Martial Art’s Hot Button Issue
Competition. The litmus test in modern martial arts. A simple dividing line that we use to put a martial artist in one of two buckets. People who train for competition and everyone else.
It seems a silly and arbitrary reason to cause such a huge divide in the community. And it is a divide. I trained in a “budo” style martial art for the first seven years of my career. In that time, I didn’t meet a single competitor. And I didn’t care to. I was taught that people who compete aren’t real martial artists. All they care about is scoring points and winning medals.
I didn’t stop to consider that competition to prepare for war is as old as martial arts itself. The samurai fought each other with wooden swords. European knights engaged in jousting, and everyone that enlists in the US Army will have to fight hand to hand with another recruit in basic training. When you think about it, it’s an integral part of martial arts.
Nowadays, I believe competition is a solution to the single greatest problem in self-defense today: a serious lack of opportunities to develop our skill under real conditions. It’s a key difference between us and the people practicing martial arts generations ago. They were fighting for their lives all the time. We are not. So often, we are students that have never been in a violent situation, being taught by people who haven’t either.
Why I Changed My Mind
A big part of my journey from self-defense junkie to casual competitor was understanding that I had constructed a false choice in my head. You either do one or the other. You can’t compete and do self-defense. This notion was planted in me by my teachers, the media, and just the overall paradigm in martial arts. But it was wrong.
In fact, I have learned that the two complement each other quite nicely. Competing has given me a killer instinct that I didn’t have before. It has taught me the value of taking the initiative, having a simple set of goals in a fight, and pulling the trigger when I see an opening. I’m a better martial artist because of it.
And yet, when I suggest the idea to other “self-defense only” people, they are appalled. As if competing would require them to turn in their badges to the authorities. But I always tell them, “It’ll make your self-defense better!” Here’s why:
Before you say it. . .
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Competition has limitations. It’s an artificially constructed circumstance. It strives for fairness so that skill alone is the decisive factor. It’s not a real fight, no one is going to die. It doesn’t even unfold in the way a real fight does, technically speaking. I get that. Everyone gets that.
But don’t kid yourself: Monday night training in the dojo isn’t real either. It is also artificial, just in different ways. It’s controlled, it’s safe, it has limitations. All forms of training do. Short of being a soldier, a police officer, or stopping traffic and challenging random people to a fight, no form of training is real. So forget about what’s “real” and instead, ask yourself this:
How can I experience the different facets of self-defense in my training? Most people agree that the regular classes we attend cover the technical aspect. What they don’t cover is the emotional, mental, physical aspect. Sure, we talk about what to expect in a fight. But we don’t put ourselves in a place where we can feel them. Those things only come from feeling real anxiety and a real sense of danger. Try as we might, it’s hard to fool our bodies into turning on the animal brain in the familiar setting of our school with the friendly faces of fellow students we’ve known for years.
But a competition? Different story.
The stakes are higher.
You may be training for life-or-death, but no one is going to die at your local dojo. You’re there every night, doing your thing. You see the same faces, you do the same drills. You may get injured every now and again, almost always an accident. The stakes are low by design. It’s not sustainable to train in a high-risk environment all the time.
But you should train in a high-risk environment at least occasionally. When you step on the mat with a competitor, there’s a silent recognition between the two of you that this is for something. You both paid an entrance fee. You traveled to get here, you canceled plans for the weekend. Friends and family were told, they will ask you what happened after. Maybe a loved one is watching. This isn’t just another night at the gym, where you will succeed and fail regularly only to return the next night. It’s a singular moment, now or never.
It’s a healthy feeling of pressure, abnormality. We know the moment is elevated. We get anxious.
Real opponents that can really hurt you.
Don’t let the fact that competition has rules fool you. High stakes invite competitive excellence. People who push the limits to win. There is a false belief that rules equal safety. But it doesn’t. Rules allow people to maximize their aggression because they know exactly how far they can take it within the bounds of the rules.
Your opponents don’t know you and they don’t care about you. They care about winning. And guess what? Winning may involve hurting you, which they will do. They’re not here to help you grow on your martial arts journey. They’re here to beat you and get that medal. Some opponents even need to hate you to get fired up.
Maybe your opponent is a really nice guy outside the mats. But the point is, you don’t know that at the outset. You don’t know anything about this person. And you need to defend yourself to be safe.
Your animal brain will turn on.
People say in a “real fight” your mental state changes. The symptoms are many. You forget things, you freeze, time slows, you feel no pain. It’s the brain’s response to being in real danger, and that experience is invaluable to your training. Experiencing it repeatedly is better. Some people say the animal brain is bad, it overrides your logic and reasoning skills. Others argue it’s good, it gives you a huge physical surge of energy. Either way, dipping into it is important. The thing is, it’s difficult to trick your brain into thinking it’s in danger. Your animal brain will never fire off in familiar settings.
I trained in self-defense for many years. Only a few times did I feel this intense, primal part of my mind take the wheel. It can wreck you. Huge adrenaline dumps, followed by total exhaustion. Tunnel vision, tachypsychia, loss of hearing. I only felt this early on in my training. As my skills developed and my confidence grew, my stress levels never reached those peaks that they did in the first year or so.
For years, I thought that I had it under control. In 2015, I entered into my first competition and boom, the animal brain returned with a vengeance. Walking onto a mat and staring at a big, mean-looking guy. My fight or flight kicked in, and I realized that I could not escape or negotiate my way out of this.
We had to fight, and it that moment, my brain was not recognizing the logic of this being a mere competition. It was too stressed, too many unfamiliar things. It had broken the glass and smashed the red button, triggering a cascade of overpowering effects on my body and mind. Time slowed, and I acquired superhuman speed and strength for about ten seconds. Then exhaustion, mental shutdown, the whole thing. I lost the match but walked away far wiser for the experience. Thanks to the animal brain, which was never really under control.
Getting Your Feet Wet
So if you’re open to it, I would hop onto your favorite social media or search engine and find a local tournament. It can be striking, grappling, whatever. It’s more important that it be small and in the “open” format, meaning anyone can participate. You probably don’t want to register for a large tournament, and certainly not a world championship.
Take time to familiarize yourself with the rules and format. Know how matches are structured, whether they’re brackets, single elimination, double elimination, round robin, etc. Browse the rules just to know what could get you disqualified.
Now for the tough pill to swallow: All my techniques are illegal in a tournament! There’s a good chance that will be the case, but I would say, don’t let that stop you! You’re here for the experience, you should not expect to win. If you enjoy yourself, you can try to win the next time around. Besides, more of your techniques might be legal than you think.
In training, you might not want to pick up an entirely new skill set. This is fine, just focus on getting into good condition for a high-intensity struggle. Cardio is really important, do sprints and explosive movements to exhaustion.
Enjoy the Nerves
The buildup to getting on the mats is as valuable as the competition itself. The title above is a joke: nothing about the buildup will be enjoyable. You’ll get that feeling in the pit of your stomach. Your bowels may rebel, or the shakes will come on. It’s all fine, remember how it feels so you can incorporate it into your training next time. In my experience, people get extremely focused in actual matches. The nerves go away completely. But everyone’s different.
The best counter to this is to eat light and do a good warm-up that makes you sweat a bit within 30 minutes of competing. Get some adrenaline out. During the match, you may suddenly become exhausted from adrenaline dump. You’ll be pretty useless from that point on.
Welcome to the 1%
Afterward, maybe you won and maybe you lost. You’ll probably feel physically great, as your body rewards survival with a chemical cocktail of endorphins and dopamine. And you should feel great. You’ve just done something 99% of people, and even 85% of martial artists, never do. You left the safety of the dojo and got yourself in, arguably, a fight. Maybe it wasn’t for you. But you still did it.
More than a decade after I started training, I have done a complete one-eighty on competition and self-defense. Now, I believe that if you are truly interested in self-defense, not just some fantasy version of fighting, you need to compete a time or two to understand the real effects of stress during fighting. I’m better for it, and maybe you will be too.
Speaking on competing, Ron Amram recently wrote an article about the recent debacle in the UFC worth reading.
Also, I have a book about training in a cult-like martial arts group for seven years, called The True Believers which you can find on Amazon.
He runs a site called HighPercentageMartialArts.com, dedicated exclusively to statistics in martial arts.
He wrote a book about fanaticism in martial arts, called The True Believers.
- I Spent Seven Years Ignoring Signs, Losing Friends, and Paying Money Before Asking Myself THIS Question: - November 26, 2018
- In An Insane World, Martial Arts is Connecting People - October 30, 2018
- Why I Changed my Mind About Competition - October 22, 2018
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