Rosanna: Wait until you’re not scared and then start, or start going until you’re not scared. Look, training to be a fighter is in and of itself ,”scary”. But you have to face it head on. You have to fake it til you make it, and you have to embrace failure. Because you’re going to fail OVER and OVER again until you succeed. But as a woman you’re going to face several things that a man never will.

1) You’re going to be told not to fight because you’re a woman.

“What if you get hit in the chest?”

“Oh my goodness, but you’re a GIRL! Girls’ don’t do that.”

“What if you get hurt?”

“I don’t want to see my baby girl get hit in the face.”

My advice? You don’t have to try to convince anyone to not tell you these things,  you just have to convince yourself that this things don’t make a difference in you wanting to train in MMA.

The other thing is that you’re going to train with mostly men. They’re almost always going to be stronger and faster. Don’t let this discourage you. Why? Because you’re going to fight women. And if you’re boyfriend or husband gets jealous? Well you can’t find a new husband but you can find a new boyfriend. As for reassuring a guy, it might stem from jealousy so just make sure that you let your guy know it’s always going to be him. Guys like that. lol

In the end, people are always going to try to talk you out of doing a violent sport, and especially when you’re a woman. It’s just that the reasons are going to be a lot more sexist than a man would ever hear. If you can tune out all the voices, EVEN the ones that come from family and friends (which will be the ones that will try to hamper your dreams the most), then you’ll be alright. If you can’t tune out people telling you not to then you most likely won’t have the inner mental voice to be a fighter. It’s almost impossible to go through a fight camp without that inner voice telling you to keep going no matter what.

Follow Rosanna @rosannajgarcia and her website: http://www.rosannagarcia.com/

New “Ask a fighter” every week on Tuesdays =)