Life Without Flinching
“Fear is a false call to movement”
Many have remarked on the transformation of Mark Zuckerberg from robotic nerd to confident and chill dude. Credit tends to fall to the gym and combat sports.
If you train for a while you will work closely with hoards of nervous necommers and see this transformation take place. You see confidence compounding. You see them overcoming adversities and develop a thicker skin.
Zuckerberg’s awkwardness have often been exaggerated — people dislike billionaires and like to dogpiling on a guy looking nervous in a stiff suit under heavy spotlights while being interrogated by lawmakers — and he always seemed to me to possess the general confidence that word-controlling wealth lends a guy. He did seem a bit robotic. Perhaps he is not the best example. It doesn’t matter, because his transformation is eerily consistent with what I’ve seen dozens of times.
Becoming comfortable in your own skin isn’t unique to MMA practicioners. It’s not even the best way depending on your goals. Go to a salsa class if you want to become more comfortable with touch and eye contact. I’ve heard good things about the Alexander Technique for posture and poise.
But fighting shaves off microuncertanties. It is uniquely good at removing sensitivity to stress that you can’t think and execute your way around. The sheer speed and chaos of fighting matches the speed of real-world interaction. And it’s adversarial.
Fighting conditions bravery. You will be taught to face your fears not just through exposure but through feedback loops.
The first non-technical skill that will be beaten into you is to not shy away. Shying away is the body-killer. It’s also the most natural reaction to being attacked. Look away from a punch? You won’t see the other hand coming in even harder. Turn away from someone trying to hold you down? Get choked from behind. Panic and tense up? Get tired fast and get dragged into deep waters and beaten. Hell, your opponents are trying to make you bite on their feints, to give in to your fear responses and lose composure. If you keep giving them what they want they’ll keep taking it from you. And if you show them you’re hurt or tired you’re just dripping blood in the water.
It takes me 30 seconds to explain to someone that they should under no circumstances turn their back to me. It takes me 5-10 minutes for them to do it 5-10 times, and I will punish them every time. It takes a week or two to mostly beat that habit out of them. Everyone knows they are not supposed to, but you still need to beat it out of them.
Our job as training partners is inflicting pain and discomfort. Just toying with someone rather than properly punishing them is frowned upon. What counts as punishment depends on the person — often times an explanation of “hey don’t do that” is chastizing enough at first. Everyone starts somewhere different. But everyone eventually gets to a point where theaching them is to hurt them. It's the epitome of tough love.
We go to great pains not to hurt each other. We very often go "oh shit are you hurt? No? It's just pain? Broken toe? Okay but you can tough that out right? Good job!" We baby you as much as you need but we are gradually pushing you, fully knowing that we will get you hard enough that nothing short of the risk of permanent injury will deter you. We are hardening you and we love to see you harden. You’ll tell us about the things you’ll never be able to push yourself through, and we’ll nod and pat you on the back and know that we all thought the same once. We’ll make a mental note of it just for the satisfaction of eventually proving you wrong about yourself.
This gauntlet is not only effective for awkward nerds and other wusses. Tough guys and average people change too. Shoulders relax. Movements become fluid. First on the mats, and eventually — after a few years — off the mat too. They stop hesitating and turn into a lion sleeping in the sun, ready to maul when it’s time. It’s a vibe shift that reveals that this person is ready and unafraid, but without carrying the tension that so often accompanies alertness. You can fake that in a safe setting. You cannot fake that when fists are flying, when your neck is being compressed from behind while your body is stuck in a vice.
That confidence shows in how you move about in the world. How you walk down the street, how you move around other people. How you react when a friend of a friend you haven’t met puts an arm around your shoulder at the bar. How you walk past someone yelling in the street. How you handle being next to a loud cocky group of teenagers at the bus stop. How you react when someones blows their top in the department store and starts shouting at a cashier.
What would your life be like if you didn't flinch? The answer might surprise you.
banger