There’s a phrase that has been repeated in martial arts schools for generations:
“Size doesn’t matter.”
It sounds great.
It’s encouraging.
It makes for a fantastic martial arts movie.
And it’s not true.
At least, not completely.
Martial arts absolutely can give a smaller person the ability to overcome someone who is bigger and stronger.
That’s one of the reasons martial arts exist.
But there’s a big difference between saying:
“Skill can overcome size.”
and saying:
“Size doesn’t matter.”
Because size matters.
Strength matters.
Speed matters.
Athleticism matters.
And no amount of martial arts philosophy gets to repeal the laws of physics.
If Size Didn’t Matter, Weight Classes Wouldn’t Exist
This might be the easiest way to expose the myth.
Boxing has weight classes.
Wrestling has weight classes.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu has weight classes.
Judo has weight classes.
Kickboxing has weight classes.
MMA has weight classes.
Why?
Because when skill levels are reasonably close, being bigger and stronger is an advantage.
There’s a reason we don’t regularly put a 135-pound fighter against a 250-pound fighter and pretend they’re starting on equal footing.
They’re not.
The larger fighter may hit harder.
They may be more difficult to move.
They may be harder to control.
They may be able to absorb things the smaller fighter can’t.
And if they get on top of you, you suddenly become very aware that gravity is real.
That’s not pessimism.
That’s physics.
But Skill Matters Too
Now let’s make sure we don’t replace one bad myth with another.
Size matters.
But size isn’t everything.
Put a large, completely untrained person against a smaller, highly skilled martial artist and the smaller person may have enormous advantages.
They may understand distance better.
They may move better.
They may recognize attacks sooner.
They may have better timing.
They may know how to create angles.
They may understand leverage.
They may know how to escape bad positions.
They may remain calmer under pressure.
Most importantly, they’ve probably spent a lot more time dealing with someone who is actively trying to hit, throw, control, or submit them.
Those things matter enormously.
That’s why martial arts training works.
Training gives us tools that can help overcome physical disadvantages.
But overcoming a disadvantage isn’t the same thing as pretending the disadvantage never existed.
Skill Can Close the Gap
I think this is a much better way to explain what martial arts can do.
Skill closes gaps.
The greater your skill advantage, the larger the physical gap you may be able to overcome.
A very skilled 150-pound grappler may have no trouble controlling an untrained 200-pound person.
But what happens when that 200-pound person has been grappling for ten years too?
Now things change.
If two people have roughly equal skill, but one is significantly bigger, stronger, younger, and more athletic, who would you rather be?
Probably the bigger, stronger, younger, more athletic one.
We shouldn’t be afraid to admit that.
It doesn’t make martial arts less effective.
It makes training more important.
I Learned This One the Hard Way
This isn’t something I only believe because it makes sense on paper.
I’ve experienced it.
Most of my fighting was done around 170 pounds, but once I fought at heavyweight (accidentally, but that is a different story).
I won the fight.
But if you only knew that part of the story, you’d miss the lesson.
I have never felt as physically overpowered in a fight as I did that night.
At one point, I had my opponent mounted and managed to catch him in an armbar.
That’s normally a pretty good place to be.
Then he picked me up.
Not struggled to his feet.
Not slowly worked his way out of the position.
He picked me up like I was a small child.
I remember very clearly realizing just how different things were when someone had that much of a size and strength advantage over me.
So I had to change what I was doing.
I got back to my feet, stayed mobile, and started attacking his legs. I kept moving rather than allowing him to get his hands on me and repeatedly landed leg kicks.
Eventually, after enough of them, he could no longer continue.
I won.
But I definitely didn’t walk away from that fight thinking:
“See? Size doesn’t matter.”
I walked away knowing exactly the opposite.
Size mattered tremendously.
The fact that I had more experience didn’t magically make his strength disappear. My technique didn’t somehow repeal the laws of physics. When he was able to get hold of me and use that strength, it created a serious problem.
The answer wasn’t pretending his physical advantages didn’t exist. It was changing my strategy because they did.
That’s an important distinction.
Sometimes martial arts gives you the ability to overcome someone else’s physical advantages.
Sometimes it gives you the experience to recognize those advantages and stop fighting the kind of fight that favors them.
Both are skill.
And sometimes the smartest thing you can do is stop trying to prove that your technique can overcome someone’s strength and start finding a way to keep them from using that strength in the first place.
Technique Doesn’t Make Strength Disappear
Martial artists love talking about technique over strength.
And there’s a good reason for that.
Good technique allows us to use our bodies more efficiently.
Leverage can allow a smaller person to move someone larger.
Timing can allow us to accomplish something that brute force alone couldn’t.
Position can make someone else’s strength much less useful.
But sometimes we take a good principle and stretch it too far.
Technique doesn’t magically erase strength.
Imagine two people performing the exact same technique with the exact same level of skill.
One is significantly stronger.
Who has the advantage?
The stronger person.
Of course they do.
Technique helps us get more out of the physical abilities we have.
It helps us overcome physical advantages someone else may possess.
But strength and technique aren’t enemies.
The best situation is having both.
The Problem Gets Bigger in Self-Defense
This becomes especially important when we move away from competition and start talking about self-defense.
In competition, we usually try to make things reasonably fair.
Similar weight.
Similar experience.
Agreed-upon rules.
A referee.
A defined starting point.
Self-defense doesn’t promise you any of those things.
The person attacking you might be much larger.
They might be stronger.
They might be younger.
There might be more than one of them.
They might have a weapon.
They may attack before you even realize you’re in a fight.
That’s exactly why I don’t like telling people that size doesn’t matter.
It can create false confidence.
If you’re 130 pounds and someone who weighs 230 pounds grabs you, I don’t want your training to have taught you:
“His size doesn’t matter because I know martial arts.”
I want your training to have taught you:
“His size absolutely matters, so I need to make smart decisions.”
Maybe that means creating distance.
Maybe it means escaping.
Maybe it means putting something between you and the attacker.
Maybe it means recognizing the danger early enough that the physical confrontation never happens.
And if you have no other option and you have to fight?
Then hopefully your training has given you skills that improve your chances.
But martial arts should make us more realistic about violence.
Not less.
Train With People Who Aren’t Like You
One of the best ways to understand this lesson is to train with different kinds of people.
Train with someone taller than you.
Train with someone shorter.
Train with someone heavier.
Train with someone faster.
Train with someone stronger.
You’ll quickly discover that the same technique doesn’t always feel the same.
The angle changes.
The timing changes.
The distance changes.
Sometimes your favorite technique suddenly becomes much harder.
That’s valuable information.
If you’ve only practiced a self-defense technique against a cooperative training partner who is roughly your size, you don’t really know how well you understand it yet.
Try it against someone larger.
Try it against someone stronger.
And eventually, when it’s safe and appropriate, try it against someone who is actually resisting.
You may discover that you need to adjust the technique.
You may discover that you need a different technique entirely.
You may even discover that something you were confident in doesn’t work nearly as well as you thought.
Good.
That’s what training is for.
I’d rather discover the problem on the mat than discover it when I actually need the skill.
Being Smaller Doesn’t Mean Being Helpless
There’s an important other side to this conversation.
Recognizing that size matters shouldn’t make a smaller person feel helpless.
Quite the opposite.
If you know someone may have a physical advantage over you, you have even more reason to develop the things you can control.
Your technique.
Your timing.
Your awareness.
Your conditioning.
Your strength.
Your ability to stay calm.
Your ability to make decisions under pressure.
Your willingness to avoid a bad situation before it becomes physical.
You may not be able to change how big the other person is.
But you can absolutely change how prepared you are to deal with them.
That’s where martial arts becomes incredibly valuable.
Martial Arts Doesn’t Make Physics Disappear
I understand why the phrase “size doesn’t matter” became popular.
We’re trying to teach people that they don’t have to be the biggest person in the room to defend themselves.
That’s a good message.
I just think we can say it more accurately.
You don’t have to be bigger than someone to beat them.
You don’t have to be stronger than someone to defend yourself against them.
And you shouldn’t assume you’re helpless simply because someone has a physical advantage.
But we also shouldn’t pretend those advantages don’t exist.
So let’s let another martial arts myth die.
THE MYTH:
Size doesn’t matter.
THE TRUTH:
Size matters. Skill matters enormously too.
Martial arts gives us ways to use technique, timing, leverage, positioning, awareness, and experience to overcome physical disadvantages.
Sometimes that can allow a much smaller person to defeat someone much larger.
I’ve experienced that myself.
But the lesson I took from that experience wasn’t that size didn’t matter.
It was that because size mattered, I had to fight smarter.
That’s what good martial arts should teach us to do.
Skill can overcome size.
But first, we have to respect the fact that size is something worth overcoming.