This story happened when I was around twenty-eight years old.
I was married at the time and living in an apartment complex where I had gotten to know two brothers, Corey and Eddie. They spent a lot of time hanging around our place. I would occasionally show them a little Aikido and talk martial arts with them.
Eddie would eventually become one of my students when I opened my dojo.
Corey, on the other hand, was a different story.
He was a good kid, but he was also an arrogant little fucker.
Funny, energetic, always testing boundaries.
One evening I was lying on the floor, half asleep.
Not fully asleep.
Not fully awake.
Just somewhere in between.
Apparently Corey decided this was the perfect opportunity to test me.
I only learned the full story afterward.
According to him, he spent several minutes slowly sneaking across the room toward me. His plan was to creep up while I was sleeping and put his hands around my throat before I knew what was happening.
He took his time.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Trying not to make a sound.
Finally he was standing over me.
He reached out.
And at that exact moment my eyes snapped open.
Corey jumped about two feet straight into the air.
It scared the hell out of him.
What always made me laugh about the story was that I wasn't trying to do anything.
I wasn't demonstrating awareness.
I wasn't teaching a lesson.
I didn't even know what was happening.
It just happened.
Years of training had created a level of awareness that was operating beneath conscious thought.
I didn't detect him.
I didn't reason it out.
I simply woke up at exactly the right moment.
The look on Corey's face must have been priceless.
Needless to say, he never tried anything like that again.
What I love about that story is that it wasn't a technique.
It wasn't a throw.
It wasn't a self-defense move.
It was the result of thousands of hours of training showing up when I wasn't even trying.
Sometimes the deepest effects of training are the ones you don't notice until somebody else points them out.