“Training is 90% physical and 10% mental, while fighting is 90% mental and 10% physical.”
There is nothing that describes the importance of mental training more than that. The combat sports present great mental challenge of direct confrontation with another human being trained to defeat you. In the process of your development as a fighting athlete your coach will work over your mentality as well.
However the mental training is slightly different than your normal skill and conditioning development – it only partially can be controlled by your coach. It is completely your responsibility to practice the mental techniques that your coach provides. Your coach can see if you have done this or not on your competition day, but during the training practice it is hardly to read your thoughts.
So here comes the problem for the athletes: they often neglect the mental techniques as something that does not develop them physically. But guess what? Read the quote above again. On competition day it happens that neglecting of these couple of minutes of your daily practice, are responsible for 90% of your performance!
The practice of mental techniques usually takes less than 5 min, or it is integrated in your routine when you have to Restart or Morph during the rounds, in the rests between rounds when you need to recover, or when you need to turn the Vicious Cycle in a scramble. As you see it doesn’t require extra time or effort, it just requires focus, to apply the correct technique when needed. Neglecting of this part of the practice jeopardize 90% of your competition performance.
So while practicing mental techniques provided by your coach does not require any extra time or energy but only focus, there is no excuse for a fighter to neglect this part of the practice, since it is major part of you performance.
