Fear has many sources. The most obvious source of fear in any contact activity is fear of injury. Before you engage the opponent, you will mentally size him up and consider how much damage he might be able to inflict on you.
This mental damage assessment comes from a basic instinct to remain safe. When you find yourself doing this, reverse your thinking. Think instead about how you have trained to avoid being hit and injured. Focus on the strength of your defense. Visualize how you will easily defend every attack your opponent attempts.
Before you experience being hit, you have an unreasonable amount of fear. By integrating contact training into your workouts, you become comfortable with being hit and anticipate the effects of blows on certain areas of the body. Once you get hit a few times, your fear diminishes. You become accustomed to the sensation of contact.
Practice recovering quickly from contact blows in your training. The human body is equipped with a front line defense system that is activated every time you face a potential physical threat. If you are injured, your body has a short-term coping system that suppresses pain and protects the injury until you are able to escape from danger. Minor injuries are almost completely masked until the fight is over. Even moderate to serious injuries like sprains, fractures and lacerations are much less obvious in the heat of combat.
Often the shock of being hit is more painful mentally than physically. When you get hit the first few times, you feel angry and frightened. Make a conscious effort to shake off this feeling and stick to your plan of attack. Don’t become distracted by your fear or anger. Rather, focus on the event.
Accept the fact that in every combat situation, both fighters will be hit and sustain some physical damage. No matter how skilled you are, you cannot avoid being hit when you engage in one-on-one combat. Fighting is an exchange of blows. The person who sustains the least amount of damage prevails.
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