Man of Principle: Ex-Navy SEAL Richard "Mack" Machowicz on Tradition, Reality Fighting, MMA and ZenBy Robert W. Young | Photos by Peter Lueders |
OK, I get it. It’s his way of telling people that the benefits of what he’s about to explain extend far beyond fighting. After interrogating Richard “Mack” Machowicz for 10 minutes, however, I learn that it would be a huge mistake to dismiss him as a guy who uses self-defense to preach self-help. It would be just as erroneous to brush him off as just another retired military man who doesn’t know that the skills civilians need are radically different from the skills soldiers need. Twenty minutes into the interview, it’s clear that Mack is a martial artist who can throw down and a guy who sees the big picture with respect to violence. Which is probably why he’s so successful at what he does. I first met him at Trexpo 2009, a Southern California law-enforcement function at which he delivered the keynote and sat at a table to meet fans and autograph his book, Unleash the Warrior Within. Apparently it’s been a best-seller since it was released in 2000. Jim Wagner, who was manning the Black Belt booth at the show, and I chatted him up a bit, then I asked him if he’d like to come in for an interview and photo shoot. Mack said he’d be honored. Fast-forward 11 months. The interview is finally a reality. Mack is sitting in the Black Belt offices, and I’m absorbing everything he says and does. By the time he finishes, I’ll feel as if I’ve learned more than I have in any other three-hour period in my life. I start by quizzing him about his background. “I got into martial arts as a kid,” he says. “We didn’t have any money, but fortunately it was a time when schools would give new students three months of lessons for free. I’d ride my bike to the school and train, and eventually the instructor would say, ‘It’s been a year—you’ve got to leave.’ Then I’d do the same thing at another place.” I’m not sure why, but it’s reassuring to learn that this super-soldier comes from Everyman stock. It would be all too easy to hang with the ex-Navy SEAL host of a TV series called Future Weapons, on which he spent three years plugging bull’s-eyes with the biggest and best guns on planet Earth, and assume he’s the product of a modern-day equivalent of a samurai bloodline. Not so. Mack explains that he was fortunate to cross paths with a Miami police officer who was teaching taekwondo. The cop took him on as a backyard student, and for two years he followed the Korean way of combat. In between workouts, Mack fueled his passion by watching Bruce Lee movies and reading Tao of Jeet Kune Do. “I was really into the philosophy [taught by] Dan Inosanto and those guys,” he says. Although he excelled at taekwondo, he was nagged by the notion that there’s a big difference between application and confrontation—in non-Mack-speak, between the dojo and the street. “I found boxing to be much more useful for those situations than taekwondo—or at least than the approach to taekwondo I was using,” he says. “Even though I’d gone through a lot of tough times as a kid and could take pain pretty well—when I was 9, I spent four years in a place where the state sends juvenile delinquents—I had physical limitations. I wanted to develop capabilities that would exceed them. That’s the main reason I went in the military. I had a bunch of experiences on SEAL Team that allowed me to grow. It fostered the development of my thinking.” The thinking he’s referring to is summed up as follows: “I learned that real fighting is not about art or style—Bruce Lee was big on that. It comes down to what works and what doesn’t for you. There are physical attributes that a 225-pound guy can bring to the table that I don’t have because I’m 180 pounds—back then I was 155!”
His awakening came long after he’d become a hand-to-hand-combat instructor for his SEAL Team and studied muay Thai, kali, boxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Paul Vunak’s take on jeet kune do. “There were so many ideas I wanted to convey that [I had to convert them] into simple principles,” he says. “Why? Because people tend to get stuck on technique. They don’t understand that techniques apply to specific situations at specific times in specific ways. That means techniques are limited. Principles are more universal. The basic principle of ‘target dictates weapon and weapons dictate movement’ can apply to everything in life because everything is a target, a weapon or a movement.” Mack explains that fighting is composed of three dynamic elements, then forces me to exercise my brain a bit to see the light: “From nukes to hand-to-hand combat, everything in life is a movement, a weapon or a target. Which is most important?” Being a martial artist, I blurt out, “Movement.” It’s the exact mistake he’s hoping for. “Most people say movement because that’s what they’ve spent years working on,” he says before launching into demo mode. His first act is one of self-preservation: Speaking slowly and clearly, he cautions me, “Whatever you do, do it slowly.” I say OK, then he prods me with, “What was our deal?” I repeat the mantra. He grabs my left wrist and delivers the directive: “Do something, anything, that will take out my eye.” Not quite getting it, I try to effect my best wrist escape. Major flub. Again, this time whispering and scowling, he says, “Take out my eye!” The light bulb switches on, and I use my free hand to mime an eye gouge, ignoring my still-trapped left hand. “What did you do?” Mack asks to drive home his message. “I focused on your eye,” I say, and he looks satisfied. I feel like a third-grader who answered a question correctly in math class. “Once you shifted your intention to the target, you actually affected the target,” he says. “Did you think about your weapon? No. Did you think about your movement? No. Targets dictate weapons, and weapons dictate movement. When you’re connected with the target, weapons show up without a thought because you already know how to do this. I used to think I had to teach people because that’s the structure of the martial arts, but everyone already knows this.” I’m not off the hook, however. Mack transitions to phase two to drive home the truth he just got me to admit. He seizes both my wrists and commands me to do something, anything, that will take out his nose. Being the numbskull that I am, I instinctively try to break free. When that doesn’t work, I forget about my trapped wrists and try to maneuver an elbow toward his face, but he puts a halt to that real quick. “Stop,” he hisses. That’s when I have my second satori, my moment of enlightenment. I lean forward as if to head-butt his beak. He smiles like a Zen master—which, in actuality, he nearly became after five years of study under a Zen sensei named Bill Yoshin Jordan. “If you really see my nose, it becomes obvious how to take it out,” Mack says. “When your intention changes, your position and movement change naturally. The more committed you are to destroying the target, the more your body will make it happen. You’ll move automatically and use a weapon automatically.” How does a person with years of martial arts training transcend technique and focus on the target, I ask. “You have to start using your body—see, hear, touch,” he says. “If you go into a situation where you think you already know what’s going to happen and what you’re going to do and it’s not based on what’s really happening, you’re not being present. The reason people don’t act in their own best interest is they’re afraid of making the situation worse. They’re fixating on all the things that can go wrong. They need to focus on the one thing they need to do right.”
The name Mack has attached to his philosophy of performance is bukido. Broken down, that’s bu, which means “war” or “military”; ki, which means “spirit” or “energy”; and do, which means “path” or “way.” Knowing nothing about the art, which he founded in 1996, I pump him for facts. “There are techniques, but it’s not technique driven. It’s principle driven,” he explains. “My position is, you already know everything I know; you just believe you don’t. We all have the black belt in us; we’ve just been conditioned to believe that we’re weak, that we need permission to go after our dreams. We don’t need permission. If we want to be successful in anything, it’s all one target at a time.” Mack insists that everything he teaches is, in his words, “a big duh.” In fact, he says all martial arts training at its best is a big duh. “And it should be because that means it most likely will work under stress and pressure. If it’s something you have to think about, it won’t work. But if you bury your fingers in a guy’s eye, it’s probably going to have an effect on him. Duh. If you kick him in the groin, it’ll probably have an effect. Duh.” In a fight, you can’t fixate on what might go wrong; you should focus on what you need to accomplish—like taking out your attacker’s eye or groin, he says. “I’m not the biggest, strongest guy or the fastest, smartest guy, but I’ll focus on what needs to get done.” That’s his cue to nail me again with what amounts to a Zen slap in the face that’s designed to make me grasp the big picture: “Rarely if ever will you experience combat, and most likely you will never see combat in a literal sense, but the principles that make for effectiveness in battle are relevant to the daily challenges you face. Why? Because when you start going after the things you want in life, you’ll experience doubt, second guessing, hesitation, adversity, pain, stress, pressure and fear. What better way to learn how to manage that than to train in a physical discipline that brings those things into existence? The dynamic you experience in the dojo is a small part of your life. To go after what you want in life, you’d better be comfortable being uncomfortable—which is what martial arts training is about. The sweat, the exertion, the muscle cramps—they’re all training opportunities for your mind to get comfortable being uncomfortable.” The pieces of the puzzle are starting to fit together. He continues: “In martial arts, you also need a calm and composed mind. You need patience, which is something I learned in sniper training. Jiu-jitsu is all about patience. If you get panicky when you’re in an armbar or choke, it’s all over. Learning how to be patient and relax and breathe when you have a Gracie on your back or a 250-pound guy on your chest is the best way to survive, and it helps you with everything. Life is a marathon with sprints. It’s patience, patience, patience, and when you see an opportunity, you sprint.” Cultivating that ability to sprint at a moment’s notice means not subjecting yourself to technique overload, Mack says. “In the Ultimate Fighting Championship, it’s not fancy techniques that win most matches; it’s the well-placed punch to the head. It’s those basic attacks—the knee, the punch, the rear-naked choke—that work. You get into a dominant position and keep punching until the ref steps in. It’s not sophisticated techniques that win; it’s sound principles.” For emphasis, he cites bukido’s second combat commandment: “I will learn the basics right, for it’s the basics that will serve me best.” I can’t argue with that. In bukido, one of the most important basics is causing chaos, Mack says. “If you can cause chaos, you can capitalize on it. There are three types. One is balance chaos—you might push me backward until I fall. Usually, it’s relatively easy to recover from, but think about Royce Gracie in the UFC. He’d grab his opponent and fall to the ground, which means the guy had a hard time hitting Royce. Meanwhile, Royce was always in balance. Then he’d start looking for another way to create chaos, maybe pressure chaos. It includes chokes and armbars that put pressure on a joint, the throat or a nerve. Pressure chaos is good, but it takes time. “Finally, there’s impact chaos, which is very quick. You can use one impact chaos to quickly go to another impact chaos—or a different type of chaos. You might strike the eyes, then immediately go to another strike to chop the guy down. Every target you go after should give you a big payoff. Don’t hit his body or leg because if he’s a big guy, it may not pay off. It’s much easier to create chaos to the eye or groin. In mixed martial arts, if you get poked in the eye or hit in the groin, you get five minutes to recover because it’s painful. It sucks! In a real fight, that’s what you want.” He reminds me that causing chaos is a principle, not a technique, and I express my wholehearted agreement in an effort to prevent him from demonstrating on my own eye or groin. I work up enough nerve to comment that there doesn’t seem to be much artistry in spearing an eye or mangling a testicle. That’s when Mack mentions that he never said what he does or teaches is pretty. “You don’t want to fight; you want to end the fight, and that means taking whatever targets you see,” he says. “There’s nothing artistic about it. If a guy comes into your house to attack you and you have to think about shooting him using perfect technique, you’re done. Your attitude should be, I want to end him! In a fight, your attitude might be, I’m going to end his ability to use his eye, or I’m going to end his ability to walk by destroying his groin!” I notice that he never mentions using a specific punch or kick to destroy those targets. It goes back to his premise that principles are more powerful than techniques, he says. “They enable you to overcome someone who’s technically better.” It’s apparent that in bukido, the mind is a terrible thing to waste. In fact, neglecting to use it can be detrimental. Or fatal. “Mind-set begins long before you find yourself in a fight,” Mack says. “In martial arts, we train for physical discipline, but more important is using that discipline in daily life. Why? Because you’ll use that discipline a lot more in your life than you will in the dojo. If you don’t practice the mental approach in everything you do, the odds of being able to use it in a fight are minimal. If you always make targets your focus, however, if you have clear intentions about how you’ll go after something and if you stack the advantages in your favor and have a not-dead-can’t-quit approach, that attitude will show up under stress and pressure. So when the guy puts his hands around your throat, it’s familiar. You know the feeling, the fear. The mental connection to applying those principles will allow you to maintain your edge—and actually improve it.” When he pauses to inhale, I slip in a question: “Would you say that’s the most important concept in bukido?” Close but no cigar. “When you’re really connected to a target, when you see it and understand it and when your intention is clear, you produce the result of focus. Focus is not something you describe; it’s something you produce. Connect to a target and bring everything you have to it, and don’t quit until you destroy it. That’s the one thing that will most change what you do in martial arts and in life.” It’s three hours after he walked into our office, and I’m a believer. 
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