1.  Setting the Tone

Many coaches preach this principle but I believe many athletes rarely embrace it.  By going out and letting your opponent know what he is in for is probably the most crucial aspect of consistent victories.

• In the martial arts the style of Krav Maga, every offensive encounter is defended using natural human instincts.  Typically someone throws a punch at you, your hands instinctively go up to block.  Couple instinct with short precise movements, defense becomes very quick.  The second part of this principle is to counter attack at the same time or immediately after the defense with ferocity at a pin point location.  This immediate action will most certainly put your opponent in a compromising position.

In the following video take notice how each defender does not wait for the attacker to approach them.  They initiate a counter attack at the same time their opponent attacks.

In a lot of combat sports I have witnessed, many coaches and trainers do not stress the counter attack enough.  I do not know if maybe they are unaware of the importance of it, or they do not deem it important.  In wrestling I notice a lot of energy is spent on “set ups” and positioning, almost as if a chess game were taking place.   I could never understand this concept and I wrestled a majority of my life.  What I did understand was recognizing an opportunity and capitalizing immediately, not waiting for the “perfect” setup.

• The life lesson to this principle:  My opinion on a life lesson here is to approach any problem head on with ferocious energy to neurtalize it, all the while capitalizing on carrying through with the momentum.  Whenever a small problem is not immediately addressed – it is allowed to grow.  As the problem grows it gets tougher to tackle.  So the life lesson here is to “kill a monster when it’s small” by defending, countering and finishing it as soon as it happens.

2.  Train Individual Techniques that will Solve a Multitude of Problems.

I have noticed in combat sports that athletes are focused on learning a lot of moves, rather that perfecting the few they really need.  It seems everyone wants to be fancy rather that effective.  I am a firm believer that the only techniques that should ever be learned are the few that can resolve a multitude of scenarios.  I believe this because of how many times it takes to train a manuever before it is dedicated to muscle memory.  Whenever our physical body does something new for the first time we have to consciously think it through.  Only through repetition will that maneuver become an automatic response of our subconscious mind, hence “muscle memory”.  It only makes sense to me that by limiting our library of moves to the most effective ones will only shorten our training time.

• Life Lesson: We wear many hats during our daily lives.  Some of us are bosses, employees, wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, soldiers, doctors, teacher, the list goes on.  The key to success, I believe is to discover effective skills in each of our “hats” that are cross-combatible and help each personality rather keep changing our “hats” a hundred times a day.

3.  Choices

No matter the situation we all have a choice in what our internal environment will be in any situation.  I have witnessed many combat athletes, wrestlers in general, that expend a lot of energy focusing on what their opponent is capable of.  I’ve heard such things as, “Man he’s tough”, or “I don’t know if I can stop his takedowns.”, or “He’s .” (insert your own thought).  I have noticed that the top athletes share one commonality and that is they focus on themselves and what they are capable of.  This might be a result of conceit, or they may be the lucky one’s who get it, I do not why, I just know it works every time.

Ounce for ounce it takes the same amount of mental energy to focus on our opponents as it does to focus on ourselves.  The major difference is focusing on things we cannot control (our opponents attributes) creates an exponential amount of energy loss because of working out of fear.

• Life lesson:  Many people stress about their lives and focus on how difficult life can be.  Like I mentioned before, you do not have control of your environment, even if you think you do.  The only absolute control we have is our internal environment and how we react to our outside environment.  Always remember to make the choice that is going to best benefit YOU today, tomorrow, and the rest of your life.  Once you start living like that, life will ease up on you, and some of the pressures will dissipate.

4.  Using Fear and Anxiety as a Driving Force

We all have fear, it is a vital part of our psyche.  Fear is uncomfortable to us and it is so for a reason.  Fear’s discomfort is meant to get us to take action.  For example, when you sit in a chair and you become uncomfortable, what do you do?  You move. You wiggle around until you find that comfortable spot again.  If you were always comfortable you wouldn’t move would you?

Image via Wikipedia

When an athlete focuses more on fear as a tool, rather than a weakness that should be banned, they automatically gain an edge.  Fear is your subconscious mind asking you to check if you have properly prepared.  Georges St. Pierre of the UFC has stated that before a fight he is always at peace with himself because he has listened to his fear mechanism throughout his pre-fight training.  He uses his fear to push beyond his limits in training to properly prepare.

Athletes who succomb to fear are usually not entirely willing to do whatever it takes to prepare.  They only do the minimum to get by.  Dan Gable was another athlete who was the complete opposite of doing only the minimum.  He was an olympic wrestler who competed in the 1972 Munich games and mowed through the entire tournament without getting scored on.  Dan was highly fear motivated, and I am not entirely sure why, which does not matter.  He has an innate fear of being outworked by anyone.  His fear motivated him so much before the Munich Games he would wake up in the middle of the night and train because he had a brief thought that the Russians might be training as well.  As an athlete, start listening to your fears and anxieties and take action what’s causing them.

• Life Lesson:  Our daily lives are indeed hectic.  We process way too much information for way too long.  We are overloaded at work, home, play, even rest.  We live in constant anxiety and it has had a major health impact on us.  Our natural “fight or flight” mechanism has been replaced with “anxiety or depression”.  This is where choice ties into this lesson.  If you choose to not do what is necessary of yourself, either privately (internally) or publicly (externally) it WILL create anxiety or depression.  When you tune into your emotions and LISTEN your subconscious will give clues on what actions to take.
• Anxiety = Fight = Take Action to eliminate Anxiety.  If you suffer from anxiety you have either not done something you should be doing or you are doing too much.
• Depression = Flight = Run.  If you are depressed than you are running from something in your mind.  Listen to the cues the depression gives you.
• Both Anxiety and Depression can be substantially minimized with Lesson #1 – Set the Tone and Lesson #2 – Train Individual Techniques that will Solve a Multitude of Problems.

So to wrap it up here is my summation of this article:

Hit your problems head on and hit ‘em hard once.  Choose the actions and reactions that will benefit you today, tomorrow and for the rest of your lives.

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