Fear in a Fight Can Paralyze
Far too many people freeze up when confronted with violence. Even trained martial artists.
Being able to control your fear in a fight is easier said than done.
Some people seem to naturally be able to control it or as Mike Tyson’s trainer Cus D’Amato would say, channel it.
Other’s have no control over their fear in a fight and sadly fall victim to their attacker.
Today I’m going to give you 2 important tips to control your fear in a fight so that you can access your martial arts skills and emerge victorious.
Everyone Feels Fear
The 1st thing that I believe will help you immensely is to realize that everyone feels fear.
Hall of Fame NFL Quarterback Jim Kelly famously would vomit before every game due to anxiety (fear). There are many other notable athletes who have the same thing happen to them.
But one of the most interesting is Mike Tyson. Tyson said he used to cry before every fight he was so scared.
Yet these athletes all had a method they used to control their fear, and so can you.
But let’s learn a little more about fear.
Fear is Your Friend
God, mother nature, the Anunnaki, Darwin or whoever the heck you believe in put fear in you to keep you alive.
Fear is there to make you pay attention when something seems out of place… something that could be dangerous.
Fear is literally your brain saying, “Hey! Pay attention that looks dangerous!”
Fear keeps you alive several times per day and you never even realize it.
It is what tells you look both ways before crossing the street. It tells you not to keep plugged in electronics next to the bathtub.
People that don’t feel fear don’t often live very long. They do dumb things.
People that ignore fear often wind up victims of crime. Which is why you sometimes should judge a book by its cover!
Vigilance is fear in a proactive form. You see someone or a group of people who look dangerous from a distance and you choose to avoid them… Smart move!
Hyper-vigilance is rational fear gone too far. It is interpreting things that don’t show as dangerous as if they were. This is also known as PTSD. Not a good way to live life.
What Happens During Fear
You may have heard silly phrases such as “fear is only in your mind”… Well duh! Of course it is… but it goes all over your body and causes all kinds of reactions.
Sympathetic Nervous System aka Fight or Flight Responses often include:
These responses are actually there to help you focus on a single target, give you a boost of strength, decrease your awareness to pain so you can fight through injury, and prevent unnecessary distractions.
But some of the negative consequences are that you lose your ability to see additional threats coming from your sides and you lose some of your fine motor skills.
I will teach you how you can learn to control your fear response so you only get the benefits and minimize the negative ones.
2 Important Things To Do When You Feel Fear
Begin practicing the following things now so if God-forbid you even need to use them the tools are sharp!
1) Welcome the Fear
Seriously! Good intentioned people will say things like, “don’t be afraid.”
But here is the problem with that. You don’t have control over what you feel, you only have control over your actions.
And fear is something that you feel.
I always tell people that they are entitled to their feelings but they are not entitled to their actions.
Imagine being cut off in traffic. You probably feel anger, frustration, etc. It is ok to “feel” those emotions. What is not ok is for you to ram them off of the road, jump out of your car and beat them up. You are NOT entitled to your actions.
When you feel emotions and try to stuff them down, shame yourself for having them, or otherwise say that it isn’t right to feel them you invalidate a completely normal response.
Counterintuitively the emotions end up having more control over you and cause you to act in a way that is out of your control… such as in anger.
But if you give yourself permission to feel the emotion it then loses its grip on you. You validate your subconscious.
I’m not trying to get all new-age on you this is serious neuropsychology here.
So if you feel fear just realize that it is a temporary emotional response that is trying to tell you to pay attention. If you acknowledge it then it will reduce.
2) Calm Your Breathing
I’m sure this isn’t the first time you have heard to calm your breathing. Take slow deeper breaths.
Well there is a very good neurophysiological reason for this.
Short and shallow breaths do 2 things:
Conversely calm slow breathing tells your nervous system that you are in-control.
Slowing your breathing will reduce the negative effects of fight or flight that I listed earlier. It will allow you to hold onto increased focus, some pain reduction, and improved strength and cardiac output due to the positive effects of adrenaline.
In other words you will be in super-hero mode!
Story Time
I’m going to share an event that I experienced a while back. I’ll try to keep it quick for you…
I was walking through a parking lot when an SUV pulled up about 30-40 yards away. There were 2 guys inside clearly looking for trouble.
They jumped out, approached rapidly, pumped their fists and thought they were hot shit.
In that moment I got both a fear response and an adrenaline responese.
I even had a brief moment of self-doubt!
But in the moment I knew what to do. I quite literally said this in my head, “thank you fear, I see the threat. I’ve trained for this, I’m ready for this.”
Then I started taking slow deep breaths.
Instantly my fear turned to focus. I looked around, planned how I would land my first strike if they dared to get close to me and how I would use our multiple attacker tactics that I teach people in my classes.
As I did all of that I was simultaneously standing calm, slightly leaning forward, keeping direct eye contact with them and never said a single word.
What do you suspect happened?…
Their fear responses must have kicked in telling them that they were in-fact the ones who were in danger.
They stopped in their tracks.
One of the guys – the main instigator – tried to disappear behind a car while the other guy stood frozen like a deer in headlights.
They realized that they had made a mistake. I could tell that they didn’t want to fight anymore.
Now I won’t lie… I wanted to “teach them a lesson” since they would have still attacked if it was someone else. But I decided that I didn’t want any of the potential legal repercussions so I told them that they had best be off… and they rapidly got back in their vehicle and drove off.
Now all of this isn’t to say how cool I am. I am just like you. What I will say is that this is exactly what being a trained martial artist can achieve for you as well, victory without violence… or with violence if need be.
Conclusion
Fear is a temporary emotional state. Fear is an action signal created by the brain, felt in the body. It is there to draw your attention to something that might be very important.
To control your fear in a fight you must acknowledge it, remind yourself that you are trained and have prepared for this. Calm your breathing.
Never think about what they are going to do to you… Rather think about what you are going to do to them.
By the way, if you are not consistently training then your very next step is to go find a high quality martial arts school that teaches realistic martial arts for the modern age.
When you have blocked tens of thousands of punches, and landed tens of thousands of your own punches then you won’t wonder “what you will do.” You will have trained responses that kick in.
You don’t rise to the level of your expectations, you fall to the level of your training.
Until next time,
Brian
