My nephew Michael—who is 10 years younger than me—used to be a most formidable full contact Karate fighter, before he got old. His only apparent weakness was that he would sometimes allow people to drive him back into the wall. Big, tough guys especially.

He’d be backing up, and backing up. They’d be advancing.

All at once he’d launch himself off the wall like a piston. And suddenly his opponent would find himself confronting a flurry of fist and foot and momentum and surprise. Wielded by a fighter who knew how to use all of them effectively. I watched him pull that dodge on fifty people, if it was a one.

Remember that the next time you think you’ve got somebody’s back up against the wall.

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Guy comes into the karate school one night, just as we’re closing up after a particularly long and exhausting day. Wants to know if I can teach him Dim Mak…the Touch of Death.

I ask him why he wants to learn it. He says he wants to kill somebody.

I look at him closer. Wouldn’t that be the same thing as if I killed them? I suggest.

He might have come over the desk at me right then and there—except he probably figured I knew the Dim Mak.

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When I was a newly minted karate teacher they pressured me to go to the “Instructor’s Class”, where, ostensibly, they taught you how to teach the martial arts. I already knew about that. I was a natural.

Then an overzealous beginning student accidently punched me in the mouth—and thought I was going to rip his arms off because of it. Not exactly the experience he was paying for. I went to the class.

It is virtually unheard of for a student to be hurt by his instructor. The instructor knows what he’s doing. And to effectively teach, he knows he must always remain closer to the student than he ever would ever remain to an opponent. It’s a dangerous place.

Thus, there is a technique that all good instructors are taught, or learn. It consists of using their arms, legs, hip, shoulder, a subtle shift of weight or posture, to stay just ahead of the student’s movements and in the correct position to diffuse, direct, and ultimately correct. It’s something that can be taught.

Years later, in my own “Instructor’s Class”, I did just that.

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One of the most important things a self defense instructor can teach a woman is that you never, ever get forced into a car. Gun, knife, you don’t get in the car. Whatever the person might do here, where there is some chance of discovery or observation, does not compare with what they might do once there is not.

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Things I learned in Martial Arts: When breaking boards, sometimes the boards win.

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