Originally posted by DAC..florida
I work in corrections and unfortunately have to use my skills more often than I would like.
How many of you have used them?
were you satisfied with your performance?
:asian:
Yes...my first wake up call was when I was about 18 years old, and I had never been in a "real fight," just high school brawls. This one was a life or death scenario, which I am not going to get all into here.
I had been doing both competition and combative martial arts. Being in good shape from the competition stuff probably helped, but only too a degree. It didn't last as long as being in the ring for me to need the conditioning.
I was somewhat satisfied with my performance, but not enough. I still suffered a black eye (which was no biggy considering what could have happened) however they suffered actual injuries, one pretty severe. It was a big wake up call as too how the S**T can really hit the fan when the situation is life or death. I realized that no amount of "training" immulates combat. No competitive arena can even come close. They are 2 different animals. I found myself obeying "rules" in the beginning of the confrontation from my competitive experience; this almost got me killed. It wasn't until my brain fully switched to fight or flight mode when my combative training kicked in and I was able to overcome the situation.
I realized that the best thing I could do to improve my self defense ability is to improve my combative martial art skills, because that is what is what I found to be the most useful. You train for there to be "no rules" and for you to be in "fight or flight" where you work from muscle memory. And...it takes a lifetime of training to constantly improve combative skills.
So, since that day I have gradually converted my training over to more combative training, and less competition, to where now I don't train to compete at all. And I enjoy my training very much today even though it is practically void of competition.
I have been in other situations since, mostly doing some "low level" or "low key" bouncing work. I found since my mindset wasn't rooted in competition or fantasy, and was instead rooted in real application, I handled things much better.
