The Four Elements of Fighting

While studying some Ninjustu books several years ago, one of the books was teaching on different fighting styles. Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. It was because of this that I noted that each person had their preferred method of fighting.

When it comes to sparring and self–defense people need to find the strategies that work for them. While every person may not only fight in only one of these particular styles I hope that this will encourage discussion and consideration of what your fighting style is and what works best for you. Each of these are not mutually exclusive. You can practice more than one and I would encourage people to learn to fight with multiple to be a more adaptable fighter.

Fire

The fire way of fighting is incredibly basic. The idea is to constantly strike the opponent and commit to your strikes even if they are hitting you. I’ve generally found that this is the most natural fighting style for most people. Normally if they break the shock of being attacked it would be human nature to fight like this.

This style of fighting can be severely draining. We have something called the one minute drill that we used to demonstrate this with. Essentially, the practitioner would wail on the pad or heavy bag for 15 seconds with hands, switch to a foot technique for 15 seconds and repeat until the full minute is up. Normally people are pretty winded by the end of this once.

Air

Air is the exact opposite. The entire idea of air is to be gentle and passive. The worst damage that should be caused is a minor stun. While this method is highly ineffective in defending yourself from a true threat I have found two major uses for it. One is in teaching kids how to defend themselves from bully’s in anti–violence programs in schools. These programs make it a lose–lose situation for kids being bullied by punishing the defender if the defender strikes the bully. This means the would be victim gets a harsher punishment for defending himself than the bully gets for bullying. The other use I have found is to keep younger relatives from being too rowdy.

Water

The fighting style I was pretty much conditioned to use since I was a kid is water. The entire goal of fighting like water is to keep all your techniques flowing and fueling the next one. This style of fighting relies heavily on combinations and knowing how to make the most efficient movements to conserve energy while exerting great amounts of force.

Earth

The Earth and water styles of fighting are very similar. The key difference is that while the water fighting style relies on combinations and flowing movements the earth fighting style has no particular order but usually those who fight with it do not need it. My brother is a classic example of this. The first move he makes is to try to lock you down. He will stay there as long as he needs to. Then he will move to the next position he wants to go to until you get submitted.

Conclusion

Each person has their own fighting style. While this is not the perfect analogy for determining how to distinguish the fighting styles I hope that it encouraged thought as to what you’re preferences for fighting and Self-defense are so that you can shape your self–defenses and sparring around it.