Learn Strategy Plus #1: How to use pressure.

Pressure is how you win without fighting, and gets badly overlooked.

👋 Welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition🔒 of my Learn Strategy series: Learn Strategy Plus. Each edition goes in deeper into strategy and tactical basics. With a follow up case study.

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I forget exactly when learning to use pressure became important to me in strategy work. So critical that if you don’t do it right, you’ll lose every time.

Pressure is one of my favorite topics in strategy and tactics. Mostly because I find it so misunderstood.

Here’s what I’ll talk about today:

1. Mistakes you’re probably making. You push too hard, too soon, and confuse motion with progress. The effort is real, but it’s spent in the wrong places.

2. How to use pressure. Pressure is steady control over the pace and ground of the fight. You hold positions that matter, choose the moment to act, and keep the other side working inside your tempo. It’s a structure you build long before the decisive move.

3. How you can practice. Treat every engagement as an experiment. Apply pressure in measured in different ways and angles. Train yourself to see and act on openings.

The idea behind pressure in strategy and tactics is winning without fighting. Its maneuvering the opponent into beating themselves.

I’ll start with mistakes you’re probably making.