After a period of extended unemployment and you know, ‘hitting the gym’ due to not having much else to do, I’ve decided to pursue this hobby of violence that seems to attract far too many chuds. I’m hoping it’ll give me a thin veneer of confidence and security, and an ability to fend off fucking assholes with my bare fists 
In all seriousness, how do I become a better fighter, I truly suck at this. Any of you fight for fun? Practice a martial art, boxing, wrestling? What’s your opinion on the sport?
Went to an mma gym about 10 hours a week for 8 years, then spent a few years as a private trainer before eventually just freely training anyone willing to listen so I could have sparring partners (am lonely). I'm not much of a grappler, and realistically only know enough to out-grapple a beginner bjj practitioner. I sunk my sweaty painful hours into muay thai, had a few fights, and without exaggeration can make a surgical theater show of your average goon. Training in it was easily the best thing that ever happened to me. The confidence is the obvious benefit, but the peace and capacity for deeper self-understanding and critique that comes from developing your theory and praxis of fighting serves me in all other ways, especially socially. Now that I think about it, I wonder if I could have overcome the reflexive liberal mental defensiveness to become a Marxist-leninist if I hadn't first spent years being honest with myself about why I got my ass kicked this or that time.
That's the key, by the way. Obviously there's no one secret to success in this stuff but if I had to give mine it would be: you have to get your ass kicked a lot. You have to get your ass kicked so many times that getting your ass kicked ceases to hold any fear or meaning, and then once you're over that, you're free to learn how to calmly engage with a fight for the dialectical puzzle box it is. It's a lot of grinding but with very noticeable milestones, and my one of m biggest "I feel like I just leveled up" moments was when I just...stopped being afraid of being punched in the face after being punched in the face so many times. Another was when I got so locked in to the movements and reactions of my opponent during sparring, that I had so conditioned him with a curated regimen of real and feinted attacks, that I was actually full-on puppeting him. There's no more humble way for me to put it, the way I moved my hands and the micro-reactions it elicited, the shifting of weight where I wanted to to go, felt exactly like operating a marionette. It felt unbelievable, I felt like a spider. I know it might sound unbelievable too, but shit gets psychologically intense in those moments, and for the first time I truly understood what the books and trainers were saying about tempo: the idea that all other things being equal, the one who controls the pace of the fight will win.
I could go on and on in a kind of unstructured ramble, it's a huge topic and it's been a huge part of my life, but for that reason it's all sprawling in my mind. Anyone feel free to ask my anything about kickboxing, from the general down to the very granular and technical, and I'll do my best to answer.
This is my shit
Truly incredible account and one I’m hoping to replicate maybe someday.
I had my literal first ever combat course yesterday, a group class at Muay Thai gym. My worry is I’ve started too late at 33. How long before I’m even slightly good as a fighter? 4 years?
Do you maybe have any prescriptions? What should I do become as good of a fighter I can be? How much should I train a week? Which other martial art?
Good is relative. If we assume say, 3 or 4 hours a week (consistency and repetition are key), then after a year you'll be able to beat, for example, most people who are at your current level right now, whatever that is, and youll feel the fufillment of that. 2 years in you're also gonna start seeing serious benefits to your body awareness, balance and agility. I would say that with a good mix of drill and sparring (can't have too much of one or the other, but in this case a little more direct contact would accelerate things) you can become a capable brawler in like 2.5 years, and ive had people take to it quicker than that. As for being 33, there were guys in their 30s or 40s in the gym who did just fine, and guys in their 50s among the grapplers.
For literal perscriptions, tiger balm, medical tape and painkillers are all essentials, and epsom salts will make your life a lot nicer too. I'll come back and add more to this when I get back home.
That’s really helpful, thanks. I don’t mean prescription as in medicine, more like a syllabus I could follow lol should have been clearer