Another reason I love the martial arts is the power of knowledge over brute force.
I was small as a child. I’m small as an adult. I’ve always been slight. The only time I was ever larger than normal was at birth. My earliest memories always include me as the smallest person in the room,surrounded by older kids and larger adults — my extended family and the people in my neighborhood.
When everyone around you is older, bigger, and stronger, learning to survive and thrive means using your brain over their brawn. Mind over muscle. I was regularly forced to be smarter — to use my intellect to find ways out of danger, mostly physical.
The Game of Mercy
I recall one very memorable — painfully memorable — situation where I wish I had known martial arts.
I was across the street at my best friend’s front stoop when one of the older kids in the neighborhood came over and decided to accost me. There’s a game called, Mercy, where two people interlace their fingers and try to bend each other’s hands backward. When both people are evenly matched, it’s a fair test of strength. When one person is much bigger and stronger than the other, it becomes something else entirely.
When I put my hands up to tell him to leave me alone, I inadvertently set myself up for an unwanted game of Mercy. He immediately stuck his fingers between mine and started bending my hands backward — all the way until I was on the ground, on my knees, and in tears.
I can still feel that moment: the feeling of utter helplessness, of not knowing what to do, of not being strong enough to fight back, and holding on to the hope he would let go. He did let go, after he proved him dominance.
As I ran home across the street, crying, one thought repeated itself: I never want to be in that situation again. There had to be some way to stop myself from becoming a victim of another person’s whims. There had to be a way out that didn’t depend on being bigger and stronger because that wasn’t an option.
The irony of the game, of course, is that mercy is rarely given to the weaker person. The bully doesn’t stop when you cry mercy. That’s the point, the sadistic feeling of dominance. I was reminded later of that infamous line from the Karate Kid: “Mercy does not exist in this dojo.” Cobra Kai was fictional, but that merciless older kid on the stoop was very real.
Samurai Sunday and the Search for an Answer
As my mind searched for a solution to the problem of being smaller and weaker than everybody else, I didn’t have to look far. Every week after church, I raced home to turn on the TV and watch Samurai Sunday on our small 12″ screen.
What I saw were mostly smaller, seemingly weaker people performing incredible martial arts moves to defend themselves and defeat larger, meaner, tougher opponents. Not through strength but through some secret training I was not privy to, yet.
Finding a martial arts teacher became the logical solution.
Even at that early age, what I was focused on wasn’t learning how to hurting other people, I was focused on keeping myself safe. How do I keep from getting hurt? How do I stop this person from hurting me and go on with my day? I really just wanted to be left alone. What naturally appealed to me were the magical, Houdini-esque escapes — effortless-looking ways out of grabs, chokes, and holds. I didn’t have this secret knowledge, couldn’t see how it was done, and desperately wanted to learn.
Once I got into class, from the very first moment I was shown something as simple as “the thumb is the weak point on the hand — if you go against the thumb, you can break the grip” — I was hooked. I wanted every escape, every technique, all of the knowledge.
What the Ancients Already Knew
Around 250 BC, the Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes made a statement that martial artists have been proving on training floors ever since: “Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.”
He wasn’t speaking about fighting, he was speaking about physics — specifically the principle of mechanical advantage, which states that a small force applied at the right point, in the right direction, over the right distance, can overcome a much larger opposing force. The lever does not care about the size of the person holding it, it only respondes to position, angle, and technique.
Martial artists have understood this intuitively for thousands of years. Across virtually every serious martial tradition — Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Russian — the foundational insight is the same: yielding to force is more effective than opposing it. You do not fight the strength. You find the angle, the weak point, the moment of imbalance — and you use physics rather than muscle to do the work.
The mechanics are straightforward. The limbs are levers. The joints are fulcrums. By positioning your body correctly against an opponent’s limb, you create a mechanical advantage that has nothing to do with how much you weigh. A small force applied at the right point, in the right direction, produces an effect far out of proportion to the effort required.
The leverage needed for small joint control is comparatively small and creates a distinct advantage over any technique that depends on raw force — allowing a smaller, weaker person with the right training to control a much stronger one. The thumb. The wrist. The fingers. These are the entry points that size cannot protect. No one can make their thumb stronger than the physics of the joint itself. Knowledge of that joint — and how to work against it — is the equalizer.
How to Win the Game of Mercy
Years after that stoop on the South Side, I met a martial arts master, Wally Jay, who taught me exactly how to deal with someone bending your fingers back and forcing you into that involuntary game of mercy.
The solution is so elegantly simple that every time I teach it, I tell that same story. And I’ve never been afraid of anyone grabbing my fingers since.
Come to class and I’ll show you. It takes about ten seconds to learn and a lifetime to appreciate — because once you feel it work, you understand in your body, not just your mind, that knowledge is more powerful than size. That the right information, applied correctly, makes brute force irrelevant.
That is another reason I love martial arts — and why you should too.