Path of the Spiritual Warrior:
-Trainings-
The following is an excerpt from Lindsey Wei‘s book ’Path of the Spiritual Warrior: Life and Teachings of Muay Thai Fighter Pedro Solana‘ published by Purple Cloud Press .
“Victories are dangerous dreams and mistakes are blessings!” Kru shouts at us during a heated Krabong sparring session.
“No one likes the pain, but there is a process all martial artists need to go through—it is to receive pain and not turn it into anger or fear, rather into stillness. Do not let the feelings of pain and tiredness stop you from seeing what is happening. That is why we are training in the pressure all the time. If you don’t have the pressure, then you are growing only in your imagination. If someone hits you two or three times hard and you have pain and you completely turn off in your mind and in your timing, this is not good enough.”
“The greatest fighter is not the one that doesn’t get hit. The greatest fighter is the one that can function under pressure and under pain, keeping the same abilities at high function.
If pain or fear turns you down, obviously you need to train that, if you don’t train that you will never succeed. You must train that through analyzing and telling the mind, its
ok, and we push it further and further, until when someone hits you, you wipe it off and continue.”
“Some people put a lot of equipment on so they can go full power, but I prefer not to. This way we are more careful when we go in for an attack. If our mind is full of aggression, we come in full power. Yes you have good workout, but I don’t think it is real. You need to control your adrenaline when you are fighting someone who has a blade and can cut… you need to be careful…. especially with the blade, we don’t want to risk. Foremost we want to avoid getting cut, and we want to cut if there is no other choice. I cannot just jump in with blade, it will create a bad habit with the equipment and armor. With the blade, one mistake you are dead, moving… cutting… cutting angles and cutting through. I don’t like to play lottery, risk. I want to make sure I play my chess pieces the best I can. The pain is important. Some people, when I go very hard, they have a lot of fear. Do you know how I take the fear out? I say ‘come’… I give them the metal swords and we spar. After a
lot of pressure with this, then I give them the wooden one and say, ‘now are you afraid?’ And they say, of course… ‘not as much’.”
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