Fear ? anxiety? name it please.

[Berkay1]

Hi nice people ! I'm new in this forum
I'm in sports since i'm 9 years old. By the way i'm 19 right now. In boxing ? It had been 6 since i first wore my gloves. My skills as well as my body in general built well , i didn't stopped boxing even for a month. 4 days a week. Ok, i talked too much. Look of the cover is good of my boxing life but there is a thing in my head that really obstacle for releasing the real potential of me.

I had only one STREET fight and it was real short. At my fifteen. I can't remember all of it even. I sparred too much. Light spars , heavy spars , even MMA spars. But in every spar i had a problem that i close my eyes so can't see my opponent's hands. Probably the reason i can't remember the street fight i had is eye closing thing.

I'm not afraid takings hits or spar with someone who is stronger or bigger than me. I can't count how many punches i took for a 6 years so pain became no problem for me also. Hundreds of spar , dozens of diffrent fighters and still my eyes closing and it really began to affect my psychology before every spar. Cause i know , i will take dozens of punches again.

Please help me.

[Ray Corso]

Head & chin down.........look "up" at the top of your eye socket.(eye lids folded back)
Focus on them being open on bag work, skip rope, pads etc..........
This is a concentration problem you must train yourself to maintain focus!
Ray.

[Berkay1]

Yeah you are right Ray. Most of the time i can't be concentrated to the spar %100. Spectators or anyone or anything will be in my vision at least %20 during spar time. I think i must teach my self see nobody or nothing but my opponent. Problem solving's main step is identifying the problem , i done it now. But unfortunately i don't know how to teach it... Maybe i must tie my hand to my back and have some beat me till i learn not closing eye and dodge every punch coming from opponent. (semi serious)

[Facade]

Perhaps you should just acknowledge that a part of you is affraid. There's nothing wrong with that. You can only start working on overcoming something, when you actually know and accept what's wrong.

Consider this for instance: If you are affraid, and you actually get hit/hurt a lot, you will learn that the fear is justified (conditioning). Your body was affraid something was going to happen and acted accordingly (defensively). What it was affraid of did occur and therefore the fear is further cemented.

Especially because you've been doing it wrong for so long, your body might have learned itself to close the eyes. Eventhough you are perhaps rationally not affraid of incoming pain, the same can't be said for your brain and reflexes. Fear isn't something rational. Look up 'amygdala' for instance. This quote pretty much sums up what i just described. From wiki:

"The amygdala is directly associated with conditioned fear. Conditioned fear is the framework used to explain the behavior produced when an originally neutral stimulus is consistently paired with a stimulus that evokes fear. The amygdala represents a core fear system in the human body, which is involved in the expression of conditioned fear. Fear is measured by changes in autonomic activity including increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, as well as in simple reflexes such as flinching or blinking"

[Berkay1]

Perhaps you should just acknowledge that a part of you is affraid. There's nothing wrong with that. You can only start working on overcoming something, when you actually know and accept what's wrong.

Consider this for instance: If you are affraid, and you actually get hit/hurt a lot, you will learn that the fear is justified (conditioning). Your body was affraid something was going to happen and acted accordingly (defensively). What it was affraid of did occur and therefore the fear is further cemented.

Especially because you've been doing it wrong for so long, your body might have learned itself to close the eyes. Eventhough you are perhaps rationally not affraid of incoming pain, the same can't be said for your brain and reflexes. Fear isn't something rational. Look up 'amygdala' for instance. This quote pretty much sums up what i just described. From wiki:

"The amygdala is directly associated with conditioned fear. Conditioned fear is the framework used to explain the behavior produced when an originally neutral stimulus is consistently paired with a stimulus that evokes fear. The amygdala represents a core fear system in the human body, which is involved in the expression of conditioned fear. Fear is measured by changes in autonomic activity including increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, as well as in simple reflexes such as flinching or blinking"

What i understand is , i can't control my "fear" directly like active things that i'm doing.(walking , writing , jabbing) Also , teached my brain that reflex by myself and solution is teach it again something but not blink when about to be punched ? Did i understand it correct ? Also i started to think the thing that in my previous "semi serious" comment may work...

Regards,

[PitbullParsons]

Mike Tyson said he was afraid every time he entered the ring. As soon as he looked at the other guy he knew he was afraid too. The key is to use your fear for you and your opponents against him. Easier said then done. As for the flinching and closing eyes, you need to train yourself through muscle memory to block/counter/whatever instead of flinching. For closing your eyes I would say have your trainer or someone throw punches for the sole purpose of hitting you in the face while you just concentrate on keeping your eyes open.

This is just my interpretation on the situation and being as it's psychological everyone will react differently.

[Facade]

What i understand is , i can't control my "fear" directly like active things that i'm doing.(walking , writing , jabbing) Also , teached my brain that reflex by myself and solution is teach it again something but not blink when about to be punched ? Did i understand it correct ? Also i started to think the thing that in my previous "semi serious" comment may work...

Regards,

I'm not sure I follow exactly what you're saying. Compliment what Ray said with what I said.

- Focus on your opponent, not on your fear. Whatever you focus on, will magnify. You say you think about it before every spar. This will make it worse. The good news is that you can choose what to focus on.

- As for the conditioning part: the body needs to learn that there's no reason to be afraid in sparring. You need to get some success while keeping your eyes open. In your case it might help to spar with people that are on your own level and on your own weight. Work your way up slowly. Conditioning works like this: you keep performing a certain action if it gets rewarded every time (success); you stop performing a certain action if you keep getting punished for it every time (getting beat up). So as for your semi-serious proposal: you could try something like that, but make sure you guys start on a level where you are actually able to avoid the punches and work your way up. If the guy trying to hit you is really having his way and you get beat the **** out of you each time, the anxiety will be further reinforced. The goal is not to 'get used to the pain'.

[Berkay1]

Hi pals! Today i worked with double-ended ball for 4 rounds for the first time.I have been thinking that tools is just waste of time and today i had seen that was wrong. And noticed When ball come to me at high speed or impact me , i blinked every time even it wasn't a punch ! So i started to think , i can use this tool for get rid of this blinking issue of me. Maybe mine is not fear or anxiety , it's just a bad-type reflex that created in my brain for speedy objects. What you think ?

[Wuckoo]

Yeah that sounds plausible. I used to be the same with speedy guys. No I don't blink or flinch because I'm used to the punches.