When one spars or competes for the first time, they are so self-absorbed due to the shock that they don’t pay much attention to the wordless conversations happening beneath the surface. But as people get used to it, they start to become better in reading the opponents. I remember the first time of my amateur competition, I got hit with some hard hooks. And now that I recall this, in retrospect, I think the message I got is: “This is not the same as sparring with your gym partners”. Why? Because I was sensing a real killer intent. In fact, my first opponent was a brawler and an aggressive personality. I guess that was my karma. 😆

So the main takeaway from this post is that the more we spar and compete, the more we get used to the tension of combat, the more we can hear the silent conversations going on beneath the surface. Because we’re no longer overwhelmed by shock as we used to, we can better observe both our state and our opponent’s.