Does Anger Help in a Fight?

There are many people that feel that the best form of self defence is to get angry in a fight. Just watch our video and see for yourself. So this week we ask… Does anger help in a fight?

I remember meeting someone who held this view. He said, “I don’t need to learn how to defend myself. I just get angry.” Of course, that’s the worst method of all to defend yourself, getting angry, doesn’t lead to emotional control. What it does is it leads to prison, because at that stage, if you’re in an angry rage, you’re not in a rational perspective to defend yourself. That makes you very dangerous to yourself and everybody around you.

In this article I will explain how emotional fitness helps you to fight better. More importantly how to greatly improve your self defence ability with some minor mindset tweaks. So keep reading.

Does Anger Make You Stronger?

Not exactly. Let’s put it like this. You’re having an argument with a stranger in the street. The guy’s screaming, shouting, and he’s in your face, you’re getting angry. In this instance anger will shut down your wider senses, it likely to create a sense of tunnel vision. You focus on the guy, arguing with you, but in doing so, you miss so much information around you. The threat signals, the escalation cues to violence, even the changes in the environment. Your threat assessment becomes limited because you’re focused and driven by your emotions.

Having a sense of emotional control is essential for self-defence. I can’t stress it enough. When you’re looking at developing your fighting ability, try to work on yourself, your emotional control. Try to develop a skill set in which you’re not being emotionally triggered. You don’t want to react angrily. Now, this is important because it not only improves your fighting performance, but your defensive ability. You even gain some additional life skills as well.

Why Fighting Angry is Bad

Emotional control is important, but does anger help you in a fight? Well. firstly street fights can always be avoided. In fact, the best form of self defence is emotional control. People put far too much effort into learning how to defend themselves while ignoring the most important element of self-defence their emotional control.

If you can’t control your emotions, you can’t control your actions. In doing so, you can’t defend yourself. Controlling your emotions improves your physical ability to defend attacks, even learning a martial art. With emotional control you are less likely to freeze, more likely to get your hands up to block a punch. You will even be able to punch harder and faster. In fact, having a good presence of mind, not only improves your fighting ability, but your awareness of what’s happening around you. What we call Situational Awareness.

Why is Emotional Fitness Important?

Developing your own mindset and emotional control is an undervalued part of self-defence. Self defence isn’t just about fighting. It’s about avoiding fights, not getting into the confrontation in the first place. What gets you out of confrontations is a sense of emotional fitness. The fact that you can control your thoughts and actions can make a difference when it comes to actually defending yourself. The problem with most people is that they misinterpret aggression as anger. They think that they think anger is good, it will make them stronger in a fight.

Cold Aggression is Key to Emotional Fitness

You have to be aggressive in your own self defence. I say this all the time when I’m teaching at the Academy. You have to have a cold form of aggression to be able to defend yourself. Cold because it’s rational, not hot and angry. If you’ve got a hot, angry approach to defending yourself, to fighting, fighting for your life even, then your thoughts and your actions become irrational. They become dangerous, but not just to you, but to everybody around you.

When you fight to defend yourself, you have to do so from a perspective of emotional control, emotions have to be cold and rational.

The Take Away…

If you ever find yourself in an argument with someone and you’re feeling those physiological changes of anger, your hairs are standing up in the back of your neck. You’re breathing a little bit faster. You’re clenching your fist. Try to step back from that. Try to take a few deep breaths and more importantly, try to have a rational exchange with the person that you’re arguing with. The ask yourself Does Anger Help you Fight Better?

There’s nothing wrong with stepping back from an argument because at the end of the day, that confrontation could lead to a deadly force encounter. Worst of all, you never know in a transitional open space who you’ve met, who you’re arguing. So always avoid arguing with strangers because you really don’t know their capability or what they’re willing to do.