Fighters Only

Issue 108

December 2013

Chartered sport psychologist and one of few mental performance coaches specializing in combat sport, Joe Bell provides tips to improve your approach.

Psychologists and other social scientists have been tormented for eons as to why fighters possess a natural impulse to face each other in hand-to-hand combat. It has sparked some bruising academic skirmishes, as they’ve squabbled and sprawled around a single answer that has been jabbed into their face time and time again. That is: when all is said and done, all men are born to fight – some just have trouble admitting it.

We as humans have inherited a natural fighting instinct similar to that in the animal kingdom. But for the majority in today’s world, whatever potential for a fighting instinct which may have been passed down has been suppressed and culturally disguised in more cowardly forms.

For example, the office worker on the receiving end of an unprovoked tirade from a power-hungry boss with chips residing on both shoulders. Or the technological advances in deadly weaponry that can strike the enemy at great distances from the safety of an armchair. And even the self-proclaimed ‘hard men’ who arm themselves with blades and bullets to tip the balance of confrontation in their favor.

Fortunately, though, for the Special Forces of sport, mixed martial artists are able to evade the negative devastating power of nature’s aggressive instinct by having the luxury of being able to redirect their energies positively, through a high-octane super-fast, kinesthetic, disciplined game of chess.

Primitive hardwiring

However genuine we may think our motives are as to why we fight, our rationale actually only skims the surface. When we peel back the layers, we discover man’s powerful impulse to fight is hardwired into a part of the brain called the amygdala.

World-leading sociobiologist and Harvard professor Edward Osborne Wilson believes that behavior is genetically transmitted and is subject to evolutionary processes. He says: “By definition man is predatory, naturally competitive and hostile, and interested only in his desire to impose his will and dominance over others.”

Man didn’t get to the top of the food chain by being flaccid and submissive, it was his ruthless fighting instinct that got us to where we are today. As initially a hunter-gatherer who lived in small groups, that ability to fight was imperative for hunting and fending off wild animals and encroachments from other tribes.

When he wasn’t fighting his neighbors or manhandling sabre-tooth tigers, a competitive drive was spawned and began to develop as a consequence of constantly being on edge. It demanded a suitable discharge of nervous energy and competition was the perfect outlet. Almost any occasion for primeval men to test their abilities and measure themselves against one another served as a means to hone skills and attract the attention of women, with the added bonus of gaining respect and boosting social status.

Thus through the ages men have fed their intense urge to compete, both formally and informally in games, public debates, proficiency in horsemanship, the size and fierceness of the game they’d killed, and even all the way to boasting about who had the most impressive scars.

Yet all these displays of prowess were outclassed by courage, speed of foot and strength of arm exhibited through martial skill. The most aggressive and talented warriors had the most sex with most women and ensured the passage of their genes through to the largest number of offspring.

This gives us an understanding of the psychological predisposition of descendants (combatants) who’ve inherited these genetics, and explains their urge to compete. In any given society, you have a select few athletes who want to physically test themselves against others. Some run. Some lift. Some play. But few fight. MMA presents the opportunity for highly-trained and civilized men to simply test themselves.