What Getting Punched in the Face Repeatedly Has Taught Me

I'm taking a brief step away from documenting my work journey to discuss one of my previous hobbies and some life lessons I learned as a result - getting punched in the face.

And I don't mean that I've been punched in the face a few times in bar fights (I've actually never been in a bar fight), but rather 100s or 1000s of times just for fun.

If it's not obvious by this point, I used to box.  More specifically, I attended a mixed martial arts gym for the better part of a decade.

MMA, in its entirety, gets an unfair wrap.  Meryl Streep, at a Golden Globes Award show in 2017, pointedly claimed that they're "not the arts."  As someone who's got a keen interest in art history and design concepts, I have to disagree with her, but know that among a large swathe of the population, her opinion isn't controversial.

When viewed through the lens of toxic masculinity, it certainly can be a brutal sport with a lot of unsavory characters, but its individual components (practitioners must grow familiar with some sort of striking, or stand-up; some form of transition, or takedowns; and some form of grappling, or ground game, in order to be effective) require as much grace or athleticism as any other sport or performing art.

In conversation, I'll often characterize the ground game (jiujitsu in my case) as resembling chess.  In order to get your opponent to submit, you need to think enough moves ahead to force them into an error.  Striking (in my case a combination of boxing, Muay Thai, and a Chinese martial art known as San Shou or San Da) is more like checkers.  There's strategy, but it's typically more broad, as the number of potential moves is smaller.  The transition game (mostly wrestling for me) is something to be avoided unless you like cauliflower (the ear, not the vegetable).  Guess which of the three components I liked the least.

So, what did I learn from getting punched in the face a lot?

First, that size isn't necessarily the determining factor in winning a fight.  I've always struggled with motivation when lifting weights.  It's just something that bores me, so I was never able to consistently improve the stereotypical metrics that define fitness for a male like bench press or squat.  I was always in awe of guys who could put up 300 lbs. and relished spending 2 hours in the gym when they had a chance.  I never had that level of motivation.

I decided to try MMA by accident.  I'd wanted to start biking more, and, this being Chicago, I needed to learn how to bike in winter.  While learning how to do so, I read an article that said "you'll inevitably fall, so learn how to do so by taking a dance or martial arts class."

So, I took a martial arts class and, over the next decade, a few more.  I was hooked because it was great exercise, there was always something new to learn, and I gained a valuable skill.  One of the new things I learned is that, by spending enough time honing my craft, I could often defeat people who had the ability to lift me over their head as though I weighed no more than if I were an umbrella.  Conversely, it wasn't uncommon for someone who was 5'6" and 135 lbs. could almost literally mop the floor with me.  

This isn't an absolute truth.  There is absolutely no way I could ever win a fight with a 350 lb. NFL lineman, regardless of whether or not they had any martial arts skill (and that is the only reason I don't fight NFL linemen).  But, barring a few far-out exceptions, it was reassuring to know that with dedication, people can be effective practitioners of martial arts even if they're not blessed with superb genetics.

Why is this important?  It helped me learn that the commonly accepted standard isn't the only standard.  Conventional wisdom states that, in the world of business, everyone needs to come up with a killer app, score funding via venture capital, and cash out when the company goes public as at least an 8-figure millionaire.

OR

You could find an existing business conept, tweak it to match the needs that delight a very specific user base, run it as a lifestyle business where you don't need to climb ever and ever higher at the behest of someone else, and make enough money to run a business you enjoy and live a fulfilling life.  In jiujitsu speak, it's a different way to use leverage to accomplish your goals rather than smash someone to a pulp.

The second lesson I learned from MMA is that it's far more beneficial to learn how to take a punch than it is to throw a punch.  Many people entertain fantasies about fighting their way out of a seedy situation using their bare hands.  But, for anything that isn't choreographed on a stage in Hollywood, there's no way that any fight ends without one party or the other walking away without a scratch.

And, getting hit in the face is not a skill that comes naturally to people.  In fact, the very reasonable reaction to doing so is to turn your back on your attacker.  If it's to run, and you can outrun your attacker, that's the best course of action in any fight.  If you can't run, turning your back to your attacker is the worst possible outcome.  You now have no idea what your assailant is doing, and have no practical means to defend yourself.

So, if you're going to learn martial arts, you're going to need to learn how to get hit (or, if you're sticking with jiujitsu to have someone lying on top of you pressing all of the air out of your lungs).  It's a rewarding experience to realize that you can get hit in the face, not immediately panic, and keep your wits about you to develop a counter-strategy (trust me, it's rewarding, if not entirely refreshing).

In non-MMA settings, I map it to the ability to deal with the inevitable setbacks of life, take stock of the tools available to you, and assemble a viable solution to the problem at hand.  Despite what C-levels will tell you about the travails of their lives, it's easy to win when everyone listens to you and you have sufficient resources to accomplish your goals.

It's much more difficult (and a much more realistic scenario) to win when you're given half the budget, half the staffing, half the timeline, and requirements that are likely presented in a format that's like the love child of Esperanto and Korean.  Being able to turn a potential dumpster fire into a successful project is an important skill to practice, and one that's far more rewarding than simply being handed the answer key to the SAT to get into Harvard.

The third, and final lesson I gathered was the existence of "Puncher's Luck."  Puncher's Luck is simply the acceptance that no matter how well-prepared you are, how long you've been practicing, or how talented you are, there's always a chance that someone can catch you unawares and win the fight, even if they're not freakishly athletic and gigantic like an NFL lineman.

This is a difficult realization to grasp.  With a decade's worth of training experience, I could still get in a fight with a rank amateur and wind up on my ass.  Of course, the benefit of training is that it improves your odds, but the chance is always present and is never as small as you'd like it to be.

This is probably the most important lesson to grasp, which is namely another version of "life is unfair."  In the work world, it translates well to accept that often the most deserving among us don't receive the recognition we deserve.  Sometimes even our best-laid and best-prepared plans go awry.  

Though the circumstances are different - and it's also very possible that the fight may be rigged against you in the work world - accepting the concept of Puncher's Luck is akin to accepting there are some things we cannot change, at least immediately.  

It doesn't defeat the unfairness of any given situation, but it does help us divert our mental energy from focusing on outcomes we can't change.

With that, I've imparted all of the knowledge I gained from 10 years' worth of martial arts training.  If I stuck around for an 11th year, I would've learned the five-point exploding heart technique and unleashed the secret to the world, but, alas, it was not to be.

Until next time, my human and robot friends.