Chapter 6

With Mom deciding to give in and just take a judgment in court and living with the restrictions from the restraining order, I was a mess by the time I got to the Blue Ridge for training on Friday. I’d managed to hold it together the day before, but apparently, I had hit my breaking point, because Chef finally noticed.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to pull your head out of your butt and get it together. We’re only halfway through warm-up, and you’ve been half-assing it the whole time. I can only do so much. If you don’t want to put in the work, then there’s nothing I can do to help you.”

“Sorry, Chef, I’m just distracted by stuff.”

“That’s fine out there, but once you’re here with me, that all stays out there. We’ve talked about the tenets several times, but it seems you’re still having trouble with the fourth one.”

“Perseverance.”

“Correct. When you train, you keep your eye on what you are trying to achieve, regardless of the distractions. You must push past the things that keep you out of balance, not just here,” he said, thumping his hand against my head and then against my heart, “but here also. Luckily for you, I have a solution to get you back in balance.”

“Sweat it out of me?”

“Sweat it out of you,” he said, smiling.

For thirty minutes Chef tried his hardest to get me to forget everything that was bothering me, and it worked. It was one of the reasons I liked coming and training with him. When you’re really working out hard, the world kind of slips away.

When he finally finished what he liked to call warm-ups, and what most people would call a full workout, he surprised me by going to a large box he’d put near the steps that had all kinds of handles sticking out of it. Reaching into it, he pulled out a baseball bat, a baton-looking thing, and a metal bar.

“We’re going to start expanding what you’re learning. You’re still going to have to do time on the bag and the Mu Ren Zhuang, but it’s time I started introducing some new things for you to think about.”

The Mu Ren Zhuang was something he’d introduced me to just before Christmas that I usually just called The Post. As my nickname for it implied, it was a big wooden post attached to a large, firm base. It had wooden spokes sticking out at various angles wrapped in what was, unfortunately, very light padding. Unfortunately, because I used it by stepping in between the posts and striking with elbows, forearms, or knees against the wooden extensions.

What I found interesting, the first time I used it, was that the sticks extending from the post weren’t rigid. They were actually slats mounted loosely so they had a springiness to them. This helped absorb some of the impacts and make it hurt a little less, but it also made it feel more real. Of course, it didn’t absorb enough to keep me from getting monster bruises on my elbows, shins, knees, and forearms. Chef said that, like the bag, repetitive practice gave me the muscle memory for strikes, so I wouldn’t need to think about it before I attacked. He believed that the more muscle memory I could form the better, since in an actual fight there wasn’t time to actually think about what I needed to do.

It wasn’t a substitute for actual sparring, since it was stationary, but it helped. He’d call out strikes and I’d need to make them as fast as I could. He usually started off slow, but once we got into it he’d be calling them out one after another without a breath in between, giving me almost no time to think before I acted. I hadn’t had the chance to actually practice it, since sparring against Chef was just a more animated version of the pole. I knew he could take me down any time he wanted, so our sparring was mostly me making strikes at pads he put on his hands and him blocking me. He said I’d been making good progress in sparring, but it was hard to tell, since nothing I did ever caught him off-guard and I never got anything past his hands, which were there to intercept every attack I made.

“Now,” he said, holding up the weapons. “You’re not always going to be fighting someone just hand to hand, especially in the real world. The most common thing someone’s going to come at you with is a blunt weapon, because that’s what’s usually available. We live in a world surrounded by weapons, if someone wants one. You have the obvious like pool cues, bats, rebar, and the like, but there will be plenty of improvised weapons. Two-by-fours, chair legs, sticks they find on the ground, standing lamps; these are not that different from things people normally think of as weapons, and I can tell you now that if someone is coming at you to cause you harm, they will find something to try and accomplish their goal. The good news is that defense from these improvised weapons isn’t that different than items designed to cause harm.”

I nodded my understanding. I hadn’t had it happen yet, but I could see Aaron or Harry coming for me with a baseball bat.

“Eventually we’ll get into the differences between shorter and longer weapons and how to deal with blunt weapons that have additional dangers, such as a board with nails in the end. Right now we’re just going to talk about the basics. A lot of people discount things like the baseball bat as an effective weapon over, say, a knife, which is a mistake. Wooden or metal items like this can cause a lot of trauma if you get hit by one with enough force. Broken bones, damaged muscle, are a major concern, but worse is if you get hit in the head, which is where the real danger comes in. These weapons increase the force you can be hit with, which can lead to significant damage to the brain, even if it doesn’t crack through the skull. The good news is that most of these weapons, especially in the hands of someone not trained to use them properly, have limited versatility.”

“You said in the hands of someone not trained to use them. Am I going to learn to fight with weapons?”

“Maybe eventually, if I feel like you need to know it for some reason. Remember I’m teaching you to defend yourself, not to hurt others. Yes, sometimes defending yourself requires you to hurt someone, but using weapons takes things to a whole new level. For now, I want to teach you to protect yourself and keep from letting these things seriously injuring you.”

“I was just wondering. I’m not looking to beat anyone with a bat or anything.”

“Let’s keep it that way. Okay, when it comes to weapons like this, they all have something in common, which is their danger zone. The last fifth or so of the weapon is the most dangerous part, and the thing to watch for. These are essentially big levers, where the user can apply power at one end and have that power amplified down the object until it reaches its potential at the end here, where you get the most force. Your goal is to not get hit by this section or, if that’s not possible, to make sure it hits where it will do the least amount of damage. Now, when someone comes at you with one of these, you usually have two options for how to deal with it, move away from the weapon to dodge it or close the distance and get inside the attacker’s swing.”

“You said usually. When is it not one of those two?”

“If you’re facing someone trained in the weapon’s use and it’s not something used like a bat, where the hands are on one end and you’re just swinging it, then you have additional things to worry about, such as jabbing attacks, sweeping attacks or force reversals, where they start the weapon swinging one way before reversing the swing and attacking with the opposite end aimed at a different part of the body. We’ll eventually get to those, but right now we’re going to focus on what you’re more likely to encounter, which is the weapon being used in swung arcs, like someone would swing a baseball bat. That is how most untrained attackers would use any of these weapons.”

“Okay.”

“Now, if you’re near the tip of the weapon, especially if it’s a long weapon like this pool stick, or if you’re outside the arc but they’re advancing on you, you’re not likely to get inside their swing before it impacts. Here, your best bet is to retreat until the swing passes you. Don’t try and get fancy with it. If you’re experienced and have trained to do it, dodging side to side might be an option, but there’s still a chance you’ll get hit, and be hurt enough to keep you from defending yourself further. It’s better to put some space between you and the end of the weapon. The good news is, the swings most attackers will use require a wind-up or large swing, which means there’s enough force to keep the weapon moving even after it passes you, which gives you a window to make a move. While they’re recovering, you move in and, as with hand-to-hand attacks, you control the attacking arm while striking with your free hand. Because you’ll be on the outside of their swing, you’re going to be controlling their outside arm, that is the arm that is primarily holding and controlling the weapon, with your right arm, which means you’re going to be attacking with your weaker hand. That means controlling the weapon is the most important thing you can do, since your attacking hand will be weaker.”

“Do I still wrap it up like I do with a punch?”

“That is an option. Hold this like you just took a swing, with it extended and your right arm going across your body,” he said, handing me a baseball bat. “Now, you have two options. The first is what you suggested. You wrap your right arm around the swinging arm. Keep in mind both their arms are now away from you, leaving them exposed. From here you have a lot of choices. You can press with the left against the bicep while pulling the arm out with your right. You’ll have the leverage on them. Their choices are limited, and all of them are at a disadvantage to you. You could also strike the face or side, go for the back of the knee with your extended leg while pulling their body in the opposite direction with the controlling arm, or go for the ankle while pushing forward with the momentum you already have, pushing them over.”

“Because they’re off balance?”

“Yes. That’s one of the keys to this. An arcing swing like this puts their balance forward, following the arc of their arms. If you successfully dodge, their center of gravity will be extended in front of them and slightly away from you, which makes it a lot easier to take them down.”

“You said there was another option?”

“Yep. Since their arms will be more or less together and away from you, you don’t really need to wrap up the attacking arm. A lot of the options you’d have in the first method are open to you without wrapping them up. The main goal is to remove the threat of the weapon and the easiest way to do that is to get the attacker on the ground. Prone, the weapon becomes a lot harder to wield, to the point of being a liability to most untrained fighters, and they lose a lot of the force they can put into swings. Once you knock them down you can either get away, which is always your best option if possible, have them removed from the fight temporarily, in case you have other attackers to deal with, or grapple and immobilize them.”