The Adversarial approach

I am a huge information whore. I love my training and fight tapes. I read everything I can about what my interests are. This is not so I can imitate but so I can figure out how to defeat something or get an idea of what might be next.

If you emulate what the best just did you are behind. The best are ahead of you. By the time you figure out what they just did they will be a few moves beyond. My goal has always been to defeat what the best do with something new and to try and see where they are looking to go next. I don’t want to be a follower. I want to lead.

If you happen to be the best you need to push past where you are in order to maintain your lead. You can’t be complacent.

New ideas come from those that see beyond right now. You have to see potential then act to make it a reality. This is what makes new things happen. We can’t repeat all the time we need more. This is what makes life exciting and keeps us motivated.

You can never limit yourself to what you see around you. What is there right now is leading to something else. What you see is already in the past. What we need to do to lead is to find what will be the winning strategy for tomorrow.

During my entire career I would look at who was winning whatever venue I was fighting in or putting fighters in. I would look for who and what was winning. When we were active in the Sabaki Challenge tournaments around the country we would have to be aware of sweeps and throws that dominated the scoring at these events. Our dojo was a dojo filled with bangers - people who liked to hit and hit and hit instead of sweep or throw. Instead of changing our philosophy we just reworked it to counter what our opponents strengths were.

In the 7 years that we were active in these events we hardly scored with sweeps or throws and we only lost 4 fights by them. Most of our matches were won by points scored by hard contact. Strong kicks to the legs and body punches were are weapons and we won with them.

I really enjoyed this challenge. Knowing that we couldn’t just unleash our attacks because of the threat Enshin Karate stylists posed made us rethink our game and adapt it for success. If we stayed where we were comfortable we would have never been challenged in a way that promoted growth.

Opponents are my friends. They have always motivated me to be better then I would have been on my own. In fighting and in life it has always been good to have competition. Having someone looking to do something better or more effective then us will push us or break us.

The martial arts business down the street motivates me to do mine better. I am sure I motivate him as well. We are locked in a duel to capture the marketplace. This is good because we both have to stay active promoting and growing our businesses. As mine grows so will my opponents. The marketplace is big enough to service multiple schools. We push each other to service our communities more effectively and offer more variety.