How To Use Fear To Stay Alive In A Street Attack

The real role of fear in martial arts

In a Street Attack fear can either get you killed, or get you safely home to your family. I heard Mike Tyson say that fear was his best friend, I have to agree. I think deciding if fear is good or bad all depends on your control of it. If you control and channel your fear it could be unstoppable like a hurricane, however if you let fear control you it will paralyze you. So the deciding factor if fear is a positive or a negative in your training, and even in your competing, or fighting for your life is you being in control of it.

For you martial artists, I am going to split up the word fear into two specific meanings. Number one would be using fear to your advantage while you were training. It is a different kind of fear, but your creativity and ability to visualize will help you in this situation."Training scared" when you're training, if you are able to train like your life depends on it that will increase the intensity of every punch, kick, takedown, and push up. The way you do this is pretend you are training for a life or death street attack every single time you go to the gym, pretend your families life is in danger every time you punch the bag, every push-up you do, even every takedown you perform. Training scared is common among sport fighters, because they are actually training for a fight at a specific time and place, so there's a lot of mental visualization in their training. Some fighters have a problem with this to the point where they have to hire a "sports psychologist" to help them get psyched up for a fight. I am not a sports psychologist by any stretch, but I have been my own sports psychologist for many sport fights. I honestly believe the best way to psych yourself up for a fight is to train like your life depends on it for a traditional martial artist, or like you're winning a UFC title and able to provide for your family if you are training to be a sport fighter. Either way you are training scared, one for a traditional martial artist, you are training like your life depends on it, and two as a sport fighter you Training like your livelihood depends on it. either staying alive, or putting food on the table for your family, either way training scared, should increase the intensity of your training.

Fighting with animal instinct, and training scared are very closely related. Train scared regularly, visualizing bad scenarios during your training will definitely help you control and channel your fear not only into more effective training sessions, but it will also help you control your fear in a real situation and not let it paralyze you. Once you are paralyzed in a street situation, your attacker will take 100% advantage of that, and since there is no referee in a street attack, that attacker will decide when he is finished with you, that doesn't sound like a very good idea to me. I'm just a simple karate guy, but I don't want my life, my health, or my families life in the hands, and discretion of some ruthless violent criminal.

So just like you will improve and maybe even perfect any technique with regular and consistent training, you can also learn to control and even channel your fear with consistent and regular training. Since fear is not a tangible technique or exercise where you will physically see the results of your training, it will be a mental and psychological gain. Training with fear, or as I like to call it "training scared," involves a lot of visualization during your training, and it will encourage or even force you to push harder during all aspects of your training. That is a win-win situation because not only will it help you keep your family safe, and help you win a UFC world title, or if neither one of those apply, it will definitely at least if nothing else Make you look better at the beach.