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The attitude towards pain as a factor in forming the fighting spirit

Considering the numerous experiments, sportsmen's and coaches' opinion poll and personal practical experience, we will try to show the relevance of failures to the pain tolerance of a sportsman.

During a full contact bout with a possible ground wrestling and blows in the head, the pain sensations are dominating in terms of tactic, because they can cause the early submission of the opponent. In practice pain is one of the tactical tasks.

After numerous experiments (conducted on the author), we can conclude that the painful sensations themselves and our thoughts and expectations of them are not the same. Sometimes, with stereotypes in mind, a sportsman gives up not because of pain, but of realizing that his opponent is applying a painful hold. Stupor, as a display of fear, can be considered as 100% death, either physical or moral, depending on the type of the bout. Panic as a result of expecting pain is much more dangerous than the pain sensation itself. First of all, horror causes dramatization of any negative feelings, and considering the shortness of bouts these feelings are multiplied by the speed. Moreover, once a sportsman has shown what his opponent should be afraid of, he can easily conduct another more dangerous and more complicated grip with a guaranteed success. Expected pain is an extremely strong distracting factor.

Now we are going to talk about some practical ways to overwhelm the threshold of pain. A sportsman applies a painful or a strangulating hold, gradually increasing the effort and watching the partner's condition. It is surprising how tolerant a person can be when relaxed. This exercise is extremely dangerous and should be controlled by a skilled instructor. The sportsman who is applying a grip should be very competent, too. The threshold of pain should be increased carefully, step by step. This kind of training is optimum on the days of sparring work, at the end of training.

After some adaptation to pain, the counter-grips are interesting. Waiting for the pain passively is another kind of stupor and therefore a very negative practice that should be avoided. A sportsman should think out the defence algorithm, keeping in mind that he should move in the same direction in which the grip is applied . When the opponent increases his effort in conducting a painful or a strangulation hold and stops at the medium level of pain, the sportsman should exit the grip. This kind of psychological adaptation allows to keep the fighting spirit even in such serious situations as painful or strangulating holds.

Actually, giving up in a bout is unnatural and impossible in real action, so in real action the choice - to struggle or to give up - is obvious. The author has seen a lot of situations when a fighter who was able to resist pain actually suppressed his opponent with disdain. No one is allowed to bend you to his will. Pain is a factor of subjection. Weakness attracts attack, whereas strength, especially the strength of spirit, suppresses. You can destroy a person only with haughty attitude to his actions. You must not give up. You do not even have to defend, because only few blows are really dangerous. When attacking your purpose should be not just to win but to wipe away, squash, crush "something" which is trying to hit you. This is the secret the author has revealed 20 years ago and since that time there has been a lot of proof to this point. My failures actually prove this more than my successes. Every win is special, whereas all failures have the same reason: one's inability to be ruthless to oneself.

The hitting technique is also full of painful sensations. The tactic of power domination puts a special accent on making every blow hard and painful, which involves training to become more tolerant to pain. Here are some examples of such training:

  • Exchange of Mavashi-geri blows in the trunk, in turn, without pauses, with 80% effort, without defense;
  • Exchange of direct blows in the trunk, in turn, at medium distance, without hand defence, with 100% effort;
  • Mutual free handwork with the maximum speed and power of blows in the head and chest. The bandage is put on hands. The sportsmen sit down on a bench opposite each other at the medium, knee to knee, distance. This exercise is held for 15 - 30 seconds. Due to the big number and "thickness" of blows the defence should be neglected. The interesting thing is that when doing this rough exercise sportsmen rarely get injured thanks exactly to the mentioned "thickness" of blows (fists "sink").
  • "Rolling the partner". Sportsman A is lying on the floor; sportsman B is standing on him; sportsman C is supporting the sportsman B. Sportsman A starts rolling on the floor, while sportsman B is shifting quickly from on foot to the other, and sportsman C is helping him to keep the balance. This is a very hard exercise strengthening abdominal and torso muscles.

In conclusion, due to the tactic component, the tasks which extend the pain tolerance are extremely close to urgent tasks, and therefore follow the demands of fighting Koi no takinobori ryu karate methods.








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