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and
    figuring out my options. It wasn’t a particularly fair tactic. It’s
    what Yamashita calls heiho— strategy.
    We took our places and prepared. Usually, the senior person
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    serves as attacker, but since I was demonstrating the full appli-
    cation of the technique, my partner would start. We sat for a
    moment, breathing quietly, wooden swords at our left sides.
    The man sitting across from me on the floor seemed calm.
    Confident. Contained.
    His sword began to move. I had been watching him and the
    others all morning. They were all pretty good. So I knew that if
    I lost the initiative here, his sword would have swept across me.
    At his first twitch, I had already begun to move.
    My bokken swept in an arc across his face, forcing him to
    pull back. I scrambled forward in the crouch we had practiced
    and he shot up and backwards to avoid the pressure I was
    bringing to bear. This much was standard, almost scripted, and
    everyone in that room expected it. But now the interesting stuff
    was going to happen.
    Because once my opponent stood up and got slightly out of
    range of my sword tip, he had a variety of options. His attack
    could come in many forms. The trick in doing something like
    this wasn’t just in mastering the awkward series of scrambling
    motions we had practiced, it was in being able to cope with
    what would happen once your moves brought you into the
    radius of your opponent’s weapon. Like now.
    I tried not to give him the option to think too much by
    continuing to jerk myself forward in that low crouch, my sword
    seeking a target. He parried and backpedaled, and I could see
    the awareness in his eyes, his realization that whatever he was
    going to do would have to be lightning quick, because I was
    moving in, and if he didn’t do something I was going to churn
    right through him.
    He moved slightly to his right as I came forward and he
    snapped his sword down at my left shoulder in a quick, hard
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    motion. I whirled in toward his blade, simultaneously mov-
    ing my left shoulder out of range and bringing my own sword
    around to beat down his weapon. The wood shafts barked on
    contact. But he was pretty good: he held on and kept trying.
    His impulse was to get the sword’s blade back up for another
    try at me. He went with the force of my parry, sweeping his
    bokken down and then up in a counterclockwise sweep that
    was designed to bring his weapon into the high position, ready
    for a strike.
    As his arms came up, I shot beside him in what the aikido
    people call an irimi, or “entering” movement. Now we were
    both facing in the same direction. I used my left hand to grab
    his neck from behind. I squeezed hard. It’s not that I was going
    to make much headway against those muscles; it’s that people
    hate to have their head or neck held in any threatening way.
    He jerked his head to his left as if trying to look over his
    shoulder—it’s a reflexive action—but he also moved to try to
    break my hold at the same time. As movements go, it was OK,
    and perfectly understandable. But for that one split second he
    had lost focus on his sword. I was still beside him and his right
    arm was stretched out, gripping the haft of the wooden sword.
    I lifted my bokken , the point straight toward heaven, and
    then brought it down vertically, slamming the butt into the
    cluster of nerves on the inner edge of his right forearm.
    It’s a funny feeling. Sort of. I heard him gasp and then the
    bokken fell out of his hands. I dumped him on the ground and
    put the tip of my own sword about an inch from his nose. He
    wasn’t stunned by the fall and his eyes crossed slightly as he
    focused on the tip of my weapon.
    I moved away carefully, taking three steps backward to bring
    me out of range, and bowed formally to him.
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    Yamashita strode forward. He picked up my opponent’s
    sword and looked around the room. “So…” he commented to
    the watchful trainees. “Application