Hey guys,
Like the title says I’ve always experienced fear of competition.
I competed this weekend and felt more relaxed, but I want to get accustomed to the environment and the feeling. Next week I have another competition up and I will compete at least 3 more times this season.
Any good reads/advice on overcoming this fear ?
Confronting it seems to be the most obvious action to undertake.
Regards
Confronting the fear is definitely the best thing to do. The more you compete, the more confidence you gain and the easier it becomes to cope with it. You will always have some fear during competition but, this is normal, everyone does. Two good books that deal with this are “Watch My Back” by Geoff Thompson and Mike Tyson’s new autobiography “Undisputed Truth”. Both talk extensively about their lack of self confidence and their fear of confrontation. Both also state that they learned to control the fear and use the fight-or-flight response to their advantage. I highly recommend both books.
What competition?
Heres the secret: everyone is feeling the same way you are. Every single one of them.
Its duck syndrome, calm on the surface… paddling like fuck underneath.
The best thing you can do is just more exposure. You will never get rid of the feeling (nor should you, adrenaline is a performance enhancing drug, without it would be like your opponent being on steroids and you being on nothing), but you will come to be able to deal with it a bit more efficiently.
Thanks for the replies so far guys.
Like I said, I’ll be confronting them more and more this season. I think this is the best course of action for the moment.
Kirks: It’s a BJJ competition. I don’t compete enough on a yearly basis, wich is probably in part the reason I am lacking in confidence.
Aussie Davo: That’s the thing. I know several of my fellow competitors have the same feeling, but they don’t seem to block down.
They just carry on a get better results. During seminars/training they are unable to follow my tempo or my technical level far exceeds theirs, but I feel like I am fighting at 2% of my capacity.
[quote]Aussie Davo wrote:
Heres the secret: everyone is feeling the same way you are. Every single one of them.
Its duck syndrome, calm on the surface… paddling like fuck underneath.
The best thing you can do is just more exposure. You will never get rid of the feeling (nor should you, adrenaline is a performance enhancing drug, without it would be like your opponent being on steroids and you being on nothing), but you will come to be able to deal with it a bit more efficiently.[/quote]
In my time with fighting I have also learned that pretty much everyone has fears or some anxious nerves before a fight. The more people I talked to and learned they felt the same as me the better I felt about it and the more I was able to control those feelings. You will learn that you can relax more later on, the more you compete. You can also use the inevitable jitters to get you amped for the fight in a good way.
Yeah, I’ve been reading up on sports psychology and how anxiety can help with or be detrimental to athletic performance.
Very interesting read and so far I have come to the conclusion that fighting and going to competitions will be the best way I’ll be able to adapt to the environment.
Any and all advices are very much appreciated!
I’ve been physically sick before a fight more times than I can remember.
A few quotes on it from the great Cus D’Amato. Well worth the time to read. Embrace fear, because it gives you the opportunity to be brave, and that is an opportunity most people never get. That’s why so few people will ever understand a fighter’s pride - it comes from complete self-knowledge, the result of repeatedly embracing adversity and overcoming it (to fight is to overcome. How you fight is more important than whether you win or lose):
?Boxing is a sport of self-control. You must understand Fear so you can manipulate it. Fear is like fire. You can make it work for you: it can warm you in the winter, cook your food when you?re hungry, give you light when you are in the dark, and produce energy. Let it go out of control and it can hurt you, even kill you?.Fear is a friend of exceptional people.?
?Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning in any area, but particularly in boxing. For example, boxing is something you learn through repetition. You do it over and over and suddenly you?ve got it. ?However, in the course of trying to learn, if you get hit and get hurt, this makes you cautious, and when you?re cautious you can?t repeat it, and when you can?t repeat it, it?s going to delay the learning process?When they?come up to the gym and say I want to be a fighter, the first thing I?d do was talk to them about fear?I would always use?the same example of the deer crossing an open field and upon approaching the clearing suddenly instinct tells him danger is there, and nature begins the survival process, which involves the body releasing adrenalin into the bloodstream, causing the heart to beat faster and enabling the deer to perform extraordinarily feats of agility and strength?It enables the deer to get out of range of the danger, helps him escape to the safety of the forest across the clearing?an example in which fear is your friend.
The thing a kid in the street fears the most is to be called yellow or chicken, and sometimes a kid will do the most stupid, wild, crazy things just to hide how scared he is. I often tell them that while fear is such an obnoxious thing, an embarrassing thing?nevertheless it is your friend, because anytime anyone saves your life perhaps a dozen times a day, no matter what how obnoxious he is, you?ve got to look upon him as a friend, and this is what fear is?Since nature gave us fear in order to help us survive, we cannot look upon it as an enemy. Just think how many times a day a person would die if he had no fear. He?d walk in front of cars, he?d die a dozen times a day. Fear is a protective mechanism?.By talking to the fighters about fear I cut the learning time maybe as much as half, sometimes more, depending on the individual.?
?The next thing I do, I get them in excellent condition?.Knowing how the mind is and the tricks it plays on a person and how an individual will always look to avoid a confrontation with something that is intimidating, I remove all possible excuses they?re going to have before they get in there. By getting them in excellent condition, they can?t say when they get tired that they?re not in shape. When they?re in excellent shape I put them into the ring to box for the first time, usually with an experience fighter who won?t take advantage of them. When the novice throws punches and nothing happens, and his opponent keeps coming at him?the new fighter becomes panicky. When he gets panicky he wants to quit, but he can?t quit because his whole psychology from the time he?s first been in the streets is to condemn a person who?s yellow. So what does he do? He gets tired. This is what happens to fighters in the ring. They get tired. This is what happens to fighters in the ring. They get tired, because they?re getting afraid?.Now that he gets tired, people can?t call him yellow. He?s just too ?tired? to go on. But let that same fighter strike back wildly with a visible effect on the opponent and suddenly that tired, exhausted guy becomes a tiger?.It?s a psychological fatigue, that?s all it is. But people in boxing don?t understand that.?
?? However, I should add that at no time does fear disappear. It?s just as bad in the hundredth fight as it was in the first, except by the time he reaches a hundred fights or long before that he?s developed enough discipline where he can learn to live with it, which is the object, to learn to live with it??
?Every fighter that ever lived had fear. A boy comes to me and tells me that he?s not afraid, if I believed him I?d say he?s a liar or there?s something wrong with him. I?d send him to a doctor to find out what the hell?s the matter with him, because this is not a normal reaction. The fighter that?s gone into the ring and hasn?t experienced fear is either a liar or a psychopath??
?I tell my kids, what is the difference between a hero and a coward? What is the difference between being yellow and being brave? No difference. Only what you do. They both feel the same. They both fear dying and getting hurt. The man who is yellow refuses to face up to what he?s got to face. The hero is more disciplined and he fights those feelings off and he does what he has to do. But they both feel the same, the hero and the coward. People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel.?
i just think of it as a sparring round, i can even sleep before a fight.
I don’t know, maybe i’ve spent all my fear quota on my first fights, it’s just like you did in training, the more your drill, the easier it gets.
Just try to have fun, once i dropped the do or die mentality my game improved leap and bounds(and that includes not tensing up before fights)
So today I had my second competition.
I had to fight twice and I lost both rounds. The second round I lost to a guy I should have destroyed, but I didn’t have any power.
My biggest lack seems to be agression in the fight. I am getting calmer eah tournament (wich is good) , but I am not amped up for the fight.
Maybe I should get my headphones out there with me next time.
I was able to pull and set up deep half guard, wich was nice.
on bjj/nogi tournaments ?
my advice would still be try entering a LOT of competitions, it will feel very natural over time.
Yeah, I’ll be following your advice! I hope to enter 3 more competitions this season.
Normally I don’t enter more then 1 competition a year, so it’s logical for me to be losing to the competition purple belts.
In training and on seminars I do destroy most of my peers and even some brown belts, the thrill of competition just gets to me.
I’ll use my time as purple belt to get experience and better technique and I hope to become a decent brown belt.
[quote]ude garame wrote:
Yeah, I’ll be following your advice! I hope to enter 3 more competitions this season.
Normally I don’t enter more then 1 competition a year, so it’s logical for me to be losing to the competition purple belts.
In training and on seminars I do destroy most of my peers and even some brown belts, the thrill of competition just gets to me.
I’ll use my time as purple belt to get experience and better technique and I hope to become a decent brown belt.[/quote]
Go for it, get used! have fun!
here in Brazil we use to say that the purple belt is the magical one because you get most of your training.
And for guys who destroy on training but doesn’t perform like that on competition we call them training lion(or belfort’s syndrome)
don’t be the training lion =)