Why I believe the study of martial arts is of tremendous benefit
Adventures Of A Black Belt Sommelier
why martial arts?
[ Silence ] Welcome. Welcome back to Adventures of a Black Belt, Sommelier. I've been thinking a lot since I started this podcast about the martial art aspect of this podcast, Adventures of a Black Belt, Sommelier. I've been thinking about the question, why martial art? Why you should study martial arts? What can you expect to gain from your study of martial arts? You know, they're famous guys like Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris, Sean Claude Van Daum, but you're not going to become Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, or John Claude Van Daum, or Steven Seagal, or whoever you want to name, because you study martial arts unless you were born Steven Seagal, Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, or John Claude Van Daum. Very few people ever have been capable of coming Bruce Lee. With no matter how much they study, no matter who they study with. But what is possible for you to become with study of martial arts? The thing about it is that if you take up a martial art, of course, the first thing is to pick the right school and the right instructor who teach what you want to learn, from which you are going to get the benefits you want to get. You know, I interviewed for the Food and Beverage Directors job at the Red Skulls in Cancun one time. And one consideration for me was, would there be a martial arts school in Cancun that I would be interested in studying in? And I did the research. I found out there was only one. It was a Chodecont school, Chodecont is famously a very, very hard, quote, hard style of karate. I went and met some people there. It was a quonset hut with a concrete floor, no pads. They basically just fought the whole time with no gloves or or head here. And they told me that at least once a week, somebody went to the hospital. That's not what I'm looking for. I don't want to go to the hospital. You know, I've been I've I've I've been involved in wrestling boxing, karate, resilient you to to a keto, so a little bit of a capoeira while I was in Brazil for a long time. And that I can think of, I've only ever actually used any of what I've learned in those studies. In a real world, street, self-defense type situation four times. One of those was a long time ago when I pulled up in front of my girlfriend's house and two guys attacked us with attack me with crowbars. Fortunately, I saw them coming. I was able to disarm them and they jumped in their car and ran off. I think if I hadn't been able to disarm them, well, they weren't the crowbars worked for long for for decoration. They had serious intent with those crowbars. One time, probably 15 years later, two guys came into my restaurant in Nashville with pistols to Robis. Again, I was able to disarm them. I don't think it was the right thing to do. In retrospect, I should have just given them all the money in the cash register and let them leave with it because there wasn't very much money in the cash register anyway because people use credit cards in nice restaurants. But fortunately, I was able to disarm them and they ran off. There was an occasion at lunch during the Christmas season when two of my friends got into it and one of them picked up a very heavy bottle and told my other friend that he was going to kill him. And I was able to step between them and control the war violent one and convince him to put the bottle down and convince him that he'd had too much to drink or he wouldn't be behaving that way and convince him to call a ride to take him home. During COVID, early in COVID, when we all had to wear masks, two guys came into the place where I was working, two very large, probably 30-year-old guys on steroids with wife-beater t-shirts and huge bulging biceps and huge bulging veins in their necks came in without masks and when I very calmly politely asked them to leave or put on the mask that we would provide, they told me they were going to kill, well, they actually told me they were going to snap my neck. Each of them independently told me they were going to snap my neck. So that's a pretty specific threat. There's no way in a fight with those two guys, I would win the fight. They would have killed me if I had engaged with them. I don't think they would have stopped until I was dead. That was how kind of out of control they were. But that's where the real martial arts, part of the martial arts comes in, is, you know, I fought in a controlled environment with some really scary people, a lot scarier than those guys. My Aikido teacher of 20 years was an ex-special forces soldier and national champion weight lifter. He was a scary guy and kind of well-known Aikido expert that you didn't want to train with because he trained so hard. He's a lot more dangerous than those two guys, even though he was about to third their size. When you've trained with someone like Stuart, breeding, Aikido instructor, you stay a lot calmer in the face of threat from somebody like those two guys. And that's really the great benefit is you stay calm in the eye of the story. You don't freak out. So I just, I kept one of them between me and the other one. That's a classic technique. You don't have to fight both of them if you keep them in line. And I put my hand, open hand, not fist, open hand, palm forward in the front guy's face and very quietly, very calmly said, over and over and over, please just leave. Quietly, calmly, non-contradationally, open hand, about six inches from his face. And he would, when he would step forward, I would step back. And when he would step forward, I would step back and I would say, please just leave, please just leave. And you know what? Eventually, they left. The reason that way that the reason that turned out the way it did is because I did not lose it. Reason that turned out the way it is because I stayed calm. If I had engaged in a physical confrontation with those guys, I would not. I don't believe I would have survived, but I know I would have ended up in the hospital. Maybe they would have to, probably not, ever again, half my age, twice my size, and I'm sure on steroids. Or more than that. How many in this, in the wide store slash deli I was working in, how many other people would have got injured, how many bottles of wine would have been broken. We would have been on the front page of the newspaper and all of us would have gone to jail. Because in that situation like that, when the police come, the first thing they do is arrest everybody and then try to figure out who's telling the truth and who's lying because they know, they know that generally nobody's really telling the truth. Even the guy that thinks he's telling the truth, it's only telling his version of the truth. You want to spend the night in jail or you want to just back up quietly saying, please just leave, please just leave, please just leave, please just leave. Do you have to prove your masculinity by fighting with guys, half your age, twice your size on testosterone? I don't. There are the benefits of study of martial arts, flexibility, just general fitness. There's a concept called on chin, which means world awareness. There's a fan of conical kusaku, where you start by doing this with your arms, which is to show that you're aware of everything that's going on around you in all directions, including up and down. That's a great benefit. I had a student who was in London with a group of friends. They were walking down the sidewalk and a guy was coming toward them. She noticed that he didn't seem, he seemed a little bit not somebody you wanted to get that close to. They crossed the street to walk down the sidewalk on the other side of the street, so they didn't have to come close to this guy. Well, he was in the newspaper in London a couple of days later. He was going around stomping women's feet. That guy that she noticed and avoided. What would have happened if they hadn't crossed the street? I had a student, female student, who was getting in the car. I told this story in another episode. I had a student who was getting her car at Target during the Christmas season, and a guy came up behind her and whacked her and had something knocked her unconscious through or into the foreburt and front seat and car got in. When she woke up, he was driving off and her hands and feet were duct taped together and her mouth was duct taped closed. She remembered that I had told in my women's self-defense classes I had said over and over again do not allow yourself to be taken to a secondary location. Whatever you have to do, do not allow yourself to be taken to a secondary location. What's planned there is going to be nightmarish. She remembered that. She started kicking him as hard as she could with her feet that were duct taped together. She just kicked him and kicked him and kicked him and kicked him and kicked him. Eventually, he pulled over on the side of the road, threw her out of the car on the sidewalk and drove off. They found his car about 70 miles away in the woods, her car in about 70 miles away in the woods. Quite sure he was headed somewhere that he had prepared for her. Thank God she remembered not to allow herself to be taken to a secondary location. But the study of martial arts really is just put tools in a tool belt for you. If somebody takes a wild right swing at you, which is generally what happens in a bar brawl, wild right punch, how do you respond to that? If you all you do is duck, he's just going to swing again. What if you step inside the punch and control the punch? You can study that. You can develop that instinct. You can develop the instinct that that's your response. There's tools in your tool belt. What do you do if somebody puts a gun to your head as those guys did at my restaurant in the national? That's a sign that they didn't really know what they were doing. If you put the gun to my head, I can fight back. If you point the gun at me from six feet away, I can't fight back. But I shouldn't have fought back anyway. I should have just given them all the money I had because even if there was a lot of money, I should have just given them all the money I had because it's not worth it. The study of martial arts gives you the self-confidence to stay calm in the eye of the storm. That doesn't happen in a matter of months. It doesn't happen when you get a white belt or a gold belt or a blue belt or a paint belt or a purple belt or a polka dot belt. It happens with years and years and years of study. Bruce Lee did not become Bruce Lee after a year. Chuck Norris didn't become Chuck Norris after two years. I've been studying martial arts for a long time. I studied Aquino with Stuart Brandy for 20 years. I hadn't even scratched the surface compared to what he knows. This mastery of it is. The question is, why martial arts? The answer is it's a question that has a different answer for every person that would pick up, take up the study of it. Some people, they just want to exercise, some people, they just want the flexibility. Some people, they want to be able to put on some padded gloves and putch a pad of some kind to take out hostilities. Some people want to learn to defend themselves because they think the world's a dangerous place, and there's dangerous people out there you might have to defend yourself against. Some people want to become Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris or Stephen Siegel or John Claude Dunne. Those people tend not to stay very long. So my answer to why I'm glad that I've studied martial arts all these years is that it has created in me call a confrontational situation. I am called. I do not make the situation worse by bawling up a fist. If you punch somebody in the head with your fist, it's going to break your hand to start with. If you never do this, there is no threat. It doesn't escalate things. It de-escalates things if you do this. And back up and just repeat over and over and over again calmly and quietly, please just leave. And eventually, if you're lucky, they all leave. Thank you for tuning in to Adventures of a Bike Belt. So will you. [BLANK_AUDIO]