“Hey brother, could you come up here for a second?”
The tattooed, olive-skinned man with the closely-shaved head standing in the center of the dojo is pointing at you.
“Sure mate.”
You get up and strut over to where he’s standing, under the watchful gaze of 20 other martial artists who have traveled from all over the country and some even as far as London and New York.
“Could you do me favour?” begins the man, in his distinctive accent, which is 3 parts Canadian and 1 part New Jersey wiseguy. “I’m going to stand here, and I want you to take me down, any way you want”.
“Sure”
“And then when you get me down, I want you to beat the living shit out of me.”
“Huh?!”
“Seriously bro, don’t hold back! Take me down anyway you can, then I want you to start pounding on me, and I’m going to try and resist. Double leg, single leg, hip throw, rugby tackle, whatever, I want you to try and run through me like a Mack truck and then go ballistic on my head! It’s cool, I take full responsibility for any physical damage you incur upon me!”
“OK…”
You both step back from each other a little, and in those couple of seconds you quickly scan the guy up and down. Yeah, he’s a well-known self-defense instructor, but he’d be struggling to break 5’9″ and 70 kilos. You, on the other hand, weigh in at a rock solid 105 kilos, can bench press a small car, and have your takedowns so honed you could floor an ape with your eyes closed.
“How hard can this be?” you think to yourself. You’ll scoop him up, drop him on the ground, slap him around a little, and make a bit of an impression on everyone watching, especially that blonde hottie in the pink Adidas top sitting near the kettlebells, hehehe.
You face each other, then begin circling. You feint a couple of times, gauging his reaction, a process you’ve been through a million times before. You feint one more time, and then you feel it – that golden moment of opportunity when your instincts tell you the time is right to pounce.
You explode off your back foot, and launch your left shoulder towards his hips with the kind of force that would rattle a double-brick house. Your timing is impeccable and in those microseconds after your launch, you get that familiar feeling of satisfaction that comes from a beautifully executed shoot. In a split second, you’ll have the guy on his back and be all over him like a rash.
But then it hits.
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