A few weeks ago I was itemizing a "Peanuts" side-splitting strip in the unpaid that had this deeply fascinating street-fighting lesson in it.

Basically, the strip was about Linus (the kid who has the blanket and sucks his thumb all the time) and his nasty sister Lucy getting ready to practice boxing in the yard.

Anyway, before they started Lucy said, "let's wait until that plane flies over us first".

Linus, not hearing a plane in the sky, looks up and says, "what plane?"

Then...while he's looking up in the sky for the plane...

BAM!

Lucy socks him in the face, knocking him down.

As a street-fighting teacher, I got a huge kick out of that.

Why?

Because it was a perfect example of how to use "distraction" as a weapon...and instantly gain the upper hand in a fight

You see, when you're on the street, and someone is trying to attack you, one of the fastest and most effective things you can do is simply distract their attention, even if for a second.

Doing so will almost always buy you an extra second to either get away or get the first attack in and grab the high ground.

And the best part about this is, there's no limit to what you can use to distract an attacker.

You can throw your wallet on the ground, fake a heart attack, fling gravel in their face, pick up a nearby ally cat and throw it at the guy, anything you can think of.

The idea is to cause your attacker to hesitate -- even if for a second -- so you can gain the element of surprise.

If you want to get good at this, then think about 5 or 10 simple ways to distract an attacker and commit them to memory. You may even want to practice them once in a while, too.

Doing so will give you an enormous advantage in a street fight.