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Our scrimmage on February 22, 2025, was our biggest yet. Our practitioners were matched with experienced visitors—some with decades of training, full-contact competition experience, head coaching roles, and even training stints in Thailand. As usual, our team endured a marathon of matches with minimal rest, each round tailored to the participants' consent and comfort levels. Notice when they check in with each other, offering encouragement and ensuring mutual well-being. This was constantly happening. The participants watching offered constant positive encouragement. An LMA scrimmage isn't a competition; it's a practice in collective growth, care, trust, and team-building.
Each round lasted two minutes with one-minute rests in between. This video captures the highlights, but what you don't see is the constant dialogue, adjustments, and laughter that filled the space. Hard head contact was off the table, and intensity, in LMA, is always a conversation.
There was a moment when a participant was stunned by a body kick. I kept it in the highlights to show how we adapt to such situations because when things are dynamic, things change quickly. She had asked for higher intensity, and when she was stunned, she wanted to continue. In LMA, psychological safety is as important as physical safety. Stopping the match outright would have undermined her confidence and autonomy. But physical safety is non-negotiable. This is why we treat everything as a game. Not a high-stakes, life-or-death scenario but a consensual, playful space where everyone is there to have fun and grow. Since it's only a game, making changes is not a big deal. As a sportsperson, her partner checked in and was willing to accommodate any changes. As the referee, I allowed the match to continue under modified conditions: punches only, light as a feather. Be competitive without damaging her. Let her fight her way back on her terms. And she did. By the end of the round, she was fine—no injuries, no lingering effects. In fact, no one was hurt that day. Everyone left energized, not drained.
For some of the radicals in the room, this was a new kind of bonding. It wasn't the kind of connection that comes from being thrown together by necessity or shared struggle. This was different. It was about choosing to be there, choosing to move together, not because you had to, but because you wanted to. One radical told me he'd been part of countless organizing groups and collectives, but this was the first time he felt like he was part of a team. That sense of belonging, of shared purpose without the weight of external demands, was something entirely new to him. And that's what LMA is about: creating spaces that energize rather than exhaust, that build us up rather than burn us out.
In a safe environment like this, you learn to push yourself, overcome setbacks, trust your senses, and build power. You make quick assessments, adapt on the fly, and believe in your ability to navigate challenges. Nothing is rigid here. Movements are fluid, strategies are flexible, and every match is a chance to explore new ways of being in your body and in the world. Everyone moves differently, and that's celebrated. Your body, your positionality, your unique way of moving—it's all welcome and makes us all better.
The skills you develop in LMA are hard to put into words, but they stay with you. They show up in organizing, in relationships, in how you move through the world. We don't promise self-defense or unbeatable skills. What we offer is something deeper: the chance to trust yourself, to see evidence of your own resilience and adaptability, and to carry that trust into other aspects of your life.
For us, safety is trust. Teamwork is knowing you carry not just your own efforts but the collective efforts of your team.
You don't have to participate in any of this, and that's what gives it meaning. We do it purely out of our own free will, and that's very rare. Even other radical practices say you have to train out of necessity—it's high stakes. But what does it mean to be high stakes when it's already all high stakes? It just becomes another thing to add to the list of things you have to do when you are subsumed by Western hegemony, capitalism, and coloniality.
You don't do LMA because you have to but because you want to, and that's what makes our practice worth doing.
To access the Liberation Martial Arts curriculum and contribute to the sustainability of this project, consider upgrading your membership. As we deal with the economic impact of the LA wildfires, find other ways to support me here. – Sam
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(I write daily about martial arts and other topics from a liberatory perspective. If you like my work, upgrade your subscription. You can also support me on Patreon or make a one-time donation on Ko-fi. Find Southpaw at its website. Get the swag on Spring. Also check out Liberation Martial Arts Online.)
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