It’s 10 p.m. You just finished having dinner with some friends at a local restaurant. You’re walking out to the parking lot, fumbling for your keys in the dark, when a giant arm flies out from behind you and clinches around your neck.
You have only seconds to react—what do you do?
For the past decade, Santa Marians Mike Meyers and Terry Briggs have been teaching people the answer to that question through the art of Japanese Jiu-Jitsu. Accompanied by fellow black belt Randy Ancheta, the senseis run the Santa Maria Jiu-Jitsu Club and teach classes out of CKD Academy of Martial Arts in Santa Maria.
Jiu-Jitsu started with the Samurai more than 2,000 years ago in Japan and employs a plethora of throws, strikes, kicks, escapes, and other methods of self-defense.
“It was something [the Samurai] could use if they lost their swords in battle or needed to fight hand-to-hand,” Meyers told the Sun.
Briggs added: “The ultimate goal of martial arts, like Jiu-Jitsu, was to be creative in battle. We try to instill those same concepts in our students when it comes to self-defense.”
At the Santa Maria Jiu-Jitsu Club, the senseis teach Seki-Ryu Jiu-Jitsu, a martial art style based on traditional Japanese Jiu-Jitsu and perfected by Sensei Sanzo Seki during the 1970s and ’80s. Unlike other forms of Jiu-Jitsu that focus on sport and tournaments, the Seki-Ryu style is meant for real-life application.
Still, that doesn’t mean it isn’t also an art form—even when fending off a parking-lot mugger.
“Is everything we teach going to work on the street every time? Maybe, maybe not,” Meyers said. “A lot of it depends on the kind of attack. We train our students to be three steps ahead of their attackers and to be able to switch [tactics] on the fly.”
The important thing, Meyers said, is not to freeze up.
“We always tell our students, ‘You’ve got to keep going—finish what you started—because if you freeze here, you’re going to freeze on the streets,’” he explained.
That ability to think on your feet, Meyers said, is a sign of any black belt worth his or her salt.
“People will say to us, ‘Wow, you guys are so good!’ But we mess up, too. It’s just that we know how to adapt to different attacks,” he said.
[image-5] But sometimes people are still mystified by the belt, likening it to a superhero’s cape or lucky rabbit’s foot.
“We’ve had kids who think the power is in the belt,” Meyers said.
To deter this myth, Ancheta added, “We’ll let them wear the belt, but then we’ll say, ‘Well, why don’t you teach class for us?’ And by the end of the night, they don’t want it anymore.”
Briggs said a strong relationship between sensei and student is incredibly important when it comes to teaching the art of Jiu-Jitsu.
[image-4] And it helps that the club has three different masters with distinct personalities and fighting styles.
“The style preference depends on a person’s height, weight, build, and hands,” Ancheta said. “The three of us can pretty much cover all of our students because we’re so different.”
And like their teachers, he said, students will eventually start to develop their own fighting styles. But once their students have the techniques down, the senseis will take it to the next level.
“After people have advanced in the teachings, we’ll blindfold them and have two or three people come at them,” Meyers said. “Then we’ll take the blindfold off and ask them questions like, ‘How many people attacked you? What kind of weapons did they have?’
[image-3] “We find that people actually do better blindfolded because their eyes can fool them. When they’re blindfolded, they have to use their brains and the feel of the body,” he said.
So does that mean muggers should fear for their lives? Well, yes and no.
“You have to match the defense to the attack,” Ancheta said.
For example, you probably wouldn’t kick the crap out of someone for grabbing you forcefully by the wrist. But if he has a switchblade pushed to your chest—that’s a different story, he said.
“We tell people, in reality, if you’re out on the streets and someone wants your wallet or purse, give it to them. It’s not worth the risk,” Meyers added. “Unless it’s an $800 Louis Vuitton bag with $1,000 in it—then you can decide, ‘Is this something I really want to fight for?’”
Don’t mess with News Editor Amy Asman. Contact her at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 21-28, 2010.
