Scott: changing your "Combative Sport's" Psych.

[Robert V]

Mr. Sonnon,

I know you competed a great deal in Sambo, but you have grown intellectually and emotionally since that time.

If you could go back and coach that "young and hungry" competitor, Scott Sonnon, how would you change his psychological preparation before an event?

Knowing what you know now!


Thanks,

Robert

[Scott Sonnon]

Robert, I had composed a long reply, but the internet dragons devoured it. I'll try and retype it.

[Scott Sonnon]

Robert,

I do not wish anything to be different in my past. The problems I faced were problems because I missed some crucial understanding which did not allow me to see the answer at the time. So in this sense, there are no questions and no answers. There is only confusion which prevents us from seeing things as they are.

In the small fashion that I can help people see things a little more as they truly are, rather than as confusion skews... The shock, surprise and error I have experienced in my life permits me to help people mitigate and diminish the impact of shock, surprise and error in their lives.

In light of this, how do I coach others differently than how I was coached?

Win/Lose Ethic versus Performance Ethic

I seem to hear the position everywhere. We should teach children so that everyone wins and no one loses. This ultra-PC hyperbole demonstrates disastrous results in behavior. The problem comes from a misunderstanding of the saying, “it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.” Most educational systems fixate on the first half, rather than upon the critical second half of this insight.

As a result, most people experience a strong positive emotional attachment to winning and strong negative attachment to losing. Enter combat sports – an activity brimming with emotional volatility – and you have a major problem. People perceive combat sports to be simulated combat and as a result competition depresses a biological trigger: the Survival Arousal Syndrome, which I have discussed across several articles in CST Magazine and exhaustively discuss in Body-Flow: Freedom from Fear-Reactivity (http://www.rmax.tv/bodyflow.html).

Coupling strong aversive fear of losing and strong attractive attachment to winning with the chaotic emotional climate of sport fighting and you have turmoil so dramatic it's no wonder that only a very few ever achieve greatness.

But it need not be this way!

Combat sports were intended to diminish emotional attachment. Furthermore, great performance requires emotional detachment! In other words, I was coached that to win I had to “desire” it more than my opponent; I had to be more strongly attached to winning and more strongly repulsed by (negatively attached to) losing. This is both oxymoronic and problematic. In combat sports, if you want to be great, you need to be detached from winning and losing.

So where should one place one’s focus? You focus upon the conclusion of the old cliché… how you play the game. I tell athletes continually that it is not good enough to just win. No one remembers the conservative athlete who played the safe game. People remember the athlete who strives valiantly, dares greatly, demonstrates unique surprises against overwhelming odds… even if the athlete loses.

But in combat sports you're taught to be conservative, stick to the high percentage moves, go for the single point, stall as long as possible. Why? Because combat sports are perceived to be a method of applying combat skills… (and this couldn’t be father from the truth.) As a result, athletes associate winning with surviving a combative encounter and losing with dying. Very strong emotional attachments form as a result of this erroneous association… attachments which impede with great performance – the means, the method… how you play the game.

I coach others (in a manner I was not coached) to focus upon performance rather than upon the winning/losing paradigm. Do not dare the dishonor of winning at the expense of poor performance. Better to lose well than perform poorly, is my maxim.

How can I say this, one may ask? Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m highly competitive. I crave it. I love it, even in business... and when I no longer have challenging opponents, I either change fields to find competition, or create phantom opponents with whom I may continue to better myself.

But competition is still only a means, whereas it is taught as the “end.” Competition is only a means of physical preparation. But before I discuss that further we need to clear the confusion caused by a schism in the current martial art “industry.”

Sport Fighting versus Reality Combat

People aren’t privy to Performance Ethic over Winning/Losing because the industry has entrenched itself into two disparate camps: Sport Fighting and Reality Combat Systems. I discuss this exhaustively on Flow-Fighting: Mental Toughness for Combat Sports and Martial Arts (http://www.rmax.tv/flowfight.html), but the argument can be summed up as follows:

The members of the Reality Combat Camp believe:-->Combat techniques are too deadly for competition. Sport techniques are not prudent for street fighting.
-->Sport Fighting is Unarmed (weaponry, that is), Singular (opponent), and Protected (environment); whereas a combat reality is Armed, Plural and Hazardous. Therefore, Sport Fighting inadequately prepares you for the realities of combat.
-->Sport Fighting does not include de-escalation skills, pre-incident awareness, and post-incident debriefing preparation necessary for street assault. The members of the Sport Fighting Camp believe: -->Sport Fighting techniques are proven by trial against uncooperative opponents. Reality Combat systems provide cooperative technique rehearsal, but lack an outlet to determine effectiveness under stress against resistant opponents. Therefore, Reality Combat Systems inadequately prepares you for a street fight, because they lack competitiveness.
-->Reality Combat Systems do not take into account the necessity and the integration of physical conditioning of attributes and relies too heavily upon untested technical precision, such as vital targets and pressure points. Both these positions are wrong, because they are distinguished AGAINST one another, rather than integrated with one another. Both camps CAN and SHOULD be integrated. The question is HOW!

Firstly, let’s see what’s wrong with these positions.

The argument that sport fighting techniques are more effective combat techniques because they are tested in sport is like saying high-performance NASCAR machines are more effective in demolition derbies because they are tested in races. You may know what it’s like to maneuver with the engine screaming, but only within the confines of specific rules. And more importantly, although you may have witnessed a collision few times in your career, they were “accidents” whereas in a demolition… they’re the goal.

The argument that the lethality and specificity of reality combat techniques more effectively prepare you for a suddenly violent street attack is like saying you can shoot a canon out of a canoe. Unless deliberately engaged in some form of “competition,” your physical platform for launching such methods sinks under the intensely blinding emotional inertia of a fully resistant opponent.

The problem is one of perception… requiring one to reframe the notion of combat sports competition. If I can have an athlete understand this point, his access to greatness accelerates exponentially.

REFRAME: Sport Fighting = Combat SPP

The most effective and the most sustainable form of combat specific physical preparedness (SPP) is… combat sport. This realization sheds a completely new realization on the nature and purpose of combat sports.

In any form of conditioning, winning is not the primary objective. For instance, it is the performance not the completion of the repetition in lifting which is the primary objective. It’s the form, the quality of movement, which remains the primary performance goal. Never sacrifice form to complete a rep. Avoid going near the nerve, to failure, so that you continue to progress in quality, diminish recovery time and improve satisfaction. The same is true of competition as part of a complete philosophy of martial arts as is expressed below in my diagram from Flow-Fighting (http://www.rmax.tv/flowfight.html)called the Performance Diagnostic Trinity.

http://www.circularstrengthmag.com/images/pdt.gif

I coach people now, that competition (like training and practice) is just a vehicle, not the end in itself. That said, combat sport is the most sustainable and most effective means of combat specific conditioning without question (though I am the first to admit that not all combat sports are created equal. Some are more effective forms of Combat SPP).

Can you imagine encountering an athlete in any combat sport who perceived it only as a means of improving himself, and the better he performed against you… with you… the better he became? Can you imagine his emotional detachment, his lack of Fear-Reactivity, due to the absence of the fear of losing?

Can you imagine being the type of athlete who strode confidently onto any mat, in any ring, because regardless of outcome you would be better? You would be totally FREE! You would be free to perform unfettered by the encumbering burden of expectations, doubts, hesitation, and anxieties.

This is what I hope to bring to others, which I had to take the long, hard road discovering. Hopefully I can help people get untangled by the underbrush I encountered and find their own Path.

[Robert V]

Thank you, Sir!

Of course, I had a hidden agenda. I will be competing soon and I needed to get my mind right.

I guess it's like the same way I approach a stretch or BME? No expectation, "no mind", not loss or gain just becoming one with the movement...in the present moment?

This may be just what I needed, for I have found that in playing Judo, I can become an "immovable object", but I have trouble pulling the trigger against quaility fighters, for fear of "failure of the tactic" and I'm not such an "Unstoppable force". And when I finally do "pull the trigger", there is so much "fear reactivity" nestled in my muscles that I become slow and it eats up my energy.

I knew that I went to the right person. Thank you, Scott. That was just classic!

Robert

[Jim Tinney]

Sorry to diminish the signal to noise ratio, but that was a great read.

Thanks alot! :D

This is why I keep coming back! This had a special impact, since I have been beating myself up a little mentally for losing to a much better player in practice on monday and injuring myself slightly prior to an upcoming competition. This had created a nagging thought that I should bail on the competition due to the possible weak link, even though everything seems to be back in working order. Looking at it from this perspective is so much better, it's as if a literal weight is lifted off of me. The difference between "What if I lose?" vs. "There's no way to lose" is about 50 lbs. off my shoulders.

Thanks, Coach - and thanks Robert for the question.

Jim

[Chuck Kechter]

Awesome posts all!

Chuck

[DaveRandolph]

Thanks Coach, That has really got me thinking about things. It goes well with what we discussed offline.


Thanks!

[Scott Sonnon]

Thanks for the good words all. I'm glad the article helped. Dave, I look forward to seeing how that manifests for you. Good luck.

[Robert V]

I have ice on my neck, as I type this, my left hip flexor is strained, for I just competed in a rank evaluation judo shiai and won first place. I beat four Judokas who were anywhere from 30-85lbs heavier than my 205lbs. I didn't lose one match.
Once again, as with my last Shiai, the "spinal wave"(IOUF) lead me to IPPON, while Scott Sonnon's Somatic Engineering of Combat (pinning, I could feel their air leaving ther bodies)I was promoted to brown belt. It was the first shiai that I played against people who were not black belts.

The reason I write this is not to boast, but to say how well this thread helped me.

I was totally unattached to winning or losing. I felt extremely calm, even when I had one 260lber on top of me, trying to pin me and even when I was trapped in an armlock by another 250+ fighter.

Michigan's foremost Tai Chi master, who is a friend of a friend of mine, was at the event. He said he knew nothing about judo, but he notice the difference between myself and my opponent. He said he was impressed my my calmness and center-ness. They were tensed, growling and at times belligerent. I felt I had nothing to growl about, for if I win great, if not great also, for I would learn, no matter what the outcome.

Thanks again, Scott!

Robert

[Scott Sonnon]

Congratulations Brother! You're a testimony to your Soft-Work. :wink:

One day you'll send this crazy koot a video of you competing.

[Robert V]

That's an excellent idea! Finally, someone watching me that knows what I'm "trying" to do.

I know all of my matches have been taped by one of the guys from my dojo, but I've never asked to see any of the videos.

I don't know when I'll compete next, although there is a big event next month and in April. I'll get some tape for you or even better, you'lll see me in person!

I'd love to have your crtitic. Are my hips getting deep enough? Do I have the most efficient grip for the throw? My footwork? Am I seeing the force vectors? Is my torso placed properly on his diaphram? These are all things I'd like to know.

Thanks, Sir

Robert

[Scott Sonnon]

Robert, that's why I offered, amigo. It would be my pleasure.