How Martial Arts Changed My Perspective

This was originally an essay I wrote for my English 1105 class. Having started this personal blog, I felt that it might be worth sharing. I hope you may find value in this.*

As I grew in my journey of learning martial arts, I want to give back and inspire others to do the same. I really do believe in the value of learning how to fight. It's encouraging to see beginners overcome their fears of getting hit and grow as fighters. I’ve been training in boxing and muay thai for over 2 years and I have witnessed first hand how it's helped me in my life.

I began boxing in my senior year of high school. My father’s friend was a boxer and he was willing to train me in the basics. We spent a lot of time doing padwork and drilling the fundamentals. It was a unique shift in how I used my body, because up until that point, I didn’t really experience my physicality. I didn't play sports growing up. I was usually the last to get picked in PE, usually the slowest, and almost always the weakest. I did lose a good amount of fat in my second year of high school from running and weightlifting, but those activities didn’t engage me the way fighting did.

I began sparring with my friends in school, but most of them would be too scared to do so. But I did have one friend who loved it as much as I did. I remember the first time I sparred with him. I was outmatched given that he’s been in several dangerous situations and knows how to handle himself. We put on our gloves and started throwing hands in his yard. It was kind of embarrassing looking back at it because it wasn’t even a challenge for him. He joked "It's like fighting a little kid.”

Though I got my ass handed to me, I gained a lot of insight from the experience. I noticed that I'd turn away whenever he would rush at me, so the next time I sparred with him I was intentional with not turning around. I iterated on this error, however, I'd keep backing up until he had me in a corner. I improved on that too by learning to hold my ground. Eventually, I became more confident and less scared of getting hit. We were sparring one day and I realized his strategy. He would bait me with his jabs so that I would slip to my left, which he would then catch me with his rear hand. As he was doing this, I rolled under his jab to the outside and came back with an overhand right, clipping him in the face.

I began to feel more confident as a fighter from these sparring sessions. But I had a deluded ego in thinking that I was tough, when I really wasn’t. Sparring or fighting in the context of a sport is completely different than doing it for survival. Sure I might have known how to fight, but was I willing to fight? Was I willing to exercise force in a situation where violence would have been justified? Was I willing to hurt someone?

There were moments in my life where I’ve been tested in such ways. I’ve been followed in the dark, jumped, and mugged at knife point. Having seen the reality of violence, I know first hand how important it is to be able to protect myself and those around me. Though my training helped slightly, the only reason I came out of those situations unscratched was because of luck. But luck runs out.

Self defense is not something most people worry about until there comes a time when they need it. Everyone wants to do it, but it’s easy to put it off until a crisis arrives. But there’s more to self defense than knowing how to punch. If someone wants to hurt you, it's important to learn how to get into a mental state where you can do the same thing. Doing padwork and light sparring is going to help, but only to an extent. As I progressed in my journey, I learned to not be afraid of getting hurt, and to not be scared of hurting someone else. Heavier and more intense sparring sessions taught me to push the threshold of how much force I’m willing to use on another human being. Being able to control that is very important.

But there's more reasons to learn to fight aside from self defense. There's a variety of benefits of learning martial arts. Aside from the obvious physical benefits like getting in shape and being able to defend yourself, it also makes you stronger in other dimensions. Mental and emotional fortitude are just as much an aspect important to fighting as physical formidability is.

Training in martial arts taught me how to focus under pressure, and that's a skill that's useful in any domain of life. If I can keep a level head when someone is throwing a flurry of punches at my face, I can keep my cool in any situation. Having that skill of being mindful, aware, and present in stressful circumstances helps me when managing deadlines, dealing with conflicts, or tolerating pain.

Another benefit of training is that it keeps me in shape. Not only is fighting a good form of exercise, but I’ll argue that it is the perfect form of exercise. No other sport or discipline is as multidimensional as combat sports. MMA is the finest tool created for expanding human physicality. Some sports require you to be strong, like powerlifting. Others require endurance, like cross country. Some require flexibility, like acrobatics. But fighting requires everything. You have to be fast, strong, agile, flexible, and have solid endurance when you’re involved in combat sports. Fighting requires you to excel in every domain of fitness.

Furthermore, fighting with men also helps with dealing with women. The only meaningful difference between fighting and sex is that physical aggression is manifested in one and not the other. They both require you to be mindful of the person in front of you. Both require good cardio, hip mobility, and muscular endurance. Both leave bruises on your body and leave you tired. Finally, both also require you to be careful, because if you’re not, you could die. So if you can fight, you can fuck.

There are countless benefits I’ve gained from learning to tussle. But one that really stands out to me is a spiritual lesson I’ve learned: To keep on fighting. Training taught me to never give up. Even when I’m outmatched, tired, broken, or even helpless. The struggles of life will test all of us. It can be tempting to give up when facing adversity, whether it be financial struggles, a failing relationship, or addiction. Why bother fighting when you keep on losing? It's tempting to take the easy way out.

But that's morally wrong. Surrendering in the face of life's challenges is the most detrimental choice we could make. Someone else is going through the same shit. If we can overcome it and grow past our challenges, we can help other people do the same. Our lives, and the lives of other people can be greatly enriched if we push past the pain and transcend our circumstances. Even if we don’t win, even if we can't win, we’re still supposed to fight.

An example of this that sticks out to me is in Halo: Reach, one of my favorite video games growing up. You play as a super soldier slaying aliens on a foreign planet. But throughout the course of the story, all remaining humans leave the planet and your teammates die one by one. At the very end of the game, you’re injured and bleeding out fighting a never ending swarm of aliens. Even though the odds of victory are literally nonexistent, you keep on fighting until death takes a hold of you. There’s a lesson to be learned in that.

Though it's in human nature to fall, it's demonic to fall and not get back up. That's how anger, resentment, regret, idleness, envy, and every other evil gets a hold of us. To keep on fighting means to hold on to your faith, hope, and dreams. That's something that all of us have to do in our lives.