RESEARCH ON MENTAL TRAINING GEARED FOR MARTIAL ARTISTS

Below are some of the information regarding mental training that I have gathered during my years in the martial arts. I gathered these information from various sources. Most of it comes from the town library books, some came from articles in various martial arts magazines, and some came from books that I have to order by mail. It is hard for me to write about every piece of information on the subject in this page. There's simply too much information. Therefore, I restrict myself by choosing some of the phrases/articles that I feel is more useful in describing the subject.

The Mind; Your Greatest Weapon (almost).

Our mind is the center of it all. It controls our thoughts and our actions during fighting and during training. During tournaments one can see some fighters tensed up and lose their concentration, especially if the spectator starts shouting and screaming obscenities from all directions. Some fighters appears relax and composed. Some appears brimming with confidence. Some are scared out of their wits!

There is a reason for all these differences in attitude among the fighters. Just as some fighters have better physique than others because they trained their body more, so must we train our minds to be more able to help us succeed in competition/training. Exactly what is the objective of mind training? It is to make us more confident, more relax, and more able to concentrate on the task at hand. There are training methods to achieve such attributes. But before I talk/write about them, I must discuss another topic: fear.

FEAR

Fear; that's the problem with some good fighters. They train hard, they look good during training. But when they actually fight they usually kiss the floor in the last round. This is because they fear losing. Losing their life, their self-respect, losing their health (like a spinal cord injury), and of course fear of losing the fight. What is it that is needed to overcome this fear, and thus become a better fighter? Below are some of the things that I've found out.

Excerpts from "Tao of Jeet Kune Do" by Bruce Lee

The late Bruce Lee addressed the problem of fear in his book, Tao of Jeet Kune Do.

On page 205, he stated; "Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or our worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear. Thus, a feeling of utter unworthiness can be a source of courage. Everything seems possible when we are absolutely helpless of absolutely powerful - and both stimulate our gullibility."

To my opinion, he said that if one has nothing to lose, one fights better.

On page 12, he stated; "Approach Jeet Kune Do with the aim of mastering the will. Forget about winning or losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh. Let him smash into your flesh and you break his bones. Let him break your bones and you take his life. Do not be concerned about escaping safely- lay your life before him!"

Obviously, what he means is that to fight properly, one must not be too concerned about one's own safety. As hard our opponent punish us, we punish him harder. And too much concern about winning a fight will only lead to our losing that fight.

The Nine Steps to Courage

Around the year 1990, I found an article written by a certain Dr. John M. La Tourette. The title is: Nine Steps to Courage. He mentions that fear is the emotion created by our minds when faced with an impending evil. Courage is the quality of mind that enables a man to face real or imagined danger with self-possession or confidence.

According to Dr. La Tourette, there are 9 methods of instilling the proper beliefs for courage. They are:

1. Mental housecleaning: To clean the mind of images or ideas that one does not want to happen using positive self-talk and positive thinking.

2. Controlled breathing: Exercises that helps in controlled breathing helps one to relax in emotionally charged environments.

3. Mental Imagery: To put pictures in your mind about winning and performing well, and not to put pictures in your mind about you being beaten to a pulp.

4. Dominant Response Theory: The most current thought in your mind before the fight will dictate how you perform.

5. Cognitive Restructuring: To stop any negative thoughts from resurfacing by shouting 'stop' (mentally or out loud) to the inner mind to force a 'mental block state'.

6. Strength Card: To recognize one's own positive attributes (e.g. good sidekick, powerful sweeps, etc.) to increase one's self confidence.

7. Righteous Indignation: If somebody hurts you without provocation, your anger will make you fearless, as you concentrate on getting back to your adversary and not worry about your safety or how big the other guy is.

8. Master Keys of Karate Physiology: This basically states that one should focus on the fight and where to hit the opponent, not worrying about what spectators are doing.

9. Changes in Physiology: It states that if we want to be brave, we 'act' and 'think' brave.

Imagery Training

Another source on the subject is the book "Warrior Secrets", written by Mr. Keith D. Yates, a 6th Dan Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do.

On page 37 of his book, Mr. Yates mentions a mental exercise known as "Imagery Training", developed by Tom Seabourne, a Karate Champion and teacher.

Tom Seabourne conducted an experiment. He divided his class into 4 groups.

Group 1 practice relaxation techniques like meditation and deep breathing exercises.

Group 2 does imagery training. I quote from the book; "Imagery training is seeing themselves perform from the internal point of view rather than just watching themselves from a crowd's perspective. By internal I (Tom) mean that you can see your opponent but not yourself." Students were told to visualize themselves fighting better than they had ever done before, blocking everything and scoring with everything they threw.

Group 3 combines the works of Group 1 and 2.

Group 4 were told to memorize Chinese sayings.

Tom Seabourne discovered that Group 1 students have lower anxiety levels. Group 2, using the visualization techniques, were noticeably better in their actual performance. Group 3 have the qualities of both Group 1 and 2.

From this, he concludes that it is best to spend a few minutes before the training session doing the mini-relaxation/imagery drill where the student imagine themselves performing what they are about to do, and doing it the best way possible.

'Mind Gains' by Health for Life

Still another resource is a book published by "Health for Life", a company based in the USA. The book describes in detail the various subjects mentioned above. It has topics like visualization exercises, to concentration exercises, to goals settings, and much more. The knowledge in this book is based on the methods used by East European countries to train their athletes. East European countries have long been known to produce some of the best and most successful athletes in the world. This is the most comprehensive book on mental training that I've ever come across. It also comes with a cassette to help in meditation.

Most of the topics in this book are more or less similar to the ones above. However, there are some additions. Two of them are goal-setting and concentration exercises.

Goals Setting

The idea is that if you chart your progress, you can see your progress and thus your confidence will increase. For example, if you start working out in the gym, and at first you use 5kg dumbells. You record the weight and the number of repetitions you are able to do. After a week you record again the weight and number of repetitions. As you train you will become stronger and be able to carry heavier loads and do more reps. By charting your load and reps you will see your progress. And if there is no progress, you can investigate as to why such is the case (lack in effort, injury, etc). Thus, seeing your progress from the progress chart, your confidence grows.

"Changing Attentional Focus" Exercise

Quoting from the book:

Find a room that has a radio and a TV set. Set the volume level of each to be about the same.

Find a comfortable place to sit facing the TV, within sight of a clock. Begin by listening to the radio (tuned to a talk show or the news). Now, block out the sights and sounds of the TV as much as possible. If need be, close your eyes. The idea is to watch the TV while focusing your complete attention on what you're hearing on the radio.

After one to two minutes, switch! Now you should be watching and listening to the TV and blocking out the radio. Do this for another one or two minute. Next, focus on what you are seeing on the TV and what you are hearing on the radio. Block out the TV.

Another variation of this exercise is to read a book instead of watching TV.

Deepening Concentration

This exercise is help one to focus in situations where there's a lot of distractions. Again, I quote from the book:

Choose a short positive statement about yourself, such as, I am strong and have good endurance. Make sure it is something you believe. Say it over and over again to yourself for two minutes. Notice how many times your mind veers away from the affirmation. Once you are able to stay with the affirmation without your mind drifting too much, increase the length of the exercise by a minute. Make 10 minutes your goal.

Conclusion from the Various Sources

Due to the research that I've done, I conclude that the following must be done on a regular basis (preferably daily):

1. Imagery Training,

2. Goals Setting,

3. Changing Attentional Focus, and

4. Deepening Concentration exercises.

There are many other information that I would like to share, but basically these are the most important ones. Basically, these are the mental training that I do to prepare myself for a competition.

Nevertheless, deriving from my own experiences, I would like to point out one thing; mental training cannot totally replace physical training! Mental training can be likened to strengthening the mind, just like technical training is to 'strengthen' one's application of techniques. One should consider mental training on par with physical and technical training, and thus work on the three areas equally.

To conclude, I sincerely hope that readers could understand and benefit from the information that I outlined here, and that they too would work on mental training.