Archive for August, 2016

Watching a documentary on a very successful and famous sports man who talked about his never say die attitude I found that his words had a big impact on me and really reaffirmed some of my beliefs.

In sport it is certain that if you quit you will not succeed. It is also very easy to say, keep going don’t quit it is however a completely different thing to actually keep going when things are hard. What was said in the documentary was along these lines, everyone has their last rep, last set, last step you can run, last hour you can study, last round, everyone has their limit before they have to stop. Then the question is what do you do now? There is a big difference between stopping and quitting.

Let’s put that in to an MMA perspective. In sparring you are having one of those nights where you are getting hit standing up, missing your takedowns and getting stuck on your back and that is against the guy that you usually beat. Next up you have someone who usually gets the better of you and it goes as you expect and you have a hard round where you are trying to just survive. The next few rounds are more or less the same, then you are up against that guy you always beat and he taps you out, controls you does something that happens only once in a blue moon. How you deal with that round is what makes the difference, you can go sit down and have the rest of the night off, you can have a round off, you can play on an injury and avoid training for the rest of the night or you can have another round. Once you have had that crap round it can only get better, once you have ‘lost’ to the guy you never lose to the only way is up.

When you are having the bad night’s that is when you find out who you are, anyone can do the easy nights. There is saying which is great ‘Anyone can do it when they feel like it, it’s the people that do it when they don’t feel like it who succeed’. The way to deal with these nights is to understand what is happening, ‘ok I am having a bad night I am going to stay on that mat for every round’ you have to understand that you will get angry, pissed off grumpy and every other negative emotion associated with fight training. Once you get out of that bad round then the night takes a better direction and you will leave that night feeling better.

Just think if you take rounds off because you are having a bad night think how much training you are missing out on over the space of a year. The only difference between a good training and bad training is what is going on in your head, if you can get passed that think about how much more you can get out of your ‘bad’ nights.

Gareth Lewis
Head MMA Instructor
http://www.Lockdown.co.nz/