Fear is something that every martial artist has to confront at some point, usually early on in their training. In terms of physical confrontation there are two types of fear: fear of getting hit and fear of hitting. Let’s look at each in more detail and how to get rid of them.
Fear of Getting Hit
Many beginning martial artists have an innate fear of getting hit. Such fear is logical and perfectly natural. It hurts when you get hit, so it is natural to try and avoid this if possible. This attitude will not help your training however, especially when it comes to sparring. It is vitally important that you get used to taking a hit otherwise you’ll just be controlled by your own fear and you won’t be able to make the right offensive moves; you’ll just spend all your time being defensive and running away from your opponent, which isn’t going to get you anywhere.
When you first begin sparring the contact should be very light so that you gradually get used to taking a punch to the head or a kick to the ribs. Eventually such hits will not even faze you and you won’t mind taking a few to get in on your opponent. Being able to take a hit will make you a better fighter.
In self defense terms it is even more important that you be able to handle some level of contact. In a street fight there is a better than average chance that you are going to get hit. For you to hit the deck after one punch is not good. This is why we get used to taking the punishment in training so that when we do get hit outside it doesn’t come as such a shock and we can carry on defending ourselves.
You can help yourself further in training by spending time conditioning your body, toughing it up to make it more resistant to physical contact. Take a leaf out of a boxer’s book. Boxers are very tough and physically resilient. They have to be because of the amount of hits they take in a match. They thus spend a lot of time on physical conditioning and a lot of time in the ring sparring. A head- shot is like water of a ducks back to a boxer because they have taken that many. This makes them good street fighters as well, because they are hard to put down.
It’s a good idea for you to come up with training routines that involve a partner striking various parts of your body as in the system of body conditioning found in traditional Goju Ryu karate, a variation of which is seen in the video below.
For our purposes the best routine to do would be for you to stand in kiba dachi (horse-riding stance) and allow a partner to strike various parts of your body. So your partner would stand in front of you and deliver twenty punches to your stomach before moving to the side and delivering ten knee strikes to your ribs and then ten on the other side. Strikes to the jaw can also be done with a knife hand strike. You can be creative here and make up your own routine. Just remember to start of with light contact, only increasing the force as your body becomes used to it.
The effect such conditioning has is to make you more resilient to getting hit when sparring or when practicing techniques with a partner. It will also make your fear of getting hit a lot less intense if not eradicate it altogether.
Fear of Hitting
A fear of actually hitting someone is a lot more common amongst martial artists than you might think. Again, this fear is natural and comes from a logical perspective in that you don’t want to seriously hurt or injure someone by hitting them. This is all well and good but you have to remember that you are practicing a martial art at the end of the day and it involves hitting.
Such fear is usually an indication that a person is not in touch with their inner-aggressor, the beast inside us all that we need to bring out proper aggression when fighting. If you can’t be aggressive then your moves will be totally ineffectual against a determined opponent; they’ll just brush them of and bulldoze over the top of you.
When I talk about aggression I obviously mean controlled aggression. I talked about this before in a previous article and about how aggression is closely linked with intent. To my mind, the two are closely linked. You need to have good intent and good aggression to deliver that intent effectively.
It’s also about finding the balance between no aggression and over- aggression. Having too much aggression will make you and your technique uncontrolled and thus you will be just as easy to dominate in a fight.
Fear of hitting in a self defense situation is not good either. Although someone with little or no aggression could be effective in calming down a potentially violent situation by virtue of their calm and poise, when the chips are down and the punches start flying such a person will not be able to handle themselves if they are afraid of hitting back.
I have heard many martial artists say that they are afraid of seriously hurting someone on the street with their techniques and developed power. This is fine but you still have to defend yourself and that means hitting back. You can of course exert some control over how hard and where you hit, but you still have to hit and that’s all there is to it. If you don’t you get beaten. Just remember that your aggressor is out to hurt you, perhaps seriously, so why should you be worried about hurting them back? You just give as good as you get. So you hurt the other person, so what? If they didn’t want to get hurt they shouldn’t have attacked you. It’s that simple. So there is really no point in holding yourself back or allowing your fear to hold you back. You won’t do yourself any favors by allowing that to happen.
You can practice getting touch with your inner-aggressor and controlling it by simply striking a bag. Just imagine that the bag is a real person and put plenty of intent and aggression behind your strikes but do so in a controlled manner. You can also do the same thing while you’re sparring. Be aggressive, but stay controlled and you’ll see a big difference in your fighting effectiveness.
Training in the martial arts is all about confronting and controlling your fears. Master your fear and you master yourself.
