The Brute
August 16, 2009
Recently I encountered yet another person who thought they knew it all about martial arts. He’s one of my students from a corporate class that just ended and they all took me out for dinner that night. While drunk, he started talking about how he is (was?) able to do something like 200 pushups. I told him that that was fantastic! He then told me he did some sort of Japanese kenpo system. To be honest I have no idea what style it was because 1. I had never heard of it and 2. he was slurring from the alcohol he had imbibed.
Well anyway, he then told me that he could beat me in a fight. He knows that my “hobby” is kung fu. He has never seen my kung fu before nor have I really talked about it beyond the extent of “I’m going to my kung fu class this weekend.” I thought it was rather rude that he would hold such an opinion without even seeing what I do, or more importantly, what I can do.
I wasn’t angry because this was not the first time I’ve heard comments like this and also because there’s no point being angry at a guy who’s generally very nice but unfortunately drunk at the moment. I asked him calmly, why he thought he could beat me. He said because he’s stronger than me (because he can do 200 pushups). I actually agreed with him – he is stronger than me. I can’t do 200 pushups. I told him, if we were ever to fight using pushups, he would definitely win.
I then started explaining that in my style, I wouldn’t fight brute strength with more brute strength because, for the reason I had just explained, I would lose. I’m not a very strong person. He still insisted that he would beat me.
One lesson Steve has imparted on me is that sometimes some people take better to a physical lesson rather than a verbal lesson. Obviously I wasn’t going to start beating him up or anything but a simple demonstration would suffice.
I asked him to grab my arm with both hands and push. I deliberately pushed back and let him “win”. I didn’t use my full muscular power because he was drunk and he couldn’t use his full power but I resisted just enough to let him push me backwards. I then reassured him that “Wow you are strong. You are definitely stronger than me.”
Then I told him, “OK this time, push me again but I’m not going to use strength to defeat you.” He obediently grabbed onto my arm again and started pushing. As soon as I felt the “break point” of resistance, I just took a sidestep and watched as he stumbled forward – it’s hard to push against something when it’s no longer there. My point of this was to show that there is more than one way to fight a fight – brute strength being one of them, and using the opponent’s strength against him being another. I didn’t make any judgements on either one because that wasn’t the point.
He got back up and said, “I could still beat you”.
Indeed.
