Every budding fighter goes through what I call the 10-fight itch.
Some experience it at 3 fights, others at 15, depending on how often they fight, but invariably, they experience it.
They start to train on their own during class times.
You have either seen this happen a kajillion times in the gym at which you train, or actually done this yourself at some point in your career.
I am yet to watch a fight at ANY level that I didn’t not see some fundamental flaws demonstrated by one of the combatants at some point or another, whether it be a result of fatigue, or the chaos that a fight creates, or a lack of preparedness.
Why do fighters think they don’t need that training? They lack humility.
They begin to look in the mirror and see a ‘Pro fighter’-one who is far too advanced for ‘beginner training’.
Don’t get me wrong- confidence is great, and actually a necessary component for success for any great fighter.
To have the HUMILITY necessary to take a class from someone you deem lesser experienced than you, with the hopes of gleaning something from it, or to take a class along side beginners with the hopes of spotting something they are doing wrong, in hopes of realizing some flaws in YOUR game, is the true test of how far you have become as a mature athlete.
It doesn’t matter if you are in a serious ‘training camp’ for an upcoming fight.
If there is a scheduled class on the calendar at the gym you train, YOU SHOULD BE IN IT. If you need to schedule extra time for your ‘sparring’ or ‘advanced training’ do it.
I cannot stress this next point enough; without the most incredibly sound fundamentals, all that ‘advanced training’ is worthless.
If your fundamentals are so incredibly awesome that you do not need to improve them, I hope you have a world title belt around your waste- otherwise you might be kidding yourself.
Even then… trust me, fundamental training should be an integral part of what you do each and every day.
Muscle memory from drilling and drilling that fundamental stance and footwork, allows your body to automatically return to that good posture just as quickly as you were knocked out of it.
As you become an upper-tier athlete, and find yourself dominating your training partners-and the competition, you become less and less likely to find yourself in positions of inferiority… until you meet your match.
How often does this happen to the top-level fighters, and they are like a fish out of water? Without exception that is the same fighter that I saw stuff a takedown on a beginner sparring partner just weeks earlier.
When you are sparring, the more advance student should ALWAYS yield to the lesser-experienced fighter… ALWAYS. This is where you are going to have to trust me, because it is a hard concept for advanced athletes to comprehend at first… You will ALWAYS learn more from this experience, than if you best your training partners.
Having the HUMILITY to allow your training partners to take you down the same amount of times you stuff their takedown, is the sign of an advanced student.
It is the insecure fighter that feels he needs to show his training partners just how hard he can hit, or how many shots he can stuff.
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