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Almost every teenage boy wants to take martial arts for only one reason: to kick ass!  They want to be Jet Li and Steven Segal and have people say that they could last over a millisecond with Chuck Norris.  They want to be able to take down the bullies and get the girl and all that.  So, in a nod to my inner fifteen year old that still listens to heavy metal and wears a mullet, let’s talk about the four reasons that martial arts kick ass:

1. The first and foremost reason that martial arts kick ass is exactly that: you can kick ass.  Now we all know that you don’t start fights but you always finish them.  You don’t purposely walk down the dark alley in the middle of the night wearing the jersey of an opposing rival team, but if someone threatens you and yours you will do what needs to be done so that you can walk away.  With enough training you have the ability to defend yourself against almost anyone.  Maybe you can’t catch arrows, but how often are people walking around with bows and arrows anyway?

2. Secondly, martial arts kick ass because you learn to get your ass kicked.  In the early 1990′s I fought one of Mike Tyson’s sparring partners, a 6’4″ 240 pound left-handed red-headed Irish monster that was quick as a jack rabbit and hit like a mule.  I was a black belt candidate in my early twenties, a graduate student in nuclear engineering, and 155 pounds if I was fully clothed and wearing boots.  After this monster beat the crap out of a 6’2″ 220 lbs fighter for three minutes so badly the guy wouldn’t come out of the corner for the second round, it was my turn.  I flew across the space with a spin back side kick aimed right at the center of his chest that was about the size of a refrigerator.  He ducked underneath it and hit me with a jab that sent me back ten feet while breaking my nose and essentially knocking me out.  It only knocked me about ten feet because the wall stopped me.  But I came right back firing even though I was out on my feet and don’t remember most of that round.  I fought him for three rounds, and took one of the worst beatings of my life.  And you know what?  I didn’t die!  I learned to take more punishment than I ever thought possible and push forward when I couldn’t even lift my hands.  It helped my martial arts immensely, but it also helped my business career, helped me make it through my son’s health issues, and taught me to never stop fighting even if you can’t win.  Based on all the butt kickings I’ve taken over my life I’ve become stronger and tougher than any of my competition in the professional world.  And I don’t get beat the same way twice, because I’ve learned to analyze failures to create learning experience, so the scars are really notes from various lessons.

3. Those lessons let you kick ass in other realms.  I was able to out work everyone in my training class when I entered the financial services arena because of my martial arts experiences.  I was Rookie of the Year because I kicked everybody else’s ass.  I worked harder and longer.  I was more focused, and learned from every loss and every win.  I knew that I had to do something a thousand times to just understand it and 10,000 times to be perfect, whereas the other guys thought doing it ten times was hard practice and “good enough”.  Martial arts teaches you to kick ass everywhere else and in everything that you do because you learn that good enough is never good enough.

4. Lastly, martial arts kick ass simply because you have less ass to kick.  Face it: we get in good shape.  Wickedly good shape.  Like only my friends that are tri-athletes are in better shape, and they spend literally every waking moment outside of work working out, so they have no balance.  The hard workouts burn out any impurities in our systems, the hours of training give us cardiovascular systems better than runners, and we can eat almost anything because an hour-long training session burns off a thousand calories.  When I was competing I had body fat levels that were actually dangerously low.  My brother said my arms looked like French bread, and my girlfriend wanted me to go around shirtless to show off.  Chicks dug it!  That was definitely kick ass!

So to recap: martial arts kick ass because you learn to lose, you learn to win, you look good doing either, and you do it everywhere.  That is the definition of an ultimate ass kicker!