Report From The Trenches..

This site is focussed on self improvement with a heavy emphasis on training, and that includes martial arts and combat training. I practice what I preach and so can personally 'road test' what I learn. So how did my training hold up when I was set upon by 4 drugged up thugs?

I'm going to honest... it held up badly. For a rough idea of how badly, yesterday I drank my roast dinner through a straw and today I don't talk; I squeek like Sweep from Sooty and Sweep. So not perfect but in my defence I was rather drunk and the weird thing it I didn't try to fight back, or run, but instead just stood there getting hit in the face. And making what I thought were funny jokes.

So in terms of endurance I did well, and I think they were impressed that it took about seven punches to make me fall over and that I didn't seem to react at all. Thing was that at no point did it hurt, and still doesn't, which meant that rather than run I just stood there saying 'have you hit me? It feels like maybe you did?' followed by 'Stop hitting me!'. I thought it was funny. It wasn't really in retrospect... Kept my honour though...

The thing that annoys me is that I didn't try and fight. If I'd tried I'd almost definitely have still lost (while four were attacking me a lot more were after my friends... who survived scot free damn them!) and maybe have got hurt worse, but I reckon I could have taken two down. Which would have been a much cooler story. This took aboutThe problem was that they gave no warning that they were going to attack like they normally do and caught me completely off guard. After following us the main guy said 'Why you lippin' us?' when I said 'we weren't', I got hit straight in the face. From there I just stood there, for a good two minutes, asking Craig to inspect my eye before getting hit again. And again and again. It wasn't until I went down that my alcohol-addled brain realised it was time to flee and I rolled, yes rolled, away...

Though the extent of the damage may have been partly my fault for innactin. This demonstrates how you can't really prepare for that sort of thing. I couldn't attack him pre-emptively as then I'd have been the first to attack in a situation where he may well have then left us alone, and even getting into a stance could provoke a reaction. If you read my book you'll see the 'step back hands up' technique which would have been very useful. I need to carry that with me everywhere... It also supports my theory that the psychological element is pretty much key in a fight and is the one thing they don't really teach in Martial Arts (being why they're essentially useless). I'll work on it.

At the same time though the real moral of this story is 'get less drunk'. Craig managed to dodge them, and I would have been able to do the same (they were rubbish punches) which would have been great. No matter how good my reactions were normally though they weren't going to work great with that much alcohol in me... So it's key to always be ready. Drinking alcohol is fun, but I should stop at the point where my reactions have become useless.

Anyway what matters now that I'm sober is how I'm going to deal with the situation. I'm seeing it as a learning curve and am going to use the recuperation time to hopefully come back better and work on some new projects. When Green Arrow got beaten to a pulp he went in for training so it wouldn't happen again, when a Saijan gets the crap beaten out of him he comes back stronger, and when Iron Man gets busted he makes a new suit of armour. So that's what I'll be doing, and as I can't eat I'll also be using the time to try surviving on just supplements, you can read how that goes right here. Stay tuned! I'll be back...