MMA fight analyst Robin Black says mind training is critical for success
The fight game is as much mental as it is physical, agrees East Preston fighter Andrew Thomas
Every mixed martial artist trains the body, but not every fighter trains his most important muscle: the brain.
That's according to former fighter and fight analyst Robin Black. The Ontario man calls cagefighting "two unwilling ballet partners with differing goals."
Each fighter has a plan for the dance and the goal is to force your opponent's body to do what you want it to. And a big part of forcing your will is having a strong mind.
Black says young fighters need to "work that muscle" to fight on the big stage.
I save everything for the fight — all my meanness and nastiness.- Andrew Thomas
"Much like anything else, you could teach yourself to box — you could watch video on it or read about it — but you'll learn them a lot better if you have a specialist coach," he says.
He co-hosts a Fight Network show called the Mentality of Combat Sports with sports psychologist David Mullins, where they talk about the mental game an athlete needs to excel at mixed martial arts.
Deal with the fear outside of the cage
Black says mentally untrained fighters try to block scary thoughts or overwhelm them with self-confidence. Black says both are mistakes.
"You deal with the truth of them, then you move on. If you ignore them, the worst time to find out you're not performing well is in the middle of the fight," he said.
And that's what he wanted most as a fighter: learn the truth about himself.
"The truth of it is incredibly cool to see — and it can also be incredibly painful. When you fight, to find out that you aren't ready, or you aren't that good, or that when push comes to shove, like 99 per cent of the population, you might not be able to shove back? That's a painful thing to learn about yourself," he said.
"If you do lose, if you do fail, if you find yourself in a situation that you can't overcome, you can go back, look at it and see just what the challenges were, and go and work to improve those things."
Saving your 'nastiness' for fight night
East Preston's Andrew Thomas hasn't been knocked out in the cage, but he has lost once by submission. He learned a lot from that defeat when Garth Neily caught him in an arm bar, forcing the submission.
"I underestimated the guy and he caught me. I wasn't really training my jiu-jitsu at the time and that really made me focus on jiu-jitsu. I won my next fight by submission," said Thomas.
"It was good I got the loss because it really opened me up to other areas of my game I need to fix."
A big part of his game is mental.
"I try to keep really calm up until the fight because it's a different mind state. It's like kill or be killed. I save — not anger — but my aggressiveness for when I get in there," said Thomas.
"I have really good coaches who know how to motivate me. I save everything for the fight — all my meanness and nastiness for the fight, and I kind of take it out then."
He's storing that nastiness up now for Saturday's Extreme Cage Combat fight with Mark Hebert in Halifax.
Black took a similar attitude into his first fight — and got flash knocked-out seconds into the first round. He quickly recovered and fought on until the referee stopped the fight as he was unable to defend himself.
"Physically, we can handle a lot more than we believe we can. The human body and the human mind are super resilient. But fear, panic — these are normal reactions," said Black.
He says fighters are plugging right into animal experiences in the cage.
"You're absolutely, positively going to be afraid," said Black.
But as they say, courage is action in the presence of fear.
Performance under pressure
"That's the type of courage you need, and not just to go get punched in the face, but to put yourself out there at risk of failure," said Black.
He says some people don't worry about the physical pain that comes with a fight, but the mental pain of failure, especially in front of friends and family.
But if that fear grows, it can overtake you and help fuel your defeat. Dealing with it well can add motivation and focus to your game.
"That's kind of the juxtaposition of the mental game. Much like fighting in general, logically if I punch you, or I'm pressuring you, the most likely thing you should do as a regular person is give me your back," said Black.
In real life that works as it points you in the right direction to run away. But in mixed martial arts, you're surrounded by a cage and someone trained to choke you unconscious from your back, so you have to learn to squash your instincts and not back down.
"That's the beauty of it. Whether people know it or not, when they're going to fight, that's the test that they're seeking — to see how they perform under pressure," said Black.