most sensible counsel or shrewdest advice is to avoid going face to face and toe to toe with skillful adversaries in their own realms of power. Do not get tricked into trading punches with a professional fighter. Do not get conned into chess matches with chess champions. Do not get fooled into popularity contests with people who have no principles when it comes to seducing the masses. Get the chess champ into the boxing ring. Trick the cage fighter into a TV debate. Force the office schemer into a sales contest to determine who wins the promotion.
It is important to acknowledge that if you are not in a refereed contest of fighting skills or a structured play of martial techniques as art performance, there are no consensual rules to protect you. Conversely, in street self protection situations, though there are no rules to limit you, there are laws that govern applicability of your self-defense actions. You are compelled to draw on everything you can summon to put you in the position of advantage. Make the adversaries have to change and adapt to your dictates. Make it hard for them to make it hard on you. You do not have to fight them on their terms.
Chapter Three
FOUNDATIONAL UNDERSTANDING FOR WINNING
It is important to acknowledge the specific differences between self-defense, fighting skills, and martial arts. Some people fail to understand or recognize this important distinction, though. Techniques, tactics, mental states, emotional considerations, laws, and cultural conditions make self-defense on the street a very different challenge when compared to willful fighting in a contest or imitating stylized combat from a foreign culture of ages past. Do not assume a skilled martial artist or fighting contest winner would be adept in a self protection confrontation on the street. It would also be inappropriate to expect every self-defense expert to be an artist in motion. The three areas of training certainly can overlap, but they are not necessarily the same thing and training in one area does not guarantee expertise in another.
Self-defense
Personal protection self-defense training is preparation for winning in situations where you suddenly and unexpectedly find yourself under siege. You do not see the attack coming. Most likely you are not even thinking about fighting. Your surprise and lack of preparation are often part of a predator’s deliberate strategy. In a self-defense scenario, as quickly as possible you need to recognize the attack, overcome it, and escape to safety. In some self-defense confrontations, shrewd psychological positioning and clever verbal response may be of even more importance than top notch fitness or champion level expertise.
Fighting skill
Hand-to-hand combat fighting skill is related to but different from self-defense. When challenged to a fight, you know an assault is coming, and you move into action with the intent of winning the fight. Perhaps escape is neither possible nor the best or most appropriate choice. Perhaps there are others who need your protection. Perhaps you need to restrain a criminal from doing more damage. Perhaps through fighting you send a message that will prevent worse violence in the future. Whatever the valid motivation, you choose to fight when challenged and you intentionally engage your attacker(s) with skill. You willfully stay in the fight with the goal of subduing the aggressor to bring the assault to a close on your terms.
Martial arts as a path in life
Related to self-defense skills (you do not expect the attack…) and combat skills (you know you have to fight…) is a realm of physical, mental, and spiritual training through which practicing techniques of combat is used to facilitate personal development. Through martial arts study you explore lessons grander and deeper than just fighting. Such lessons prepare you to win in all sorts of situations, even those not physical in their threat. In pursuing the path of the noble warrior through martial arts training, your life increasingly reflects the depth of the qualities you seek through your study. The highest goals of martial arts training are most often perfection of character, commitment to bettering the world, and attainment of personal peace.
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