Do high kicks work in a real fight?

A high kick is like a punctuation in a fight in that they often are the last word. It’s a beautiful collision of timing, control, and when it lands right on the button, the noise stops. The nonsense stops. Everything just... stops.

Heads and necks aren’t exactly built to absorb that kind of sudden, bone-rattling force. That’s why, when a high kick connects just right, there’s usually no need to throw another shot. You’ll know it worked. Everyone watching will know it worked. There’s no ambiguity.

In the hands (or rather, the feet) of someone who trains like it’s their religion, a high kick is a precision strike and a demolition job wrapped up into one motion. Practitioners from striking arts like Karate or Taekwondo have usually logged thousands of hours throwing them, learning to bury them inside combinations and layering them in misdirection like stage magicians. Used against someone who doesn’t know better, it feels almost cruel.

The loudest critics of high kicks are always the ones who couldn’t get their foot above their knee if their life depended on it. They lounge on the side lines, arms crossed like they’ve solved martial arts, grumbling that high kicks are flashy nonsense meant for showing off. But that’s not insight, that’s just lazy ignorance wearing a smug face. High kicks aren’t fluff; they’re precision tools of chaos. They’re range, they’re speed, and they’re a message written in motion: “I can reach you, and you don’t get to blink.”

High kicks change the equation even when they don’t land. You deny your opponent the chance to think about their next move. They’re thinking about yours. And that split-second hesitation is your opening. That’s where you start to control the tempo. When they realise your foot can reach their head, it’s not just about blocking anymore. It’s about survival. Their stance shifts, their eyes snap to your hips like a magnet, their guard lifts higher, their confidence drops lower, and now they’re not in control… you are.

They’re not fighting with strategy anymore. They’re reacting. To you. To your presence. To the unspoken promise that you could end it fast. That’s more than respect. That’s fear.

Fear is like a sneaky cheat code that stalls your opponent just long enough for you to take control. Every twitch of your leg becomes a psychological tripwire. They brace for something that might never happen, and in that moment, they've already lost momentum. Their body's an open book: liver, ribs, groin, thighs, knees, and ankles are all vulnerable. One blink of hesitation, one tiny lapse in confidence, and half their defence vanishes. So, you sell them a story. Make them buy the high shot, get them tracking your shoulders like you're going for the knockout. And while their eyes are up, you’re already going down, crashing through the gates they forgot to lock.

A high kick rewrites the rules mid-fight like someone flipping the table during a chess match they were losing. It stretches into a dimension most fighters don’t even consider, slicing through that invisible buffer zone they mistook for safety. In that split second, when they're still certain they're fine, your leg snaps upward like a coiled spring finally unleashed, and suddenly their comfort zone gets drop-kicked out of existence. You can see the blink of realisation on their face when the mental map they were relying on evaporates. They were banking on time, distance, and a plan. But all of that disappears the moment leather meets skull.

And even if it doesn’t knock them out cold, it still messes them up. A clean shot to the head rocks their world and dents their confidence. And here’s where the critics totally miss the point. They dismiss high kicks as flashy nonsense, as if effectiveness and style can’t hold hands. But that’s lazy thinking. They’re not seeing the gears turning under the surface. There’s no appreciation or comprehension of the timing, the pressure, and the trap. A high kick is a signal that you decide the rhythm now.

While I am going to use this post to share some of my own experience using high kicks in real fights, I’m not about to launch into some overblown action-movie monologue like, “I’ve gone toe-to-toe in a thousand street fights,” or “I’ve never lost a fight.” That kind of performative bluster collapses under the weight of real life. It’s pure ego wrapped in a cheap costume, swaggering into the room like it’s the main character while the people who truly understand what violence is just look on, totally unimpressed. That kind of false confidence is ridiculous and dangerous. You shouldn’t go looking to get into street fights. They’re chaotic, painful, and no one comes out of them looking good. You won’t earn honour, and you won’t be a hero. There’s no glory in bleeding in the street.

And if you're sitting there, hearing that all-too-familiar voice whispering, “Real men love to fight,” because some loudmouth with a trendy beard shouted it into a camera, do yourself the kindest thing you can: turn your computer off. Seriously. Step outside, breathe real air, let your shoulders drop, and remember what actual peace feels like. Maybe even talk to a human who isn’t hustling you with a fear-wrapped version of manhood that demands you perform instead of feel. Whatever you're carrying, throwing punches at random people won’t fix it. And honestly, there’s nothing weak about reaching out. There’s zero shame in hitting pause and choosing a path that leads somewhere better. That’s what real strength looks like.

I’ve never exactly been the towering type. Stocky, sure. But I’m short enough that some people apparently take it as a green light to act like clowns at a cheap circus. You know the ones: amped-up egos stuffed into giant frames, running their mouths like they’re auditioning for a fight they’re not ready to finish. They swell up with bad beer and worse decisions, all chest-thumping and hollow threats, thinking loud equals scary. It’s laughable, exhausting, and honestly, just sad.

That kind of ego hates being ignored. It feeds on attention like a parasite with an inferiority complex. I’ve crossed paths with it more times than I can remember. I usually just bounce. Not because I’m scared, but because, honestly, I’ve got way cooler things to be doing. I’m not here to perform for anyone, and I’m definitely not throwing away a perfectly good evening on some clown trying to puff himself up like he’s the king of the beer-soaked universe.

But sometimes, walking away just isn’t an option. And wow, do I hate that. It’s that moment when you’re backed into a corner, every exit sealed, and the person standing in front of you might as well be an industrial refrigerator with fists. That’s when everything shifts from bluffing and bravado to pure, unfiltered survival mode.

When you’re giving up a significant size advantage, the odds take one look at you and laugh. Physics doesn’t care how smart you are. Mass is mass and force is force. And there’s no slick move in the world that gets you clean past someone twice your size when you’ve got nowhere to go. I’ve lived that nightmare before and once is exactly one time too many.

I let one of those guys sucker-punch me with a surprise move. It was an absolute rookie mistake on my part because I missed every obvious signal. I didn’t clock the way his body shifted, didn’t catch that weird little twitch in his eye that yelled “something bad’s coming.” One second, we’re exchanging words back and forth in the kebab shop, the next I’m in a chokehold so brutal it felt like my skull was about to explode. There was no dramatic build-up. Just a jarring, violent snap into chaos, and I had zero chance to respond.

So, there I was, flailing like one of those wacky inflatable tube guys you see outside car dealerships waving their arms everywhere. It wasn’t a fight; it was a one-sided beating. I had no style or control, just the purest form of "oh crap" energy my body could muster. He had me locked in tight, and he was hammering my head like he was trying to break through to another dimension, every hit pounding like he wanted people three blocks away to feel the bassline in their chests.

I got absolutely wrecked. No excuses. I lost, full stop. And weirdly, I’m totally cool with it. There’s zero shame in that kind of loss. It leaves a mark, but in a good way. It’s the kind of experience that scorches lessons into your bones and gives you lessons you’ll carry forever. It smacks you with the reality that sheer force won’t always cut it, especially when you’re not exactly built like a concrete slab capable of dropping elbows on another person’s head. When you’re more strategy than muscle, you’ve got to get smarter. You have to adapt or risk getting flattened again.

That’s where high kicks came in. Not because I’m trying to look cool or pretend I’m in some overproduced action flick with dramatic lighting and slow-motion that makes everything seem ten times more epic. I throw high kicks because they work for me. They buy me time, give me space, and open up angles that wouldn’t be there otherwise. They let me stand a chance when I’m up against those walking vending machines with fists like demolition tools. High kicks help level the playing field. And let me tell you, once you’ve had your bell rung by a dude whose jab feels like a brick through drywall, you stop trying to out-brawl him. You switch games entirely. While he’s busy hammering away, you’re already moving three steps ahead. Oh, and to the inevitable “bro” who’s already halfway through typing “Just do jiu-jitsu,” save it. Respect, but no thanks. That’s not for me.

When a high kick smacks the skull just right, the conversation ends fast. Brains, being balls of meat jellies, don’t like rapid, violent movement. A well-placed high kick whips the head around like a joystick yanked by an angry gamer. That twist sends the brain sloshing inside the skull, like a rowboat caught in a freak storm, mid-turn, mid-scream. And you don’t even have to throw it like you’re trying to break concrete. If you catch the moment and angle with precision, the lights cut out before the body even realises someone hit the switch.

I remember this one time outside a CVS in downtown Knoxville. I’d swung by to grab some painkillers for a wrist I’d messed up while hauling hay bales at the ranch where I worked between college classes. Working on a ranch is long days filled with relentless heat, endless layers of dust, and a kind of fatigue that makes your soul tired. As a result, I wasn’t paying much attention to my surroundings.

I shoved open the door of the store and slammed straight into a wall of humid air that clung to me like an overly enthusiastic cat. I managed maybe two steps toward my car before this guy just materialised. No sound. No “Hey, dude.” He was just there, like I’d wandered into the middle of someone else’s movie scene, completely uninvited.

“What time is it?” he asked, voice as flat as a dead radio signal. He was way too close. Like you’re breathing my oxygen close. I had to shift back, just enough to stop every cell in my body from sounding the this is not okay alarm.

And then the smell landed like a punch from nowhere. It was a nasal ambush that stank of chemicals and body odour. My nose tried backpedalling before my brain could even clock what was going on.

I took a step back with my hands raised, one hand open between us in that universal peace offering gesture. My other hand still gripped the crinkly paper bag like it might anchor me to something solid. I could hear the pills shift inside. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I checked my watch as dumb instinct whispered, “Just play it cool, get through this.” Like he’d disappear if I just answered. I met his stare. Told him the time. Then stood there, waiting.

I could tell he wasn’t actually listening. His eyes dropped to the bag I was holding and stayed there, locked in like it was the only thing that mattered. Like the rest of reality had peeled away, and that one object was the centre of his universe now. That’s when the whole vibe flipped, like walking into a room that had been full of chatter a second ago and now it’s dead quiet, and you suddenly realise how deeply wrong that silence feels. Something inside me flipped right then too. The usual low hum of thoughts in my head snapped into full-blown warning sirens.

I finally registered his visual form then. He looked rough. His clothes told a story of hard knocks stitched together with regret. Dirt was encrusted on them and individual threads dangled like they were barely clinging on after too many nights that went way past bad. He looked like someone who’d been through places people pretend don’t exist. And the smell was like the city itself had exhaled its worst and decided to keep him soaked in it.

He towered over me by at least a foot. He wasn’t bulky, just wiry in that tough, no-nonsense way that comes from years of grinding it out with nothing handed to you. His body had the look of someone who’d learned to get by on not enough, like he’d built himself for endurance, not ease. He moved like he still remembered what it meant to throw down, even if he hadn’t needed to in a while. And even though he was covered in grit and the fallout of whatever he'd been through, the way he held himself told me he hadn’t gone under. Not completely.

He spoke again, voice low and nosy, poking at the tension. He asked what was in the bag like it was his business. I didn’t blink or let a single muscle betray me. I kept my eyes locked on him “Doesn’t matter,” I said, as cool as I could manage. Then I smiled. Not the friendly kind, but in the way that tells you we’re done here. I gave him a single nod. “Have a nice day.”

I took a step to go around him, but he cut me off clean, no hesitation, like it was part of a routine he’d perfected a hundred times before. The guy slid into a blocking position and fired off his pitch. He said he needed money, something about food, his girlfriend, and hunger. It could have been legitimate or complete baloney. But it didn’t matter. I already had every intention of getting out of there as quickly as I could.

I slid back just enough to create some space and not look like I was retreating. I shifted slightly, turning my body a few degrees off-centre to line things up in case this got stupid. My heart pounded in my throat, fast and heavy, like a drumline warming up for something loud and messy. I moved the paper bag from my right hand to my left, a tiny adjustment that felt bigger than it looked. I always lead with my right when things get ugly, and I wasn’t about to give that up because someone else decided today was the day. My left wrist still buzzed with the low, nagging ache of the sprain, and I didn’t trust it to hold up if things went sideways.

Then he casually said his girlfriend was down some grimy little side street. Like that one vague detail somehow made his sketchy tale bulletproof. Then he leaned in and asked if I wanted proof, as if we were two shady dudes haggling over a bootleg deal behind some dumpster that smells like broken lives. I honestly can’t tell you exactly what I said, but whatever came out of my mouth wasn’t friendly.

His eyes locked on mine, hard and steady, and then he just offered to sell her. No flinch or hesitation. Like it was Tuesday and this was normal business. I looked him in the eye and told him flat that I wasn’t interested. Then I tried to slip past him. I kept my angle tight, gave him space, but not so much I looked rattled. Just enough to say, don’t try me. And even though I didn’t know how this was going to end, something deep in my gut had already clocked this wasn’t done yet.

He stopped talking like someone had hit the mute button. His arms dropped, hanging loose and seemingly useless. Then his eyes started to drift, slow and smooth, scanning the area. Left. Right. Behind. Not like he was lost or wondering. It was more… clinical.

I knew that look. It’s the dead space right before the chaos. He was gauging the environment, running the math, clocking if any witnesses were around. That prelude to violence never leaves you once you’ve seen it. It’s like hearing the first low rumble before the sky cracks open.

What happened after that gets fuzzy. But I do remember the lunge. His whole body snapped forward, aiming for the bag in my left hand. Maybe he thought it held something worth selling, snorting, or injecting. Whatever the reason, he came at me with a kind of broken determination. His movements felt off, like his limbs hadn’t gotten the latest update from his brain. Jittery. Scrambled. Like a bad signal that still keeps broadcasting. But he never managed to lay a finger on me.

My right leg shot out before my brain even caught up. It was pure instinct with zero planning. I launched a roundhouse kick, and it felt like I hit a punching bag wrapped in memory foam. There wasn’t much resistance, only a weird, soft thud that didn’t match what I saw. But I did see it. My boot’s instep snapped against his jaw, skimmed up into his ear.

The kick had me moving forward, so my foot kept going without pausing. It stayed in contact with his head like we were glued together. He didn’t sway or spin or stumble in some cool, cinematic way. He just dropped as if someone yanked the plug. When he hit the ground, my foot was still right there on his skull. I didn’t stomp or grind it in. I didn’t even lean in too much, only placing the weight I couldn’t help. But even that unintentional pressure was going to matter later. But we’ll get to that.

His legs just gave out, like the power got cut mid-stride. One second, he was upright, and then he was on the ground. His knees bent at unpleasant angles, like his body forgot how bones are supposed to work. It wasn’t dramatic, no gasps or cinematic thud, only this eerie, brutal instant of failure. And the quiet had this awful weight to it.

I didn’t hear his head hit the pavement, and somehow that silence made everything worse. Then I saw it: blood, creeping from the corner of his mouth, and pooling beneath his skull from a head wound I couldn’t see. That red was unnaturally bright against the cold, indifferent grey of the concrete.

But he was breathing. That one stubborn fact barely held me together. His chest rose and fell unevenly, but it did move. Not nearly enough, but still, somehow, enough to count. And then, the sound started. Oh man. That sound. It hit like a punch to the gut. Wet and ragged, like every breath had to fight its way through a swamp-soaked rag. It was loud, grotesque, wrong in every possible way. The kind of sound that wraps itself around your spine and pulls. You only need to hear it once for it to take up permanent residence in your brain. It was the sound of everything falling apart.

I moved. Not cool or calculated or like one of those people who always has their act together in a crisis. I moved as if my brain short-circuited and my body just said “go.” It could have been adrenaline or blind panic. Either way, I was moving and I wasn’t stopping to think about it. I got him onto his side, even though I know you’re not supposed to touch them if there’s a head injury. But this wasn’t some tidy textbook scenario with a checklist and helpful diagrams. This was chaos on concrete, and he was gasping like the air was trying to run away from him. So, I acted. Because letting him lie there and drown in his own fluids in real time wasn’t an option.

And then, thank whatever’s out there, it actually worked. The choking noise stopped once I got him into the recovery position. He didn’t wake up, didn’t magically sit up and crack a joke or anything. But his chest was moving. I could see it, count it, and anchor myself to it. That rhythm became my lifeline. I was still rattled. Hell, I was shaking. But I wasn’t spiralling anymore.

By now, the whole thing had attracted an audience. A guy in a CVS shirt already had his phone out, calling for an ambulance. His voice was sharp, eyes jumping like they were tracking every worst-case scenario before it exploded. I’m not going to lie – every instinct I had was screaming at me to bolt. My brain locked onto one word and wouldn’t let go: Leave. Just get out. Don’t stick around long enough to watch this spiral.

But I wasn’t a complete idiot. I knew that bailing would crank this up from bad to full-blown catastrophe. It’d shift the blame in a heartbeat and slap me with a label I didn’t earn. Suddenly, I’d be the villain of someone else’s story, and I wasn’t about to hand them that script.

I stayed right there with my feet planted like I belonged, even though my hands wouldn’t stop shaking and I was barely keeping my breath steady. I kept telling myself I was fine, that I could pull it off. I wasn’t fine. Not even close. But still, better to stand there and be seen than to bolt and look guilty as hell. Shaken beats suspicious every single time. What I didn’t realise, and what I couldn’t possibly have known, was that a Knoxville PD cruiser had been sitting across the street the whole time.

The blue-and-red wash of the roof lights hit everything as the patrol car eased into the lot, slow like it had all the time in the world. It rolled to a stop a few feet in front of me, humming like it was sizing me up.

A woman in a white lab coat (probably a CVS pharmacist) was crouched next to the guy I’d kicked. She was holding gauze or a pad to his head, pressing it down like she knew what she was doing. And it wasn’t soaked. That hit me like a jolt of weird relief. Like, okay, he’s not gushing blood, so maybe I didn’t screw up as badly as I thought. Maybe this wasn’t going to spiral into something even worse. I didn’t know jack about internal bleeding or concussions or any of that. I just knew I hadn’t meant to put him out cold. I was trying to stay on my feet and survive the moment.

A solitary police officer got out of the cruiser. He took big, deliberate strides until he stood next to the downed man and the woman pressing the gauze against his unconscious head. He spoke into his shoulder mic. Then he scanned the crowd, as though he was working a jigsaw puzzle and every person was a piece he had to figure out. He started asking people if they saw anything.

And then it happened.

Some random guy, no one I recognised, just a blur of a face I’ve already forgotten, threw his arm out like he was gunning for a courtroom mic drop. Finger locked right onto me. No pause. No doubt. And his voice, man, it just cut clean through everything.

“He stomped on this guy’s head,” he said. Loud. Sharp. Final.

And just like that, my stomach bottomed out. Gone. Like stepping into thin air.

Oh shit.

The cop wandered over like he was on a lazy stroll through the park, not mid-shift in a parking lot drama. He asked for my name, then what went down, like we were two strangers catching up over coffee instead of one of us possibly being in trouble. I handed him my driver’s licence and started explaining. Not too fast or too slow, just casually walking him through the blur that had somehow become my reality. I tried my best to keep it eve and calm-ish. I mean, I was definitely not panicking. Definitely. Not. (I was.)

I’d barely got through the first chunk of my story when the ambulance rolled into the lot. No sirens, just flashing lights that spun in surreal silence. It made the whole thing feel even more serious. It was as if some quiet countdown had started and I hadn’t noticed.

The officer gave a single nod. No words. Just turned on his heel and told me to follow him. We walked over to his cruiser. He leaned against it like this wasn’t his first confusing mess of a situation. Told me to start from the beginning again. So, I did. I told him a guy came at me, and I reacted. Called it a defensive kick to the head. I might not have nailed the phrasing, but I definitely said “kick” and “head” close enough together that they landed in the same breath. That’s when his eyebrows shifted. Not a full-on Spock move, more like a ripple in the calm. He’d caught something. Something that made sense in his mental flowchart of what happened.

He held up a hand and told me to run through that part again. Slower. This time, he asked the question with surgical precision: “Was the guy sitting on the curb when you kicked him?”

And then my brain just froze. Like he’d asked me to do long division in Ancient Greek. For a second, I couldn’t form a sentence. Then my thoughts caught up, and I realised what was happening. He was cross-checking. The stories were colliding now; mine, and whatever the witness had said. Probably something about me stomping the guy, Mortal Kombat-style.

And suddenly, I saw it. The gap between what I meant and how it sounded. The disconnect. This version of events where I’d played the villain delivering a final, dramatic move on a guy who was already down. It wasn’t the truth I was trying to tell, but I couldn’t deny how easy it would be to read it that way. It was all there, in my own words. And yeah, it didn’t look good.

So, I laid it out for him again, careful not to raise my voice or flail around like some wild cartoon character. I needed him to see that I had control, not just of my words, but of myself. I told him the guy hadn’t been sitting there like some innocent bystander. That’s not how any of this started. He walked up, asked me for the time, but right away, I knew something was off. His body language didn’t match his words. He was calculating something I wasn’t supposed to notice.

I stepped back. Twice. Maybe three times. And every time, he matched me, move for move. That’s when my brain kicked into high alert. That crystal-clear, ice-down-your-back moment where everything slows and sharpens, and you know deep in your bones that this isn't random. I didn’t see a weapon, but I didn’t need to see one to know something bad was about to happen. Then he lunged. No warning. No sound. Just sudden, violent movement. Before my thoughts could catch up, my body answered. I threw a roundhouse kick. Not pretty and definitely not textbook, but it connected, and it worked.

The officer looked at me then. Not like he thought I was lying, but like he was lining up the puzzle pieces in his head. He asked me to go through it one more time, and I did. Same story, but this time, I mentioned I had martial arts training. And that changed something. He nodded, told me he’d trained too for about fifteen years, mostly wrestling and jiu-jitsu. After that, the air felt different. His posture shifted, like we’d stopped being strangers in a cop-and-civilian situation and briefly found common ground.

I didn’t even notice the second cruiser until two more officers strolled up like they’d just wandered out of a lunch break. No hurry, no tension, just a casual energy like they'd been there all along. It threw me. I didn’t hear the first officer call for backup, so it felt like they’d spawned out of nowhere. One of the new guys, older with that quiet authority that doesn’t need flashing lights, looked right at me and said I needed to sit in the back of his cruiser while they figured things out. It wasn’t a threat or even really a command. I wasn’t cuffed, but let’s not kid ourselves, I wasn’t free.

I got in and he shut the door. And then I waited. And waited. Time stopped behaving like time. I gave up checking the clock after twenty minutes. Past the one-hour mark, I seriously started to wonder if I’d been forgotten like a sock behind the dryer. I sat there, on the backseat of a car that smelled like vinyl and stress, watching shadows slide across the pavement and strangers move past like they were part of some other timeline. Everything outside felt slow and far away, as if I’d been paused. I didn’t move. I counted breaths and tried not to spiral. Tried to keep my mind from chewing through itself. Just... waited.

Eventually, one of them came back. I can’t remember if he was the first officer or one of the other two. But he told me they’d pulled security footage from a camera outside the CVS. Every second, recorded and timestamped, similar to a digital receipt of the whole thing. This news didn’t calm me down exactly, but knowing the footage existed helped. At least I wasn’t stuck trusting the fuzzy details of my memory. He said I wasn’t getting arrested. That hit like a jolt of fresh oxygen after being underwater way too long. My body remembered how to breathe again.

They wanted me at the station to give a formal statement. I said yes. Looking back, I don’t know if I really had a choice, but it didn’t feel like I was cornered. So, I went. That’s when the heaviness kicked in for real. I sat there, walking through it all, moment by moment. Over. And over. And over again. Two hours straight, turning each second like it held some cosmic importance (and maybe, yeah, it kind of did). Definitely not how I’d imagined the day would go when I dragged myself out of bed. But life throws a punch, and you learn to roll with it.

Eventually, it wrapped up. They walked me to the lobby and said I was free to go. No follow-up promise, no “we’ll be in touch.” Just... done. On the way home, silence took the passenger seat. That weird kind of silence that shows up when your brain is sore from replaying things you’d rather not remember. And one truth clung to me like static: doing the right thing doesn’t always leave you feeling noble. Sometimes, it just means spending two hours in a fluorescent-lit room, rehashing your worst moment while a stranger scribbles in a notebook.

About a week later, I got a call from the police. The guy I kicked in the head got out of hospital a few days after the incident happened. Turns out, he was already on the police radar for minor stuff, mostly drugs. They didn’t give me his name, and I didn’t ask for it. They asked if I wanted to press charges for assault and attempted robbery. I passed. I didn’t have the energy to keep dragging it out, to keep feeding it breath it didn’t deserve. I just wanted to close the book and keep moving forward.

I’m not sharing this memory to soak up praise or pretend I’m some action movie badass. That’s not what this is. I’m telling it because there are three things I walked away with that still echo and which are worth sharing.

First: high kicks work. Not the kind you see in shiny gyms with mirrors and choreographed routines, but in real-deal chaos. When your system’s lit up like a pinball machine, your hands twitch, your skin’s ice, and your brain can’t decide whether to run or freeze. In that white-hot, everything-goes-weird moment, they work, but only if you’ve baked them into your bones. You don’t learn that in a weekend seminar. That comes from training them until your muscles move before your brain even weighs in. Until your leg goes without a thought, like flicking on a light switch in the dark. That’s how mine landed. Not luck. Not instinct. Just hard work over a very long period of time.

Second: the whole mess could’ve been avoided if I’d just looked around. That’s the one that stings. Staying alert isn’t sexy, but it’s the unsung hero of staying safe. Fights don’t explode out of nowhere. They hum and crackle before they blow. And if you’re tuned in, you hear the static. If you’re tuned out, you’re already behind. Most violence slips in through the crack you left open by not paying attention. That crack was mine. I saw it too late, and I own that. Lesson learned. I haven’t let my guard down like that since.

And third (this is the big one), you don’t walk away from a fight clean, even when you’re in the right. Even when it’s justified, by the book, textbook self-defence. There’s still a price. You get your adrenaline, then you get questions. Lots of them. From people who weren’t there, who don’t know you, who have zero context. Cops, lawyers, judges, maybe all three. You explain it again and again and again. Every frame, every beat, every flinch. And they don’t want feelings. They want facts. The system isn’t built for nuance. It runs on process, not people. “Right” doesn’t mean much under fluorescent lights and file folders. I was lucky. Really lucky. My cost was a few hours and a lot of repetition. But it could’ve spun out of control, like if the guy had died. And if it had, being right wouldn’t have saved me. Preparation would’ve been my only hope. That’s why I’m telling you this. Maybe it helps someone dodge the same pitfalls. If this hits even a little too close to home, or if you want to understand what happens after the smoke clears, look up Marc MacYoung.

If you want to land a high kick in a real fight, your foundation better be rock solid before your foot ever leaves the ground. The cornerstone of that foundation is cold flexibility. Not yoga-after-latte flexibility. I mean cold. The kind where you walk into a room thick with tension, and without stretching or thinking, you can put your foot on someone’s face like it’s any regular Tuesday. Because in a real fight, nobody’s giving you time to limber up. You’re in or you’re out. And cold flexibility gives you the right to choose which.

Also, never throw a high kick on its own. (Yes, I did. I know. Don’t come at me. I said was lucky, remember?) A high kick is one tool in a toolbox of violence. It needs setup. It needs context. You work it in with hand traps, foot feints, maybe a jab that draws their weight just enough. And if it doesn’t land, you follow up hard with knees, elbows, headbutts, or whatever keeps the momentum. The fight doesn’t stop because your kick didn’t connect perfectly. You don’t get a redo. You just keep going, or you get wrecked.