why a perfect expert and trained taekwondo player or martial artist fear fights?

Question

I would like to know why martial artists who believe in their training and technique still have a deep fear of engaging in a fight, or losing a match.

Answer 1

Thanks for this question. It's a subject that's near and dear to me. And I think I understand what you're asking.

When I was a brown belt in Taekwondo, I was 17 years old, and I remember having an encounter with a drunk, crazy guy on the lawn of someone's home on Halloween night. A smaller friend of mine was with me, and I think we were going to a party or something. Well, this crazy guy starts picking a fight with my friend for no good reason other than he was much smaller and an easy target.

Now, it didn't help that this friend of mine was not backing down and was actively engaging the drunk, crazy guy. I just kind of stood there, motioning for my friend to come and get out of there. When the crazy guy really started getting physical with my friend, I froze. I wanted to go over and rescue my friend, but in that instant, I felt that I had nothing I could do. I was imagining what I would do, but I just didn't think any of it would work reliably, and the situation was totally unlike anything I prepared for in Taekwondo. I felt completely out of my element and just froze.

After that, I did go on to get my black belt several months later. So I was almost a black belt when this happened. After getting my black belt in Taekwondo, I graduated high school and went to college. And in college, I went on to study a bunch of other martial arts. I was never satisfied, though. I was always looking for new systems that could take me further and give me more realistic fighting tools.

Over the decades since then, the rise of the UFC and MMA happened. The martial arts community in general has become a lot more knowledgeable about fighting. And we know now why practicing MMA leads to more successful outcomes in sport-based fighting as well as real life fighting than, say, Taekwondo or Aikido. The reason is simple: It's not the style, it's the way you train that matters.

I go over this more at my answers in the following links:

Measurement of the practicality of a martial art

is Jun Chong TKD a legitimate TKD dojo for self defense?

Essentially, it comes down to being confident. And I don't mean having a false sense of confidence, like many martial arts give students. Real confidence in fighting means you recognize the situation and are comfortable with it. You don't gain confidence in fighting without realistic training. Realism means that you have someone who's kicking you, punching you, grabbing you, throwing you to the ground, wrestling you, choking you, etc. And he's not letting you go. He's actively resisting you all he can in order to "win" against you.

If you're just doing a very small subset of those things - like Taekwondo does - or you're doing it, but without a partner who's putting pressure on you and really trying to win against you, then you're going to freeze in a real life fight like I did. You will realize in that instant that you don't really know how to fight, and this situation you're in bears no resemblance to anything you did in class.

You have to train for fighting as realistically as possible. There should be very little rules, except to prevent injuries. You need to train safely so that you can come back day after day and get better and better. If you don't have any rules, injuries are guaranteed to happen, and you won't be making any progress. In fact, you'll quit after the first day. So you need to look at the way MMA trains. They take a very minimal approach to the rules and allow pretty much any technique. And most important, they will keep the pressure on you. They won't just let you do things and get away with it. You'll find out really quickly whether you can handle yourself or not.

Some people freeze when, deep down, they realize they don't know how to fight. Others just know to avoid situations like this. Avoiding fights when possible is what you should always do, if you can. But if you need to fight, you want to be confident that you can handle yourself. Otherwise you're going to freeze or do something foolish that will only get you hurt.

Being afraid to fight is fine. That doesn't mean you lack ability and confidence. Everyone should be afraid to fight, because there's no telling what will happen in a fight. The guy could take out a knife or a gun when you're not expecting it. Or one of his friends could come out of nowhere and hit you over the head with a big rock or something.

But letting your fear paralyze you from acting and doing the right thing is not okay. Usually it means you just don't know how to fight, and you know it's true at a deep level even if you don't realize it consciously. You can get over it with the proper training method. It's how you train that matters, not the style.

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

Q: why a perfect expert and trained taekwondo player or martial artist fear fights?

A: Have you heard of the saying that the more you learn about something, the more you realize how much more there is to learn? The same thing is relevant in martial arts. For a novice, the "experts" seem to know everything and can handle any attacker. The "experts" walk with presence, and seem to have an "air of confidence" that the novice aspires to have. This is typically seen in a controlled environment.

What Steve Weigand mentioned about 'confidence' is absolutely true. You gain true confidence by building it up in many 'fights' - the less rules the better for your confidence. Unfortunately, there is a high correlation with fight experience and a greater chance of being injured or killed. Training in a safer environment is great and also build confidence but you also begin to acutely realize your distinct deficiencies. You also are comforted by the fact that if you do get injured, your opponent (usually) doesn't keep attacking - there is a pretty definite stopping point.

If you don't train sufficiently realistically, you gain a false sense of confidence. This means that your moves all work when your opponents are compliant and know how to react. You feel like a badass who can win any fight, however, in a spontaneous fight, your opponent will not be compliant - at all. To make things worse, your opponent could pull out a weapon, or have friends nearby. Despite what movies might suggest, coming out unscathed against a weapon wielding attacker is very difficult (even for trained martial artists), and multiple attackers significantly reduces your chances of 'winning'. Even if you do 'win' in some way by injuring your attacker(s) to the point where they stop attacking you, now you may face legal repercussions - even for a self defense scenario - and that is just the start of your problems.

Does any of this mean that martial arts are useless? Not at all. But have some expertise in a martial art can get you out of a bad situation, make you aware of your limitations, and teach you that avoiding a fight is almost always your best option. To summarize, a "streetfight" has too many uncontrolled variables even for a very experienced martial artist to guarantee that they will be successful. Any martial artist with robust training knows this, and this is why they fear fights.

If you're still curious about this, I've put together a longish document based on my experiences and what I've seen: A primer on effective self-defense

Answer 3

I'd like to add yet another perspective which kind of repeats points of the other answers, but in a different guise.

The main point we have to keep in mind here is psychologically: Fear.

Yes, even if it is a highly specialised martial art like TKD, it's not like they would have nothing to offer in real fights. They know how to keep their distance, read movements, and kick really hard. But the question comes down to: Why can't they get into their game at least and stick to their bread and butter? It is fighting, after all?!

But one thing you have to keep in mind here is that most widespread martial arts are advertised and trained as sports these days. This has great advantages, e.g. more people who like to try the style and more active training time due to less injuries.

And that's the main point: sports are generally designed to lessen the chance of injuries in a given aspect of human physical activity. In the case of martial arts, you have rules and cushions that put you into a bubble.

This means that deep down, you know that there's not much that could happen to you which you don't expect and have trained for. Even if a kick hits you, they either are not allowed to kick with full force (karate's "lack of control") or you have a cushioning vest. Sure, it still hurts. But it's not like you would end up in hospital or in an urn.

Or, taking the example of a boxer, you know no matter how hard you hit or where you hit, you will not break your hand. And you won't get kicked into the genitals or kneed into the floating ribs. So you can simply forget about a lot of problems that are there as soon as you get into a real fight.

When a real fight begins, most martial artists do not know what to expect. They do not know how fast or strong their opponent is. Or how they will engage (kicks, punches, grappling, all of them?). Or how it feels to get hit by a fist or shin with full force. Or whether it isn't too risky to kick or punch the way you trained because it may break your bones. That is very different from a sparring situation where you know exactly what to expect. And even if these thoughts are not explicit, this triggers a subconscious response.

The natural reaction to a threatening situation where you do not know what will happen is fear. You freeze, you run.

That does not mean that you are a bad player in your sport, nor that you are a bad martial artist. It just means that you have to realise that this is not what you have trained for. If you want martial arts training for being able to defend yourself, you have to train self-defense. There's no magical transition from a to b. Some people are psychologically more resilient (or generally more aggressive) and will overcome their fears and be able to apply what they've learned. But that is not the norm for people who have not trained self-defense under extreme physical and psychological stress.

That said, this of course holds true for tournaments, albeit to a lesser degree: You are in an uncontrollable situation where a split second can mean defeat and you are not in your usual training mode. This triggers fear. It's all about being in a situation you are not used to.

Answer 4

Thankyou everybody above here ,matte here poor english i write. But the most important thing that i actually intrinsically feel is that it's the character and the tendency to protect your self respect or so called ego (by people). You practice hard and can fight in a match in stadium but obviously when you are in real life situation, your thoughts about tom cruise and action and missions and adventure gets descendingly diffused in atmosphere.

Whenever we are in such a situation, according to me and whole lot buddies around the world ,you feel a strange and alternatiing current evading whole of your body like pure current is just moving in your nerves causing throbbing of heart that can be listened through your throat (indeed ).

trained and muscular female or male martial artist needs to understand that wrong is happening with them and they as a human is human and that after that situation they would necessarily getting excruciating pain of mental stress that they being a trained player were defeated by assholes.

Also i wants to share an advice that if something wrong happens, eg:stalking , teasing, confronts or street assholes fights,,>>>respond very quickly <<<, respond should be spontaneous in every situation , the senses should work in miliseconds so that your whole lot self won't get enough time to think or feel current movement in your tissues and throbbing of the heart and body.

"matte"