Fear has its undeniable dynamics in all forms of street combat, with no exception, but you can rise above the “fear factor” by adding a considerable mental feature to your efforts of learning street fighting. Critical situation on the street are possible at any moment – it is a good point to start with for your preparation for facing the additional fear aspect. Do you feel like you are the type of man or woman who simply freezes when a street fighting situation occurs? Well, panic is unavoidable with most of us – but if you learn to fight and control, at the same time, your emotions, you will handle your emotions to the disadvantage of your opponent.

This is why it is vital to practice, practice, and then practice again – it is the essence of any effort to learn to fight. It is crucial to arrive at such a point of naturalness, so that by the time you become conscious that you should actually feel terrified, your attacker has already been dealt with. Many people forget to take in hand the intensification of the feeling in an authentic street combat situation.

More often than not, if you can bring to a halt the intensification of emotions on both street combat sides (the attacker(s) and the defender(s)), the conflict does not take place. However, such prevention of emotion intensification rarely occurs, so the only thing that you can do is to continue your street fighting training and to learn to fight by being the one in control – which means that you control your emotions and not the reverse.

I can recommend a series of real-life situations exercises, but my warning is that the level of emotion intensity with such exercises does not compare with the level of emotion intensity in the actual street combat. For instance, a good manner of learning to deal with fear is by having someone rub you the wrong way. When someone is rude to you, you will experience both panic and bewilderment as to the reasons why he or she might act in such a manner.

The reality is the same: you may often find no authentic logical reason behind street attacks. They might want to rob you, in some situations, but time and again you may find yourself with your face smashed for no reason that you could actually comprehend. This will definitely line up a series of contradictory emotions. In practice, you may even feel the need to cry or even let your tears out, for that matter. This means that you have lost control over your emotions.

However, practice does make perfect. If you cry while you train, you will gradually learn to retain those tears, so that when a street fighting situation actually comes up, you will be the complete master of your emotional reactions. Listen to what I am saying: an aggressor is not going to attack you with subtleties. On the contrary, he or she will yell insults straight to your face – sometimes closer than what you might ever expect to, and believe me; sometimes you may even have to deal with literally bad breath situations.

Finally, when you learn to fight by controlling the fear factor, remember that your attacker actually deals with emotions, too. Your fear control training may in fact provide you with some reliable clues as to what the other is going through in a similar situation. In other words, never let it out of your mind that your opponent has weak emotional points, too. By studying yours, you can get an idea of his or hers.