Fear of the knockout and how to deal with it...

Watching someone get knocked out or indeed being knocked out yourself can be scary for any martial artist.

As with all fear’s, they are real to you. But how you handle it is the key to dealing with this common, but unspoken fear.

In this post on fear of the knockout and how to deal with it, we are going to look at some of the ways you can allay yourself of this fear.

Through practice

Preparation

Be prepared... This is the first step, if you are prepared to deal with what you fear, the fear will start to subside. You can then face or do something about it.

It’s in the art

In martial arts – when it comes to sparring, there are two tools to help us deal with a potential knockout blow, knowing this helps conquer fear:

Defence and attack, these blend into each other, overlap, run concurrently and also in isolation.

The same two apply to your opponent, when your opponent goes for the knockout. What you can do to nullify the attack/potential knockout strike is attack him, his punch or kick, the limb carrying the punch or kick or defend by avoiding, blocking, smothering or redirecting.

Remember, “never anticipate the outcome of the fight” - Bruce lee.

The idea of practicing defence techniques against a potential knockout as mentioned in various in this post is to give you tools... However the right tool cannot be decided before the fight or even the attack.

If you have practiced as described in this post, this will happen automatically.

Things are looking up.

Now you know what to do to alleviate the fear and move forward. The next step is to make those skills part of you... So you can use them instinctively.

You practice attacking and defending for the purpose of protection against a knockout. Remember this is an ‘art’ and hence requires that you practice, hone and deconstruct and put those skills to the test continually.

You can always get better than your best, and this is another way you deal with that fear inducing knockout.

Visualisation

Visualisation can be used to improve all aspects of dealing with the fear of being knocked out.

From how to let your mind be filled with confidence that you’ll use your skills when required. To honing the effectiveness of your attack, defence and relative skills, like evading, conditioning and a positive mindset to name a few.

 

Be positive

A huge factor

Confidence plays a huge factor in dealing with all fears. And yes, you can act confident. But it’s difficult to sustain when everything about you works against this ‘act’.

What do I mean?

If you don’t practice regularly, haven’t isolated your defence techniques against a knockout, and practiced them diligently till they are faultless.

If you haven’t kept yourself in the best physical shape and done your cardiovascular work... Then it is harder to sustain confidence.

And even if you do sustain the confidence, you may be setting yourself up, because the skill level will not support you when a knockout comes from your opponent. Especially if he has put in the work and done all those things

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So, be confident, but make sure it is backed up by having done all the work we have mentioned here and a little more besides...

Then your confidence, based on real acquired skill rather than hope will stand a much better chance of working for you.

What we have

We have just looked at the fear of the knockout and how to deal with it... From the preparation, your mindset or state of mind, to the simple tools we use to deal with the knockout to honing those tools in the dojo.

We also looked at effectiveness through visualisation. Then confidence, held up by good foundations – Your complete training which is in a constant state of development and improvement.

Thank you for taking the time, I hope you have enjoyed this post. If so please share it on facebook.

Paul.