Martial Arts and Adrenaline Good or Bad?
ok ive been doin taekwondo for a long time and recently started mauy thai
im aware that as a martial artist in mauy thai and tkd we are trained to be conscious however tht means we must control adrenaline in our body
if we control adrenaline then we can be aware of the fight and think however, adrenaline stops pain receptord tht means if we fight normally adrenaline is stoping us from feeling pain in the fight
so if we learn 2 control adrenline in martial arts we will feel pain in a fight? and im talkin bout a real fight no protective gear or a street fight?
It depends on your training. It’s good for energy and strength, but if you practice a martial art that requires neither then it will only cloud your judgment. Adrenaline rushes are unavoidable, but you have to learn to control yourself and keep your mind clear.
adrenaline can make you sloppy and loose technique if you fear pain then you will recieve pain in a fight if you fear no pain its very less likely youll experience pain everything is mental
adrenaline is a common factor that plays into genuine self-defense situations. You can’t control it,but you can recognize when adrenaline has been dispersed and is effecting your body.Adrenaline gives us strength beyond our own in certain situations. It is a performance enhancer that increases your speed,strength,etc.,and most of the time you don’t feel pain. Knowing when adrenaline’s come on will help because you will have those effects,but won’t be so dazed(most of the time you’re wondering what that feeling is). This,combined with strategy – something every martial artist needs – can help you dominate in a fight.
Very good answers so far. I might also add that when you recieve an adrenaline dump you will tend to lose all but your gross motor skills, and your though processes will not be as sharp.
this is where the repetition of martial arts training comes in. I know many think kata serves no purpose, and if that’s what you beleiev fine, however if I visualize exactly what i am doing to/with an opponent each time I run a kata, after 1000′s of times my body will just react automaticly when it finds itself in a similiar situation. Yes you need to practice the techniques with a resisting opponent, however once you know it works, you can plug it back into the kata and train against the same attack over and over until it becomes second nature.
This is one way to control your adrenaline rush, through repetition.
I’m not sure it’s as much a matter of "controling" it as understanding it. I’ve found, and heard from most other people, that once a fight kicks off, you don’t feel any nervousness. Adrenaline seems more of an issue pre-fight. I would refer you to Geoff Thompson, a black belt-turned-bouncer. He’s written a lot of good stuff on how adrenaline effects people in a real fight.
I am an instructor in Commando Krav Maga, and we count on people experiencing an adrenaline dump during a fight for our training. A real fight will cause alot of things to happen to your body. One of them will be the release of adrenaline, which can help speed your reflexes and also help you ignore pain to some extent. In CKM we train with "pressure tests", where the student is attacked by several subjects for several minutes. This puts alot of physical and mental pressure on the student and they see how they would react to a real fight. I have found this to be an invaluable training tool, and I have injured myself during the pressure tests only to realize it later, so during the actual test, much like during a real fight, I was not aware of the injury.
Adrenaline is released when your sympathetic nervous system is activated. This basically means that when you are threatened your body goes into "flight or fight" mode. All of the physiological changes that the SNS affects have historically helped an individual to survive.
Some of the changes include:
Pupil dialation to improve vision; however peripheral vision is lost (Tunnel vision)
Increased heart rate and inhalation rate to both take in more oxygen and pump it throughout your body
Blood vessels dialate in muscles to allow for more oxygen and glucose intake (cell fuel).
Once these changes begin your body’s natural reactions are relied upon. The problem with martial arts and adrenaline is if your system is not used to the techniques during an SNS response; in these cases the body resorts to more primative attacks. Through conditioning, you can train your body to call upon martial techniques during SNS respsonses.