Finding Inspiration and Beginning of Understanding in “A Fighter’s Heart “
Thanks for an inspiring read Sam Sheridan (aka @fightersmind)
I was reading Sam Sheridan’s book “A Fighter’s Heart” and from the very first chapter I was then hooked. I didn’t read it straight through but I was so captivated by it as both a writer and someone who has fought. I don’t think I would ever call myself a fighter the way those that do it for a living do but I know in my heart that I am not done with the ring yet.
I have so much more to learn and discover about what I’m capable of if I can learn to believe that it’s possible and that has been a reach too far. I’m turning 35 soon. I am old in some ways but so very young in others. My life stage is still just post university, with very few discernible skills besides writing and communications. Everyone fights for different reasons, some of us we want to make it a career, others want to test the limits, others do it for fitness and more still because they want to prove just how badass they really are.
Me within a few weeks of doing the gym I was hooked and even a few months of any serious training I am kicking and punching phantom opponents. I know to keep it in check. I know that my skills aren’t what they were when I stopped but I still see the ring in my future. It calls out to me to take the scales and says to me are you going to stay at the centre or are you willing to risk a loss as you search for the win.
Sam downplays who he is but how many of us can say we sailed around the world, helped build an Antarctic outpost or were part of a team that would fight forest fighters. That’s not the universe I’ve ever lived in. I’ve never been in a fight before I stepped into the ring the first time. It took me 14 months before I could summon the courage to push those limits and even then I didn’t think I could.
I go into any fight shorter than my opponents, older than them as well, I go in as a diabetic and all the complications that entails for training and finally I go in almost blind trying to stand in the ring with Thai’s that have done it all their lives. Where muay thai is not just about them but supporting their families and breaking out of the poverty that is all they know.
I was in Thailand scraping by, trying to find a way to keep on going. That’s been magnified a ton now that I’m in New Zealand. I’m trying to be as cheap as possible in Auckland which is such an expensive city to call home even if its temporary and in the back of my mind what I really want to to is train and I never thought that would happen. Throughout his book Sam usually doesn’t call himself a fighter and for most of us what he has done even he only fought once epitomizes what it means to love the sport of fighting.
Reading his book made me feel like a fraud for thinking I could ever call myself a fighter even if it was for just a few months in 2015 and 2016. I don’t deserve to call myself anything close to being a fighter but I can’t take those words back once I’ve given them a voice. I need to learn to earn them not just in the ring but life as well. No one is going to give you anything, everything is hard and complex and for me the fight in the ring isn’t about my opponent it is about fighting myself as much them am I prepared enough to endure let alone because the fight is built on the preparation in the ring just as much as what you give to it when you are there.
Did I do enough to give my opponent the best of me at that moment, I was trying to earn the training they put into the match as I hope they would do the same for me. I said I was a fighter then because I had to make it real, to put it out there and maybe if I said it to others I could learn to believe it myself. Obviously I am not a fighter the same way Sam is or was when he wrote the book but for me to say it was to own and to own the words was not about fighting in the ring but about fighting for my place in life.
I think back to the end of Sam’s book about what the person fighting you is doing and in Sam’s words he said “the opponent allows you to strive fully, without reservation, and you do the same for” them. I remember reading Sam’s words and the question everyone who has ever fought or wanted to fight which was why? I have a lot of limits, boundaries we a box from which I could not leave. My diabetes is not going anywhere, my vision isn’t getting any better and I am not gonna start aging in reverse.
I did it to prove that my limits could be overcome and to see if I could commit the time and energy it would take just to get into the ring. Training and fighting have effected me more than I could ever say. I don’t think if they’ve made me more confident but they did make me less afraid. They made me realize that “I could” even if no else thought so.
I remember after my first fight where I went last and being blind because they took my glasses and feeling as close to being naked both mentally and physically as possible before I was led to the ring and the ram muay began. Later Bee told me that someone else at the gym asked him why he let me fight? The other person said something to the effect of “He’s going to die.” In my head I thought “That’s probably what I would think if I saw myself preparing to fight.” Bee grinned and said I could do it and not only that but that I could win.
That was a huge vote of confidence even after I had to train on my own while the other farang fighters worked together and I felt more on my own. I found just a hint of focus and calm even when I was scared. When it happened I felt at peace knowing no matter what happened I was better for getting in the ring, never expecting to win and just hoping to survive the upcoming onslaught.
After struggling for months just to kick and after having been there for so long him saying that, meant everything. It was like after that first fight when Bee said I had the best fight of the night and a few other of our trainers said I hat heart. That was better than winning it meant that I did it and I didn’t stop fighting there I continued on to fight every month up until I left.
I ended up with a 2:2 records. The third loss was bad but where I learned a lot and if felt great to be in the same position of the guys who I say fighting and being on the other side as the participant not just a spectator. I think about my fight as not one in the ring but of taking what I learned there both the commitment and effort and bringing it to everything I do.
I have to or what do those fights mean? I need to because I want to show I can climb then next mountain one which will include another ring at it’s peak. I have to not because I am trying to make a career of fighting but because I want to better myself both physically and mentally and find a way to a confidence I never thought I could or would reach. I fought because no one thought I could, I fight because I need to learn that I can and the way for me to do that is through pain of controlled violence where the rush and calm come together for just 15 minutes after training for months to get there.
This will not be the last fight I do, I want to learn BJJ (while I’m here) and maybe just maybe try some Kung Fu. Before that I want to get back into fighting shape while I am here but on a traveler’s budget with jobs as hard to come by or being as easy to be let go I don’t know when the next paycheck will be coming from.
I don’t plan to train to make fighting a career I am well beyond that point but I want to do it to improve to be the best me I can be as someone who has learned to love sparring and fighting after starting off hating it. For me and a lot of people the rush of getting into the flow is a high I can’t wait to experience again and again.
That is the balance but I do want to fight, I need to, I want to sweat, tire and feel like my arms and legs will fall off I want to feel because I’ve let myself get used to not feeling and not being worth much of anything. I can and will find a way because I have to and I can’t use not knowing where I am going as an excuse not to train because I can train in other ways I just need to do it and I will.
I need to train to keep the blade sharp and to expand my knowledge in martial arts. My mantra begins with “I let go of fear” from my time in Nepal when I was searching for a way out of the hole I had long dug for myself. In Sam’s book for the many of the best “the lack of fear leads to a nobility of character.” I’m afraid of failure, I’m afraid I’ll never find success or love. I am afraid of reaching him and falling off the cliff.
I want, no need to leave that fear behind which I knew before I first started muay thai but continues to be an elusive steed. I need to turn that fear into focus, I must be not a lone wold but one of the pack which is how it felt being at Charn Chai Muay Thai. I want to find the heart of a fighter in myself not just in the ring but when the challenges seem insurmountable and all roads are blocked. I can find a way and I will because I believe and that’s what the heart of a fighter, the heart of a warrior means to me.
So thanks Sam Sheridan for the great book, I know you are a writer not a fighter writer but it means a lot to see what you have done even if my own path to a book is so far removed from fighting it remains a ring on top of the mountain that I will never stop climbing. Through relentless belief and hard fought stubbornness I’ll get there my own way and have the heart to keep going when the mountain is veiled in fog. Just one step at a time. Thanks for your words as I struggle to write my own.
I am new to fighting but your book was passion and stubborn commitment and I know my own understanding of fighting will be use your experiences as a filter for my own and for that you have my thanks.
