The 40 Most Common Mistakes Fighters Commit, Part 7
By Joe Lewis • Oct 21st, 2008 • Category: Martial Arts Education, The Science Of Fighting25. Many fights end because one contestant has a habit of carrying his hands too low for a proper defense. That contestant additionally lacks any head movement (rhythm), making his skull an easy target. You cannot expect to survive a fight if you have either or both of these defensively weak habits.
26. Aggressive and cocky fighters have a bad habit of forcing the action, over committing. They become too physical, attempting to use their bodies, their muscle strength to do the job, instead of trusting in the technique do the work. A fighter must learn to fight with his head, not his hands or feet.
27. Poorly trained fighters have the bad habit of coming in head first or straight up, during an attack. Often, a fighter, who always leads by slightly tilting his head towards his opponent on his initial move, leaves himself wide open for a counter straight up the middle. Most of these fighters lack any head rhythm movements and always attack by coming in straight up. Amateur boxing disallows coming in head first.
28. Avoid freezing. All actions and non-actions in the ring have consequences. Learn to focus on only that over which you have control. This is another example of both a physical and a mental mistake.
Greeting Mr. Lewis!
I have been reading with very great interest your 40 most common mistakes of tournament fighters. As busy as my life gets, I find it true that there is always time to study from a true Master.
At RMCAT, I teach self-defense alone, as you may know, and no particular martial art.. After much research, Black Belt Magazine identified my RMCAT course as “…the best self-defense course existent” 3/2002. I was also rather absurdly pleased with myself ( I must confess) to be inducted into the Black belt Hall of Fame as Instructor of the year for 2008.
But here is what I really want to communicate to you sir. While we both know that the prize ring is not the same as an actual self-defense encounter, so far every one of your “common mistakes “ has resonated with my own experience right down to the ground!.
While it is true, at least in my experience anyway, that actual fights only last seconds, and so as a rule, in real fight, the depth and level of your understanding of the prize ring is very seldom demanded there, but your installments in Mapro has given me a new insight into my own experiences with actual violence.
Everything you says in your articles thus far has came up for me (so many years ago) in some real fight. The real deal is not the ring, but when you run up against a trained fighter ( I used to call them “head hunters” in my Cooler and Bouncer work in the mid seventies) everything you point out, and so very economically of words sir, has saved my ass and kept my teeth in my head when I ran into a really well trained fighter.
Boxers by the way I found very often to be the most dangerous. I would use the hard part of the top front of my skull to intercept their naked fist blows and break their hands or sprain them such that they could not, or decided not to continue hostility.
Sometimes this nearly Ko’ed me too though! You know, you see the purple dots against the jet black background for a instant or more?
In most fights, the depth of knowledge that you engage in your articles on prize fighting skills do not come up in actual self-defense encounters, but I think this is mostly because if your mind is right and your skills tested you never allow your enemy a chance to defend himself. I would just enter and strike him down when demanded or restrain him with whatever was an appropriate level of counter-violence.
But if I misjudged my assailant, and the guy stepped off my attack line fluidly, and sometime even counter struck at me at the same time! Well, then every thing you list so far in your articles are truly the very mistakes I learned to avoid making.
We both know that all the technical skill in the world won’t serve you either in real fight, or in high level prize ring, if you haven’t got your mind right first. Like you said as best as I recall, its “10% technique skill and 90% heart”.
Frankly, I truly tire of the incessant articles in Mapro about “make more money”, “keep more studentsand charge them more etc”. Sure we all have a legitimate right to make the best finachial living we can, and I have done so off my own teachings and experience at RMCAT.
But if that is all there is to this martial life for some, to the ‘martial way’ of thinking and living, then I earnestly feel they have missed the real treasure in our special life and special journey with through the ‘vehicle of martial serious training’.
Perhaps this, and this most of all is why I so deeply admire your articles in Mapro now. Neither of us are monks or saints my friend, we are flesh and blood and given to the weaknesses of both. But we still should be able and willing to help others see truly further than far to many of our colleagues seem too now. That is beyongd the “dollar” alone. As the Christians are fond of pointiong out, WE will take not one cent with us when our time arrives, and it most certainly will too.
Peace be with you and yours sir,
Peyton Quinn
www.rmcat.com