Embodied Knowledge and Functional Pragmatism
The Nine-State Martial Model becomes practically meaningful when its conceptual distinctions are translated into embodied capacities. Its purpose in practice is not simply to enable practitioners to identify the Nine States but to develop greater sensitivity to the conditions through which force capability is expressed and regulated. The central practical problem is how practitioners learn to perceive what is occurring, recognize what possibilities remain available, organize an appropriate response, regulate force, and reorganize action when circumstances change.
Embodied knowledge begins with perception. Martial action is shaped by information that may be available before it becomes fully articulated through conscious reasoning. Changes in distance, pressure, balance, timing, resistance, posture, movement, breathing, emotional activation, and environmental constraint can all influence the possibilities available to the practitioner. Through training and experience, practitioners can become increasingly sensitive to these relationships and respond with greater immediacy.
Within the Model, this perceptual capacity can be understood as state recognition. State recognition involves identifying the emerging relationship between force expression and force regulation before that relationship becomes unnecessarily rigid or reactive. The practitioner attends not only to external demands but also to the condition through which the response is being organized. A practitioner may recognize that direct force is being expressed with stable force regulation, that yielding is becoming increasingly constrained by fear, or that attempts at adaptive engagement are becoming inconsistent under pressure.
State recognition alone does not produce adaptive action. The second capacity is state regulation, through which the practitioner governs the relationship between force capability and action. Fear, anger, hesitation, fatigue, urgency, excessive confidence, and perceptual overload can all influence how force capability is expressed. Effective state regulation does not require eliminating these conditions. Instead, it involves maintaining enough organizational capacity to prevent them from completely determining the response. Force may consequently be increased, reduced, redirected, withheld, or terminated according to the demands of the situation.
The third capacity is state transition. Once the practitioner recognizes that an existing configuration is no longer appropriate, effective action may require a reorganization of force expression and force regulation. State transition is therefore more than changing techniques. It involves altering the organization of action in response to changing conditions. A practitioner may need to change the manner in which force is expressed, modify the degree of force being used, or recover regulatory capacity when pressure begins to narrow available choices.
These three capacities—state recognition, state regulation, and state transition – are interconnected aspects of embodied adaptive competence. State recognition makes the emerging configuration perceptible; state regulation governs how capability is expressed within that configuration; and state transition reorganizes action when conditions change. They should not be understood as strictly sequential stages because, in actual practice, they operate continuously and often simultaneously. A practitioner may recognize a change while already modifying a response, regulate an emotional reaction while transitioning to another mode of engagement, or discover through movement that an initially perceived situation was different from what had been assumed.
This perspective also changes how martial training should be understood. Repetition remains necessary because coordination, timing, technical reliability, and physical familiarity require practice. Yet repetition under highly predictable conditions cannot by itself establish adaptive competence. Variation is required to reveal whether learned capacities remain functional when resistance, timing, distance, pressure, uncertainty, or emotional activation changes.
Training can therefore introduce progressively different conditions in which practitioners must reorganize familiar responses rather than reproduce them unchanged. Variable resistance, altered tempo, unexpected movement, changing positional demands, and uncertain outcomes can expose limitations that remain invisible during predictable practice. The purpose is not to make training chaotic but to create sufficient variation for practitioners to learn how stable force capabilities can be reorganized under changing conditions.
Failure has a particular role within this process. When a response breaks down, the failure may reveal a limitation in technical execution, perception, regulation, timing, capability, or transition. A practitioner who repeatedly responds too early may need to refine perception; one who becomes excessively forceful under pressure may need greater force regulation; one who recognizes a changing situation but cannot reorganize action may require greater transitional force capacity. Failure therefore provides information about the relationship between force capability and circumstance.
Functional pragmatism follows from this orientation toward situated performance. The practical value of a response cannot be determined solely by its technical characteristics or association with a particular Style. A response becomes functionally meaningful in relation to the conditions under which it is employed and the consequences that follow from its use. The same force capability may produce different outcomes depending upon timing, distance, resistance, environmental conditions, the behavior of others, and the practitioner’s force regulatory condition.
Technical knowledge therefore provides a repertoire of possible actions, but the existence of a repertoire does not guarantee adaptive performance. A practitioner may possess numerous techniques while remaining dependent upon familiar responses when conditions become uncertain. Conversely, a practitioner with a more limited technical repertoire may sometimes respond effectively because available force capabilities are well integrated with perception, regulation, and situational judgment.
Embodied learning consequently involves an expansion not only of what practitioners can do but also of what they can perceive, express, regulate, and reorganize. Development does not proceed through a fixed sequence of the Nine States. Rather, it concerns the increasing capacity to recognize configurations, preserve force regulatory options, and reorganize action when existing responses become inappropriate.
The Model therefore functions as a reflective instrument rather than a mechanical decision system. Practitioners do not simply identify a State and then select a predetermined response. Instead, the Model supports a process of situated inquiry in which perception, force capability, expression, force regulation, action, and consequence continually inform one another. The practitioner observes what is occurring, acts within the available possibilities, evaluates the consequences of that action, and modifies subsequent behavior as conditions develop.
The practical contribution of the Nine-State Martial Model consequently lies not in prescribing a fixed way of acting but in making the processes through which embodied agency becomes adaptive more visible, examinable, and trainable. The States provide reference points that make differences in force expression and force regulation easier to recognize, while actual practice remains more fluid and complex than any nine-part representation can capture.
Adaptive Embodied Agency
The concept of Adaptive Embodied Agency provides the broader theoretical interpretation of the Model. Adaptive Embodied Agency is not simply the ability to choose among techniques. It involves the capacity to remain perceptually connected to changing circumstances while reorganizing available force capability, force expression, and force regulation.
This understanding places force capability at the center without treating force capability as sufficient in itself. A practitioner may have considerable physical and technical capacity but limited ability to regulate it under pressure. Another practitioner may possess less absolute force capability but organize available resources effectively within a particular circumstance. Adaptive expertise therefore concerns the relationship between force capability and circumstance rather than force capability in isolation.
Force expression provides the visible manifestation of this relationship, while force regulation provides the organizational condition through which force expression is governed. Adaptive Embodied Agency emerges when the practitioner can recognize these relationships and reorganize them as circumstances change.
The Model therefore treats martial practice as a particularly clear site for examining a broader problem of human action: how embodied agents maintain effectiveness, responsiveness, judgment, and responsibility while responding to uncertainty, pressure, resistance, and change.
Ethical and Institutional Dimensions
The ethical significance of martial action cannot be located in force capability or force expression alone. Force itself is not inherently ethical or unethical merely because it is powerful, direct, indirect, restrained, or decisive. Ethical significance emerges through the relationship among force capability, force expression, force regulation, intention, circumstance, proportionality, consequence, and responsibility.
A practitioner with substantial force capability has greater possibilities for action, but those possibilities do not determine how force capability should be used. Responsible action therefore requires the ability to regulate force in relation to circumstance and consequence. Force regulation is not simply the suppression of action; it is the capacity to govern action deliberately.
This also explains why High Form should not be equated with Soft Style. A practitioner may be highly regulated while using decisive force, just as a practitioner may appear restrained while acting from fear, confusion, or constrained capacity. Ethical analysis therefore requires attention to the relationship between what was possible, what was expressed, how it was regulated, why it was expressed, and what circumstances surrounded the action.
At the same time, Adaptive Embodied Agency does not develop independently of institutions. Training systems, organizational cultures, authority structures, professional expectations, rules of engagement, accountability mechanisms, and systems of reward or sanction influence which forms of force expression and force regulation are cultivated. Force regulation is consequently both personal and institutional.
An organization may encourage practitioners to prioritize decisive action, restraint, de-escalation, technical control, or rapid response. These institutional conditions can shape the repertoire of available behaviors and the force regulatory expectations placed upon practitioners. The Nine-State Martial Model therefore provides a means of examining not only individual action but also the environments through which particular configurations become more or less likely.
This institutional dimension is important because responsibility cannot be located entirely within the individual when force capability is systematically trained and organized by social structures. Institutions participate in defining which forms of force are authorized, which are discouraged, and which are treated as legitimate responses to particular circumstances. Adaptive Embodied Agency is therefore developed through an interaction between individual capacity and the environments in which that capacity is exercised.
Applying the Force Framework Across Contexts
The value of a force model becomes more apparent when it is considered across different contexts in which individuals may be required to manage physical capability under conditions of uncertainty, pressure, and responsibility. Self-defense, executive protection, club security, policing, corrections, and individual military action all involve the possibility of force, but they do not constitute equivalent situations. Each establishes different purposes, authorities, constraints, relationships, and consequences, and these contextual differences influence how force capability is regulated and expressed. The purpose of applying the Model across these domains is therefore not to treat them as interchangeable forms of practice but to demonstrate how the same underlying dimensions of force can assume different configurations according to circumstance.
The practical significance of the Nine-State Martial Model becomes clearer when its Style–Form relationships are considered across different operational contexts. Although the underlying framework remains constant, the demands placed on force capability, force expression, and force regulation vary according to the purpose, legal authority, environmental conditions, and consequences associated with each setting. The six contexts presented in Table 8, therefore, do not represent six different versions of the Model; rather, they illustrate how the same Nine-State structure can be oriented toward different operational requirements. Table 8 identifies the Primary State Orientation that is most characteristic of each context while also indicating the Transitional State Capacities through which practitioners may need to modify their response as circumstances change. This distinction is important because effective force management rarely involves remaining in a single State throughout an encounter. Practitioners may need to transition between modes of force expression and force regulation as the level of threat, resistance, cooperation, uncertainty, or available alternatives changes.
Table 8. Primary State Orientation and Transitional State Capacity Across Contexts
| Context | Primary State Orientation | Transitional State Capacity |
| Self-Defense | Middle/Soft Style + High Form Adaptive force regulation, avoidance, positioning, redirection, and controlled engagement where possible | Capacity to transition rapidly toward Hard Style + High Form (Disciplined Force) when an immediate threat requires decisive intervention, and back toward Middle/Soft responses as the threat decreases |
| Executive Protection | Soft/Middle Style + High Form Conscious redirection, positioning, shielding, movement, extraction, and controlled intervention | Capacity to transition between Soft, Middle, and Hard Styles while maintaining High Form, particularly when protecting another person requires increasingly direct intervention |
| Club Security | Middle/Soft Style + Middle/High Form Environmental management, verbal intervention, positioning, separation, escorting, and de-escalation | Capacity to transition toward Hard Style + High or Middle Form when physical intervention becomes necessary, and to reduce force and restore environmental stability once the immediate problem is controlled |
| Policing | Middle Style + High Form Adaptive engagement combining communication, positioning, assessment, control, de-escalation, and proportionate use of force within legal and procedural constraints | Ability to transition from Soft Style responses such as communication, positioning, and de-escalation, through Middle Style responses such as controlled engagement and physical control, toward Hard Style + High Form when necessary to address an immediate threat; and to reduce or terminate force and return toward Middle or Soft Style as the threat, resistance, or risk changes. |
| Corrections | Middle Style + High/Middle Form Controlled engagement, spatial management, separation, compliance, and restoration of institutional stability | Capacity to transition between Soft, Middle, and Hard Styles as threats develop, while maintaining force regulation within a continuing institutional relationship and reducing force when conditions permit |
| Individual Military Action | Middle/Hard Style + High Form Disciplined force, situational awareness, positioning, coordination, and controlled action under extreme environmental constraints | Capacity to transition between Middle and Hard Styles, and where operationally possible, toward withdrawal, repositioning, or reduced force, while maintaining High Form under rapidly changing threats and mission constraints |
Table 8 also demonstrates why the Model should be understood as a dynamic model of adaptive force organization rather than a classification of occupations or practitioners. A context may have a characteristic orientation without limiting practitioners to that Primary State Orientation, and Transitional State Capacity becomes particularly important when conditions change rapidly. In policing, for example, the ability to move between controlled engagement, assertive intervention, and physical restraint may be required within the same incident, while the force regulatory demands remain continuous even as the expression of force changes. In corrections, security, self-defense, military, and other settings, similar transitions occur but are shaped by different forms of authority, legal responsibility, environmental constraints, and consequences of force. The value of the Model, therefore, lies not in assigning a fixed State to a particular profession, but in examining whether practitioners can recognize changing conditions, regulate their responses, and transition appropriately between available forms of action.
In self-defense, force capability is primarily organized around the immediate management of a threat to oneself or another person. The practitioner may have very limited time to interpret circumstances, determine available options, and act while the situation is still developing. Force expression may therefore involve rapid transitions between avoidance, positioning, physical contact, disengagement, and decisive action. The analytical significance of the Model lies not simply in identifying the amount of force employed but in examining how available force capability is regulated in relation to perceived threat, environmental conditions, intention, and the possibility of withdrawing from the encounter. The exercise of force must also be understood within the applicable state law governing self-defense, including legal requirements concerning necessity and proportionality, which may vary according to jurisdiction and circumstances. Self-defense consequently illustrates particularly clearly that force capability does not determine force expression by itself; the same physical capability may be expressed through restraint, evasion, redirection, or direct physical intervention depending on the circumstances.
Executive protection introduces a different configuration because the practitioner’s primary responsibility may be the protection and movement of another person rather than the direct defense of the practitioner’s own body. Force regulation therefore includes spatial management, positioning, shielding, movement, extraction, communication, and anticipation, with physical intervention potentially serving the larger objective of creating or maintaining an opportunity for the protected person to reach safety. In this context, effective force expression may involve using less visible or less direct physical force precisely because the practitioner’s objective is not necessarily to dominate an encounter. The Model consequently highlights the distinction between force capability and the purposes toward which that force capability is directed.
Club security provides another distinctive context in which force is embedded within a socially complex and rapidly changing environment. Security personnel may have to manage disputes, intoxication, crowd dynamics, boundary violations, and emerging physical confrontations while attempting to prevent escalation. Force regulation in such circumstances may therefore involve continuous assessment rather than a single decision to use or not use force. Verbal intervention, positioning, separation, escorting, restraint, and physical intervention can form part of a changing sequence in which the appropriate response depends on what is occurring at each moment. The use of inappropriate or excessive force may also create legal and civil liability for the security personnel or firm and potentially for the club itself, making appropriate force regulation important not only for immediate safety but also for organizational responsibility. Moreover, unnecessarily forceful or poorly judged intervention may alienate customers and damage the relationship between the club and its clientele. The context demonstrates how force expression can be shaped as much by the requirement to maintain environmental stability as by the immediate physical capabilities of the practitioner.
Policing introduces institutional authority and formal responsibilities that further differentiate force regulation from private self-defense. A police officer may possess significant force capability, but the exercise of that force capability occurs within legal, organizational, procedural, and accountability structures. Force escalation protocols typically provide a structured sequence or range of authorized responses, requiring officers to adjust the level of force to the circumstances and to de-escalate or reduce force when conditions permit. The relevant question is therefore not merely whether the officer can physically control a situation, but how force capability is regulated in relation to authority, necessity, proportionality, public safety, the behavior of other persons, and the changing circumstances of an encounter. The Model can thus be used to examine how force expression emerges from the interaction between individual capability and institutional conditions rather than treating physical action as an isolated technical event.
Corrections present a further variation because force may be exercised within a confined institutional environment in which personnel and detained persons remain in continuing proximity. Unlike many short-duration encounters, correctional situations can involve repeated interactions, restricted movement, group dynamics, and an ongoing requirement to maintain institutional safety. Correctional force protocols may similarly establish graduated responses and escalation procedures, while requiring personnel to reassess the situation continuously and reduce or terminate force when the circumstances no longer require it. Force regulation may consequently involve preventing escalation, controlling space, separating individuals, establishing compliance, and restoring stability while considering the continuing relationship between personnel and those under institutional custody. Here again, force capability cannot be understood independently of force regulation and circumstance. A technically effective action may have different implications depending on whether it resolves an immediate threat, intensifies collective tension, or creates additional risks within a confined environment.
Individual military action provides another distinctive application, particularly in confined environments such as urban combat. At the level of the individual soldier, the relevant analytical problem is not the strategic employment of military force or the operation of large weapons systems, but the management of embodied capability under conditions of extreme environmental constraint, uncertainty, and rapidly changing threats. Confined urban spaces can restrict movement, visibility, communication, and available options while simultaneously increasing the significance of positioning, awareness, timing, and controlled action. The soldier’s force capability must therefore be integrated with situational assessment, discipline, mission requirements, coordination, and the constraints governing the use of force. Force expression in such circumstances may involve movement, positioning, physical control, weapon employment, or withdrawal, but the Model directs attention to the force regulatory processes through which force capability is organized rather than treating the resulting action as a simple measure of physical power.
Across these contexts, the Model reveals a recurring distinction between possessing force capability and determining how that capability should be expressed. The underlying physical capacities of individuals may overlap considerably across different occupations and situations, yet their practical expression can differ because intention, authority, environment, responsibility, and available alternatives differ. The comparison therefore supports the proposition that force is not adequately understood as a fixed quantity or as a direct manifestation of physical capacity. Rather, force emerges through the relationship between force capability, force regulation, force expression, and circumstance.
This cross-context application also reinforces the distinction between the descriptive dimensions of the Model and the particular institutions in which those dimensions operate. Style and Form describe patterns through which force is expressed and regulated; they do not prescribe a particular occupation, tactical doctrine, or professional identity. A similar configuration of Style and Form may therefore appear in very different contexts while serving different purposes and operating under different constraints. Conversely, the same professional role may require different configurations as circumstances change. The value of the Model lies precisely in preserving this variability without abandoning analytical structure.
The comparison consequently extends the concept of adaptive moral embodiment beyond martial practice narrowly understood. Ethical significance does not reside in force capability alone, nor can it be inferred simply from whether physical force is present. It emerges through the relationship between force capability, force regulation, intention, circumstance, and the manner in which action is expressed. Examining these relationships across self-defense, executive protection, club security, policing, corrections, and individual military action demonstrates how a force model can remain analytically coherent while recognizing that responsibility changes with context. The objective is therefore not to establish a universal formula for action but to provide a structured means of examining how embodied capability is governed when individuals must act under pressure.
Conclusion
The Nine-State Martial Model shifts the analysis of martial practice from fixed classification toward the dynamic organization of force under changing conditions. Its conceptual foundation is the distinction among force capability, force expression, and force regulation. Force capability concerns what the practitioner is capable of doing; force expression concerns how that capability is manifested; and force regulation concerns how force capability and force expression are governed through awareness, intention, judgment, control, and responsiveness to circumstance.
Within this broader architecture, Style describes force expression, while Form describes force regulation. Their interaction produces the Nine States, which function not as permanent categories, personality types, or developmental stages, but as reference points within a broader field of embodied action. Force capability underlies the possibilities available within that field, but the expression and regulation of force capability vary according to circumstances.
The significance of the Model lies particularly in movement among configurations. Technical proficiency remains an essential foundation of martial capability, but adaptive expertise additionally requires the capacity to recognize changing conditions, regulate available capability, modify force expression, and reorganize action as circumstances develop. Stress, fatigue, fear, experience, training, environmental uncertainty, institutional conditions, and responsibility may alter both force expression and force regulatory capacity. Mastery is therefore not represented by permanent residence within a preferred State. It is better understood as the capacity to navigate changing conditions while preserving sufficient awareness, force capability, responsiveness, effectiveness, and responsibility. In this sense, the Nine-State Martial Model provides a conceptual topology through which the dynamic character of Adaptive Embodied Agency can be examined.
The ethical implication follows from the relationship between force capability, force expression, force regulation, intention, circumstance, proportionality, and consequence. Greater force capability creates greater possibilities for action, but force capability alone does not determine how those possibilities should be used. Responsible action requires the governance of force capability rather than simply the presence or absence of force. Ethical regulation is therefore inseparable from the ability to recognize circumstances, maintain awareness, control force expression, and reorganize action when conditions change.
The application of the Model across self-defense, executive protection, club security, policing, corrections, and individual military action further demonstrates that force cannot be adequately understood apart from the context in which force capability is exercised. These domains differ in purpose, authority, institutional structure, environmental conditions, responsibilities, and constraints, yet each presents the individual with the problem of organizing available force capability under changing circumstances. The Model does not make these contexts equivalent, nor does it prescribe a single form of action across them. Rather, it provides a common analytical vocabulary through which differences in force expression and force regulation can be examined while preserving the significance of circumstance.
This broader applicability also clarifies the relationship between martial practice and Adaptive Embodied Agency. Martial practice provides a particularly clear context in which the relationships among force capability, force expression, force regulation, perception, circumstance, and consequence become visible, but the analytical problem extends beyond martial arts. The Model does not claim that human behavior can be reduced to nine discrete categories. Instead, it provides a structured vocabulary for examining variation, transition, and regulation within embodied action across different contexts of force.
Martial development can consequently be understood not simply as acquiring greater force capability but as developing the ability to organize, express, regulate, and reorganize capability as circumstances change while remaining functionally responsive and responsible. The central achievement of adaptive martial practice is therefore not a fixed mode of force, but an embodied capacity to recognize what is possible, determine how force should be expressed, govern that expression, and change its organization when the conditions of action change. The Nine-State Martial Model ultimately locates mastery not in a permanent State of force, but in the capacity to adapt the organization of force while maintaining awareness, responsiveness, and responsibility.
Author
Michael Martin has been involved with the martial arts for more than six decades, beginning in the Japanese/Okinawan martial arts for fifteen years and then through the past fifty years with the Burmese martial arts and Muay Thai.
