing
Stretching. Force the enemy to stretch and/or overextend themselves past their center so they off-balance themselves. Armies should be allowed to advance beyond the reach of their supply lines, so that they spread themselves out to thin (like in the board game "Risk").
Sudden, Large Steps. Use one, giant leap to immediately close the distance between you and the enemy. This fosters a negative, defensive spirit in the enemy, and it will throw off their sense of distancing.
Standing a Little Closer than Normal. Keep your hands close to your chest. This conceals the length of your reach, giving the enemy an incorrect sense of distancing.
Standing Close. Stick to your enemy like a coat of paint, to deny them space to maneuver.
Sticking. Clash, press your weapon against the enemy's weapon, and refuse to disengage. The enemy cannot assume an attack position without dropping their guard to disengage, and creating a moment of vulnerability.
Expanding. Pretend that the enemy creates as vacuum whenever they inhale or lighten up their attacks, which sucks your techniques towards them. Soldiers take cover under heavy fire, but they will reveal themselves under light fire while they seek better cover.
Timing
Half-beat. Establish a rhythm, then strike in-between beats (like grace notes or drum fills) to disrupt the enemy's sense of timing.
The Method of Winning. Never fight at the enemy’s pace. Either speed up or slow down, to force the enemy into fighting at an uncomfortable pace.
Wedge Technique. A totally-committed, perfectly-timed attack cannot be stopped. This holds true even when you are being attacked, because your technique will act as a wedge which automatically deflects the enemy's attack aside.
Passing
The Principle of Softness. Cause stationary enemies to move, and then attack at a different (typically diagonal) angle. Use the enemy’s momentum to drive takedowns, instead of depleting your strength.
Baiting. Present an obvious, seemingly-unguarded target to provoke enemy attacks. By overly-focusing on offense, the enemy neglects defense, which sets them up for your surprise counterattack.
Positioning. Don’t run from danger, move towards advantageous places. Pass the enemy and wind up behind them, where they can’t get you. (This is the Top Gun maneuver.)
Joining Centers. Imagine you are welded to the opponent, so that you are one piece. You will move them whenever you move yourself.
Dropping Your Guard. Completely drop your guard, so that you can be attacked from any direction. The enemy will momentarily hesitate once they realize you are awaiting an attack, because only an incredibly insane and/or badass person would try this.
Over-preparation. Exhaustive preparation and drills will allow you to attack at any moment, from any position. Being prepared for anything from any position precludes your from ever being caught off-guard, so you can always seize the initiative.
Centering
Drawing Lines. When there are no boundaries, establish some, and then control them. Invade the enemy’s personal space and control their centerline.
Parrying. When your centerline is threatened, quickly sweep the enemy’s attacks aside to create openings for counterattacks.
Springing Away. Counter the enemy's strength with equal strength, then suddenly let off. The enemy will off-balance themselves with their own continued momentum.
Subtlety. By giving your enemies nothing to resist, they cannot resist you. Manipulation must be always subtle, or else your enemies will realize that they're being manipulated.
Countering Leverage. The enemy is strongest near their absolute center. Pushing or extending them away from their center weakens everything they do.
Appearing
Intimidating Appearance. If you carry yourself like you can't be attacked or defeated, the enemy will think that it's true.
- This is countered by focusing on what the enemy does, and not on what they claim to do.
Professional Appearance. You can weaken an enemy's spirit by simply maintaining good posture and a neat personal appearance. These will make you seem like a trained professional, even if you’re really not.
Threatening. Making threats momentarily stuns enemies while their minds transition from peace to war, and as they make plans to counter your threat.
- This tactic only works against untrained opponents in situations with clearly-defined goals.
Transferring Emotion. Foster mutual feelings between you and the enemy, and then quickly change your demeanor. (This is the Evil Dead maneuver; lightening up lulls tense enemies into feeling safe, which sets up surprise attacks.)
Hard and Soft. Become equally skilled with hard and soft approaches; starting with one and finishing with the other. This off-balances the enemy, who much constantly switch their strategy and fighting style to deal with two opponents contained within one person.
Changing
Letting Go. If your current strategy isn't working, then it must be completely, entirely abandoned and replaced with a different strategy.
The Mountain and the Sea. If the enemy strongly resists, then immediately abandon the current strategy and adopt a new approach, which is as vastly different and unrelated as the mountains are from the sea. Most enemies are unprepared for abrupt change, and will hesitate while they adapt.
Flow / Bounce. Boost your attacking power by using your previous attack's momentum to setup your next attack.
Stirring Up. Frequently making small, random changes to your strategy makes you appear illogical, and keeps your confused enemy from discerning -- or countering -- your true strategy.
Variations. Changing the ending of a technique counters the standard defenses against that technique.
Concealing
Mirroring. Copy the enemy’s strategy when you don’t know what to do. This is not a solution, but it can delay the enemy’s plans long enough for you to develop and implement a better strategy.
Pre-emptive Counters. Attack as the enemy tries to set up their attacks. By countering attempts to attack rather than actual attacks, the enemy will be constantly imbalanced.
Goading. When the enemy’s intentions are unknown, throw a feint to force them to act. The enemy will then reveal and execute their plan before they are ready.
Framing. When you have discovered the enemy’s intentions, make the necessary changes which will force the enemy to abandon that strategy, and frame them into adopting a new strategy which they aren't as skilled with.
- Be mindful that these changes do not have to be large or elaborate.
Flanking / Pincer Maneuvers. Attack, so you can distract the enemy from noticing another attack, which comes from a different direction.
- Unlike a feint, both of these attacks must be legitimate threats.
1000-Yard Stare. Don't look directly at your enemy, look behind them, as thought you were gazing at a faraway mountain. This improves your reaction time by forcing you to rely on your peripheral vision, which is more motion-sensitive than foveal vision. Additionally, de-focusing the eyes de-focuses the mind, which allows you to easily flow from one task to another.
Initiating
Rhythm of One. Drill constantly, so that you can react to anything without any delay or wasted motion. Then the enemy cannot act, since they'll immediately be countered.
Free of All Thoughts and Plans. Train until you can automatically react in the best possible way.
- This is not running on "autopilot." There is a stage of skill-development beyond "autopilot" where new and unique solutions are reflexively generated as-needed.
Heading Off. Perceive the enemy’s attack / plan / train of thought, and calculate the shortest possible path to counter it.
Sacrificing
Sacrifice. You must accept the fact that you will receive minor injuries whenever you try to inflict a major injury to your enemies.
Accept Death. Accepting your own mortality renders the enemy unable to frighten or intimidate you. By being willing to get hurt in order to hurt -- to be killed in order to kill -- you will overwhelm enemies who are < 100% committed, forcing them to flee (and likely die trying). Planning for the worst-case scenario automatically prepares you for all lesser scenarios.
Responding
Broken Rhythm. Constantly vary your attack speed, intensity, and duration. If the enemy cannot discern a pattern, then they cannot develop a counter-strategy.
Leading the Target. Strike where the enemy will be; not where they are. Rather than launching multiple attacks against a mobile enemy, launch your initial attack along the enemy’s projected path.
Big Picture. Treat the enemy as one large unit, and not as a complex multi-component being.
Feinting. If you can't make a decisive attack, the make the enemy flinch, and attack in the brief moment when they're flinching.
- Note that feints do not work against highly-skilled opponents, since they can discern this trick.
Picking Away. If you cannot immediately destroy your enemy, attack targets of opportunity.
Striking the Heart. Fixating on defeating the enemy grants you the inner strength which needed to recover from failures. Any enemy whose heart still beats is a potential danger -- because they will eventually win.
Controlling
Decapitation. Controlling a person's head completely restrict their mobility. Likewise, organizations can be completely impeded by attacking or controlling their officers or leaders.
Balance-Breaking. Anyone can be severely weakened by breaking their balance, usually, by pushing or pulling on their shoulders. Likewise, an organization's balance can be overthrown by overly-focusing on a single branch or division.
Officers and Men. Pretend that your enemies are your subordinates, and not your opponents. By exploiting their conditioned response to authority figures, you can stun enemies by giving them simple commands, like “Stop!”
- Do not make threats, since the enemy won't comply.
Crushing. Be mindful of the ultimate goal of conflict -- reducing your enemies into mentally and spiritually crushed piles of shattered bones and torn flesh. Any and all other strategies and techniques are just a means to this larger end.
Planning
Large and Small. Large problems should not be treated like small problems. Small problems should not be treated like large problems.
Dealing with Multiple Enemies. Organized enemy groups should be reduced to disorganized mobs via the following best practices:
- Brutally incapacitate the most powerful enemy first. The resulting chilling effect will break the group's morale. More importantly, you will have to fight the toughest enemy eventually, so you should do this before the other enemies tire you out.
- Incapacitate the group's officers or leaders to destroy unit cohesion and disrupt communication. This distracts the entire group, since they must come up with a new plan, without knowing who is now in charge.
- Push your enemies into the paths of your other enemies. At worst, they must waste their energy maneuvering around themselves. At best, they become human shields.
- Never position yourself between your enemies. Keeping all the enemies to one side eliminates their numerical advantage, as the fight is effectively reduced to single combat with a large, amorphous enemy.
Circumstances. Do not fight on the enemy’s terms. Only fight at places and times which stifle the enemy. Study the enemy prior to the engagement to find their exploitable personal weaknesses and/or character flaws.
Trojan Horse. Rather than wasting energy tearing down an elaborate defense, coax an overly-defensive enemy into dropping their guard.
