Staying grounded in reality
As well as being a martial
artist I am also a bit of an amateur writer. So I have a bit of an active
imagination. I constantly have to keep my head in check when I think of self
preservation scenarios. So the other day I was thinking about my two favorite
targets, the groin and the throat. They compliment each other so well, hit one
the other opens up and vice versa. So I am thinking about this and my brain got
ahead of me again....well this is how it went down in my head:
The idiot in front of me is still going on about how he is gonna
kick my ass. Frankly it is starting to annoy me.
"So we are gonna fight and you are gonna kick my ass, is that about
right?” I ask with what I hope is an air of casual indifference.
As soon as his mouth opens in an affirmative, my left hand whips
out, the web between my thumb and forefinger connecting solidly with his
trachea. His hands fly to his throat in some primal attempt to hold everything
in place. As his back arches backward while he gasps for air, I step forward, on
an angle, in a deep stance reminiscent of Zenkutsu-dachi. I exhale forcefully as
I fire my fist towards his groin. My vertical fist lands flush on his sacred
member and he pikes faster than an Olympic diver. As I step back, he crumples to
the ground like a marionette with its strings cut because, unlike Pinocchio, he
was a real boy.
I wrote that a while ago to document one of my many forays in to martial arts fantasy. I read it every once in awhile to remind myself of the differences between how combat really goes down and how we want it to go down. I am willing to bet I am not the only one who has indulged in the kind of imagination like the above scene. Such fantasy is in part of our heritage and has always surrounded the warrior arts.
You have all seen the movies where the hero dispatches the bad guys all the while maintaining perfect technique or where the hero dispatches 6 bad guys with 6 shots from his revolver (all head shots of course). This is the standard picture presented to us in fiction and it isn’t new. You find this kind of “super hero” in the Epic Fantasies of a millennium ago. The trend continues up through Tolkien to Comic books, Kung Fu movies and Dirty Harry.
The main reason this has survived is because we like to picture the extraordinary. No one wants to fantasize about being average. If I made a movie about a hero who fires 10 rounds and maybe gets one hit in the heat of a fire fight or fights like a girl clawing and scratching with his only goal being survival, would you want to watch it? (Hollywood movie producers, attention: If you do drop me a line). Probably not, you could see that by taking a trip to New York.
This carries on into our own thoughts because we don’t like to think of ourselves as ordinary. We like to think we are better than the scum that may attack us. While we may be better socially and morally, it is hard to take comfort in that when you are preparing to defend yourself physically. As a result, we tend to picture ourselves better martially as well. This is why we often see people practicing against the single over committed attack or the tactically stupid rush attack. Martially, the common street thug is probably more experienced than you and he may even be better trained than you (although probably in an informal street “style”). He has probably learned his lessons well in the criminal school also known as prison.
If you wouldn’t attack with a single over committed round house punch why do we assume an experienced street thug would? It’s because we are better than he is, at least in our heads. We have to be better because we are afraid of him. In our heads we force him to rely on stupid techniques because we can defeat those attacks. Better yet we can defeat him soundly and retain our dignity thus proving ourselves superior to this common street trash. In short, it makes us feel better.
The problem with this, of course, is that the “street trash” we look down upon doesn’t give two shakes about how we feel about our selves. All he cares about is himself and what the beating he is about to give us can get him. By massaging egos rather than practicing to protect ourselves, we have given him the edge. This has to change. We need to change.
The first step is confidence. A person with a lack of confidence is a breeding ground for fear. A lack of confidence causes us to massage our ego because we are afraid to confront the truth. Confidence can only come from realistic training that pushes past your personal boundaries and shows you what you are capable of. Armies every where use the same concept during their training. They push the soldier past their breaking point until, like a phoenix rising from its own ashes, they can arise stronger, more confident and able to do their job regardless of the obstacles in front of them.
We need to do that with our training, we need to do that with our fantasies. Rather than training to easily defend against an attack, train to survive a vicious assault. Rather than fantasize about defeating an attacker so easily it would make Steven Seagal proud, visualize digging deep and overcoming the odds to survive. We all need to add a little truth to the equation. We will feel much better for it. Trust me; you can do it, you just have to want to.