From my perspective there are 2 types of fears. 1.) A personal “challenge” fear. For example – I have a tattoo on my chest saying: Conquer your inner fears. To me, this means don’t let the fear of doing something hold you back in life. One of those things was fighting in a MMA fight. I was afraid of fighting against another man who was as ready, as prepared, and as skilled as I was. 2.) There is the fear of actually being in a fight or facing something that is fearful; that is when the “flight or fight” instinct takes over. When you’re in a cage though, you don’t have the flight option! But for this topic, I am going to address the actual fear of facing an opponent, where flight is not an option. We will call it “Combat Fear”.

Combat Fear: A tool or a problem

Fear can be used as a tool or as a crutch when it comes to fighting. Fear (in a fight situation) is your body and mind’s natural reaction for preparing itself for combat. You will feel your heart race, your body temperature go up, you will become more sensitive, you tolerance for pain will increase and your reactions will become quicker. The hard part is learning to deal and accept these reactions. This will probably happen right when you realize there is no way out, you are fighting. When you are actually IN the fight – instinct takes over. Instinct is a whole other topic.

Accept Fear into our hearts

The best way to recognize combat fear is to realize and point out what it is going on in your body. Tell yourself what is happening, embrace the feeling of the heightened awareness, don’t try to control it, ride it. This won’t take away the feeling of being afraid, but you will know what it is, and that it can HELP you. You maybe able to let you use fear as a tool instead of a crutch.

One of the most inspiring qualities of champion fighters is their mental toughness – the ability to persist through adversity; to never quit. In a study of the psychological characteristics of ten Olympic champions (who had accumulated a total of 32 medals), mental toughness was the most frequently mentioned trait (along with focus) by the athletes and their coaches. Many sport psychology studies highlight its importance in sport performance, particularly among elite-level athletes.

What is mental toughness? Well, it carries different meaning to different athletes. Researchers have even conducted surveys just to better understand how to define it. One of these studies conducted by Jones and colleagues and published in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology came up with the following proposal:

“Mental toughness is having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables you to:

1) Generally, cope better than your opponents with the many demands (competition, training, lifestyle) that sport places on a performer; and,
2) Specifically, be more consistent and better than your opponents in remaining determined, focused, confident, and in control under pressure.”

For more than a hundred years psychological researchers have recognized the importance of qualities related to mental toughness. Through the years, in-depth interviews have been conducted with those considered to possess “genius” in the fields of art, music, finance, business, science, law, medicine and others. Consistently, the “stand out” performers are the ones whose passion and commitment allow them consistently to persist through adversity.

More recently, researchers in the field of “positive psychology” have explored a similar idea that they call “Grit.” University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Angela Duckworth has pioneered this line of research on “grit” without even drawing on sport psychology studies of mental toughness. But many features are remarkably similar. Duckworth defines grit as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.”

One of the most remarkable findings from the research on grit is that it appears to be just as important as – or perhaps more important than – IQ (natural ability) in predicting grades among Ivy league college students, retention among West Point cadets, and achievement in the National Spelling Bee. If grit and mental toughness are that important in determining who will achieve in such “intellectual” tasks, and it also consistently distinguishes top-level athletes, it probably deserves attention from anyone who wants to perform at their peak.

When a fighter has been dominated for two rounds of a three-round bout, what makes him want to continue? If an MMA fighter loses his first three professional bouts in a row, what would drive him to keep training? When you have worked tirelessly on a business proposal or project only to have it “shot down” by your supervisor, what makes you want to continue working on an idea you believe in and press on to make it better?

Recall that the research definition marks mental toughness as a natural or developed psychological edge. Mental toughness is, indeed, a skill. One that can be developed and trained. How do you develop that kind of resilience? Through preparation and practice.

A first step is learning how to pull yourself through the rough spots. As Winston Churchill said: “If you are going through hell…keep going.” This ability to transcend adversity is a key element of what psychologists call resilience. It is as important to success in business as it is in fighting.

Learning to modify and control how you think about a bad situation can really help to take the edge off of its negative effects. The best fighters don’t ruminate endlessly over a loss or repeatedly beat themselves up over it. They develop an explanation that makes sense to them about “what happened” – then they figure out what they need to work on to keep that from happening again.

They console themselves with the realization that an occasional loss is virtually inevitable when you are competing at the highest levels of your sport. They do not define themselves as a “loser” simply because the lost a particular match.

When bouncing back from a loss, those with well-honed mental toughness will typically find a way to accept the loss, keep their confidence up, and develop specific, measurable goals they want to achieve in moving forward. They then get swiftly to the task of working to achieve them. Looking forward works better than continuing to look back.

This post is an excerpt from Combat Pyscology Blog found here:
http://combatsportpsychology.blogspot.com/

The UFC and other MMA events are great to watch and gives people a great insight into a “real fight”. The slogan of “It’s as real as it gets” is very true. And when it comes to a real fight situation, I would put my money on an trained and experienced MMA fight compared to your average “street fighter” on the street. The reason being is that MMA fighters have true fight experience. They have tested themselves in the gym and in the ring. They understand combat.

In some ways, it kindof annoys me when I hear other martial arts systems say that “They are too dangerous” for the UFC. The ONLY group or martial art system that would be “Too Dangerous” for the UFC would be the Dog Brothers. The Dog Brothers is a fighting group that uses, punches, kicks, grappling, takedowns, jiu-jitsu… and weapons. It’s PURE anything goes WITH a weapon. Pretty cool huh!

So if MMA is so great – why don’t I just train that?!

Well – you could! And you would be a step above everyone else. The DIFFERENCE is that an MMA fighter has all the tools, movements, and techniques – they just need to be tweaked and the mind opened to use those techniques when you are faced with…

• A Gun
• An edged Weapnon
• A club type weapon
• Multiple Attackers

Also, an MMA fighter is comfortable spending a great deal of time on the ground. An MMA fighter is either trained to finish with a submission or ground and pound. There are other “dirty” or illegal MMA tactics that can be employed to finish the fight early.

What should you train for self-defense?

There are many great martial arts systems out there and I have trained in many of them. To date – the best system I found was Kobukai Ju-Jitsu or H2H Self Defense. They are essentially the same thing – yet H2H is geared heavily towards extreme self-defense, why Kobukai Ju-Jitsu is geared towards self-defense as well, but is also a traditional martial art. I’ve been training in both for about 9-10 years. I’ve used the techniques in Professional MMA fights, grappling tournaments, and in Real fight situations while working security at a popular night club in Hartford, CT.

The key to Kobukai Ju-Jitsu or H2H is not that it has some sort “secret” techniques. The key is that the system is simple, taught properly, approached in a logical manner, and the techniques are almost universal. What I mean by universal is that the principles, concepts, and technique that you used to defend against a punch, may also be used to defend against a knife, a gun, a club, and on the ground. The techniques eventually become “readily available” – there is no thinking about what you are going to do, or confusion about what is the proper response, you just execute.
The system is always evolving too. If the technique works, its added to the system, if it doesn’t, it’s not!

So when looking for a good system check out the www.h2hselfdefense.com site (shameless plug) or find a local martial arts school or training place that has a strong self-defense combat and real combat approach as well as a system that’s structured, easy to learn, and easy to use.