Scared of Fighting yet love martial arts!

fear is both natural and healthy, provided it is does escalate to the level where it interferes with your capacity to act...

it is borne of an awareness or perception of a threat to your well-being, it carries an important message designed to cut through non-essential concerns and bring your attention directly to the cause of the threat.

a lack of fear can lead to a recklessness which endangers you... you can see this in kids taking risks climbing, for example, that would have their parents jibbering wrecks if they could see them. The parents fear comes from a deeper awareness of the risk than the child. The child is ignorant of the full consequences of falling foul of the risk, so the fear response is not as acute as the parents.

this is different to people losing their fear through experience, in these cases, the fear still exists, but it is not felt the same way, it becomes a trigger for the execution of a stratergy that has produced positive results in the past.

once this stratergy is implemented, the fear has done its job and thus subsides, the person feels confidence in their action so, perceptually, the threating nature of the event is reduced.

as said above, sparring exercises condition the fear response through the aquisition of effective stratergies which minimise the perceived level of danger associated with fights.

put simply, you develop confidence by learning skills which you can later rely on.

 

So what your all trying to say is..

In a Fight its not the Enemy you should be fighting, its the fear?

 

The only advice I can really offer you is
A) spar more, the more contact you can do safely, the better
and
B) Read Fear: The Friend of Exceptional People by Geoff Thompson. Everything in there works - the author went from being scared of his own shadow to being one of the top doormen in Coventry; at the time, arguably the most violent city in the UK, all by controlling his own fear.

 

sort of...

though it could be expressed as just getting comfortable with feeling fear.

i guess it could be compared to a fireman.

there is always going to be a level of fear associated with dealing with burning buildings... but good training, competant collegues and the accumulation of experience make that fear managable.

 

no, i'm pretty sure you'll be wanting to fight the enemy, otherwise you're going to get punched a lot.

 

I think what you were trying to say was,

In SPARRING, it's not your partner you should be fighting, it's the fear.

 

I would recommend facing your fear gradually and in a controlled environment. Get some full contact sparring with lots of pads on, get used to punches coming at you, things like that...that should get you used to the idea of fighting after awhile. Getting into shape physically can also help, and since you're school I would recommend joining the wrestling team if your school has one. I can't count how many fatties they turned buff at my school...

Whatever you do though, don't turn into one of those really pathetic guys who takes one of those "FEAR NO MAN" classes and gets brainwashed into thinking you're some kind of Schwarzenegger-esque killing machine. Yeah that was kinda random but that my friend, would truly suck.

 

Hey Visage,

I like the idea of tying a belt/rope between you and your sparring opponent. I rely a lot on movement and agility to get my shots in but this method would force me to stand my ground a bit more and learn how to deal with an opponents strikes etc. Will definitely be including that in my sparring once in a while!

 

I'm scared of fighting, but that's OK. Fear is a natural reaction that normally makes us faster and stronger than we would otherwise be. The question is how to react to fear. The reaction is all we can really control.
That's why I am really in favor of doing reaction drills based on commonly occuring attacks. If one trains this way alot, and covers a wide range of possible scenarios while doing so, then one builds a "library", so to speak, of appropriate responses which, in my experience, the body just naturally does when attacked. No thought necessary. Then, the strength and speed that one gains through fear makes these reactions that much more effective. The trick to this is that, in practice, the attacks have to be done with real intent - even if they are being practiced in slow motion. Stylization is to be avoided. A flowing, natural response is the goal.
I really think sparring is limited in this respect. There's just no real intention to harm, and it's just too uncommittal in nature to produce the kind of results that reaction drills produce.
Meditation is a useful adjunct to this type of training, but that's a whole nother subject.
Fear is nothing to be afraid of.