Since I will never be present when you defend yourself and can never say these few words to you before an encounter in the streets jumps off, I am going to say these words to you now and maybe make a lasting difference in your street fighting encounters. I want you to “trust your training”. I know you may think you know what these words mean but I have added some of my own thoughts, as your coach, to these words, so hang on to your gloves!

“Trust your training” is a lovely way to tell your student that what they have learned a great deal about, they have learned from the best and that they need to calm down before a fight and go slow on the inside and fast on the outside. What that means is that getting in a hurry on the inside is a fool’s game. Trust your training is all about being fast on the outside and slow on the inside. Why?  Because in your training you were taught not to think about your next technique, just to do it.  That means you don’t think, you just do. Just doing is much faster and has less probability of mistakes.

Trust your training is about understanding that the very best of what has come to you has come from fighters now long dead who gave their everything to send technique and drills forward into our life time that you need to remember and use when the time is right. Trust your training is about developing a relationship with your self and your coaches that lets you relax, breath and feel something great when the time is right for you.  What beginners don’t understand is that they are in fact right in front of who they need to be in front of and at the right time of their life. There are no coincidences or accidents. Everything is happening just the way it is supposed to happen and you whether you realize it or not are most definitely in control of it all.

The trick for that beginner is to be sure of yourself and pick the person that you have learned the most from as your coach. Your goal is to understand that you must listen to your self and trust your self. Seeing your training as an force that came into your life and that you would not hear of it any other way is a step on the road to meeting teachers in the most unusual places. If my politics gives you pause for some concern, let me explain to you, this.

Rape is a political act plain and simple. Let me illustrate my point. If politics is the management of many by few, which is any dictionary’s way of defining politics, then me teaching women to utterly destroy their attackers is a political act as well. Think about this, if a man hesitates to attack a woman in her home and rape her because she might be one of my students is he not being controlled by his fear just like all women are controlled by their fear of being raped by a rapist? As a political act, women have the opportunity to double down on my teaching, by teaching other girls or women that are in their circle of friends and family. To my point, is it not a good thing to give women as much power over men as we can generate in our lifetime?  I mean where is the harm in teaching women to be as hard-core a martial artist as we can collectively train them to be? So, if you were to train with me and the thought came into your head about why I am so in favor of really destroying the attacker, not just giving him a couple of taps and running like a rabbit into the night. You ask your self, why doesn’t he show a little mercy to the attacker? Think of it this way, does the rapist show any mercy to the women he rapes and murders? Does he show any mercy to the little girls he buries alive? Does he show any mercy to the women he beats to death with a baseball bat? Does he show any mercy to the girls he rapes and buries in 55-gallon drums? Does he show any mercy to anyone? I don’t think it would be keeping everything in balance if we show those attackers any mercy at all.

And yes this little start to your training is actually a part of your training and I want you to memorize it. Why do I want it memorized? Because this tradition of passing the information on could be taken from you by any number of sources so I want to be sure you copy it down and memorize it so that you can teach it to others when the time is right. Yes I am serious about this training homework that I am giving you.  Neither of us knows what the future holds for any of us anymore than those who died during the 9-11 attacks on the twin towers or any other event that caught people by surprise and they got killed by outside forces

Trust your training means, “your Kung Fu is strong”. Which is something that Kung-Fu practioners say about each other’s abilities, if they are in fact good.  It means that what you have been seeking in learning how to protect yourself, has all along been heading your way for the last three years. What you are seeking is seeking you!

And now your training is at your computer screen waiting for you to decide on weather you want power, skill and the ability to move amongst men and not be afraid of them in the slightest, or you want what you have now. The choice is yours to make.

“T r u s t   your   training”