Don’t be a martial ass-ist

Just because you know a bit of karate, it doesn't mean that you're some kind of superhero all of a sudden!

A few years ago, my sensei, Jason Smith recounted a story to the class that has always stuck with me. It was about a female student who walked home each evening. In her path stood a wood, which, because it was dark and potentially dangerous, she always walked around, adding extra time to her journey. After training with GKR for a while, she came up to her instructor and enthusiastically announced that since she’d started training, she felt safe to walk home through the wood. Naturally, her instructor was alarmed. A little bit of karate training did not suddenly turn her into super woman. She was still almost as vulnerable to attack as before she started training. After all, if three men jumped her and started to attack her, how much use was a few months, or even a few years of karate training going to be? Sure, she might get in a few digs, and even injure one or more of her attackers, but then she would probably be done for. She totally misunderstood the point of learning martial arts.

Sure, it is there to help you feel more confident, and to give you some options in a violent situation, but it’s not there so that you can be foolhardy! We teach kids in class not to use their skills to attack others, but deliberately putting ourselves into dangerous situations is almost as bad.

This week Malcolm Stewart from Boronia dojo in Melbourne sent me this story, which he reckoned should be the first entry in a new Darwin Awards section of the site:

‘Like the time a sensei was asked to hand over the evening’s fees, even whilst he was still dressed still in his gi and black belt.

Mugger, "Hand over the till I know kick boxing!"

I believe that GKR still received that evening’s fees so I guess you can work out the result'

It’s a classic example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. The mugger obviously thought that his three months of kick-boxing training (or whatever), suddenly empowered him to take on the world. I guess he knows differently now. The thing is; you can just never tell how tough a person is just by looking at them.

When I was 19, I was in the army and I had a friend called Jon, about whose background I knew nothing. He was a tall, skinny, weedy looking guy, and one day as he was walking back to our quarters across a stretch of grass, I ran up behind him, and uttering my best Bruce Lee kiai, I leapt up to deliver a double flying head kick (stopping short of contact of course...). Things didn’t work out as planned because he turned did some hokey block and before I knew what was happening, I found myself lying flat on my back on the grass. I didn’t really know martial arts at all at that stage (except Judo), but he clearly did. Thank god I wasn’t genuinely trying to fight him!

Anyway, the point is, martial arts don’t make you a superman, and even if you can handle yourself, you just never know if the person before you is a tenth dan with a lifetime of experience behind them. Effective martial arts starts in the mind as much as the body. If you deliberately put yourself in danger because you have a yellow belt or even a black belt, then you may have some painful lessons ahead of you...