When someone threatens you can say and do nothing.
Just look at that person directly in the eyes and remain quiet.
As they progress with their threats etc they are revealing more and more about themselves, including weaknesses in their character,
and if people are witnessing this event the aggressor will want to look good in front of them and will mouth off, hopefully telling you what they can do as they threaten you more

– in all this you learn a lot about them, they get frustrated and angry that you do not respond – they want to see fear to give them courage to attack, and they want to hear what you have to say in response to their aggro behaviour
– if you give nothing away the they have no idea what they are dealing with, and with that they are more hesitant to attack.

But if they do attack they are to be careful so that in front of the crowd who they have made themselves out to be the big hero in front of, they don’t want an instant knockout 🙂

The best defence is to try to decelerate the situation and calm the person down.
This means don’t do anything to make the other person behave more threatening or to upset that person.
A lot depends on waiting and seeing what developers while also mentally and physically preparing yourself just in case the person threatening you gets up enough courage to attack you.

There are many normal stances where your hands, body language and face give away an impression of a submissive person, yet in real life you are readying yourself for an attack and will spring into action at the required moment. If you have no self defence training, get some, even from the Internet.
Any form of defence is better than none at all and just being beaten up.

It is the Repetitive Action, repeating a move over and over again that installs the move deeply in our memory.

When you practice a single martial arts block say abut 100 times in a training session you get your body used to the movement and it is the repetitive use of that movement that makes it become an instant act when someone tries to attack you from that area. Repetition is one of the ways that we learn.

Say you are in the ring with someone and that person hits you in the same place over and over again, the pain, being annoyed at the pain, the attacker forces you to come up with a block for that action – this is natural.

When you study a fighting technique you are shown ways to avoid getting hurt before you ever are hurt in that place in real life.
Practicing that block or strike repetitively prepares you for an attack from that angle.
Like as has happened to me a few times, a person may try to grab me, or hit me for fun, and I dodged without thinking then they subconsciously are warned that I dodged and they missed, and they realize that I know how to dodge/block/fight. They may not saying anything, but they will never attack you either.
They may talk big about beating you up, but never to your face.

Once a 6 foot guy far heavier than me came up behind me to whack me on the right shoulder, but instinctively without thinking my right arm swung around and deflected his arm and he freaked out because he couldn’t figure out why I was able to block and I hadn’t even turned around.
Its like that.
I just gave him a big grim and walked on. But it was enough to scare him and put him off attacking or fighting me in the future.

Martial arts is far more effective than boxing due to the user using their whole body and even weapons in the fight.

Through repetition and an understanding of the how’s why’s, and the reasons for the techniques used one becomes effective in self defence and attack.

Your hands are faster than your feet, but your feet are more powerful on impact.

When the Japanese had invaded Okinawa, the locals were forbidden to fight, weapons were taken away.
So the locals developed a way to fight so that they were fast, effective and could take out a fully armed swordsman, even one on horseback, with no weapons at all.

The Japanese disliked and feared martial arts, Karate, open hand fighting, so much so that they killed the entire family of anyone found practicing martial arts.

The armoured swordsmen of Japan had gaps in the bamboo armour (like at the elbow to allow for moment of the arm at the elbow) and the Karate fighters would attack in those gaps probing for pressure points to help disable the swordsman and then to disable them or kill them.
Very effective powerful jumping kicks were used to knock a swordsman from Japan off his horse so that he could be beaten on the ground.

Many things are to be learned.
For instance one can learn blocks, attack moves, but also must learn distance and how to cover ground quickly, to measure up the distance to the opponent right in front of them or the kick will not find its target.

I have always found that looking directly in the opponents eyes allows me full coverage of the opponent and their moves.
You can see, sense, and get used to certain body movements and what attack and defence moves your opponent is about to use.

Repetition makes you fast and the moves instinctive, natural and the arms, legs, body, all just flow with the movements needed for attack and defence.
In time the learner becomes surprised at how they respond to an attack without even thinking of what to do, they just instinctively move in an effective manner doing exactly what needs to be done to protect themselves or people whoa re with them.

“Usually the smaller person has the advantage because he is closer to the ground and can maneuver more quickly.
The taller person, because of his farther distance to the ground and his physical weight, would be slower than his smaller counterpart.”
– Benny Urquidez.

There are two forms of strength, physical and the power within.
I have personally wrestled with weight lifters and beaten them.
One reason is that big bulky muscles tend to be impractical and restrict body movements,
and the other bulky muscles are not necessary strength, they are for looks.
Bulky muscles can shorten ones reach. Some weight lifters and people who use weights cannot straighten their arms due to their weight training bulk.

Your Weapons are your body.
Anything on your body can be used to defend yourself against an opponent, especially if there is a need to fight your way out of a tricky situation.
As you practice you will find, as I did, that your mind can come up with new ways to defend yourself, and you can twist, block, move with a natural speed and precision that you never knew existed.

You will also do things that you never knew that you could do.
Once an opponent was coming at me with two sticks, one in each hand.
On movies I had seen people kick sticks out of a persons hand but had never even practised this myself.
But on this day I easily kicked both sticks out of the persons hands with the one legwith two swift short kicks, one after the other,
leaving my opponent looking stunned without weapons anymore to attack with.

With martial arts training you gain more balance, and control of your body, and because of this and a certain looseness to your movements you can take on moves that you have never tried before, but very successfully. This is very satisfying, and gives one much more confidence being successful in moves that they had not even trained in yet.

I was pleased to learn from the Benny Urquidez training course that he also uses music to train with.
I find music makes the work fun and exciting as well, and helps one develop some rhythm.
When I cycle and get home I use weights and martial arts and keep my Bose music player playing music as I workout.

The more martial artists you talk to the more you will learn about the other martial arts, the ones that you have not experienced yet, and you can be shown moves that may surprise you because they had not yet occurred to you.

A lot of Benny “The Jet” Urquidez’s opponents are more muscular, taller and have longer reach, but the pure enthusiasm, refusal to lose and stubbornness in Benny has him fighting like a lion, his opponents learn the hard way.

One of the biggest mistakes they make about Benny is his height.
I am forever amazed at how tall guys are so arrogant about their height and they fool themselves into thinking that longer reach and height guarantee them a win.
If you watch martial arts fights you will note than many short guys thrash taller guys, and this is because of the taller guys foolish belief that height makes him
superior and also because tall guys are traditionally slower, they move slower, punch slower etc.

Martial arts is far more complete, and more lethal than boxing.

Benny is the gentleman of the sport as well, he knocks down his opponent, pulls him up off the ground then gives him a hug, and then knocks him down a little while later.
His speed is amazing.
He breaks the rules of always having your guard up, and because he didn’t he rested his arms a lot between each bit of the action, giving his opponents the illusion that he is a sitting duck and they can just be tempted to have a go and then Benny thumps them good and hard.
Benny is going backwards, with his guard down, giving the opponent the illusion that Benny is tired, scared, backing away from the fight, etc, and the opponent has to cover more ground to get to Benny and then Benny thumps him good and proper awakening the opponent from his dream of an easy kill.

Another thing I noticed about Benny is that at the end of the fight when the opponent is tired Benny stands in the middle of the ring and attacks from a position off strength while his oponent is trying to constantly avoid benny, so he dances around, does careless tired kicks and punches leaving him tired and Benny withmore energy.

Chopping down the tree, along with the Thai of hitting the leg, Benny was good at kicking the opponents body often in a battle and eventually wearing the opponent down.
As with Chopping down the tree the opponent may not even realise what is really going on until the full effects of being constantly hit in the same area by such a powerful weapon as a muscled leg.
With Benny there is a lot of psychological warfare as well as sending messages that are not true, confusion, many smiles, and especially complimenting his opponent when the opponent gets within Benny’s guard and hits him, it all adds up to a weird experience for the opponent and make them struggle to have a strong working plan to defeat Benny.

Many of Benny’s opponents were arrogant, like the Japanese who saw Benny as some fake American martial artist who was not up to the grand standards of the Japanese martial artist who were fighting in traditional forms, this was the reason why Benny defeated them, because they made the serious mistake of judging him as weak, easy to destroy and were cocky enough to think that
they could do it. Always remember, that in fighting the more prideful, arrogant and sure of themself the opponent is the more easily they can be taken down and given a good lesson.

Anger is also a good weapon to have on the fighters side.
Chuck Norris was about to lose a world title fight and his opponent just kept running around refusing to fight and Carlos (Chuck) said something to make his opponent angry and the opponent flew at him and Carlos sorted him out quick smart and it was all over.

When on security patrol people who came up against me would be put off fighting because of the uniform, also because I represented authority, and also because of how I carried myself.

I had an awesome event where I found some 20 year olds stealing.
They threatened me, two against one, I laughed and said, “Well, here we are, right here and now, lets do this!” and I motioned them to come to me around some obstructions between them and I, and instead of fighting they ran off.
When I talked to the Police later on I asked if I was allowed to physically hold them and they said that it was better to leave them and let them go – this just made me angry, but on another occasion a Policeman chasing some car thieves told me that if I were to see them then grab them and hold them for him 🙂

Sparring is a joy. My first public fight was in a Dojo and when we finished, I won, and the Sensei I was fighting and I got a standing ovation 🙂

Chuck Norris was asked to fight world boxing champion Mohammad Ali and Ali was all for the fight but Ali’s wife, a martial artist was listening on an extension phone and she said that Carlos would kick his but and she told Ali to not fight, so he didn’t. Boxing is not all round fighting,it has many restricting rules, while Benny’s type of fighting is more free form, more at ease to use the whole body.

Full body fighting feels more natural, it is easy when you can call in any part of your body, all your limbs, to use as a weapon, to block, to defend and attack.

With drunks who threatened me I would just walk straight up to them and they would often keep yelling, but then would back off because they realised that I was not fazed and wouldn’t back down,so they did, and like youths who ware too afraid to take you on face to face when at a distance they would often yell abuse and sound tough, but only from a decent distance ensuring that they won’t get hurt.

I am a very strong believer in not letting your opponent have any clue what they are getting into if they want to take you on in a fight.
But in general, in normal life, don’t let people see and know what you can do.
It is far better to let them go on, yell, be abusive and just stare at them, not wavering your gaze and just letting them know that you are right there in front of them and if they want to go further you are not walking away, you are not shaking, and you are just observing them waiting to see what happens yet according to their next move, not yours.
Never, ever let them know what you are capable of or that you will fight.

Many fools will take your stance as cowardly and many have found out afterward that this was a big mistake.

Wisdom is learning how to use anything as a weapon of defence or attack, anything. arrogance makes people see you with a small stick ad think that you are a fool, until the stick is embedded into their thigh or body.
Anyone coming at you in a threatening manner with anything in their hands is to be taken seriously, and regardless of what they say their actions should be considered an attempt on your life and therefore your defence should be protective and your follow up to take them out of action in any way that you can to protect yourself and those who you love.

The Kata is a good way to train the body, keep fit, be confident and also teaches us how to react to multiple attackers.
The moves become natural with time and before you know it you have blocked on one side and kicked on the other sorting out a couple of opponents with the minimal amount of effort and in a second or two. Another important point is that the mind and eye becomes trained to move at speed to do a job, fast and efficiently, with precision.

Stick fighting is often thought of as using a stick as a sword.
So if you hare a stick fighter and have a sword in your home you can use the sword with the same moves as your stick fighting moves and you become lethal indeed.
If you us a staff, bo, you can use any length of stick to fight with once you have the idea how to hold the staff, the blocking, thrusting and blocking moves, its all
good, and you are good to go. Using weapons such as this are helpful if you are hurt on one arm, or you have an injury before you fight.

You know that you are doing well with martial arts when the moves become natural and you strike, block, move without thought, your body just reacts with speed and accuracy and before you know it you have snacked your opponent, aggressors, or defended yourself without really even being conscious of your effort or moves.

All the best from
James M Sandbrook.