Mental training in muay thai

[TZ22]

Hello,

 

I know Sylvie talked about the importance of mental training for muay thai, and I've tried doing some meditation/visualization before my fights, but I'm finding that I am still experiencing a lot of pre-fight anxiety and usually the first round of my fight I feel like my brain is in complete fog, I have a hard time concentrating, hesitate a lot and my technique comes out very sloppy even though I have no problems in sparring. I only had 5 fights so far (3 inhouse/smokers fights, 1 fight in Thailand and 1 fight at a tournament)...I am not sure if what I am experiencing is simply a lack of ring experience and lack of practice performing under pressure of a fight and I just simply need to keep getting fights to eventually get rid of my fight anxiety/hesitation or if there are specific things that I can do to address this problem? I'm also recovering from burnout so I am wondering if this might be part of my problem and I just need to be getting more rest (which is hard when you're trying to prepare for a fight)..Anyways, any suggestions would be much appreciated (if there are any podcasts or books that you know of that might be helpful for me, please let me know also).

 

Thank you 

[bbf3]

I've had around the same amount of ring experience as you and know what you mean about the first round.. nothing like a good beating in the first to get you into gear for the second  :wacko: . This happened in my last fight, which I lost to a split decision. Leading up to the fight I remember I overhyped my opponent in my head as I had seen some training videos of her before and this weighed on my confidence. The fight before that one, I was confident about beating my opponent before even stepping in the ring and didn't have as much trouble getting going in the first round. So I suppose there is a mental aspect to it which I'm still figuring out, but I believe fight experience is a big factor. Maybe I need to somehow train my brain to think that fighting is not that much different from the sparring I do in training. Looking forward to hearing others' thoughts.

[TZ22]

Yes, i've also been trying to convince myself to think of my fight as just another sparring session, kind of like when I was in university and experiencing some anxiety about an exam so I would keep telling myself that it's just another practice exam, but this strategy does not yet work quiet well in a ring...it's frustrating because this time it cost me a chance at a tournament belt against an opponent I could have and should have beaten had it not been for that "brain freeze"...

[Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu]

I've had around the same amount of ring experience as you and know what you mean about the first round.. nothing like a good beating in the first to get you into gear for the second  :wacko: . This happened in my last fight, which I lost to a split decision. Leading up to the fight I remember I overhyped my opponent in my head as I had seen some training videos of her before and this weighed on my confidence. The fight before that one, I was confident about beating my opponent before even stepping in the ring and didn't have as much trouble getting going in the first round. So I suppose there is a mental aspect to it which I'm still figuring out, but I believe fight experience is a big factor. Maybe I need to somehow train my brain to think that fighting is not that much different from the sparring I do in training. Looking forward to hearing others' thoughts.

Oooh, good advice! I'd add that part of "training my brain to think that fighting is not that much different from the sparring I do in training," is making your training as similar to fighting as you can. Not ALL the time, but as much as you can without it interrupting other aspects of your gym sessions. For example, when you sit down to wrap your hands, use that time to visualize having your hands wrapped for a fight; ask some of your training partners or your coach to talk to you between rounds in sparring and actually go stand in the corner as you would go to the corner in a fight. Before you do padwork, visualize your coach as your opponent and picture how seeing him before the event is filling you with confidence or resolve, rather than psyching you out. The more you can bring the emotions and small events that occur before fights into your training, the more comfortable you can get in training how you want to be before fights.

[Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu]

Yes, i've also been trying to convince myself to think of my fight as just another sparring session, kind of like when I was in university and experiencing some anxiety about an exam so I would keep telling myself that it's just another practice exam, but this strategy does not yet work quiet well in a ring...it's frustrating because this time it cost me a chance at a tournament belt against an opponent I could have and should have beaten had it not been for that "brain freeze"...

I don't think it's quite right to try to convince yourself that fights are "just sparring." Fights are bigger than sparring for way too many reasons that you can't convince yourself to ignore all of them. It's a strange location, lots of people you don't know, you have to wait your turn, you wear different clothes and gloves and think different thoughts, it interrupts your training schedule, etc... none of those is like sparring. What you should be doing is convincing yourself (because it's true) that you don't have to do anything special; you don't have to perform differently. All the things that are different are things you don't have control over, so put them out of your mind but it's fine to be aware that you're in a different environment. The fight isn't the same as sparring, but what you have to do to have a good fight is exactly the same: relax, focus, flow.

I think I wrote something similar in a response to a woman a couple years ago who felt she ought to be less nervous as she got more ring experience, but that wasn't happening.

[TZ22]

Cool, thank you :)

[Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu]

My brother recently posted on his blog about the Underdog Mentality. He has a 7 point list of how to set your mind for success in this scenario (some links to exercises and other articles). Because I'm usually smaller than my opponents, I have a degree of the underdog in me all the time, although I've never actually purposefully played out the "underdog mindset." I reckon it's easy to go the wrong direction when the odds are stacked against you and develop an inferiority complex, so it's very useful to see this laid out for how to take advantage of competition situations where the playing field isn't perfectly even... which is pretty much all competition, really.

Advanced Mindset - Underdog Mentality