From the Fundamental Exercises to the Functional Exercises, and in this case, the Self-Defense Techniques, borrowing Pavel Tsatsouline’s concept of “linkage vs leakage”, it is easy to see how and why arm, leg and trunk movements serve more than a warm-up for the muscles or exercises for joint mobility.

All the stances covered in chapters 4, 5, 7 and 10 of the second Natural Method book are revisited in Chapter 8 in the standalone book on self-defense techniques.

As the saying goes, pictures being worth a thousand words, let’s explore how these arm, leg and trunk movements are applied for both functional and fundamental exercises.

In the picture below, we see the Forward Slit™ with various arm positions. That stance is akin to what I call “power stance” in my Ninjutsu training, and Zen-kutsu from my Shotokan Karate days.

To illustrate that last point, here’s what it looks like for throwing a punch: below, person on the right in the picture.

Now, let’s look at the following carryover of the Backwards Slit™ operating as a weaving maneuver to avoid a punch (of which the person on the left in the picture does a variation of).

The Balancing exercises covered in Chapter of the second book also can double up for kicking exercises (front kicks, hook kicks), as illustrated in the pictures below.

Even the ground fighting work has its roots in the bridging exercises or trunk movement fundamentals.

Once again, nothing is new, everything has been pretty much covered and it is indeed in the quality of the teaching, the execution of the basics, the development of the skills where the strength of an individual’s results lie. While many things have evolved since the creation of systems, at this point centuries old, if not millennia, History is there for a reason. I believe in adaptations rather than updates, as well as modern context and cultural preferences. The framework doesn’t change all that much.