Fighting Is Self Taught

Fighting is partly self taught believe it or not. I'm not say that you can just read a book and go fight or you can't learn anything from somebody else. People will show you the basics (how to stand, movement, etc.) but you will teach yourself how to apply them. When I hit the pads or mitts, I prefer to not have punches called for me most of the time. Why? Because I will throw what my body feels like it will land on a live opponent. Ok, that might not make sense if you haven't had a lot of fights or sparring. You have to get experience through sparring and fighting first before the other stuff (bag, pads, etc.) really makes sense to you. After I learned how to stand and what a jab was, I watched fighter train and what I saw was a lot of self motivated athletes get in and train. Coaches would walk around make a suggestion and guys would do it. Nobody told them to run or do exercises. Over time they watched the good fighters and took mental notes and just did it. I don't think I ever had a coach say to me, "Go over there and do 5 rounds of bag work and 100 sit ups". It was as simple as, "I don't know how to do this, so I'll go over there and work it till I get it". You learn through self exploration to fight.