Sean has progressed about 300% over the past six months, largely because he has been solo training, which is how fighters get better, and coaching novices which is how you burn the principles into your brain. We went at this with the idea that we would pick up the pace toward the end of each round and faster for the last round. In the last round the young man was getting to me, having learned his technical lessons, so I decided it was time for him to find out how much a nasty battle of attrition a stick fight could be, by hitting his forearm flexor of his checking hand over and over again at a moderate power. In fighting arts we can never forget that there is always an “ugly” way to win or lose, and it is the sparring partner’s job to remind his partner of this when useful, and not in the beginning of a session but towards the end.

With the end of the second round, as I was fading, it was important to remind Sean to keep the pressure on me. Fighters have to train for the imposition of will, done in sparring with repetition and closing pressure rather than power. Training technique without training the psychology of attrition and developing a killer instinct in a thinking fighter is a fatal error.