If you ever have the opportunity to train with Sensei Norm Bettencourt from British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, consider yourself one of the luckiest people in the world because in fact you have found one of the best reality-based street fighting instructors of the world. His system is intensive in the real world, as his studio is made to look like real street environments. You do not wear any chalk or ancient and exotic oriental attire. You are not asked to have feet. There you train with your shoes and / or boots. His training environment is stairs, alleys, small rooms with tight spaces with furniture, and areas that look like sidewalks of streets. This is the real deal here! You get the look of real life, where all the violence takes place, not the romantic meditations of learning endless kata and forms, and having to memorize all the moves and strokes, even having to learn them in the original Chinese. or Japanese language. (I guess when you say “punch” or “kick” in Chinese or Japanese instead of English, you do better).
Sensei Bettencourt can train almost anyone, male or female, to be combat ready in just two 8-hour days each day of intense reality-based situations and encounters.
Norm Bettencourt doesn’t believe in belts. As he likes to joke with a laugh, “A belt only serves to hold up your pants or suffocate someone who has taken a gun from you.”
But Norm Bettencourt’s story began like most of us with the romance of becoming a “martial artist.”usually right after watching the latest Jackie Chan or Jet Li movie.
Norm Bettencourt’s turning point occurred on a cold night in Vancouver, BC, Canada. By this time he had already earned his black belt and had learned dozens of moves, techniques, and counterattacks. I was waiting for a bus at a stop. An individual approaches you and bumps your shoulder in a rude and intentional manner.
“Do you have some kind of problem, friend?” Norm responds when this boy pushes him, knowing that he was a black belt and that he could get him out with all the techniques he knew.
“Hey buddy I’m sorry I pushed you …” Pow! The guy chills cocks and punches Norm viciously on the jaw. Norm tries to respond, but this madman keeps punching and punching, causing Norm to fall back onto a hard concrete bus seat. Norm completely loses his balance. The aggressor approaches to kill. He begins brutally kicking Norm in the head knocking him unconscious.
When Norm also arrives, he realizes that a bus driver had gotten off a bus to help him get on.
As Sensei Bettencourt told me: “This was a blessing in disguise and a turning point for me when I wondered what had happened to make a guy on the street get the best of it. I–a black belt–and knock me out! Then the answer hit me like lightning. This guy was an expert on the street when it came to fighting. He knew how to “punch.” I knew only a few moves, but I knew how to execute them well and wasn’t afraid to keep going with continuous punches until I was completely knocked out. He had the mentality of a street fighter while I had the mentality of a martial artist. “This was the birth of Norm Bettencourt …Street Fighter!
We can extract 3 little recognized facts from this Sensei Bettecourt story.
Fact # 1 – A martial artist is like a good painter or a graceful dancer – The martial artist too often worries about style, form, grace, and beauty that don’t work well on the streets.
Fact No. 2: Street Fighter is like the guy who cleans himself after painting or dancing. The street fighter has a serious job to do and is not concerned with looking pretty, but simply doing his dirty work as quickly and efficiently as possible, so that Hears is tthe last man standing.
Fact # 3 – There is no such thing as a dirty fighter, only an educated one – The guy who attacked Sensei Bettencourt knew how to “hit” and was neither afraid nor minded to cause serious damage by continuing the attack until Sensei was unconscious. As a street fighter you must be an educated fighter, that is, you must fight hard and dirty until your you are the last man standing and your You are the one who walks through that door to kiss your daughter good night.