You Should Learn How to Fight
The title sort of speaks for itself on this one, doesn’t it? We’re not gonna lie to you or sugarcoat the truth here, apologies in advance: You don’t know how to fight. It’s OK. Most people don’t. Turns out, there isn’t much of an ‘instinct’ in anyone for fighting. Like many things, it’s a learned skill, something that needs to be practiced and studied to figure out. But unlike many other skills that we all have an outsider’s respect for, for some funny reason, all sorts of people assume they know the skill of fighting when they’ve never stepped in a martial arts school! Why is that?
Well, theories abound as to this blind spot that many folks share. Perhaps it’s the ubiquity of action movies we watch – heroes who simply punch a bad guy once followed by an instant bad-guy knockout. That’s a common one. Or maybe you scratched your way through a scuffle in high school (congrats). Maybe you lift a lot of weights, you sexy hunk of muscle, you.
All of these reasons and many more seem to keep otherwise-reasonable adults trapped with a notion that they would hold up just fine in a fight. But here’s the thing: The bad guy can take more than one punch, and he punches back; your high school enemy didn’t know how to fight either; and for the gym bros out there, as we’ve pointed out before, at a jiu jitsu gym, the weights actually fight back.
Never fear, we’ve got good news! Even though you don’t know how to fight – No, you don’t – this can be LEARNED! And learning to fight can be one of the absolute most fun and enriching experiences you’ll ever find. ‘Jiu jitsu changed my life.’ It’s a cliche because it’s true for many, many people. Your brain is an amazing thing. It can learn the skills of self-defense, ground grappling, takedowns, and control at an incredibly rapid pace.
Of course, over here at Airlock Jiu Jitsu in Bastrop, TX, we’re always going to advocate for jiu jitsu as the strongest base in learning to fight compared to other martial arts – with all due respect. In many fighting situations, we want you to learn how to control and grapple with another body, even one larger than yourself, and take the fight to the ground. In fact, covering this topic is giving us ideas for future blogs about the benefits of grappling over striking in most fighting situations. Keep an eye out for that golden idea.
So, no matter who you are or how much you’ve deluded yourself into the idea that you can fight (sorry, we said we weren’t going to sugarcoat it), you are WELCOME in our little home to come find out how you can learn this magnificent skill that may change your life, or even save it. Come see us anytime at Airlock Jiu Jitsu in Bastrop TX to get started.
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