On the streets, it is not always about how good your skills are – positioning yourself strategically is more than half the battle. By that, I mean if you walk along well lit streets, you are much better positioned than walking along dark alleys. If you have multiple adversaries, allowing yourself to be encircled is the last thing you want to do.
Good positioning by itself does not win the battle for you but it never hurts. Some examples of what good positioning do for you:
- Limit resources available to your adversaries. For example, a well-lit street means that if your adversaries must risk being identified and be worried that other people may come to your rescue.
- Limit your adversaries’ options using distance, environment, visual coverage, geometry / area coverage. Goalies cannot always predict where a shot is coming from, positioning themselves properly is one of key things to train for. If you have a way to go behind your adversary, you should do it because it limits how he can fight back as well as limit what he can see. Or staying at a distance when you fight a shorter guy means that you are limiting what he can do to you.
- Create unknowns or add a new twist to otherwise known ingredients – BJJ brought fighting to the ground which is foreign to a lot of traditional martial artist. They dominated the octagon for quite a few years until people start to understand it more.
- ‘Lead’ without actually leading – if you watch cycling, you know that you cannot maintain the top spot throughout the entire race – positioning yourself to a spot where you are not closed-in and yet top place is still within reach is very important. Watch the TV reality show Survivor, you can see that natural leaders are considered a threat and therefore seldom last. Learn how to get your wish without imposing.
- Allows you to leverage off external resources like people, lighting, direction of the sun, time, weather, etc. For example, the presence of external authority (teacher, police, etc) can act as a deterrence; staying in the dark or in shielded areas to avoid detection; blend into the crowd make it harder to track you down.
- Give you flexibilities and open up new options to you. To have choices means that you have to get ready for it. Running away is not an option if you don’t have endurance. Keeping an opponent at a distance is not an option if you don’t have any tools available for that distance. Furthermore, effective positioning maximizes your advantage and minimizes your adversaries’ strengths.
- Allows early detection of trouble or opportunities – in the old days, viewpoints up the hill where you can see the entire port, now radar, satellite or even espionage (commercial or police or national security), monitoring of communication, etc.
The term positioning can be applied in a non-physical context such as marketing (e.g brand positioning), readiness (e.g. in a position to be eligible for a career advancement or to do a career change) and more.
Exercise
Apply the positioning concept relevant to you in a non-physical manner. For example, how do you positioning yourself strategically if you are grade 12? or close to retirement? or in high school? or if you are still looking for your dream job?