“IF”

For ex-competition fighters this requires a total reappraisal of what the training is teaching.

I was recently talking with my wife’s cousin Gordon about my life long continued training in Martial Arts.

He is closing in on 60 years of age but for over 20 years, from his pre-teens onwards, he trained and competed in Full-Contact Karate.

Like most ex-Martial Artists there was the  ‘I miss it, and part of me wishes I never gave it up” moment, but when I encouraged him to get back into it there was the also echoed “I am too old now, and it has been so long, that ship has sailed”.

I agree that if you intend to “compete” , especially “Full-Contact”, then there is a cut off point that is age driven.

Not because of age related physical ability, but rather the realisation that everyone you face will be “MUCH” younger, fitter, faster, stronger, and hungrier and as such the chance of life changing damage becomes a real possibility.

A genuine consideration that must be factored in.

But the need for self-defence never really changes, if anything the need is elevated as we become older, and at least at face value, are physically less viable. 

Here is the good news, those self-defence needs are few, relatively simple, and easy to maintain.

‘IF’ we keep up training.

This led to the question of how long can someone be away from training before it diminishes to the level of no longer being viable.

Although this is a classic ‘Horse for Courses’ situation it can help by looking at what happens in sport.

What happens to a sportsman/woman who is out of the game for 6 months?

Do they come straight back into the first team?

On their first game back do they get awarded the Man Of The Match Award?

In our own lives if we get invited to join in a fun run, or a charity bike ride when we have not been involved in these pursuits for years do we just turn up on the day and go for it?

In my own experience I had a 5 years break from golf, when I stopped playing I was a 12 handicap, decent but nothing to boast about, it means I would score around 84 for a round of golf, but on my first round back I actually had a few ‘Windys” , more than a few 3 putts and did not break 100.

When we are talking about sports we can work for weeks on our conditioning and get several warm up games under our belt before fronting up to our first real match.

But when we are talking self-defence there is no weeks of prep, there is no warm up, the situation is more like what we would find 5 minutes before full-time in the grand final against our strongest rivals.

Maybe this is over egging the cake a bit, but self-defence is always match day, and the closest we are to match ready the better will be the outcome.

If we are willing to accept that once we pass 40, no matter what style we play, we are now training for self defence, we benefit from fully understanding the difference between fighting and self-defence, and the different requirements we now expect from our training.

For ex-competition fighters this requires a total reappraisal of what the training is teaching.

The training itself does not need to change, only a reorganisation of priorities.

In competition ‘Fighting Skill’ can be the difference between a ‘W’ and a ‘L’, but in self-defence ‘Fighting Skill’ is not much more than a Toolbox.

If we use our own life experience of Toolboxes to paint this picture,  we take the same toolbox, or something very close to the same toolbox, when we go to fix the wife’s lawn mower as we do if go to tune the family car.

And in most circumstances this is less than optimum.

Thanks to YouTube we can access footage of genuine street violence, we can get a ‘Ball Park’ idea of what and who we will be up against, and if we are honest, it is nothing to be real worried about.

‘IF’ we approach it in the correct way.

It should be obvious that ‘Fighting Skill’ as useful and effective as it most certainly is…

… it is not the ‘SECRET SAUCE’.

Composure, co-ordination, and balance are king.

Not falling over is a game changer.

As I have said many times before, ‘IF we can poke them in the eye, we can push them over, IF we can push them over we can get out in one piece”.

To quote rudyard Kipling…

…If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too;

This is why we train until the curtain falls.