Are Some People Just Not Meant To Be Fighters? • Ft Burton Richardson and Matt Thornton 

I think everybody can learn to fight. Some are naturally good at. All humans deep down have fighting in their DNA.

There are 2 aspects to fighting. One is physical, and it is directly related to your athleticism. The other is mental. It is directly related to your understanding of human nature. Everyone can fight, you just have to know which one you are better at.

This is a great interaction. And Burton Richardson is really a class act.

Most instructors in the classical and modern martial arts don't understand how to teach people how to "handle" themselves. They can show moves, and they might have a fighting instinct, but teaching it too someone who desperately needs to learn how to defend themselves from say, bullies and muggers. And there are different needs. What a cop needs to learn is different from what a house wife needs and so on.

Of course some people are not meant to be fighters! And this is where it gets really confusing....while people might want to learn self defense, it does not mean they want to get hit, etc. And to insist that they fight, you will drive them away. Everyone can learn some useful self defense techniques, but that doesn't mean they will be fighters, nor should they develop a false confidence that they are.

Thanks.

Thinking about using people’s willingness to engage in striking sparring as a metric to determine if they’re a fighter or not... I ~really~ don’t enjoy striking sparring, so I haven’t done much of it. I ~do~ enjoy grappling/wrestling and weapon sparring, so I’m often eager to do them. Having worked in retail loss prevention and as a bouncer, I’m also not at all hesitant to engage with people “on the street” if necessary. Given these and in light of your metric, would you not consider me a fighter? What about all the historic warriors who didn’t live in cultures with competitive striking traditions, or even just without competition in their martial traditions at all (thinking specifically of samurai)? Would you not consider them to be fighters? I’m not sure that I can get on board with defining a fighter by their willingness to spar with striking.

Great!

always seek truth

I know - for a fact that some people never get over their fear of contact … they are eternally preparing … so in that way some have the mentality and some don’t … so some are fighters and some not . Physical fights as opposed to shooting someone with a gun or “ fighting “ in a board room / business setting . I don’t think everyone has a physical fighters mentality - simple

Savat!

Everyone Can learn the skills, but applying the same in combat (not sparring) is not necessarily an easy or automatic transition. I believe, just like in Training for Soldiers, the newbies all want to quit at some point, but after 2 years, the numbers of complainers/who want to quit, reduces in numbers. Martial arts training is like that, and just like, how not all soldiers will see active combat, not all martial artists will see practical combat scenario.. But, like Bruce Lee said, train hard, to the extent that your skills are refined and you can put your opponent down and out in the shortest time, without too much effort from your side! now, that's a tall order and requires many years of dedicated training, realistic sparring, amateur tournaments and so on. For that, best is muay thai... there is no room for any fake or flowery techniques!

I don't want to watch the video. Can someone tell me what they said?