MartialArtistZone.com

It’s called practice,

Take some marital art class, they will teach you about confidence and overcoming your fears. In good dojos, they will make you spear. Spearing will help you overcome panic and nervousness in a self defense situation. Once you learn how to take a hit you will be able to start to learn how to over come you fear.

You never truly overcome those feelings. They are actually quite useful in the decision making process of fight or flight. In any type of self defense training, you learn to practice the movements and control your breathing. This will help keep you clear minded and alert. By constantly and consistently training, you teach your body and mind to react to certain circumstances with little effort.

If you are defending yourself against an aggressor, then that person thinks that you are weak and vulnerable, all you have to do is show confidence and no fear. After all, we are all human.

When you gett into that kind of situation you body relases adernoline into the body. Which causes the fight or flight scenario. You can either stay and fight or run away. But there has been reports that when in this situation you are able to be a hell of a lot stronger than you usually are.

Adrenaline will take over your body and turn you into a monster. Well it does for me. But usualy not in self defense.

get a gun

You got a gun, you don’t have to work out. l ain’t working out. l ain’t jogging. You got pecs, l got Tecs.

Panic and nervousness can only be overcome through experience and growing accustomed to the situation. That’s why we spar, to get used to to getting hit and hitting.

Now, though panic can be overcome, fear/pensiveness/nervousness never really leave. Those without that are said to be Skitzos, emotionless/remoresless; and they are the scariest of all humans as they can face a gun without emotion, get stabbed without emotion; or kill you for no reason and two minutes later babysit your neighbor’s kid without a hint of what just happened.

The uneasy feeling is a sympathetic nervous system response which is what gives us the fight or flight instinct. This becomes a tool instead of a crutch in martial arts. Through constant training and thought of different scenarios we are able to take that fear and control it, helping us to make better insticntual decisions.

In most traditional karate systems you see kata being used a lot. This creates muscle memory, which allows the reaction to be just that, a reaction. A motion without thought, as the nerves signals move from the spine to the muscle, instead of going to the spine, brain, spine, and then the muscle.

This is important because that leads us into interpretation of the kata. First we learn the moves, now we learn what they can do. So through interpretation we see that this one technique we’ve done over and over can be used in many situations. Thanks to muscle memory we’ve got our set move and a choice of when to use it.

Next, we use bunkai. This is such an important part of understanding kata and body mechanics, as this in when we put our interpretations to the test. Having the attacker come with speed and power, and reacting we see what really works and what does not. This is where we generally eleminate the techniques that are overly complicated and time consuming. There generally is not a lot of time when in a self defense situation. I mean that as self defense, because in fighting one is aware of the situation, and in self defense it’s all reaction due to the surprise attack.

After the bunkai has been perfected with multiple styles of attacks for each series, and reactions become more like second nature; it comes time for sparring.

This is generally the final step in the application of what we’ve learned through out our practice. This is where confidence is built in having the ability to handle any type of attack in any situation.

So I guess the moral is you don’t overcome it without experience.

In a sudden attack or violent confrontation the body releases adrenaline .This causes feelings usually seen as fear and nervousness.If you try to suppress it to try and make those feelings go away they get worse because you are not giving the body the commands it now needs
The body has prepared your body for flight or fight and given you extra strength to do so by the release of adrenaline and is now waiting for a mental command from you to either fight or flee.
As MR PARKER noted “he who hesitates meditates in the horizontal posistion” go with the flow of adrenaline dont fight it .
This is why training for self defense scenarios must be as close to reality as possible .

If we are to be able to effectively defend ourselves then we need to ensure that our training also develops physical condition and mental strength in addition to technique. The key is to ensure that our training is intense enough to encourage growth in all three areas e.g. we drill our techniques with intensity and to the point of exhaustion (stimulates physical strength) and no matter how much we want to quit or ease off, we then drill them some more (stimulates mental strength).

Panic and nervousness is brought about by stressful situations. The practice of possible scenarios is the best way to prepare. In both the military and in law enforcement, soldiers and officers are placed under life like stressful simulations that are as close to the real thing as you can get. They are trained to think fast on their feet with the goal of making the best possible decisions under those stressful situations. I can attest it is not as easy as it looks. The beauty of it is, if you make a mistake or hesitation you can go back and review and see what went wrong and what you need to do to correct it. The more you practice those situations the better prepared you will be if the real thing ever does happen. Martial arts training is much the same way. A good teacher will push your limits both physically and psychologically under different scenarios to make you more aware and better prepared to deal with the stress so that you don’t panic. Simply put, practice, practice, practice.. then practice it again, because your life may depend on it.

Like said Before it is virtually impossible to get rid of nervousness and panic due to our nature only thing you can do is minimize it these are all great thing above the body memory is great its mainly preactice practice all your technique to the point that it become secon nature like breathing some one touches you u just react anywhere any time also for fighting on the streets best way to minimize the fear and nervousness is to get some buddies put some gloves on and go at it so u learn how to take a punch and scrap in the streets at the same time since ur doin it with friends they wont kill you its just a learning thing. Hopefully its not so bad u get nervous to even fight a friend but yeah thats the best way and goin to tournaments and jsut taking it and swallow the nervousness and get out there in front of all those ppl and do ur thing slowly it will go away

Hi
Being myself born and Raised in one of the most violent and dangerous places in the world ( Michoacan Mexico) All I can say is that if you don`t have contact with violence in your life, if you were raised in a peaceful place where problems are solved by talking, it`s almost impossible to overcome the fear of a phisical confrontation.
In he other hand if violence, street fighting and confrontation are present in your life almost like an usual thing, you get the skin and the street wise to be not affraid of anybody or anything, but I should say it`s mostly a personal developed skill.
Good Luck

By becoming familiar with the situation, you don’t want to get hurt but taking as close to the real thing with safety foremost the feelings and the setting become familiar so the fear goes away. How you do this is takes some imagination and moving outside of your comfort zone admittedly, so hope that helps, best of luck