BLOCK AND THEN COUNTER IS OBSOLETE.
In 1967, Bruce Lee made a radical choice: he abandoned the traditional emphasis on blocking and embraced interception.
By the 1970s, his student Dan Inosanto refined this further with the concept of destructions—striking into the opponent’s attack itself, defanging the snake.
Together, these shifts rendered traditional blocking effectively obsolete.
A student once asked me:
“What is the difference between interception and blocking?”
My answer: Bait him to move in, then strike him as he moves.
This is not just defense—it’s control.
The student replied:
“Isn’t that attack by drawing?”
Yes, it is ABD.
But interception goes beyond a single tactic.
You can intercept anytime your opponent attacks—or even when they merely think about attacking.
You can strike into their intention.
I once demonstrated interception with an eye jab, rotating center and triangulating against a jab punch.
It wasn’t just physical timing—it was reading the opponent’s mental space.
When intention arises but action hasn’t yet begun, there is a gap.
Strike into that gap.
The Power of Suki and the Four Sicknesses
In Kendo this gap or space is called suki—an opening in position, rhythm, or thought.
Kendo also warns of the Four Sicknesses (shi no byōki), mental traps that can destroy a warrior:
- Surprise (Kyō): Being caught off guard in battle—or in life—creates paralysis. The warrior trains to stay ready in all moments.
- Fear (Ku): Fear makes the body heavy and the mind hesitant. True training teaches us to meet fear with breath and presence.
- Doubt (Gi): Hesitation is the death of opportunity. In life as in combat, the warrior must act with clarity, not second-guessing.
- Confusion (Waku): Overload—too many attacks, too much chaos. Confusion dissolves only when we return to stillness and center.
A high-level master doesn’t just move through physical openings but through the gaps in the opponent’s mind.
As one teacher beautifully put it, “He’s moving through the gaps and spaces in your mind.”
Kuroda Tetsuzan, a great master of the sword, embodied this principle until his passing.
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that he’s moving through the gaps and
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spaces in your mind, which is a
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beautiful way of saying it, isn’t
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it?
Geometry, Chess, and the Six Ranges
This principle is mirrored in chess and geometry.
The triangle, the circle, the gates—all can be seen as the chessboard of movement.
(See the RAT Synthesis Symbol: ratsynthesis.com/the-rat-synthesis-symbol).
Geometry allows you to master the game, whether in combat or in life.
When you train to intercept rather than block, you join yourself with the world until you and your opponent—indeed, you and everything—become one big body.
In RAT Synthesis, I teach that there are six ranges of combat:
- Kicking
- Punching
- Trapping
- Wrestling
- Weapons
- Mind Range™
The sixth range transcends the others.
In the East, the word “mind” also means “heart”—the feeling center.
Bruce Lee himself said, “Don’t think. Feel.”
This is Heart-Mind—intuition beyond calculation.
Evander Holyfield used a form of interception called “attack on preparation” to frustrate Mike Tyson during their infamous fight.
By disrupting Tyson’s mental space, Holyfield gained the upper hand before the first punch landed.
This frustrated Tyson so greatly that he lashed out in desperation—biting Holyfield’s ear as a response.
Why We Meditate
This is one of the great reasons we meditate.
Meditation is not separate from martial arts.
Martial arts is life to an extent; meditation allows us to sense the subtle gaps and move with intuition.
When the world and you become one big body, you see and feel the chessboard clearly.
Interception is not only a method of combat—it reveals that martial arts itself is a way of life: feeling, intuiting, and moving before the clash even begins.
This is the art of becoming a chess grandmaster of both combat and existence.
This teaching is part of my upcoming book:
MEDITATIONS OF A WARRIOR-YOGI
By Sifu Matt Russo
Warrior-Sage | Kriya Yogi | Strategist & Mentor of Life
