BaffledExperts by Adam Norman

24: Being on top

It’s nice to be on top. The man on top doesn’t have to worry about punches, elbows, or having his Walla Wallas worn as cuff links. The top can dictate the 'pace' of a fight--he usually gets the first move if a sequence ends up restarting after reaching an impasse. He can also pressure the person on the bottom by being aggressive.

Most importantly, being on the top is just plain easier. It’s hard to lift people, to hold them at bay, and to knock them off balance. In other words, it’s hard to be on the bottom. It’s far easier to squish and smother people and to stand on their nerve bundles. You can do that from the top.

For these reasons, like me, almost all judoka like to stay on top.

In a scramble, after a bad throw, after an escape, or at the start of newaza, focus all your attention on staying or getting on top. It is in the first seconds, even the first second, that many fights are won or lost.

Last week, I won against a very good fighter and friend of mine in just that way. We fought from standing, and we tumbled to the ground inconclusively. It happens all the time. He, though, made a very silly mistake: he stalled, expecting things to muddle until the ref got bored. He miscalculated: I'm bigger than him, aggressive, and pretty good on the ground--stalling doesn't work well with me. And, frankly, I was terrified of standing back up with him, where I knew he is much better than I am. Instead of fumbling and thrashing, or worse, just standing up, as soon as we tumbled, I pushed the fight forward and submitted him fairly quickly. In that first few seconds after the tumble, many fighters lose their bearings or nerve. That's the time to strike, especially if, like me, you're not very good.

That doesn’t mean you should be tense. Far from it. As I mentioned earlier, good judoka save energy for seconds at a time, preserving their strength for an eruption. When I start fighting, for instance, I go quite slow and stay soft. I talk a little to my adversary. I ask how their week was. I hold their gi gently and tell them I’m feeling a little under the weather, you know, and how my daughter has really been keeping me up. I try to wait until my opponent over-commits to a push or a pull against sweet, soft, fatherly old me, and then I go very fast and hard indeed. I discharge all my week’s frustrations into my opponent’s shoulder or shin. I am almost always able to get the upper hand, partly through deception, and partly through explosion.

I heard once from a chef that if you stroke the back of a chicken’s neck and caress the bird a little, maybe whisper to it and tell it sweet nothings, it will wiggle, settle, and fall asleep. And, though I’ve never tried it, I believe her when she said that it’s much easier to chop the head off a sleeping chicken.

I love this deception. By day, I am a college teacher, and so I am nothing if not patient. I am a father, home owner, minivan driver, and taxpayer. I am a little fat. And on Friday nights, I practice killing.

It is too much to say that this is the other me. It is not the dark side to my personality, or my secret identity, or anything silly or ontologically dubious. Because by day, I am also violent, frustrated, impatient and mean--it’s just that I suppress. I am quite sure that most people are the same and do the same.

Most people also don’t go to judo, so clearly venting those frustrations isn’t necessary. I don't even think it's good to vent, although it is a tempting idea. Perhaps by repressing my dark urges, I could subdue them entirely. Aristotle would think so, and I think he's right.

I know that I am not the only one to feel inclined to practice my art on an adversary outside of the dojo. I know I’m not the only one to hold the dark fantasy that someday my skills will be needed to rescue a pretty woman or save an old dog. This urge is ugly and irresponsible, and I focus on keeping it smothered more than I should need to. I cannot say that it has gone away, though, as I have become better. I feel the urge every bit as much as I ever did. No more, but no less either.

My violent side exists, though, that much is certain, and I feel comfortable exploring it--perhaps I shouldn’t, and perhaps I am ill served by doing so. But I like to, and I have learned some small things about myself and, perhaps, violence in general.

Take, for instance, the time Jake broke my toes. It is one of the most shameful episodes of my life, and I hesitate to share it. I will only because I expect nobody to read this book, and nobody to get this far through it. Jake is my best friend. We’ve been friends since childhood, and we have done many stupid things together, stupid things I enjoyed and that made us close. I love him. Still, several years ago, in a judo fight, he folded me over and unintentionally broke my toes--or at least I suspect he did, as while I have never had them x-rayed, they hurt to this day. At the time it hurt like hell. He didn’t mean to, and he didn’t do anything stupid. He is blameless.

Still, when we landed, him on top of me, I hit him. I struck him with the heel of my hand hard across his face. I didn’t think. I didn’t even really even intend it. Honestly, I was almost blind with the pain (though obviously not blind enough to miss). I was furious, seeing stars, and I lashed out.

That explanation is not an excuse. I hit Jake because of a character weakness. It is entirely my fault--and I choose that word for its two meanings. I was flawed. I may still be. Under the pressure of a fight, pain, and the injury of a friend, a fault in my character opened, and I did something shameful.

As I write this, I am tempted to tell you two things: that I am better for knowing, and that I have meditated and fixed my flaw so it will never happen again. It would make a nice conclusion, but it wouldn't be true.

I am much worse off for knowing. I am still disappointed with myself for the shitty thing I did. I have, though, thought long and hard about it, and I am fairly sure that I would not be such an asshole again. I don’t truly know though: I have made a thousand promises to myself, but my actions were reflexive, and while my conscious mind demands obedience, my umbral mind is past examination and control.

But this is part of why I love judo. It puts us into situations that bring out our instincts, and into situations that test them. Many people hold one of two equally incorrect beliefs: that people are bad, or that people do bad. A father sees his daughter’s greasy boyfriend as bad. He is a bad young man, and acts as a bad man does. The daughter, on the other hand, sees the lost boy inside her love, and knows in her heart that her boyfriend is not bad; he just does bad things. Yet, I think it makes sense that neither the father nor the daughter is quite right.

Aristotle also said that it takes practice to be good. Practice of the right kind improves a man’s character. Practice of the wrong kind worsens it. Goodness tends to snowball: if you do good, you get better, and you do good still more.

This is deep, and not without its problems. But it makes clear something we need to know: you can’t be good by accident. The boyfriend is neither good nor bad; as a young man, he isn’t practiced enough to be either. But he is in danger of being bad, as the father sees, and he is redeemable, as the daughter hopes.

As an Aristotelian, I, apparently, need to do better. My reflex when I was hurt and angry was to lash out. I could have shaped my reflex, moulded or directed it into something better if I had been a better man or if I had practiced more. Judo lets me practice around the edges of real danger. There’s nothing particularly dangerous about judo--it’s a sport, and it’s stylized. But it is closer to true violence than I tread in daily life, and that may be a good place to tread now and then.

I think that this is as close as judo gets to the ’spiritual development’, ’discipline’, and ’whiter-than-whites’ nonsense that martial arts schools promote. Let me be straight: if you or your child are taking moral lessons from a martial arts teacher, you are in a sorry place. Many sensei (but not mine) are simple, greedy, and narcissistic. They are among the very last people I would let my children learn from. The practice of a martial art, though, is a different thing. To practice a martial art, one must be willing to get hurt, suffer a little, and work one’s own way through. Learning self defense involves dealing with a little pain and a lot of assholes. Pain and assholes are--in small doses--good for the soul.

And I rush to point out that there is nothing here that is unique to judo. Any martial art would have the same lessons. Hockey, football, and soccer probably do too--although, to be honest, there seem to be more pricks in the moneyed sports than on the mat.

I think that practicing judo has made be better able to deal with unpleasant or trying experiences. I think that I am becoming better, if slowly. A couple of months ago, my judo teacher badly damaged my elbow. Something popped, and it hasn’t been right since. When he hurt me though, this time, instead of getting mad or upset, I stood up, bowed twice, and excused myself from the room. I didn’t get emotional. I hope that it was some small sign of progress.