Being Small in Martial Arts
An important early lesson in martial arts is that it's easier to control your own actions than your opponent's. But if you've spent enough time in martial arts gyms, you know the beginner tendency is to try and lift someone up if they're lying on top of you. It's often futile, but attempting to control others is what occurs to us. It's what's been conditioned. And if we can't control others, we feel like we've failed. I'm failing at sparring; I'm failing at this new martial activity because I can't dictate what my opponent does. So then, what is our initial concept of success? Controlling others. And if we can't, we're failures. How debilitating is that? How wrong is that?
But if you look at animals or small children, they squirm to free themselves when restrained. They contort themselves to exploit any gaps. They understand the game is already rigged. We are not equals. We don't play by the same rules.
If someone bigger is on top of you, don't try to shove them off. Instead, scrunch yourself until you are as small as possible, then slide out from underneath them. What is actionable is you, not them. The shrimp can't move a boulder, but it can move itself. This form of escaping is often referred to as shrimping.
These things don't occur to us because we're conditioned to believe we have all the same rights, powers, privileges, and options as powerful white men. This is, unfortunately, the default even in martial arts: if a powerful white man can do something, so should you. The curriculum is geared for them rather than the weakest, smallest in the room. It's for the lion, not the shrimp. So the powerful can get their way.
If all things were equal, you'd have as much say as they do. But power in this white supremacist capitalist society is asymmetrical. For the weak, our options are much more limited. But knowing that gives us strength because rather than being stuck in the muck of inappropriate choices, we can isolate the decisions we can make. What can I do here and now? We can't rule the jungle, but we can rule ourselves.
Learning how to use weakness as strength is an act of defiance. Isn't that the appeal of martial arts?
Rather than being powerful, be clever. Being clever means recognizing your constraints. If you don't think you have any, that we already live in an equal and just world, then what need is there to be clever?
Your power comes from redirecting your opponent's energy against them and striking when they're vulnerable. Liberatory martial arts is about converting our weaknesses into strengths. Innovations come from limitations. Assess the situation and focus not on what you can't do but on what you can.
Then fight like hell.
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