Martial arts is about fighting. Although we might talk about many other aspects, from exercise to spirituality, it would be incomplete to ignore the full meaning of the term, “martial art.”
But this post is not about how to take someone down or to recount injuring someone. That would be grotesque. Instead, this is about the logic of fighting that wasn’t apparent to me before I trained.
The first thing I learned was how to fall and roll. No one can go through every fight without being thrown, my master told me. He was right. I was once caught by a leg sweep so violent that it threw me six feet in into the air. I was horizontal and floating for a second before I fell on my back onto a concrete floor.
I learned to always hold my hands up. I was taught to put my strong leg back. That narrows the area where an opponent can attack. I kept my knees bent and learned to be mobile. I was told to lower my chin and open my eyes. All along, my master shouted: “Get closer! Get closer!” This seemed insane: The other guy was trying to hit me! But the idea of getting closer was to move inside the other person’s defenses.
I got hit. Some parts of a body can take a strike, while delicate ones can’t withstand a strong blow: top of the head, back of the head. Eyes, nose, ears, mouth, jaw, chin, throat, heart, solar plexus, liver, spleen, kidneys, groin. You have to defend all of them. Your joints are vulnerable to being twisted or struck: wrist, elbow, shoulder, knee, ankle. Moving or rolling with a blow is better than take a strike squarely. It dissipates the force.
My master loved to talk about hitting pressure points. A good martial artist, he said, might have one or two that they defend carefully, but they don’t need to defend anything else.
“Where are my vulnerable points?” I asked.
“You? Anybody could hit you anywhere, jack.” Oh.
Look at the list again. Those are all targets on an opponent too.
I learned that no one can hit or kick me without opening their own defenses. Granted, they may be swift or feint well, but for every strike, no matter how fast, there will be a commensurate opening. I had to learn know how to anticipate them. It’s a wasted effort to hit an opponent’s blocks, or to hit them where they’re heavily muscled. Movements must count.
My opponent and I have the same two arms and two legs. Same vulnerable points at risk. You might say it’s a matter of who’s younger, faster, or has more techniques. But it’s more than that. It’s often a matter of who’s better practiced.
Every fight is a risk. That’s why it’s better not to fight. I learned that even an awkward, smaller, and seemingly less-clever person could still deliver a hurting blow. Often, they were so unconventional that they didn’t conform to my expectations. I might have gotten in a flurry of blows, but they then delivered their one desperate punch.
You can almost always avoid a fight—unless you happen to meet a truly malevolent person. Then you must put them down. All of this is martial arts. I study to fight precisely so I don’t have to fight.
I used to live in ghettoes and barrios because that’s all I could afford. I was on the bus late one night when a young man got on with a Chinese double-edged straight sword wrapped in cloth. He sat down.
“That a sword?” The homeboys asked. The young man only nodded.
“You gonna cut a motherf—kr in half?”
Another joined in. “Why you carrying a sword unless you going to cut some motherf—kr in half?”
This went on for half an hour. The young man said nothing.
When he got to his stop, he stood up calmly and got off. No one tried to stop him.
Good martial arts demonstration.