SPACE: THE FINAL FRONTIER.

WHAT THIS SHOWS ME IS THAT MOST PEOPLE ARE TRAPPED IN A MAN-ON-MAN FIGHTING MINDSET, AND THAT SO FEW PEOPLE UNDERSTAND SELF-DEFENCE.

As you are well aware, I like to start the training month with a question and a thought exercise, then build out the training objectives from there. 

One reason is to focus on the decision-making aspect of dealing with violence and how better information and a better understanding of the situation make good decision-making easier.

This month, the thought exercise we are using is to imagine we are sitting in our car at the lights when we hear breaking and then “Kaboom”; someone runs into the back of us- nothing insane, a 40 kph impact. We get out, survey the scene; both cars are damaged.

See it in your mind’s eye, feel it in your gut.

Flip the script: now we are driving and run into a stationary vehicle, same 40 kph impact, same damage.

See it in your mind’s eye, feel it in your gut.

The objective of the exercise is the thing to think about.

It surprises no one that the impact damage is the same if we are the stationary vehicle, the agent of non-involvement or the moving vehicle, the agent of dynamic involvement, but for some reason we are not as comfortable with this when it comes to hitting an opponent.

Somewhere inside, we doubt that the power of our punch is the same if we are stationary and our opponent is stepping in at us as it is if our opponent is still and we are stepping in at them. Think about this; it is a thought exercise after all.

This month’s question is…

Q. How many ways can an opponent attack us?

Our man Salah immediately answered: “ONE”.

And I love that answer, but it becomes really tricky to create a conversation from this perspective, so we settled on “FOUR”.

1. An attack initiated from an arm.

2. An attack initiated from a leg.

3. Attacking by physically grabbing and causing negative manipulation, breaking, twisting, etc. 

4. Attacking by physically grabbing and throwing a body into a wall or onto the floor. Even out of the window.

Whatever we think an attacker can do falls into one of these categories.

The natural follow-on question becomes…

Q 2. Is there a single common denominator that we can exploit to make all options fail?

We can see how Salah was thinking in the right direction.

After some back and forth, we settled on “controlling space”.

After all, if they can’t touch us, they cannot do anything.

This is another situation where we accept that the answer is obviously correct, but boy, does it feel wrong.

Why is that?

More importantly, why do so many people reject this?

I have had this conversation many times in the past, especially with contemporaries at the Academy, where people have put great effort into trying to prove that this answer would fail.

Things like: what if there is a wall, what if they force you into a corner, what if they rush you and other such ideas, to which I would answer…

“Why would you let them do that? Surely our training is about empowering ourselves, making decisions that benefit ourselves; why think for the Bad Guy”?

Even Mr Miyagi told us, “Best defence, don’t be there”.

I do get the doubt; on the surface, being out of touching range sounds like non-engagement, while all of our training is centred around engagement.

What this shows me is that most people are trapped in a man-on-man fighting mindset, and that so few people understand self-defence.

If we agree that the most successful method to defend ourselves against anything is to stay outside of touching distance, why would we ever step into an opponent’s space?

Getting even more problematic, choosing to attack the Bad Guy means that we voluntarily choose to abandon the one thing we know will succeed.

That is a big call.

Here is the game-changing advantage of changing our thinking from fighting to self-defence.

Our first-choice options change from engaging at all costs to moving out of the way, which of course, keeps me out of my opponent’s touching range; taking the blind side takes me out of my opponent’s touching range, and positioning myself behind my opponent pretty much makes me untouchable.

It is a different way of thinking, and it leads to far more effective decision-making.

If you find yourself saying, “Yeah, I get that, and that is exactly what I would do”, there is a possibility that your ego is not facing reality.

Wing Chun does not fight.