If We Breathe, We Fight

If we breathe, we fight...

​that’s the new phrase going on all of my self-defense booklets from now on.  The more I train, the more I learn, the more I experience, I realize that when it comes to combat and defending yourself, mindframe can and will mean everything.  This can be seen not just in fighting or self-defense but in life.  Henry Ford said “Whether you think you can or if you think you can’t, you’re right.”  When it comes to defending yourself though, there can only be one of those options on your mind, I CAN and I WILL.  In a true self-defense encounter where your health and wellbeing are literally on the line, you must be willing to lay it all out there.  There can be no holding back, you must fight with every ounce of energy, strength, and endurance that your body can muster.  If you are breathing, if you’re living, then you must FIGHT.  There is only one other alternative, and I don’t think anyone out there wants that.  

This kind of mindframe, way of thinking and acting, can be cultivated.  For starters, deeply visualize yourself being violently attacked.  Really try to see the attacker, the scene, feel the adrenaline, the fear, picture the worst case scenario and how this would make you feel.  Fear?  That’s fine.  Use it!  It’s ok to be afraid, feel it and fight!  I’d like for you to get to the point where you replace your fear with rage.  Rage over the fact that this person that you don’t know and doesn’t know you cares ZERO about your wellbeing.  They don’t care about your family at home, your hopes and dreams in life, they don’t care about causing you pain, or even ending your life altogether.  Does anyone have that right over you?? NO!!  Of course not!  How does it make you feel that they’re trying to end your life, take you away from all that you love and all that love you?  Does that set well with you?  It sure shouldn’t.  No one has a right to cause you harm, no one has a right to inflict their ill will upon you, no one has the right to threaten the life that you love and have worked so hard for.  If you’re not going to stand up for yourself and all that you hold dear and fight, then who is?  Will it be scary?  Yeah.  Will you probably get hurt?  Yeah.  Will you have to physically hurt someone to defend yourself?  Yep.  But what’s the alternative? Dying?  Being raped?  Being beaten, robbed, and left for dead?  Never!! 

Other ways to cultivate this sense of indomitable will, is to push yourself in other physical activities.  Anything where your body is screaming for you to stop and you must garner the mental fortitude to tell it to shut up and keep going can be enormously beneficial to gaining mental strength. Now, I’m not saying go out there and hit the weights until you tear a muscle, but I am saying you could do a burnout set on your last set for example. Get to that fatigue point where your muscles are burning and you want to stop, but you keep pushing.  Go ahead, keep pushing until your muscles are so fatigue, depleted of energy, and filled with lactic acid that you can’t physically do one more rep.  It will be hard, it will not be comfortable, but it will be a testament to yourself that you can push through discomfort, and exhaustion, that you don’t stop when your body starts asking you to, you stop when your mind says it can stop.  Like I said, I’m not telling you to go out there and deadlift your max until you slip a disc.  What you can do though if you’re doing something like bicep curls, push-ups, bodyweight squats, or crunches for instance, is to push until you literally can’t do one more rep.  You’ll probably be sore the next day, but your muscles will recover just fine with rest.  You could ask any client that I’ve ever trained, I’ve tried to push them all to this point on multiple occasions.  Why?  For every reason I just stated.  I don’t want them to just get stronger and in better physical shape.  If you have a weak mind or will, this probably won’t happen in the first place.  I want them to gain just as much mental strength as I do physical.  That’s the true goal. To put them into situations that they may never put themselves in, encourage them, and let them know that there is no other way but through this challenge.  Let them see and feel what it’s like to push past their limits, do things they previously would have never thought they could, and KNOW that they can make it out just fine to the other side.  Difficulty does not equal impossibility.  That kind of mental strength is something that will overflow into other areas of a person’s life.  Got a big project at work that’s going to require days of intense focus and maybe little sleep?  You can do it.  Falling on hard times in life where nothing seems to be going right?  You can make it through the other side of that too.  Have the mindframe that you will expend every ounce of life in your body to accomplish your goals.  If something means a lot to you, if it’s something that consumes your thoughts, keeps you up at night, then it’s worth giving everything you have to accomplish.  

People may not realize it, but so much of life is a metaphorical fight. We are confronted with challenges everyday and the same mental strength that you used to finish up that 100th burpee or run a mile further than you ever had before, is the same mental strength that will tell you that you can ace that test, complete that big project on time, excel at your new job,  get through your troubled home life, you can do it all or expend every ounce of your being trying.  When you make up your mind and have cultivated that sense of an indomitable spirit, you have the greatest weapon you could possess.  What more can you do, can you present, can you offer up, than fighting for what you want until your last breath?  Sound extreme? Good, it is.  When it comes to self-defense, violence is extreme.  It can force you to face the ultimate reality of life and death whether you’re ready to or not.  Have that faith in yourself, that resolve, that when death comes knocking, you will fight it until your very. last. breath.  If we breathe, we fight.

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