Fight Experience vs. Gym Experience

What's up, guys? Today I want to talk to y'all about fight experience versus gym experience and why both are important, but why oftentimes fight experience can be more important than gym experience, especially at the high levels. And what I mean is this. There's plenty of people that you've trained with if you're. If you're a current fighter or current person that trains already.

If you're in the thick of training, you've probably encountered numerous individuals who excel in the gym. They might dominate sparring sessions, display flawless techniques, and exhibit incredible stamina. But when it comes to actual fights, things can be dramatically different. The dynamics of a real fight bring in factors like pressure, anxiety, and the unpredictability of an opponent's moves. These elements can't be truly replicated in the controlled environment of a gym.

Imagine fighting in front of an audacious crowd, under glaring lights, with the stakes towering high. These experiences carve a different kind of resilience and adaptability that gym sessions alone can't provide.

Key Points
Gym Experience: Involves controlled training environments, structured drills, and sparring with familiar faces.
Fight Experience: Introduces chaotic, high-pressure situations, making adaptability and psychological toughness crucial.

Understanding the distinction between these two experiences can immensely impact your progression as a fighter. While gym training polishes your skills, real fights test your mettle and bring out the true essence of combat proficiency.

Experience vs. Starting Age in Training

There's plenty of people you may have trained with that have been in the gym since they were kids, that have been training since they were 5, 10, 15 years old. And there's guys that come in and start fighting at 19, 20 years old. Conceptually, you have way more experience than they do if you've been in the gym since you were ten and they come in at 20 years old and train for a couple of years. So you may have ten years of training experience, and they only have, let's say, two or three years of training experience.

Importance of Fight Experience

The difference is they already have fights and you don't. And there's a good chance you could still win because of your experience in the gym, for sure. When you've trained that long, like, those reps matter, of course, but fighting matters. I have a student of mine, Desauan. He had 30 amateur fights in about a two and a half year period.

And they were, half of them were smokers. They were kickboxes, smokers, where you show up to a gym or a location, multiple gyms show up, and you basically spar each other in front of an audience, and it simulates a fight. It's not really a fight, though. It's not. You're wearing shin guards and big gear and big gloves and sometimes headgear. He did amateur boxing, fought the golden gloves. So between boxing, it fought Tuesday night fights, boxing fights that are amateur show, we have here locally.

So amateur, pro, amateur boxing, kickboxing combined, this guy had 30 fights. And because of that, now he's a sanctioned fighter, he's an MMA fighter. He's a kickboxer without shin guards and stuff. He's so much more relaxed than these guys. Like, I'm a big believer in fight experience because when I was coming up, I didn't start training, so I was 20 years old, so I was really late behind the game. But in my first, basically, year and a half of boxing, I had 20 amateur fights. I would go to tournaments.

I fight sometimes two or three times in one week. I fought at the Golden Gloves, and both times I got three fights. So I got six fights, one and two weekends. That experience matters because what happens is you'll take, like, let's say you're an MMA guy, and you'll take an mma guy that has 5-10 years of grappling experience. He's been striking for a year or two.

Slow and technical. You know, he's just been taking his time. He's very technical, he's very good, but he hasn't really fought. And then of, of course, this is very common, too. I see a lot, a lot of grapplers trying to go straight to mma without taking striking fights.

The Role of Experience in MMA

And they're not used to getting punched in the face as much when they get into MMA because they've been grappling all the years without punching, you know, and this is, I'm talking about becoming an amateur at first. What happens is the guys in there, like, when I had these 20 amateur boxing fights, I was so relaxed, I would go into the ring. I remember I had 20 amateur boxing fights, and some, these people thought that I had all this experience, but I'm a trainer a year and a half. So what happened is I go in there and I would fight guys that had five years of jiu-jitsu, and I'd only been training jiu-jitsu for six months, and I would beat them. I wouldn't beat them on the ground, but I would avoid the ground and I'd beat them.

I was so relaxed, and they would get nervous. They would have adrenaline dumps like that. Ring time matters. Ring time, if you can fight as much as possible as an amateur, but you have to stay healthy with it. That's the hard part.

And also, it’s depending on your defense or you've taken fights and taken no damage, or are you taking fights and you're getting hurt? Like my student Desauan had 30 fights in two and a half years because he wasn't getting hit a lot. He wasn't taking no damage, and he was winning the fights pretty handily, so I moved him accordingly. If he was having wars out there, then I would space him out, make him wait every three or four months to take a fight. But ring time matters, guys.

Why do you think someone like Alex Pereira or Izzy, Israel Adesanya. They're so relaxed in there. They're so relaxed. They have 70, 80 amateur, I mean, professional kickboxing fights before they came to MMA.

Importance of Ring Time

They have a lot of ring time, guys. They have a lot of ring time, and they're used to the nerves, they're used to walking out. They're used to people trying to punch them. Grappling tournaments help, too. Going to a grappling tournament can help with the nerves as well.

You still get nervous going to grappling tournaments. You're still competing against someone you don't know in an environment you're not comfortable with. But at the same time, striking is better, in my opinion. I think every fighter who wants to turn pro in MMA should have a minimum of ten amateur boxing and kickboxing fights combined. Smokers—they don't all have to be sanctioned fights—but like a lot of these coaches here locally, they let these people fight two smokers and then they're so eager to turn them into a sanctioned fighter so they can go to these big shows.

It's really more about the coach than it is the fighter. But ring time matters, guys. So think about this as you're coming up or if you're coaching someone, or you know someone coming up, they need to get quite a bit of experience in the ring. So they're used to walking out, they're used to the crowd being there.

They're used to being nervous. They get over the adrenaline dumps because you're gonna have them at first regardless. Most people have adrenaline dumps at first. When they fight, they'll fight three 1-minute or two-minute rounds and they're completely exhausted and gassed out. They think they're out of shape, but really, they're just nervous. This is part of the process.

But the more times you do it, the less nervous you are, right? So ring time matters, guys. Take as many fights as you can. Obviously, make sure that you're working on defense and you're not taking a bunch of damage.

Building Experience and Managing Nerves

Take as many fights as you can when you first start, once your coach approves that, obviously, because later on, that will pay off big time. When you come to a fight and you have 15-20 amateur boxing and kickboxing fights, and the grappler only has a few jiu-jitsu tournaments, it matters. They may be a higher belt than you, but they have no ring time. That matters a lot, they're going to be more nervous, and they're going to get tired faster.

Adrenaline dumps do that to you. You basically are all amped up in the back. You’ll see it a lot at local shows in your area—you'll see guys warming up for two hours straight. They’re walking around, pacing, nervous, and they don’t know how to relax because they're inexperienced.

I did this—we all do this—but it causes adrenaline dumps, so all of that gets washed out. In the amateurs, if you have enough fights and then as you turn pro, every fight makes you nervous, no matter if you’ve been fighting for 20 years or two years, but it gets less and less. You’re able to deal with it and the pace is not as bad.

Definitely, I suggest taking quite a few boxing and kickboxing fights, smokers, Golden Gloves, USA Boxing, whatever's in your area. Local fights at the bar where they box each other, whatever. All you’re getting is experience walking to a ring or cage, people watching you, playing your music—the whole feel of a fight without taking the damage of a fight because you're wearing big gear.

So, something to think about, guys. Get as many fights as you can, take as little damage as you possibly can, and work on defense. If you have any questions or subjects you’d like me to go over, just let me know in the comments.

If you’re looking for a new gym or guidance on finding a gym near you, get my book, The Ultimate Guide to Choosing Your Martial Arts School and Instructor. Thank you, guys.