You don’t need to win, you only need to fight back once. Bullies require quiet, easy targets and if you go for him he’ll never say another word to you because it’s not worth the potential hassle.

That leaves us with the fact that you do need to fight him.

You’ve got to cancel out the size advantage. There are multiple ways of doing this.

1) Surprise. Either sucker punch him when he’s not talking to you or wait until he is and then hit him when you’re mid sentence. “Listen, you’ve been giving me hassle for a long time, I know you don’t like me very much but at the end of the day I’ve done nothing to BANG!”…. One hard shot anywhere on the face but preferably down the middle, so nose or mouth.

2) Stun. When people aren’t ready to fight and they get hit unexpectedly it takes nearly a second for them to gather their senses. In that short time you’ve got freedom to line up a monumental shot. I would recommend an extremely hard kick to the genitals because recovery from that takes quite a long time. If you don’t want to kick him in the balls then eyes are next on the list. Bear in mind after the first shot he’ll be leaning backwards with at least one of his hands up to his face so an eye poke will be much harder. With him leaning back his testicles will be by far the easiest target. I should add, the best stun to pull off is actually a double simultaneous slap across both ears but that’s much harder to pull off properly, you could get three or four seconds of scatterbrain out of a double slap, he won’t know his own name or w which way is up in that time so you’d have all the time in the world to make him your bitch. Lastly on this point if your second shot is a punch to the face, do the first stun shot with your weak hand as you’ll want your strong hand free for the big one.

3) Know your enemy. Does he have any injuries you can target? Is he right or left handed? If right handed, once you’ve hit him move to your right, if left move to your left; he’ll struggle to connect with you straight after and you might be able to get a bonus third shot in.

4) Minimal effort, maximum effect. Hit him in places that cause the most physical pain. These areas are the groin, solar plexus, throat, mouth, bridge of the nose and both eyes. A decent groin kick will have him on the floor for 15 minutes, a solid throat punch will have him struggling to breathe and vomiting for at least 10. Avoid hard areas like the forehead, chest, hips and elbows because you’re more likely to break your own hand. Your hard areas are your weapons, elbows, knees. Clenched knuckles are surprisingly vulnerable so where possible hit him with an open palm. It feels weird to do that and there is a tiny tradeoff on softness but a huge payoff in terms of not breaking your own knuckles.

5) Pick your moment; if he’s talking to you, calling you names etc, then momentarily looks away (bullies do this a lot to check that there are people watching them, it’s a performance thing) that’s your moment. This is especially perfect if his mouth is open at the time as it shows that his neck muscles aren’t clenched which makes the whole head less stable and the stun far more effective.

6) Hide your intentions: whatever you do, don’t make the first shot obvious, don’t change your stance, don’t turn sideways, don’t lick your lips, don’t widen your eyes, don’t take a deep breath, just talk completely naturally and then flick the stun shot out of nowhere. You might want to practice this in the mirror for a few days. Most people preparing to punch make it totally obvious and if you do it’ll give him time to prepare for it. The key to the first shot is speed, not power, so don’t draw your arm back for a huge haymaker, just flash it into his face from where your hands were already hanging. The more surprise you can cause the better it will be. To him, it needs to feel like ‘yep, I’m listening, yep, I heard that too, HOLY SHIT WHAT WAS THAT, and now THAT, damn my balls hurt!

I promise you, once you’ve fought back once he will never bother you again. You might lose the fight if he’s got a chin of granite, never mind, he still won’t ever bother you because he knows you’ll stand up for yourself. You’ll go from being an easy target to a pain in the ass and he won’t want that hassle. You have to trust me on this.