Is it right and proper to compete?

Do you guys think competition can lead to ego? Should a martial artist hurt people to prove themselves? Is it worth the risk of injury to "test yourself"?

Granted the other guy is in there of his own volition but there's part of me that questions the use of my killing instinct in a situation that is all of my own making.

I have a lot of questions surrounding competing and I'm really not sure if I want to compete. I want to test myself, I want to make myself more psychologically strong, I want to feel at ease with the chaotic ebb and flow of combat but I'm also unsure about a few things. I mean I enjoy stand up sparring but I imagine true competition to be very different, requiring a different mindset.

I should probably mention that my face is very very pretty too.

What do people think?

 

Of your pretty face?

 

Of course ego is involved, anyone who competes and tells you otherwise is either misguided or lying to themselves.

The trick is to not become a slave to your ego or allow your ego to turn you into a sh!tbag in training.

EVERYONE has 'ego', it's a part of being human. The same way everyone gets angry, but most people learn to deal with that and focus the energy generated accordingly.

 

To me competition was to teach me that I am not made of glass..not so I could beat the hell out of someone else.

Down 8 up9 is a great lesson.

 

Competing for me is getting over self-confidence and nerves. It's one thing to do kata in class with everyone, or spar against someone from your own dojo. It's another to do kata in front of 3-4 judges, and spar someone you've never met in your life (and in my case, can be twice as big as me - that was an interesting matchup that time....)

 

Human nature.
What better way to test fighting skills than to fight?

Ego? Depends if you win or not

 

I actually think competition does more to keep your ego in check than to inflate it. Unless you're the top 1%, sooner or later, you're going to get your butt handed to you. At first, you're going to get your butt handed to you quite a lot. It's a very humbling experience. It might be different at the professional level, but at the amateur level, there's a lot of getting your butt handed to you, and when you do win, there's not much limelight. It's not a very ego-friendly environment.

I think there is much more potential for out-of-control egos in systems with heavily-emphasized rank systems, grandiose titles, and a lack of pressure testing.

Both of these rules have exceptions, but these I'd say are the general trends.

 

He's right you know.

 

Even the top are going to get their arses handed to them at some point.

Still I agree. It will probably do more to keep ego in check. Of course fighting competition is a bit different from someone trying to rip your head off and do unspeakable things to your neck pipe. So it is always worth remembering that many top class competition fighters are trained only for victory in the ring. So you have to ask yourself do you want to be a survivalist from what you do or a prizefighter?

Personally I wouldn't bother competition. I believe that if you constant tune the body into a set of rules and techniques to work in one environment then tht is all it will ever try to do. So when brown meets fan against a completely different and altogether life threatening situation you are not adequately prepared to face it. But that is just what I believe. All I know is so far what I have hasn't failed me and I've never competed. So I may be completely wrong.

Make sure you've got friends and training environment where they'll tell you if your head is starting to wedge itself up your own backside. That's about the best advice I can give.

 

I wouldn't agree that competition-honed skills can't carry over outside of competition. The best example I have is fencing modern competitive epee and then playing in the park with a SCA friend under the SCA's rapier combat rules. Under your theory, I would have been helpless because many of the rules I'd been accustomed to no longer applied (only the tip of the blade matters, stay more or less in a straight line, don't use the rear hand for anything). In fact, I held my own just fine. He had a greater repertoire of skills (draw cuts, off-hand parrying, circular footwork), but my narrower skill-set was faster, more precise, and more instinctual.

Also, boxers don't exactly have a reputation for losing barfights. Just saying. (Not that I condone barfighting, which I think is stupid and pointless).

 

i dont think competeing leads to ego...possible the exact oposite. if you compete odds are sooner or later you will find someone better. (probabley sooner).

ego can really come from not competing and staying as king of the gym or dojo.

even in our gym i noticed when new guys walk in most who have been competitors before are real humble down guys.....most of the brag show you see is act to sell tickets...and a leftover from how fighters are suppost to act..left over from the ali days

new guys who compete all know ...you never know who is in this gym, and that everyone starts out the same way. walk into a gym knowing nothing,learn a bit, spar and do well against someone, learn alittle more, get ass handed to you buy better fighter.....repeat next week


this is a humbling experence.

 

Fair point Mitlov. And I agree, barfights are stupid and pointless. Main reason I'm not a pub loving guy, too many wannabe toughguys in this day and age. Then again I've seen a fair few boxers (with very bigheads and very small brains) get pummeled by smaller, but more experienced street fighters.

I probably didn't clarify my point (sorry I have a bad habit of doing that. I tend to explain and expect to be understood, it must be a black country thing, I've never experienced it anywhere else XD). What I was trying to get across with that point was more to do with intent. In a ring you fight for a prize and status. On the street it's nearly always for your life. So if you're accustomed to fighting to a certain result (k.o, opponent gives in, ref decision) you are (more often than not) unprepared for fighting to stay alive.

 

I think Mitlov already smacked the right out of this question. Everyone has ego. So what we're really talking about here is excessive ego. And excessive ego relies on an unrealistic sense of self. It's very difficult to maintain such an unrealistic sense in the face of the sort of feedback competition provides. Squaring off against another well-trained, well-conditioned exponent in a relatively objective test of skills doesn't leave nearly as much room for ego to thrive as does sequestering yourself away in the comfort of your own school, ensconced in titles, ritual, and belt colours.

Hell, even when you win, it's seldom so pretty that you'll walk away thinking "man, I rock." When I competed (which I didn't do much; my loss), I was usually thinking, "man, that guy put up a good fight." I felt fortunate much more than I felt awesome.

You're learning a combat art. I'd argue that it's more irresponsible to continue training without a realistic sense of what it's like to both suffer and dole out damage. I think it will also dispel a lot of unrealistic notions about people's capabilities.

How's it all of your own making? You didn't organize the tournament. You didn't sign the other dude up. You didn't force gloves onto his hands or a mouthpiece into his gob. He's there for the same reasons you are. To answer questions.

I think that's the heart of it really. Competition is simply different. Sparring within a school is unconsciously cooperative, on several different levels. You're often paired up according to size and skill level. You're from the same style(s), so you come from similar frameworks. And, consequently, sparring matches often feature a sort of unspoken common understanding. In the worst cases, it results in people sort of taking turns showcasing their best material.

In competition, the other person isn't a friend or training partner. He's not coming from the same set of assumptions as you necessarily. He wasn't necessarily trained in the same framework with the same mindset. And he's there to impose his will on you.

As an infrequent competitor, this is the lesson that took me a long time to learn. How to deal with someone genuinely trying to inflict themselves on me. And how to be comfortable with inflicting myself on someone else. I'm a nice guy by nature. Stay-at-home dad. School counselor. Anti-tough guy all around. And it took a lot for me to be alright with even causing someone distress in sparring, nevermind actual harm. But that's a lesson you need to learn if you're going to take yourself seriously as a martial arts student.

And you're worried about competition creating ego.

Don't worry. Time has a way of solving that dilemma for you too.


Stuart

 

Training has rules too. You get used to them as well. And when anything hits the fan, you have to break out of that mindset as well. Unless you're telling me that in your training, you actually DO gouge eyes, rip groins, and break wrists.

Training is always an abstraction. The only reasonable answer is to hit it from as many angles as possible, hoping to triangulate the truth. Because you're never going to land squarely on it in training OR competition.


Stuart

 

In competition, you want to defeat your opponent and you don't think beyond that. Thinking beyond that, if it happens, is between bouts and never during a bout. Nobody thinks about "a prize and status" mid-competition; they think about the opponent coming at them.

It's almost impossible to simulate the panic and surprise of a real-life self-defense situation in a martial arts school. But in my experience facing someone you've never met before, who doesn't give a rip if you'd never want to speak to him afterward, and who will do whatever it takes to dominate you (within certain safety rules), causes a much higher level of adrenaline/anxiety/etc than working with someone you've known for years in a "gentleman's agreement not to do real damage" context. I think the adrenaline level would be even higher full-contact striking art competitions, where losing almost necessarily entails getting hurt.

 

I've not broken wrists yet. You'd lose too many uke that way. But other than that yeah. Gouge eyes (not to actually rupturing the eyeball) rip at groins if necessary, bite, pinch. General 'dirty' fighting. Within reasonable limits ( and I know that is an abstract )

I fully agree. I have no experience of competition. I've only ever trained in the dojo and fought outside of it (I don't count sparring as fighting). You're never fully prepared for it.

Fair enough, I stand corrected. I'm non competitive so I will take that as read.

I will disagree here to a small extent. I will say this differs from school to school and person to person. I understand the difference between adrenal levels from someone you know and someone who you don't and who wants to impose a dominance of will onto you. However in terms of a gentlemen's agreement that is down to person and training environment. The only example I have there is that in my training I've always been taught to give maximum resistance and expect nothing less when I train so my techniques all had to work under pressure (even more so when having to use them sparring).

If you know the pain is going to be there, the adrenaline steps in to do its job. I will concede however it will be at a lower rate that if against an aggressive adversary.

In terms of stimulating panic. That can be done and quite easily providing you know how to push a persons buttons. But there are not a lot of places willing to put students under that kind of pressure (and then only selecting the student if the teacher feels they are capable of handling it and then thoroughly overseeing it). Martial arts schools aside the army does it all the time. When I was on basic we got attacked by our instructors at night. They had blanks and so did we, but that doesn't run through your head (I suppose reinforcing your initial statement).

 

To what degree have you gouged someone's eyes then? I'm not having a go. I'm just making the point that what you do in training isn't what you'd do in reality. So the leap you'd have to make isn't so different from the leap a competitor would have to make.

And as for being constrained by your training within a ruleset, tell that to the poor dude who got kicked in the nuts by champion boxer Mike Tyson.

 

Actually, I know people won't believe it, but the 'street' has rules too. Punch a copper in the gonads and call me a liar.

 

I know what the Army does to create adrenal dump and simulate panic. But like you said, few martial arts schools do what the Army does (for student retention and legal reasons).

So what, specifically, does your martial arts school do to create an adrenaline dump?

 

Is the big ego a chicken & egg situation?

I know a few professional fighters that have a huge ego. They've been there and done it though so once you reach the top it must have an effect