Life or Death?

[Lucas]

So a friend of mine just almost died. He was riding his bike through an intersection where a car ran a red light, he was lucky enough to notice what was going on, and quick enough to jump off his bike and hit the ground running.

his bike is smashed to bits in between two cars, but hes completely unharmed. 2 or 3 seconds late and he would most definately be dead.

He has no doubt that his MA training is directly connected to not only his response time, but he ability to jump of his bike as fast and as far as he did.

this is another one of those wonderful side benefits of practicing MA with dedication.

You never know what your fight is actually going to be. This time he fought a clock to the death, and won.

[tsuei08]

Thank God your buddy's ok. That is some scary, scary stuff. It's great to hear stories like this (with positive outcomes!) where the effects of training have application outside of the obvious.

I can think of two for myself, one nearly serious, one minor, but cathartic.

The minor one first; my old house in Alabama had 2 steps up from the garage into the kitchen and also into the laundry room. I was in the garage and my wife (rest her soul) was cleaning the kitchen. I didn't know she had leaned the broom against the door, I was looking down at my shoes to make sure there was no gunk on them as I opened the door to go inside. My next awareness was of my left arm above my head (as in Yang White Crane Spreads Wings or similar) with a broom handle resting on my forearm. It happened so fast I was not consciously aware of the action. I stood there for a minute staring at the broom. That motion had been pounded into me through Tai Chi and, frankly, every other art I had studied since they each had a similar high block. The action didn't save my life, but it saved me a knot on my head. The moment was a source of meditation and the realization that I had, in fact, learned something.

The second could have been serious, even life threatening. Same location, except stepping down from my laundry room into the garage with a basket full of laundry. I was in a hurry and the door jam (or whatever the thing that the knob plunger latches into is called!), well it caught the mesh of the basket. It jerked my shoulder hard, and the metal was actually bent out at a 90 degree angle!, man it hurt like heck!, it spun me around and I fell, backwards off those steps.. well, the floor is concrete... this is when break-fall training kicked in on auto-pilot... I was vaguely aware of my shoulders curling in and my spine curving forwards and the sequential uncoiling as I hit the concrete... when I stopped moving, my chin was tucked to my chest and I had not hit my head on the floor. Without my training; the speed of the fall, the odd angle I would have hit the floor, and my head hitting the concrete all would have spelled serious injury... not to mention being alone without aid, I would have been in sorry shape for sure. I expected to be sore the next day, but I wasn't except for my shoulder that had been wrenched at the start of the fall. I thanked my Sifu when I saw him a few days later!

[uki]

hopefully he ran over and punched out the idiot who ran the red light and made a citizens arrest...

[tsuei08]

hopefully he ran over and punched out the idiot who ran the red light and made a citizens arrest...

Yea man, a little frontier justice...

[Drake]

We once had an AT-4 fire a rocket with a broken fin fly off and explode. Amazing nobody was killed.

And once I was driving a humvee that burst into flames on the autobahn. That sucked too.

And Iraq was unpleasant, too.

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

well i certainly wont be lifting a car off of me after the fact, so i guess im ****ed.

[David Jamieson]

We once had an AT-4 fire a rocket with a broken fin fly off and explode. Amazing nobody was killed.

And once I was driving a humvee that burst into flames on the autobahn. That sucked too.

And Iraq was unpleasant, too.

Dude... This is actually making me laugh for some bizarre reason. :p

[Lucas]

hopefully he ran over and punched out the idiot who ran the red light and made a citizens arrest...

thats the kind of funny part. he was all mad, then saw that the driver was an old lady. Of course he was still mad but his first response was to make sure she was ok, because she hit the other car pretty hard.

she turned out to be fine, and shes going to buy him a whole new bike! which means he gets to replace his old POS and get something new.

[uki]

thats the kind of funny part. he was all mad, then saw that the driver was an old lady. Of course he was still mad but his first response was to make sure she was ok, because she hit the other car pretty hard.

she turned out to be fine, and shes going to buy him a whole new bike! which means he gets to replace his old POS and get something new.another fine example that martial arts pays. glad he's ok.