marino13

Hey I was wondering about how do you go about overcoming fear. I want to fight,but to be honest I'm afraid of being hurt or embarassed. I do really good in all aspects of my trainning, but sparring. I'm not only concerned for myself but also afraid I might accidently hurt someone.

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure I can take a punch, or kick ! I fees as though I could, and I've always been tough,but then again how do you ever know ? So this makes me passive when I spar, which means I'm picking up bad habits.

Is there any trainning methods to over come this, or do any of you have any fear related stories to tell ? I just want to make know I'm not alone on this feeling, or if it will ever get better.

Richie

joeuser42

Read this everytime you worry about being embarrased or losing in the ring:

@@@

just go nuts, convince youself youre going to break the opponent get red mist and if you get hit it dont hurt. this is my theory basically.

Tee Sok

Don't care about others, everyone fears something. Fear is an instinctive reaction and it makes you more aware. Panic is something else.
Even Rickson said he feels fear before his fights, it's the most natural thing.

I was scared too, scared to get hurt and stuff like that. But that fear became will to do good, to get better. The more you spar, the more normal it will be, and you will love it! You just have to take the first step, to get used to it slowly. In most cases what you fear will never happen. It is really all in your mind.
You can get hurt, that's part of the game, but if the school is good there should always be an instructor watching and ready to help. But from what I saw and experienced, no one gets badly hurt. And then you will be stronger than before.

Hope that helps.

gregimotis

You aren't and it will - Everybody feels it, especially in the beginning. Over time you get used to it like everything else, though some people get used to it faster than others.


Another quote that might help (the Roosevelt one is great):

"It isn't whether you get knocked down that counts, it's whether you get back up."

Vince Lombardi

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I am Tired. Tired. Tired.

Khun Kao

If you're not afraid, you're not alive.

If you're more scared of hurting someone than getting hurt, then perhaps fighting is not for you. If you're to have any success in the ring (meaning not getting hurt or embarrassed), you can not have any concern for your opponent.

I started off the same way, but after sparring regularly, I got over the whole "not wanting to hurt my partners" thing. If you can't get past that in your training, you should not fight.

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Kru Brooks C. Miller
GCA MuayThai Board of Advisors
USMTA Director of DC, MD, and VA
http://khunkao.com/

EmptyneSs

my advice to u is to concentrate on your defence. learn to parry well, and counter attack. that way u can be defensive, and evade strikes and cause ur opponent to open himself, as well as be able to stop peopls attacks with one of your own. im more of a defensive type of fighter, i like to wait for my opponent to open himself to a nice counter of combos. good attacking skills are important as well, but i prefer to be defensive, it works better for me and i like to evade tons of hits and make people get pissed and tire themselves out.

some examples

parry a jab or cross over ur shoulder, and come under with a punch of your own to his ribs or solar plexus, letting the attackers momentum slam into ur fist

parrying punches to ur face, and countering to the attackers face

parrying a jab or cross and contering with a hard leg kick

blocking a leg kick, then immediately attacking the nearest leg of the opponent

marino13

Thanks for the replies. Sparring and fighting are two different things, but you need them both, I know here is my concern for both.

Sparring: I work my defense mostly because I rarely throw anything back at them, and when I do, I pull my punches well short of the target. Take the Jab for example, I will thrust it out with good speed and snap on it, but I intentionally throw it from distances that I know won't connect. I also hardly ever throw my cross. It usually stays up on my jaw/chin. Sparring is where, I'm afraid I'm going to hurt my partner, because I can either go fast and hard or slow and soft, and if it's slow and soft they see it coming a mile away. This is where I usually get my foot caught or something.

Fighting: I'm not worried about hurting someone here, because it's hurt or be hurt type deal. My main concern here is humiliating myself or my school. Plus fear of being injured to the point of not being able to train or work for awhile.

Richie

Tom Yum

hey marino, I know what you mean. About sparring, go fast but not all out. Maybe you're relatively new, but you can still hit fast but not clench your fists at the end of the shot. Try going for technique and speed with your sparring partner; you won't hurt him, just let em know that you want to work on speed/technique - that's kind of the unspoken rule, you hit as hard as you want to be hit back.

The goal is to go about 60-70% contact so that there's enough power to be respected but still be able to come back to the gym in a day or two.

Good luck to you and hang in there.

tom

pittbulldog

"The great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of the engagement; you ought not to be thinking of whether it ends in victory or defeat. Let nature take its course, and your tools will strike at the right moment." - Bruce Lee

bodhisattva

Tee Sok, you just stated one of the most important truths. This is true of all fear. ALL FEAR. What you are afraid of is never in the room with you..because if it was in the room with you, doing what you are afraid it will do, you wouldn't be afraid, you'd be actively fighting it off.

So, fear is a reaction to something that hasn't happenned, isn't happenning, and most likely never will.

And when it does, you'll be too busy to lament.

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St. Louis MMA Training Club - MMA Boxing / Clinch / Submission Grappling / Wrestling Gym

Portland MMA Training Club: MMA Boxing / Brazilian Jiu Jitsu / Greco Roman Wrestling

gregimotis

As for wanting to not hurt your sparring partners, you might also consider that if they want to learn then you ARE hurting them by failing to give them a realistic spar. They can't learn to defend well if they don't have strikes coming in the right way.

Not wanting to hit anyone is a pretty common attitude for 'normal' people starting off in fighting arts; fighting and sparring is simply not normal for most folks. You should stick with it for a bit and see what happens. As Khun Kao said, it may just not be your game, but I think you should give it enough time to see.

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I am Tired. Tired. Tired.

Garland

Fear is a beautiful, wonderful thing. Fear keeps you alive.
If you're gunshy, that's a little different...and is completely natural at first when acquiring a new skill.
I mean...chances are, if you're going at a proper pace with proper pressure...you're probably not going to injure your opponent. Accident's happen, but, I mean, justify it like this...how many ring fights end in severe injury?
Even if you're trying hard, if your opponent is skilled enough to defend himself, both of you should be relatively cool. It is important to build a repiore with your opponent...so that eventually you can go hard, but you also need to go soft to develope technique and timing, distancing, rythm, accuracy, correct mechanics, etc. Even going hard all the time is bad, because alot of these important attributes get tossed to the wind, and it ends up just becoming a free-for-all, haymaker and rigid-kick-fest.
Going soft at first and developing your training will also allow you to start and let yourself go hard and will allow you to expirement with different things and start taking chances.

Sparring is like Research and Development...it is far better to test your skills out and tweak things a little in the gym than to get destroyed in the ring or killed on the streets.

I USED to be gun-shy sparring. I would be careful and tentative, until I had my first ring fight...now I realize that my sparring partners back in the day were hitting me just as hard or harder than the guy I fought...so now, since I've learned to pace myself...I no longer fear hitting the other guy hard and having them get pissed, I hit them as hard as they hit me. But you train to learn...not to kill your partners...so take it easy, relax, and don't be affraid of a little smack to the head...

Consider that you do best relaxed and fully composed, but with a little anticipation, and come your first fight, you'll zone into it flawlessly. A fight is as much mental as it is physical, and if your conditioning is top notch, and you're overtrained on your technique, you will destroy the fool who steps out of the changing room and into the ring against you without trying. You can turn the pressure on and off, and when you start to get the technique down, and you spar heavily...you'll feel what I'm talking about.


My advice; work on counter-striking. If your personality seems to make your personal style passive...work on countering, i.e. counter punches, counters to kicks, prummb work, footwork, and how to move to create targets and maximize the damage of your strikes. Also try and learn some explosive and ice-breaking (you know, when both guys are just standing there shuffling their feet and panting) techniques, because after you jab for the round, the guy won't expect a jumping cross. Learn how to open your opponent up and when they do open up, put them down quick.

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homo homini lupus

Garland

Man...you have to LOVE that feeling though. That feeling is LIFE itself, minus the monotomy and frustration. Adrenaline and endocrine dump...better than any drug ever made. Any of you guys ever cliff dived? Man, outside of parkcity, we have a place called Echo lake...huge cliffs, and they're kinda teired so one'll be 45 feet and the one next to it will be about 70....man, take a swig of jack and gun a 90 foot one (we swim to the bottom before to make sure it's deep enough), my god...instant zen until you surface.

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homo homini lupus