Jailhouse Strong: The Successful Mindset Manual by Josh Bryant & Adam benShea

Author:Josh Bryant & Adam benShea [Bryant, Josh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Back Arms Publications
Published: 2014-10-15T23:00:00+00:00

Psyching Up

“Psyching up” refers to what is done in the start period, immediately preceding the competitive outing. Remember, too much psyching up can be devastating to your performance.

You’ve heard of the athlete who’s been “psyched out” by his opponent. That means his mind was affected, which led to his losing performance. But you can also psych yourself out by thinking too much about what might happen in the event itself.

Tremendous tension can build to the point of escalating fatigue when you psych yourself up too much. The simple remedy for this is to remove yourself from the warm-up and retire to a quiet area where you can practice some of the “mind control” techniques referred to earlier.

In addition, there is tremendous benefit in using humor to reduce the terror or anxiety caused by a looming fight.

As the Beat stage performer Lord Richard Buckley used to say, “Humor is the absence of terror, and terror the absence of humor.” In this sense, terror refers to the mind’s capacity to frighten itself. To combat the potential for self-induced mental panic, many athletes like to surround themselves with a training team that is able to keep the training hard, but the mood lighthearted. Therefore, it is not uncommon to enter the locker room of a top-level MMA fighter before a fight and find an environment that resembles an amateur comedy hour.

Now psyching up for competition is not unnatural or abnormal. In fact, it’s necessary to some degree. All good athletes must mentally prepare themselves for a contest shortly before it’s about to begin. About two to five minutes before your game or event, you should be practicing psyching methods, but in a controlled and calm manner.

The truly great athletes always seem to possess an outward calm, no matter how intense their inner psyching is at the moment. They have a single-minded focus on what they are about to do. They don’t need to jump up and down and bash heads, slap faces, or growl like an animal. All their base and primordial instincts are gathering inside of them for a controlled source of raw power. They will let it all out only when the bell rings and the competition demands it.

The Emotional State of the Competitor

Your mind and your emotions are tightly tied together. It’s up to you, as the competitor, to find a balance between them and exert control over them.

Your emotional state plays a large role in your overall performance. The way you are feeling inside has repercussions for your behavior and performance on the outside. Many different factors go into the makeup of a solid emotional base. Some of these factors are personal life, sex life, family life, job, daily schedule, diet, financial matters, health concerns, and most important, self-esteem.

Your own self-esteem contributes greatly to the level of your sports performance. Self-esteem can vary greatly within the time confines of a single athletic event, and it can mean the difference between winning and losing. One minute you may hate yourself

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.