The value of competing in combat sports.

In a previous post I talked about these account pushing men to step into the ring to prove their manhood while they’ve never been in the ring themselves.

So that obviously made people wonder if I saw value in competition.

The short is answer is “yes”.

Competing in martial arts is something everyone should try at least once. Simply because it will teach you a lot about yourself leading up to the competition, the day of the competition and after the competition.

On paper it’s very easy. Show up to training and show up to fight.

In reality however, it becomes a bit more difficult.

Can you really dedicate X amount of weeks going through the hard training?

Can you be disciplined about your diet to make the weight?

Can you show up to training when tired or not feeling like it?

Or can you train twice a day to get the best preparation possible?

Can you show up on fight day or will you run away the day before?

Can you deal with outsiders asking you the same questions over and over again?

Can you perform under the bright lights?

Will you fight if you get injured during camp? Happened to me before my first fight.

Will you keep going when you get in serious trouble during competition or will you quit?

….

I’ve seen tons of people say yes to all of these questions while they never tried it. In reality, you can only know if you actually try. Otherwise, it’ll be an assumption you have.

I know of a guy that said yes, did all of the stuff he had to do, only to make a runner the night before the fight. I’ve seen people step into the ring and break mentally as soon as they got hit.

When preparing for competition or competing people have to face reality, something they can easily ignore in other endeavors.

For some, it becomes a painful experience because reality and their self- image couldn’t be further from each other. They decide to run away from reality as they’re used too rather than confronting reality and learning from it.

For others, it becomes a learning experience where they get better at getting to know themselves each time they do it.

It’s not an easy thing to do because the only way to get better at this is to be brutally honest with yourself. Plus your team/coaches will be brutally honest with you as well.

So what can you gain from this whole experience? Life experience, knowledgeable about yourself, learning how to perform under pressure, learning how to push through when things get hard, learning how to control emotions aka not letting your emotions get the upper hand, learning how to have a setback and bounce back from it, learning how to reflect on a win or loss and how to perform better next time,…

Simply said, by taking the right approach you become a better competitor and the skills required to do this can be carried over to other aspects of your life.

So how can competition be bad? As much as people don’t like to say it, competition makes you a better person. There’s nothing to lose, there’s only to gain!

Seems to me that people who find it bad are either afraid to face reality or just haven’t put too much thought into their reasoning.

In the end, I’ve never met a person so far that regretted competing in combat sports and some of them lost their first fight. One of the guys even got cut.

I do however know of people that regretted not competing.

Fighting Muay Thai in Thailand.

Did you ever consider coming to Thailand to fight Muay Thai? You’re not the only one!

Sadly enough, there is not a lot of information out there on Thai culture in gyms and how you can spot bad gyms here.

So for a lot of people the trip to Thailand can become a frustrating experience because

• they pay crazy gym fees only to never fight
• get a fight but get beat up bad because the fight was a huge mismatch (doesn’t only happen in the local scene, saw it happen on a big promotion).
• they think only the good gyms are the ones that are unaffordable to stay at long term.
• They don’t understand Thai culture and the culture in gyms.

Luckily for you I have the solution. in my e-book On Training And Fighting In Thailand: an in-depth breakdown of Thai culture in gyms I break down how to find a gym that is affordable while caring about you at the same time. And much more of course.

People that come prepared to Thailand will have a better experience and won’t lose a huge amount of money training here.

What about…?

When I originally tweeted about this, someone messaged me saying ‘there is a risk of serious injury too’.

So in my next substack article I will cover this because a lot of people tend to focus on this while this doesn’t serve them in any way, shape or form.

Until next time

Alex