#42 Mental Training: How I Prepared For My Championship Fight - Sylvie's Technique Vlog (45 min) (Patreon)

Having just made the steep climb to win the WBC Minimumweight World title this weekend - thank you everyone for your support! - it seems a very good time to share with others my mental training experience, because mental training isn't always easy to access, and maybe my experiences will resonate with some of you. This isn't really a "How to Do Mental Training" post. It's how I did it. 

My path into and with Mental Training has been an inconsistent one, and that's something I've been working to be more responsible in over the years. As I discuss in this Technique Vlog, my first commitment to Mental Training practice came as a kind of triage response to a terrible performance I had about 8 years ago, when I had another, high-pressure fight just days after a very bad performance and knew I had no possibility of physically training for a different outcome in that second fight. So I really just buckled down and did as much focused mental training as I could in those days and ended up with a very positive performance in the high-pressure fight, beating the phenom Japanese fighter Saya Ito in my first high-profile fight in Thailand, the Queen's Cup (2014). I have continued with my mental training between that time and now, but definitely not in a way that I would consider the responsible and most beneficial manner. I liken Mental Training to Cardio, in that it's not something you can just throw in at the last minute, a week before your fight, and expect to glean the most benefit from it, even though my first experience of it was emergency style triage. Like Cardio, consistent Mental Training allows your training and fighting to be better all-around; it allows you to do more of what you actually find exciting or fun, and I've kept up a general focus on mental improvement over the years, especially in learning to turn down the inner coach and to read my performances more positively. (We even did an online reading group with patrons in 2018 of the fantastic book The Inner Game of Tennis - watch those chapter by chapter reading group conversations here.) But, the specifics of visualization and "work" is something I've been inconsistent with. 

This vlog discusses how I approached:

• Confidence
• Visualization
• Affirmation
• Pressure

When my WBC World Title fight was confirmed, about a month prior to the event, I knew that I had to do a lot of work to get ready. I had to reshape my physical training which had been non-ideal for a couple of years; this change would be draining and emotionally difficult, which meant that my mental health in that challenge would be a determining factor in whether I could even get through it or not. So to step up my game I went straight to finding an audio book that I could listen to when running, resting, getting massages, chores - the thing about mental work is it can be done in many more settings than physical work can be done, but it does require a lot of time and concentration, so I basically used all my "off time" as "on time" for mental training. I looked through a number of titles before deciding on "The Confident Mind" by Nate Zinsser (link below), which carried me through my weeks of training. I got sick after my first week of intense training and had to take a few days off, which basically made me have to go through the physical "hell week" of starting an increased regimen again, but the mental work continued during that down time, which I think helped a lot. I also found "Performing Under Presser" by Weisinger and Pawliw-Fry, which I started listening to during my training but didn't actually connect to and get much out of until near the end of my physical training, when that tapered down and it was mostly just the time between stopping training, traveling to the event, weigh in and fighting. That's when the pressure element in that book connected for me.

These are my resources, below is an annotated resource list for fighters, and this Technique Vlog goes over what I used in particular to preparation for this fight. But my advice is this: go look for what speaks to you. Look at many options (don't buy them, necessarily, read excerpts, listen to samples, read blurbs) and when something speaks to you, take it and use that. We're all different and yet our experiences are connected and similar enough that works using examples of tennis players or executives can still be useful to fighters; you just have to adjust the references.

The two books I used in preparation for my WBC World Title fight:

The Confident Mind by Nate Zinsser

Performing Under Pressure by Hendrie Weisinger and J. P. Pawliw-Fry

My Technique Vlog on Visualization 

My Blog Post with Mental Training Resources for Fighters 

All my Technique Vlogs for Patrons

Check out all my other Patron-only technique vlogs:

#41 - Designated Tension In Clinch & Other Techniques (14 min) 

#40 - Whole System Learning (22 min)

#39 Committing to Throwing 3s in Sparring (22 min)

#38 Head Diving, Small Changes In Balance (21 min)

#37 Training Around Injury (15 min)

#36 Improving Your Footwork Using a Footwork Grid (17 Min)

#35 Pressure Fighting Working on Getting In / Staying In (28 min)

#34 Experiments In Sparring pt. 2 (1 hr)

#33 The Importance of Head Alignment (13 min)

#32 How to Train Clinch in Shadowboxing

#31 Things to Try In Sparring (38 min)

#30 Training Stiff Arms and Shoves (15 min)

#29 Training The Lead Side Only (16 min)

#28 Training Through Fatigue and the Feet (15 min)

#27 Why You Should Slow Down on the Pads (17 min)

#26 Barefist Training vs Training with Bag Gloves (18 min)

#25 The Non-Switch Lead Kick (9 min)

#24 Getting on Your Toes (13 min)

#23 How to Use Bagwork in Thailand (17 min)

#22 Guard: Palms Facing Outward (17 min)

#21 Your Ambient Footwork (15 min)

#20 Jang-wa, Rhythm and Timing (15 min)

#19  Training Ruup & Composure  (13 min)

#18   Closing the Door in Long Guar (11 min) 

#17  Static Block for Balance (9 min)

#16 The Diamond Guard (20 min)

#15 Mental Gym, Beginning to Advanced Visualization (19 min)

#14 Getting the Right Hand In (13 min)

#13 Rising on Techniques (6 min)

#12 Control of the Kick (6 min)

#11 Body Position First (11 min)

#10 All About How I Recover (12 min)

#9 Creating Power and Distance At Close Range (9 min)

#8 Where Are Your Feet? Foot Position (9 min)

#7 Evolving in the Long Guard (10 min)  

#6 The Power of Eye Contact (10 min) 

#5 Dieselnoi's Lowkick in the Clinch (12 min) 

#4 Air Knees in the Corner (8 min) 

#3 Acceleration at the End of Strikes (10 min)

#2 The Kem Pivot (12 min) 

#1 Dealing With Fear, How to Cut it Out (13 min)

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