Do you like to fight? WHY?!?!?

[ballen0351]

Yeah, youre doing it wrong

Naa im just getting older and dont heal as fast

 

[Em MacIntosh]

Admittedly, nothing makes me feel more alive than standing on a pile of my vanquished foes.

Fighting inspires anxiousness, hightened sensitivity and promotes high levels of adrenaline due to the very real possibility of danger. If you're repeatedly familiarized with the feeling of desperation you may become more "comfortable" with it or even rely on the physical reactions thereof...perhaps even enjoy it. While bungee jumping and fighting both have the possibility of danger in common, the whole purpose of fighting is to make it go wrong for the other guy.

I enjoy the rush of fighting. Time slows down, sensitivity to minutia goes into overdrive and adrenaline makes me feel like I have superpowers. Of course I enjoy it. It's also one of the few areas I feel I have some raw talent in.
The best feeling comes from their surprise when you suddenly and ferociously overpower them and they thought you were easy pickings. They started it and you finished it. You're the man. You're the righteous hero. You get the respect. Your peers will lift you upon their shoulders and sing songs in your honor for generations.

Then I use my brain. We underestimate how fragile or how durable the human body can be, ours and our opponents'. We know better than to trust it'll be a fair fight. You just come off looking like a showoff or a freak that lost their temper...or an exposed wannabe.

I like to spar hard with no equipment but it's sparring. It stops when one of us says so.

Never engage in a duel. It always escalates. Operate under the assumption that there is no honor.

There's nothing wrong with admitting you enjoy it. Understand what it is you enjoy though and understand where it puts you on your own moral compass. I enjoy money but I'm not about to rob someone. I think most of us can understand that.

I think fighting's barbaric, but it forces you to confront yourself.

 

[lifespantkd]

One thought I have in reading this thread is that the terms "fight" and "liking" need to be defined, as they mean different things to different people in the martial arts. For example, a martial artist may greatly enjoy watching or participating in a rule-controlled sparring match but would be abhorred by the brutality of any number of real-life violent conflicts, particularly those that involve maiming or killing.

Among our human needs is a need to use our bodies physically. Unfortunately, modern lifestyles are, on average, far too inactive to meet this need. And, while all of us experience the hormonal cascade (e.g., adrenalin, cortisol) of our fight-flight-freeze response quite frequently to perceived threats that do not actually endanger us in modern life (e.g., a frustrating workplace conflict related to the management of a project), our cultural training often prohibits our engaging in the immediate and intense physical exertion that would burn off those stress hormones. Taekwondo (and other martial arts) offers generally well-mannered people the delayed chance to engage in that intense physical exertion. The resulting improvement in how we feel after a good sparring match can quite naturally leave us with the sense that we "like fighting." And, as others have commented, many of us value knowing how to defend ourselves and take pride in our increasing skill to do so. Of course, there are also practitioners whose life experiences have contributed to high levels of aggression and/or who become addicted to the adrenalin of an actually dangerous fight and/or who have been culturally indoctrinated to like violence by repeat exposure to violence in the media or who have been psychologically damaged to pathologically like violence from growing up in a profoundly abusive environment, and so on. So, there can be what I would consider both healthy and unhealthy "liking" of "fighting." I think this is why traditional Taekwondo schools emphasize the philosophy underlying the art: it protects the practitioner (and society) from the effects of an unhealthy liking of fighting. Given the strong role of culture in the experience of and expression of aggression, and given anthropological studies of peaceful indigenous societies, I think there's more going on than just innate biology.

 

[mastercole]

Fighting against another being is a competition against that being, whether it is a tiger or a human. Some person's may rise to the occasion, or occasions, and begin to have some skill at fighting. What they then experience is the same thing the soccer, football or other sports athletes experience. Some call it being in the "zone".

Once that has been experienced, certain personalities will become addicted to that experience, they may find they like it. This too is for the few, not the many.

 

[Buka]

"Fighting" and "sparring/training" are as different as ice cream and asparagus. When you spar someone better than you, it's like Christmas morning.

When you fight someone better than you it's like getting your ----- stuck in your zipper.