Going to the well is a boxing term for digging deep within while in dire straits. In every fighter’s journey there comes a time when he goes to that same well one too many times and pulls up an empty bucket, or worse yet finds out he has stripped mined his well and there is nothing left. This has a deep psychological impact on a fighter and often results in “crutching’ and retirement.

The well is a metaphor, and may mean a talent, and be referring to a certain physical ability like Ali taking a punch, or may refer to the fighter’s overall psychological depth.

Crutching tends to happen to fighters who are injured early, freak out, and then adapt a narrow low-risk solution, which often limits their growth. For instance they might level down their training partners to protect their ego, or switch sports. Crutching is preferable to retirement. However, we want to limit it, and rather than make it a permanent retreat, treat it as a refuge for rearmament and reconstitution.

Eventually, at age 39, continued boxing was out of the question, so I retired to what had been my crutch of stick-fighting, which was the place I trained my combativeness and my movement while my ribs and shoulders were recovering between boxing bouts.

Unfortunately, it is a fact that connective tissue and spinal injuries never heal to 100%.

Charles, for instance has a bad low back, which was his reason for getting out of MMA and into stick and knife fighting. Now he finds that the back injury is flaring up in response to knife fighting. This is because he has a good fade, in which he leans back at the waist and twists to avoid a throat or head slice. We are addressing this issue by committing to Charles not fading in sparring. He will not get any better at fading, and should just practice it in slow motion to insure his range. Using it in sparring is emptying his talent well for no good purpose, and draining the main well. I have advised him to save fades for competition, and in sparring work on some fundamentals like angulating footwork that we have all, as a group, failed to explore fully.

I have chronic ankle injuries that go back 14 years. I am currently sparring and training with a full ankle sprain in which all of the ligature was injured grappling when I came down on the front of my left foot with all my weight. It is at least different than the other sprains to that foot. I sprained my right ankle again this morning walking down the stairs to wash my coffee cup. In each of the last five years I have sprained each ankle at least three times, and have missed no training or competition time for it. I will go over ankle rehab in another article. The point I’m making here is that I will not go to my ankle well in sparring, and only in competition when crucial. In sparring I work on flat-footed mobility, using more saber steps than boxing bounce.

Putting yourself in the position of managing your various talent wells helps prevent you from stripping the central well, which is your WILL. For instance, the period when injuries tend to affect a fighter catastrophically, in terms of degrading confidence, tenacity, discipline and dedication, are between the ages of 27 and 33. This is the age at which fighters hit their peak powers, and are also beset by weight gain. The body is changing and the skills long honed, as well as those frantically being reached for to add to the tool kit before it begins to fade, are stressing the body in different ways. A first time injury or a more debilitating reoccurrence of an old injury, like a simple rolled ankle that returns as a session-ending ‘pop!’ can be a serious blow to a fighter’s mental self-image.

Below are some tips for continuing to progress as a fighter, in terms of biomechanical skill and mental prowess, while injured.

1. Know that you have a predisposition to an injury. Any joint, tendon or ligament that has ever been injured, ever, will be susceptible to re-injury.

2. Train previously injured parts without bracing or compression, but do so lightly, with a focus on form.

3. Keep bracing and compression equipment with your training kit. If a problem erupts in training, brace and compress and continue training with the focus elsewhere, searching for those skills that do not stress this part. This is where—in the mirror, in front of the bag—you discover what you can do—what well you can dip into—when this part is hurt in competition or in a survival situation.

4. Brace for any sparring that has the possibility of requiring performance from your chronically injured part.

5. Discipline your mind to not go to a specific well in training. This is placing a leash on your ego. If I am sparring with Charles left-handed, I know I will be slaughtered, taking hits at a 20 to 1 ratio. Right-handed, I break out my lunges to put him on his heels. Left-handed, if I lunge, I could have a complete detachment of my atrophied Achilles from the heel and be maimed. When sparring left-handed, I take my whooping and work on head movement and hand skill.

6. Brace bilaterally. If you have a suspect left knee, that requires bracing, then brace the other too, as you will unconsciously place more weight on the good knee.

7. Practice alternative fighting styles in the same discipline so you have someplace to go when injured. Be able to fight flat-footed or on your toes. When you do this it fills your main mental well, enhancing your will, rather than breaking it down by going again and again to the same depleted place.

By taking the above measures—not all of them being precautions—you will make yourself a longer-lived fighter and a better coach. I did not become a good boxing coach until after I destroyed my shoulders and hurt my back, which required me to rely on the jab, which is foundational to the art, and which I had neglected in favor of a big left hook. Ultimately we all lose our physical powers. But if we manage them appropriately as they degrade we will be able to employ them past their normal athletic life and continue to develop our fighting soul, which in the end, is often all that is needed to protect our families in the worst situations.

I am reminded of an old, blind Filipino-American fighter in California, some decade ago, whose story is told in a nice boxing book titled Boxing in Black and White. Like most boxers, this man never lost the power in his right hand, as it is the most purely mechanical punch. A young relative of his was under some kind of threat by an adult bully. [One is reminded of Samson and the slave boy in the palace of the Philistines.] The blind man told this child to take him by the hand and walk him up to the bully, a large man, and to place his left hand on the bully’s shoulder. Any experienced boxer who can touch something with his left hand while his feet are in the correct oblique position in relation to the target, can hit that target with his power hand. And so the old blind man knocked out the big bully.

The above is an example of a man who kept his spiritual well full and used his wits to access the only talent that remained to him.

I shall continue this discussion with specifics in ‘Pop!’: Moving Forward with Ankle Injuries for the Combatant