HOW TO AVOID ATTACK
Tai-chi-Chuan teaches you how to avoid attack on the street and to make it difficult for a sparring partner to defeat you in class. Even if you are not strong or are not used to fighting, there are ways you can thwart the attacker’s efforts.
A mugger is looking for an easy attack on someone who won’t or can’t fight back. He mugs for a living and doesn’t want to get hurt “on the job”, just like anyone else. The mugger must assess the physical abilities of his victim as well as the victim’s state of awareness.
There are three qualities you can develop to lessen the chances of becoming a victim. The first is the alignment of the body. If your body is not aligned properly you are probably not involved in any physical activity that requires coordination. The mugger can sense this. Any training, such as Tai-chi, Zookinesis, Yoga or Pilates can teach you the proper alignment of the body. Even the use of such physical therapy aids as the foam roller will improve your posture. This will also improve your overall health.
The second quality is the fluidity of the body. If your body is stiff and tight, you probably can’t move very well and certainly can’t run after the attacker. A person who walks fluidly and is well connected to the ground may offer the mugger trouble. If your body seems bouncy and alive you may have the energy to run after him. The training methods mentioned above as well as such activities as trampoline work will bring that fluidity to the body. Trampoline, Zookinesis and the animal forms of the martial arts are especially good at adding that bounciness to the body.
The third quality a mugger looks out for is awareness. If you are aware of what is going on around you, you can prepare for an attack. Strong awareness also shows that you have had some training, as the awareness of most people is very dead. All of the above training helps with awareness, especially the Push Hands exercise of Tai-chi, sparring in general and the Zookinesis exercises.
In a classroom situation there are ways to thwart the sparring partner as well. Most fighters concentrate on the opponent’s fists and feet and sometimes elbows and knees as well. But they don’t concentrate on the space between the sparring partners. Proper Tai-chi training teaches you to move into the open spaces so that the opponent is jammed. You should be more interested in the spaces between you than in the strikes of the partner. Let his strikes trigger you to move into the open spaces where you can easily deliver your own strikes.
This requires that you don’t keep moving forward and back as with most styles of fighting. You stay in and don’t allow the partner space to move or even time to relax and catch his breath.
Another way to quickly tire out the partner is to make his attention move rapidly. Most people have very weak attentions. While a properly trained martial artist has a “field of attention” so that he can deal with many things going on at a time, most have a “single-pointed attention” which can only be in one place at one time. That person’s attention has to jump from one place to another and it gets tired.
So you should strike to different parts of the body. You can punch the legs as well as the head and body. You can integrate kicking with the punching rather than using kicking for a while and then switching to kicking. Add a little bit of grappling as well, just for a second or two, here and there and then go right back to punching and kicking. If your partner cannot predict what you will do next, his attention is uncertain and wears out quickly.
Keep the body fluid. Allow your hips, lower ribs and elbows to rotate in small circles and allow the head to reflect this movement. This will allow you to respond quickly and will make it difficult for your partner to aim. It will require his attention to follow your movements and most people cannot do that for long.
These are but a few simple ways that proper Tai-chi training can teach you to be uninviting to attackers and to make it difficult for an attacker to defeat you.
