Batman who?

“You know how to fight six men. We can teach you how to engage six hundred.”

You might have seen the seminars where the Sensei fights 4 or 5 students at one time. Most of the time it’s so fake you can see the student fly in the air without the instructor touching them.

Maybe you heard on the news - one person was assaulted by a gang. So, to get back to the title of this article, “How do you defeat 100 opponents at once?” Drum roll please…….

RUN!!!

Okay, this may not be the super ninja tactic you wanted to read about, but hold your judgment off until you finish the article.

If you are facing 100 people intent on attacking you, your chances of survival is so low it’s nearly zero.  Even if they engage you one at a time, eventually your stamina will give.  There are just too many opponents for you to handle.

Image this for a moment, you are in a good shape and you cross train in many different areas of fitness….

So you run and they follow.  Maybe after 500 meters you separate the pack and only 50 are able follow you on foot.  Now it’s 1 verse 50. You just defeated 50% of your opponents.

You run to a river and swim across it.  During this swim half their numbers either give up or are not strong enough to follow.  Now it is 1 verse 25.

You reach the other side of the river and find yourself facing a couple of fences which are 4 meters high.  Since you’ve trained in Parkour Urban Ninja Freestyle running, this is no problem for you.  You hop over the fences easily.  Your attackers are either too tired or not skilled enough to follow.  It is now 1 verse 5.

So far you’ve drastically increased your chance of survival without even throwing a punch.  Where you had a zero percent chance of survival before, your situation is starting to look pretty good.

Still, 1 verse 5 is not quite the odds you’d prefer.  So you take the race to the city weaving through traffic, moving through obstacles, crawling under bridges and over walls until you look behind you and only see one person – a banged up and tired assailant giving chase.

You turn around and see the one attacker left is near exhaustion.  You pass a corner to get out of sight and either disappear or wait to take him out quickly and quietly.

Congratulations, you’ve just defeated 100 opponents!  Bruce Wayne who…

Photo Credits: kevindooley

Originally posted 2010-04-15 03:09:15.

What is mental presence?

Mental Presence: A Definition

When you're sparring with someone, you usually have two ways of interpreting their presence. You have what you see (the physical presence), and you have what you don't see (mental presence). The mental presence of your opponent will partially be shaped by your own interpretation of him. If you're scared, their mental presence will be larger. If you're confident, it will grow smaller.

Whoever has the larger mental presence will often have the advantage in a fight. Mental presence is often boosted when the opponent is not sure about you - uncertainty can quickly turn into fear. When you are much faster than your opponent originally estimated, you gain a boost in mental presence.

How to Develop a Larger Mental Presence

The more confidence you build, the more mental presence you'll have. Of course, this is easier said than done. In order to build confidence, you'll have to practice being assertive. In sparring matches, concentrate on being assertive even if it's at the expense of your fighting skills. It will be important to isolate one skill - your fearlessness and assertiveness - in order to build it up for a while. Once you feel comfortable standing tall and being assertive, bring your skills back into the mix. You should find that you perform much better.

Surprise is the quickest way to build mental presence. If you don't appear strong but your moves have the added strength of assertiveness behind them, your opponent will be more in the dark as to your true abilities. The more uncertainty and surprise you can generate in your opponent, the more mental presence you'll have.

Remember that mental presence comes from within. It comes through the self-discipline to work on your confidence and skills. It also comes from understanding your opponent's mind and knowing how human beings typically react when surprised or caught off-guard. To have mental presence, it's important that you take action as opposed to reacting.

Photo Credits: thivierr

Originally posted 2009-08-17 03:37:16.

Karate Primer.

First, karate is primarily a form of martial arts that focuses on striking, much like Tae Kwon Do. Striking refers to blows you rein down on an opponent through the use of the legs and the arms. Punching, kicking, and blocking are emphasized heavily in karate. If you want to know how to both throw a punch and block a punch, studying karate would be the right discipline to choose. It also introduces more elements than a martial art like boxing in that you can use your feet and legs more aggressively.

Karate also incorporates locks and throws, which gets closer to a more Brazilian jiu-jitsu style of fighting without fully embracing it. You might think of karate as learning how to fight at a medium distance: you aren't locked fully with your opponent, but you aren't shooting arrows at them, either. In karate, you can get close enough to "throw" an opponent, but this isn't always the primary way of fighting.

Karate emphasizes self-defense. By teaching you how to strike and block strikes, it gives you an ability to read a situation and adapt through a variety of self-defense techniques. In other words, you learn how to defend yourself. You learn to strike back so you can disable your opponent, as well as how to take them aground so that the fight can end.

Like many martial arts, much of karate emphasizes self-discipline and confidence that allows you to carry yourself in a more assertive way, hopefully leading to a decrease in the amount of people that want to attack you in the first place. Through training and dedication, you can give off the energy of "someone who knows Karate" and avoid fights before they happen, which hopefully leads to a greater amount of peace both in your life and throughout the world.

Photo Credits: tomer.gabel

Originally posted 2009-08-06 05:36:31.