Jump to content

Recommended Posts

This was my answer to someone on Reddit who messaged me and asked what I do for mental training. I'm posting it here in case others have had success or experience, or if there are questions people have an would like to raise.

This is what I said: 

Thanks for listening to the whole interview and I’m happy it resonated with you. I’m still working a lot of this out myself and there’s a LOT of trial and error, just like with physical training. It’s also so much easier to slack off of mental training than it is getting physical work in. So whatever routine you figure out for yourself, really set a schedule and stick to it. Break it up into a 5-20 minutes various times throughout the day.

mental-training.png

Hey, not selling this, it’s expensive. But it was an investment and it worked for me

I used this program for myself and found it really helpful: 14 Steps to Mental Toughness. He walks you through some visualizations, using imaginary waves to match rhythms to your breathing for relaxation. Something my brother taught me, also, is that you can practice and teach yourself how to visualize using more mundane things than your training or fight. I found it SO HARD to visualize fighting in a concrete way. So John asked me to describe in strong detail just walking around my apartment. Picking things up, where everything is, how it smells, the lighting, etc. Stuff I see literally every day. That way I see how to visualize with all that detail and can slowly start applying it to being in the ring. A fight is an “event,” but what you’re visualizing isn’t. You’re kind of exploring a space and possibilities – like playing GTA in your brain.

Something that really helped me from the tapes was writing down my thoughts before, during and after training, every day. So I’d get to the gym and immediately sit down and just write whatever I was feeling: “tired,” “sleepy,” “unmotivated but ready to work,” “strong,” “I”m going to kill my trainer on the pads,” etc. Then I’d check in and do some more mid-training, then again after everything but before going home. It showed me a few things: 1) My thoughts were really negative a lot of the time, for really no reason. I actually ended up naturally adjusting for this by writing the negative feeling but immediately countering it with “but…” and whatever good could come of it. I wasn’t forcing myself to be positive, I actually just started feeling like “I’m tired but I can focus on being relaxed in my movements” was better at driving me. 2) It showed me that my thoughts change over time in practice. I can come in feeling negative and end up feeling great at the end. Or I can come in rearing to go and then something that happens in training gets me down. Which leads to 3) I have control over how I respond to things. I just have to be aware of it – mindful of what I’m thinking and whether or not I want to keep thinking those things.

More recently I’m working on connecting relaxing breaths to active movements. So instead of holding my breath when I’m being hit or blocking or striking, I pay attention to breathe out and in with a rhythm to my movements. The point is to get my heart rate down under pressure, but it’s conditioning myself to do it automatically through movements I’m going to be using without being able to think about breathing. If you breathe while trying to drink water you choke. But you don’t think about “don’t breathe” in order to drink water – you do it automatically. So I’m trying to get my body to do those automatic things to stay relaxed under pressure.

As for a schedule, figure out where you need to focus your attention: how you talk to yourself, how you respond under pressure, visualizing, etc. and work out a plan to work on these things several times every day. I visualize when I lie down for a nap or sleep. I write when I’m at the gym. I breathe when I’m actually training.

 

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I find this post really really helpful.  Over 3 distinct fights I found that mental training was a huge contributing factor to my success and failure.  First time I had any suggestion to address the mental aspects of my training was from my strength coach last year who recommended I read "Relentless" .  At that time my fight that immediately followed that read was my best performance to date and I was not at my best physically but overcame with effective strikes, not gased, just overall feeling of accomplishment (unanimous decision WIN).  However, I left the book alone and did not follow up with anything following.  I had a surgery, took some time to recover and wanted back in, following a pretty 'meh' demo I took a fight against an opponent that for the most part I was expected to outperform just from power.  I had the worst performance EVER, I was so nervous after the first round I was so exhausted, just completely depleted.  I felt that I completely defeated myself before I even stepped foot in that ring (unanimous decision LOSS).... fast forward a couple months later to Muay Thai Classic and I began reading "Mind Gym" shortly before and again I had what was an amazing performance to me (Unanimous decision LOSS) I was relaxed, focused.  It was a clinch battle and I executed to the best my ability in the circumstance.... I'm looking for any suggestions to make a serious commitment to mental training.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I find this post really really helpful.  Over 3 distinct fights I found that mental training was a huge contributing factor to my success and failure.  First time I had any suggestion to address the mental aspects of my training was from my strength coach last year who recommended I read "Relentless" .  At that time my fight that immediately followed that read was my best performance to date and I was not at my best physically but overcame with effective strikes, not gased, just overall feeling of accomplishment (unanimous decision WIN).  However, I left the book alone and did not follow up with anything following.  I had a surgery, took some time to recover and wanted back in, following a pretty 'meh' demo I took a fight against an opponent that for the most part I was expected to outperform just from power.  I had the worst performance EVER, I was so nervous after the first round I was so exhausted, just completely depleted.  I felt that I completely defeated myself before I even stepped foot in that ring (unanimous decision LOSS).... fast forward a couple months later to Muay Thai Classic and I began reading "Mind Gym" shortly before and again I had what was an amazing performance to me (Unanimous decision LOSS) I was relaxed, focused.  It was a clinch battle and I executed to the best my ability in the circumstance.... I'm looking for any suggestions to make a serious commitment to mental training.

So much the same for me. It's hard to realize - like, really accept - that I have to keep working on the mental all the time, not just when it's been a hard time and I want something to make me feel better. You would never expect to just do 10 pushups a week before the fight and be stronger. You have to keep doing it, and then do 20, then more, etc.

My most recent fight I worked really hard on the mental practice. I'd lost 9 days prior and had no time to make physical changes, so I knew it was all mental. I worked and was very dedicated to the mental training. And while I lost again, I performed really well - same as you describe above. And I feel good, ready to learn and improve. But the physical side is so easy to design for yourself - watch some videos, read some routines off of athletes you like, make up your own circuit. But the mental isn't as intuitive. I think it's actually embarrassing to work on confidence and being kind to yourself - it feels narcissistic or something.

I asked my brother in my interview with him, "what is the 'couch to 5-K' of Mental Toughness?" Just the most bare-bones starter program. He talked about breathing and relaxation, recommended some books. If I were to ask myself that same question and have the gall to offer an authoritative answer, I'd say this: start with "act as if." Think about the kind of confident, strong, calm and collected athlete you aspire to be and then act as if you are that athlete. Confidence is an action before it's a feeling, not vice versa. That's something I believe wholesale. Being consistent with training and kind on days when my mind is weak (just as the body can be) is hard, but I've seen how worth it the effort is.

  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Most Recent Topics

  • Latest Comments

    • Saenchai with another KO win on Entertainment Thai Fight. He's the last magical fighter of Thailand, that last of Thailand's greatness, and we are all blessed as he continues in the ring. I don't watch it much (or any of Thai Fight), but still consider it a blessing. When he stops it will all be gone, even though this is kind of half-fighting, and surely he'll do show fights after his retirement. What I love about this photo - and the first thing is that it suddenly feels like Saenchai has aged, and this happens - but what I love about this photo is that you can see his "coal eyes", which is what I call them. There was an old trainer at Lanna named Nok, who when you trained with him his eyes, if you got any advantage or edge, would just turn black. You could see, he just went into that state. And you knew, stop fucking around. Saenchai has always had such a joyful, playful visage, and a charm of handsomeness that he carried everywhere, even into intense battles. But every great, experienced fighter, even Saenchai, has "coal eyes" inside of him, they have to or they couldn't do it the way that they have. And, in my poetic view, it feels like in this slightly aged photo you can see his coal eyes come out. And its really beautiful. 
    • I thing that many people miss in assessing ONE's future, or even capacity to do anything, is that almost everything you know about ONE (aside from financial declartive documents, and the few voices that escape NDAs and non-disparagement agreements), has been told to you by ONE. So every concept of "reach" or success that is measurable or on a scale comes from the ONE picture building. And...its a bit like asking Trump how his Casinos and buildings are doing. A good, if small, example of this is how RWS is far exceeding ONE Thailand in revenue, by a factor of about 6.  source It just shows a very different concept of business. RWS actually wants to generate revenue at the gate, ONE much rather would pack houses with loads of given away tickets and project massive success through its social media agreements and message control. ONE is trying to generate (one might even say "fake") the feeling of a massive moment...because everything is basically a commercial for the next investor round. They much less want actual fans, so much as the vast impression of fans, and spending everything they can to create the impression is a priority...because the "real" revenue" is a massive investment round, unfortunately something that seems to be drying up. They aren't selling the sport to fans, they are selling it to investors. Sizzle, not steak. So any kind of picture we draw from is already part of this enormous Image creation, which it was hoped would bootstrap itself through dramatic gestures of largess. Flaunting huge payment numbers, etc. A form of "Mystery"... Which isn't to say that none of this is good. The world, and especially the "good" of Capitalism, is made from ostentatious pretension. There is in the world the whole "escape velocity" theory, the fake it until you make it, and when fueled by more than half a billion dollars there is a lot one can fake, in fact the faking becomes quite real, affects real lives, turns into power, creating new capacities and opportunities.  So, one of the most compelling questions about what comes now is that the actual question of revenue and profit making, peeled away from the presentation of profit-making, gets put up against other forms of Thailand Muay Thai that are pulling revenue. And, because so much of what has come to us has come through the filter of ONE's image making its very hard to know where anything is at all. Everything is bigger, better, about to break through. It's the Golden Rule of Trump-like positive image driving, which when looking at the world does lead to power itself. Invest now! Buy now! You don't want to miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity! A certain kind of power.  We of course should not be lead astray into thinking that Thailand's Muay Thai does not develop and express itself through all kinds of power relations, many of them institutional, many strongly divided by class differences and entrenched hierarchies, There is no "innocent" Muay Thai in the sense of a Muay Thai without efforts of domination and control, in fact the art and sport arguably is the ritualized performance of such. It's more though that maybe this form of economic magical portrayal, as it is so globalized, so hyperstated, so flowing from that which is outside and beyond Thailand, feels like it could be destructive. Too much sizzle...too little steak?   
    • This is my wild guess about the possible future of ONE with the rumored loss of both big investors and Amazon Prime: My take...I suspect it will morph into a significantly contracted phase that is something the Thai gov will support as part of its Soft Power commitments which will somewhat balance out the loss of big investors. There may even be rule changes to bend a bit closer to trad elements (maybe glove changes? maybe a touch more clinch?); guessing there will be a significant downgrade of top end pay and bonus rates, and probably significant cuts into the all-important marketing budget too. It will fall more in line with Entertainment offerings like Thai Fight and RWS. The challenge is the struggle over the shrinking Thai talent pool, which is also no longer producing transcendent talents like Superlek and Nong-O, and how it will compete against other Entertainment promotions without big top end pay and bonuses (I believe RWS revenues were reported as much as 6x ONE's in Thailand). It may have difficulty continuing to snipe the high level names produced by other promotions. It still has a well-built-out, massive digital media footprint in a very small info ecosystem and that proven strategy, and has secured a place in the Thai combat sport imagination, two very big assets.
  • The Latest From Open Topics Forum

    • Hi all, Does anyone know of any suppliers for blanks (Plain items to design and print a logo on) that are a good quality? Or put me in the right direction? thanks all  
    • The first fight between Poot Lorlek and Posai Sittiboonlert was recently uploaded to youtube. Posai is one of the earliest great Muay Khao fighters and influential to Dieselnoi, but there's very little footage of him. Poot is one of the GOATs and one of Posai's best wins, it's really cool to see how Posai's style looked against another elite fighter.
    • Yeah, this is certainly possible. Thanks! I just like the idea of a training camp pre-fight because of focus and getting more "locked in".. Do you know of any high level gyms in europe you would recommend? 
    • You could just pick a high-level gym in a European city, just live and train there for however long you want (a month?). Lots of gyms have morning and evening classes.
    • Hi, i have a general question concerning Muay-Thai training camps, are there any serious ones in Europe at all? I know there are some for kickboxing in the Netherlands, but that's not interesting to me or what i aim for. I have found some regarding Muay-Thai in google searches, but what iv'e found seem to be only "retreats" with Muay-Thai on a level compareable to fitness-boxing, yoga or mindfullness.. So what i look for, but can't seem to find anywhere, are camps similar to those in Thailand. Grueling, high-intensity workouts with trainers who have actually fought and don't just do this as a hobby/fitness regime. A place where you can actually grow, improve technique and build strength and gas-tank with high intensity, not a vacation... No hate whatsoever to those who do fitness-boxing and attend retreats like these, i just find it VERY ODD that there ain't any training camps like those in Thailand out there, or perhaps i haven't looked good enough?..  Appericiate all responses, thank you! 
  • Forum Statistics

    • Total Topics
      1.4k
    • Total Posts
      11.5k
×
×
  • Create New...