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I was browsing back through Sun Tzu’s Art of War and after reading the chapter “Attack by Strategem”, I came across his 5 essentials for victory.

The first one caught my attention. I have read it numerous times before, but I started thinking about how it could be applied in everyday training. I also tried to think about other applications on different levels.

“He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.”

The obvious first level of this can be seen as simply choosing the battles you fight. As an example, let’s take a self-defense situation where it is assumed the attacker has a weapon, but you’re not sure. You are not armed. You may choose not to fight. The best solution may be the “flight” instinct and not the “fight”.

But let’s take this a little deeper.

Let’s say you are working your punching techniques by doing some competitive sparring. Choosing when to fight and when not to fight is not so clear cut, but still very relevant.

To borrow from Joe Lewis, you don’t want to attack someone when they are “set”. When someone is “set”, they are planted and have you in their line of fire. They are basically just waiting for you to get into range so they can attack. This is called their Set Point. (For more information on “Set Point Control” see the link below to Joe Lewis’ DVD, now titled “Control the Firing Line”.)

So, what we want to do is choose when we want to fight. We may use our footwork to set him up. Make him move his Set Point first and then catch him between Set Points. This way we are choosing when we want to fight and when we do not want to fight.

Let’s take this to the grappling realm.

When you are grappling someone bigger and stronger than you, then you have to be very selective as to when you fight and when you do not fight. Otherwise, you will exhaust yourself through fruitless effort.

So in a way, we are choosing our battles constantly as we evolve as martial artists. In order for us to be efficient, this process has to take place.

Let’s take it one step further.

In our daily training, don’t we also choose when to fight? We choose when to train hard or to keep it light. We choose the type of techniques we will train. We choose IF we are going to train or not.

So in a sense, aren’t we deciding on whether to fight our weaknesses, or not fight them and strengthen our strengths?

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Kip Brockett
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