Martial Arts Fighting: Learning To Laugh Over Assaultive Behavior

We don’t practice martial arts fighting in order to prevent ourselves from being assaulted.

Even predicated on the conviction that if a person assaults me, I will assault him more effectively and therefore be safe, to practice martial arts with the goal of better assaulting the assaulter degenerates the practice into a series of challenges. Each challenge drives its own individual goal of imagining an assault and role-playing yourself assaulting the other person better. In spite of the bravado that is part of today’s cage fighting showmanship, not even cage fighters train that way.

Martial Arts Fighting As A Game

A mixed martial artist I know once told me that when he has been challenged to a real defense situation on the street, it causes him to laugh. He does not come across as a violent or low-class person—quite the contrary. The fact that a challenge to a real situation causes him to react the way it does reveals that his training priorities are where they should be. Martial arts fighting practice is a game. Games—strategic and otherwise—bring out a child-like joy in their experiences. To challenge this man to a fight is like asking, “Would you like to play?” And because the game is fun, imagining the “play” causes him to laugh in anticipation of having fun.

Martial arts fighting practice can be a rough sport. Intentionally falling to the ground as you launch a kick, or moving in for a quick close to jam an opponent’s kick goes against our natural instincts for self-preservation. We have to practice because most of what we do in martial arts does not come instinctively to us. Over time, with patience and diligence, we re-make techniques until we experience them as if they were natural instincts. The same is true with every habit you have learned. You are born with very few habits at the onset of your life. You will eat and clear your bowels without being taught, but nearly everything else you do, from walking to chewing gum, has been somehow learned.

Good And Bad Learned Habits

But there are good and bad learned habits. Practicing martial arts fighting to better assault the other person is a learned habit that restricts your overall ability. It is dependent on specific situations. As long as you are going to be attacked by someone like the one you practice with in the same way as he or she attacks you, the “better assaulter” mindset might work to your advantage. But it restricts the game. There is no room for a change in the rules, a change in your plan, or flexibility in the dynamics of your techniques. If the goal is to assault the other person better, there is no way of defining where “better” is until the you are engaged a fight. If that is the case, it is impossible to practice to the correct situation because the situation will always be different than the practice.

The very best martial artists have always been the most peaceful, not assaultive. The best forms of martial arts practice have always been those that allow you to lose yourself in the habits of practice, to master self-control by abandoning control over yourself. Would you like to experience a simple illustration of this? Stand on a good, padded gym mat in a martial arts stance. Kick your front foot out by hitting it with your back foot and fall to the mat. As you fall, kick out with the front foot. It is a simple drop-kick technique, but if you haven’t practiced it before, you find yourself holding yourself back—not wanting to lose yourself in the practice—preventing yourself from falling. With practice, in time, you will be dropping and kicking with no thought and without trying to control the fall. You will have then learned self-control in drop-kicking by having abandoned control over yourself. It’s an interesting paradox.

Learning To Let Go Of Control

In this same way, we tend to think of a real self-defense situation as something we must have control over, and so we learn and practice martial arts fighting by trying to acquire skills that will allow us to assault the assaulter—in other words, control the other person. A very good example of overcoming this tendency was illustrated in the movie, “The Karate Kid.” Mr. Miyagi, the teacher, has the young student waxing cars, sanding floors and painting the fence and house to the point of exhaustion. The activity also tried the student’s patience. The student, Daniel, had earlier set himself to the goal of practicing punching and kicking on his own. What’s wrong with that? Isn’t that what the bullies were threatening him with? The problem was, the student was trying to practice to specific situations that hadn’t happened, and might never have in just the way he was practicing. Instead, Mr. Miyagi caused the student to become lost—abandoned—in practice just for the sake of the practice itself. The goals were not to block-punch-kick. The goals were achieved when Mr. Miyagi looked at the results of the work and praised him: “It looks good, Daniel-san!” Mind you, he was not praising the student’s ability, but the cars, the deck, and the fence. (The expression on Ralph Macchio’s face when his character suddenly realizes he is blocking punches and kicks is classic. It still gives me chills to watch.)

To abandon yourself in your martial arts fighting practice causes you to let go of your ego—you desire to control others. You begin to practice specific martial arts techniques and strategies for the pure enjoyment of experiencing them. Lost in the fun of practice, you surprise yourself when actually challenged. It is an interesting experience that I’ve known, myself. An aggressor reached for me, and my hand motioned as if by itself, and the experience caused me to laugh. Never, ever in my own practice did I imagine myself being faced by that person in that way.

To truly master martial arts fighting, let go of all thought of assaultive activity. Abandon your ego. Practice for the pure joy of the art itself. Then, when a situation arises, watch as you suddenly amaze yourself. It’ll catch you off guard. You’ll wonder, “How did I do that?” And you’ll be laughing.

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