- health/fitness
- fun/hobby
- self-defense
- confidence
but i think it's missing another element. An element so crucial and essential to martial arts but i think have dissipated given the society we live in..as well as it being diluted by time, economics, teacher's preference, etc.
And what is that element?
that element is handling fear. Fear is that natural instinct we all have that means survival. No fear = death...from an evolutionary standpoint.
Things have no doubt changed now that we live in the society we live in..we are, for the most part, safe.
But fear is an essential element in the fight scenario - either fight or run....or freeze up.
But it's interesting that karate classes, taekwondo, boxing, etc do not tackle this subject head on. it's almost assumed that we will be able to fight in the face fear. i don't think everyone will. i think some will run, some will freeze and some will give in...and some will fight.
But shouldn't our self-defense classes teach us how to handle fear? how to use it to your advantage? how to train your body to deal with the fear response?
What are your thoughts?
until then.
1 comment:
I completely agree. I'm trying to remedy this somewhat by implementing role-playing excercises when I train privately with someone: we both wear head-gear. One person plays the role of the harrasser, walks up to the other person, starts pushing a bit and threatening and harrassing. The other person has to verbally ask the person to back off, and when that doesn't work, they start hitting untill the other person has to back away.
Though it might sound "corny" and not very intimidating to do this with friends, I've found that with the proper mind set, this really does get the adrenaline going. That way, you can also learn to get your body used to overcoming the "freeze"-effect, and using the adrenaline to attack. There's also something about using the head-gear which partly obscures your face which allows you to really "step into" a role, a bit like how wearing masks lets people act more like savages in Lord of the Flies.
As to why it isn't taught and practiced more, I think this has a lot to do with why people do martial arts. I think it's often the case that people don't *really* want to push out of their comfort zone, but they do want to feel like a "badass". They want confidence, they want to feel in control. On the other hand, if you try to really push into realistic self-defence orientated training and inducing fear and adrenaline, you're going to put people in a real unpleasant place psychologically. I think that very few people have the willingness to continually put themselves in that position. It doesn't feel "good". But then again, neither does real violence.
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