Every man in this day and age should know how to fight. It’s an essential skill. Why? Because fighting is so deeply rooted in our masculine nature. True, there is little need for fighting in the real world now, but any man who aspires to be strong, masculine, and respected should prioritize honing his ability to defend himself.

Why fighting Is hardwired into our biology

Hundreds of millennia ago, before humans even knew how to communicate via speech, fighting was a staple part of human life. See back then, life was far harsher than it is today. Modern inventions did not exist to shield us from the harshness of weather. Food was a luxury. And threats lurked around every corner.

Surviving through these periods required far more competence, toughness, and aggression than any average male could muster today. This, as well as the scarcity of resources essential to survival, created fierce competition between males.

The most dominant males (a.k.a ‘alpha’ males) received the most women, food, and comfort and therefore had the highest chance of surviving.

And how did these alpha males manage to rise to the top? You might’ve already guessed it. It was usually through proving their dominance by fighting other men in the tribe. Therefore, the ability to fight was seen as a defining characteristic of an alpha male.

Physical aggression wasn’t just a sign of strength and dominance. Perhaps an even more important application was its use during hunting. The animals that would yield the most meat and fat were generally the most aggressive or hardest to catch. When your tribe tasked your ancestors with slaying a woolly mammoth, skillful physical aggression meant a greater chance of success. Ultimately, this correlated with the overall improved well-being of the tribe members.

Consequently ‘alpha’ males also received the most respect from women and men in their tribe because they had the highest chance of extending their tribe’s lifespan.

All this to say that controlled physical aggression – or fighting – was a skill that our ancestors valued highly. Why does that matter though? Our world is nothing like it was a hundred thousand years ago.

This is true, but our ancestral behavior still plays a very key part in the dynamics of the modern world.

The world as we know it, and the lifestyle we are familiar with, constitute a minute fraction of the time that humans have been on this planet. 99% of human life has been spent as hunter-gatherers, where everything mentioned above, was applicable.

This also means that 99% of how our brains function is still a product of that period. So a man who can fight is still going to be viewed with a higher level of status, dominance, and respect compared to someone who doesn’t know how to fight, all else being equal.

Learning to fight will make you more confident

Although far safer than back then, our modern world is not danger-free. Many people believe that the world is going to become harsher over the next few decades.

Either way, learning to defend yourself will never be a skill you regret learning. The cost of learning to save yourself is simply far lower than the cost of getting into a bad situation and not having the confidence to fend for yourself.

When you trust yourself to be able to deal with physical confrontation, your confidence in daily life will skyrocket. Whether they admit it or not, many men do not say what they believe or act how they want because they are afraid of getting into a physical confrontation with another man. When you have experience with physical confrontation and know how to handle it, this fear vanishes and it becomes easier to act how you please.

In addition, men around you will disrespect you less and this will further reinforce your heightened confidence. The truth is that men will treat you differently when they know you can knock them out.

Training like a fighter is a whole different level of training

Every man should experience the training of a high-level martial arts competitor at least once in their life. Training to fight in a sport like boxing is completely different from training weights in the gym.

To begin with, martial arts training is brutal. Enduring a training session that a fighter would go through will build a mental toughness that lifting weights simply can’t. Unlike traditional resistance training where the muscles are the limiting factor, in martial arts, your mind is the limiting factor.

So when you keep showing up week after week to train like a martial artist, your mind and your muscles are undergoing growth. You build up willpower and tenacity. You learn what to say to keep yourself going even when it hurts like crazy.

That will benefit you in a way that doing 8-12 reps simply can’t.

In my opinion, the fighting style of training is a better overall training regimen for men than the traditional bodybuilding style training. Human bodies were never meant to be huge and bulky like bodybuilders. The ideal male physique from an evolutionary standpoint is much closer to a competitive boxer’s physique or an MMA fighter’s physique.

A bodybuilder would have not survived more than a week in the hunter-gatherer period. The mass of muscle on their body is simply too restricting for flexibility and their weight means that their cardiovascular health usually suffers.

Fighting at a high level requires stamina, power, strength, agility, and speed to be successful. It encompasses a much wider range of fitness metrics compared to bodybuilding which purely focuses on size and strength.

Someone who trains like a fighter will be healthier and fitter overall than someone who just trains for mass or strength. You might not get as big, but you can still develop an extremely aesthetic physique and respectable mass.

This is also why I believe women find a traditional fighter’s physique more attractive than a bodybuilder’s physique – because the alpha male of our ancestral tribes probably had a physique closer to that of fighters!