Be obsessive, love going to the gym and when you miss out you are agitated, annoying to be with and disappointed in yourself. Addiction to training grows the more you train, the more you see yourself improving and the more you realise how good it makes you feel. You will improve when you don’t like missing training and start adjusting your life around training times. This addiction is good for you! It is purpose, pride, and satisfaction.
There is often a gap between how people train and how they fight and vice versa. Most people don’t fight as well as they train, and a few people fight better than when they train. The best training should align with your fighting performance. Fighting is the goal, and training is how you get there and meet those goals. What you do in training should be performed in competition. If you’re not competing, measure your training against your sparring performance.
Competition/sparring is when you practice what you have been doing in training. It is not the time to try new things; invent things or expect things you don’t do in training to work. You have to reduce the uncertainty of the performance by doing what you’re certain of or have proved effective in training. If you can’t compete like you train, you need to think about what this actually means – why can’t you, and what can you do to close the gap?
Fighting like you train is the techniques you use, your pace, your rhythm, your style and how you use your conditioning. Do you do better pushing forward, countering, kicking, clinching, or do you have a high work rate? What is your style and what style do you want to fight with? To improve your performance, you have to apply your training in your fighting or you’re wasting a lot of time in your training. Sometimes you have to also reverse engineer your performance and realise honestly what you do in a fight and practice that to make it a strength and not have any delusions about how you want to fight, if that’s not how you actually fight or what works for you.
If you train with going first and forward pressure and then stand there in a fight, wait and work counters, you are a counter fighter not an aggressor! Why are you wasting so much time on the style you aren’t comfortable using in a fight? It could be pressure from your coach or club style; it could be a dream you have or how you see yourself or even the style of another fighter you admire. Whatever the reason, make a choice and either change your training, or change your fight style. The style that’s best, is the style that works better for you and contributes to you performing as good as you can.
Why is there a gap between training and performance?
- A lack of self-belief, belief in your training and confidence in yourself.
- Mindset and everything related to your mood, confidence, self-belief and how you imagine the fight going – when this isn’t aligned with your mindset in training.
- Nerves and performance anxiety will affect your performance and often degrade your expectations. This takes experience and applying the certainty of training to reduce the uncertainty of the fight experience.
- Not listening to your coach at training and in fighting.
- Your coach telling you to do things or expect things that you don’t do in training.
- Being arrogant about your performance ability. Wanting to show off!
- Your training program is random with no deliberate practice and focus.
- You have a plan that cannot survive the first punch in your face.
- You either build your opponent up to be an 8 armed, 2 headed smashing machine or you look down on them and show no respect, but you get it wrong and cannot adapt!
A fighter’s mood at the event is critical to performance. Positive self-talk, an experienced team and a realistic but confident approach is required. A hard weight cut, stressful lead up and a challenging week will reduce the positive mood, but much of this is unavoidable in fight week. It is the time the nerves and doubt grow. This is where you need certainty and a team that works together. A coach should be able to push the right buttons and get the best out of the fighter. A fighter and coach need to have conversations about expectations and also what type of style will be the best for the fighter, well before competition training and competition matching commences.
Everyone must work on developing a style that best suits their aptitude, ability, composure and utilises strength while minimizing weaknesses. The simplest best thing is to accept your mood will fluctuate, you will not feel like fighting and won’t think you’ll do well when you’re cutting weight and you’re nervous. but when you get to the event, you’ll be ready, and your mood will improve and as the excitement takes hold and you’re ready to perform. It’s just part of the process for your mood to fluctuate. Accept it and be ready to psych yourself up to perform and go hard when you fight. Solid consistent training will come out in a fight so trust it and back yourself 100%.
Current times, the sport, clubs, and the industry now. Why it matters! So, you don’t take the good things you have opportunity to learn from for granted.
The people fighting now and training now are training harder and smarter than ever before, and they are also more skilled than ever before. Anyone training to fight now has more opportunity than ever before. I’m an improvement coach, and the coaching improves in line with the people and the sport. Modern students are bombarded with information and education, and it’s hard to find the ‘truth’ or real info that pertains to them. Listen critically to everyone, be skeptical of anyone preaching or giving their opinion who hasn’t done the work and just promotes themselves. There are coaches with extensive experience, many fights and proven success but there are also ones with fancy gyms, Instagram fame, Thai tattoos, one holiday to Thailand and the bullshit express.
Individuals need to do their own work more, to improve, to change to accept your weaknesses and develop them into strengths. Platitudes don’t last and individuals need to look in the mirror and work harder on what they need to improve.
Everyone that competes is training hard and there’s no doubt many of the classes everywhere are as hard as ever, with improvement across the entire sport evident. The standard is as high as ever; however, this is not always transferring into the actual fight performance for some. Therefore, something is lacking and needs attention from everyone that wants to compete. Train like you want to fight and fight like you train.
How you listen to your coach and, how serious you take it and what you do about it in training is on you. Are you motivated enough to listen to what your coach says and implement it in training, seriously. People need to take it serious enough that the advice changes you, the advice changes your style, you develop, improve and the way you train is close to the way you fight. Personalities are malleable, developmental and your fight style in no different. You can change, develop, and improve if you want to. No number of drills will change your lightbulb if you do not seriously decide to change your lightbulb yourself. Doing the training will only get you so far, your mind has to change, your mind, and your self-belief has to shift.
I find that the longer I coach the more information I have, but the harder it becomes to share it and build the motivation people need to be able to absorb it. Being too nice because you want to see people do well, keep members and be a good person can be detrimental to self-improvement. Coaches need to be hard on fighters emotionally to develop their weaknesses and turn them into strengths. This is not about more push ups, pads, or harder sparring, we do all that and everyone works hard. It’s about the motivation for you to do deliberate practice, improve yourself, believe in yourself and improve your mindset to fight like you train.
Many people train hard at drilling, learn technical skills and love the classes, but aren’t accountable enough to their weaknesses and the effort required to improve them. Many people have excuses that turn into beliefs and are too sensitive about what they think is right for them. Enjoying the training is important but it’s not the most important thing.
A good coach can see the future. They can see the fight and your opponent, and they can focus on the most important thing you need to improve on. It is never simple, but it’s usually more psychological than physical. Yes, bringing your hand back to your face is physical but when you persist in not doing it, it’s mental or psychological, because you know you should and think you are, but you’re simply not. Habits can change, and bad habits must change!
Everyone has seen examples of tough fights, close fights, hard losses, good wins, and solid performances. Win or lose we need to analyse the fight, the training, and the performance in the fight. Winning doesn’t mean you fought well and losing doesn’t mean you fought bad, but it does mean you have things to work on. Step 1 is your mind and how you prepared that for the bout. You win on strengths, but you lose on weaknesses. You must back yourself, but this has to be more than words, pep talks and psych ups. It has to be self-belief, making the uncertainty the certain, managing the stress and your performance when stressed. Knowing tired and stressed combined and performing like you do in training.
The growth of clubs, fight shows, and participation comes with an increase of shit proportional to the quantity of participation and social media focus. It is easy to con people with what look likes ‘Muay Thai’, get tattoos on holidays, train at a Thai camp for 2 weeks and walk the walk and even look like you have skills, but they’re often built on fluff, look, platitudes and the need to keep people paying fees.
The great fighters still come from hard neighbourhoods, hard countries, tough times, and hard work that is done to prove something to themselves and overcome. You might get through a few fights with a neat left rib kick and Thai music in your head, but you won’t last against a mongrel. There are more great fighters, great shows, and higher standards than ever before, but there is also more bullshit from commentators and fakes in the game to promote themselves. There are also local clubs that compete, but locally only and stay in their own fishbowl too much. They market prolifically to their own students to build a world in their own little post code where they are awesome. You can enjoy training there, but you will also be a deluded fool if you step into the real world of the standard of Muay Thai at a national or international level. But like most deluded fools at ‘Take Ones Dough’ you believe your black belt is worth something and would never read this anyway.
A few things that I believe will help individuals improve.
- Be able to take criticism and learn from it.
- Self-analyse more. Have a notebook and write down what you need to work on and note when you do and when you do not.
- Take what your coach says about you AND WHAT YOU THINK YOU NEED TO WORK ON more seriously. Write it in a notebook, analyse it, and work it into every training session.
- Read the important ANTMAN articles! A selfless plug! The articles are critical insight from a more experienced person written for you. Why are you too busy to study them but can find time for Netflix?
- Learn to tolerate criticism, see improvement required and be accountable to others for your improvement and more importantly face reality, not your own perceptions. You deserve nothing and should work for everything.
- You have to fix your weaknesses, and you have to be accountable to yourself and the coach. You cannot just train hard and do the class and be a part of the lesson and not work on your weaknesses and do deliberate practice.
- Everyone should train once a week, by themself. Do mirror and bag work and do boring repetitive technique work. At least 12 by 3 min rounds. Yes, smash the bag and practice your output and personal drive but the purpose is to train your mind and repeat over and over the drills you need to improve and the self-talk you need to have when you are fighting and sparring.
- Do the actual skills you do in training, in fights, decide you will and do it. Fighting can be short term and if you are thinking ‘axe kick’ you’re on the wrong track completely, in your own head and not comprehending what a coach is telling you. Everyone has had their pointless axe kick moments, and you need to change your thinking to improve. World champions do basics well and can take shots!
- Actually, listen more in classes. Too many people nod, get the drill and off they go but are not actually working on a better way for them to improve their weaknesses in the drills.
- Watch fights that are good, be motivated by them and believe they can be you.
- Switch screen time, scrolling and pointless shit to study time for your mindset and your training. Be more serious about how you want to perform in a fight every day not just leading to the weigh in. Write in your notebook about your training and how you feel. Criticise yourself and learn from it.
- Tell the coach, or whoever is coaching, how you want to be coached as well and what works for you. Ask questions and then actually listen to the coaching. It’s a two-way relationship, and it has to be brutally honest both ways.
- It’s not about how hard you hit pads, but hitting pads like you want to hit a person in a fight and concentrating on your technique, effort, aggression, and mindset.
- Discipline is Key. Motivation is overrated.
This has been written because you need to know and understand there’s more to winning fights and doing well in them than turning up to classes and wanting to compete. Have a few fights, have a good job, have a good relationship, get a degree, and then keep training to stay fit and strong and help build others. Being a professional fighter and earning a living from it is rare, and even if you’re successful, your body will most likely be destroyed. Fight as often as you can to never have any regrets when you’re older, to ensure you gave it a red-hot go.
However, when you’re training to fight, give everything.
Train like you want to fight and fight like you train.
Future: The more experienced a coach gets and the older they are, the more what they say matters. Listen! A younger coach should be able to do, show and lead by example. Young coaches who talk all the time should shut up more. Young coaches who cannot do what they ask others to do, should train more. A great coach can ‘cut to the chase’ and always try to make training suggestions that are the most important thing for you to do to improve. It might hurt your feelings and require a slap but that’s what good coaching is – improvement is the most important. I write like I’m writing a novel, I live by quotes, but when I coach, I try to say the most important thing people need to know and do. Knowing is not enough – it is doing that counts.
History and perspective. Train like you want to fight and fight like you train.
I made this quote up to improve my own performance. I was a very nervous fighter with lots of performance anxiety. I never fought anyone fitter than me, but I did gas against people less fit than me. I lost against less fit people than me, less skilled people than me and people who did not work as hard as me. I hated every loss and even when I coach people; every loss hurts me to my soul, and I take responsibility for it. I improved as I fought more, and I trained more focusing on meat and potatoes training that I wanted to work in a fight. I gave up every job I ever had to commit to training, so I was very obsessed with improving my performance. I coached myself, I did bag work, shadow sparring and worked drills. For the first 5 years I had to travel to Sydney to get any sparring until my own students improved enough to be challenging, even then I could never ‘fight’ them up. I would go to Sydney every second weekend to spar at two different gyms consistently for a few years. (Double Dragon and Boxing Works). I had to listen to my coach (Mick Spinks > Kickboxing – Larry Papadopoulos > MMA) because I only got to see them occasionally and what they said I took seriously and worked on every minute I wasn’t there. I took notes, I read them back and practiced deliberately before the concept was invented. I would then practice what I needed on my own and not just wait until there was a class, or I was given something. This was good for me and different to what most people are privileged to get with full time clubs and classes every night!
With a coach there every day to give, this allows for some complacency and expectation but not for enough self-development. It’s a privilege to have someone coaching you every day, but people often take it for granted. It’s not always better to be given. I organised everything myself and didn’t even have a coach in my corner on some fights. I had to focus on improvement, and I was and still am, my harshest critic. Self-awareness and self-improvement are possible, but it’s up to you to do the work on your mind, not just you are training. I was a boring, meat and potatoes fighter who would burn people out and never quit. I would just do the basics, and I would do them the same in a fight and in training. So, no matter the pressure, I did what I needed to do and as the fight went on, I worked harder. I didn’t have a lot of training partners and there was rarely someone my size, my gender, or my level. You have to work with what you’ve got and not want what you don’t have. I could do as much fitness as I wanted so instead of partner work, I ran, I swam, I rode, I did bag work and trained in every class I taught. I spent hours learning to use the conditioning I had and focused on my second favourite fighting quote:
You have one tank of fuel – use it wisely.
I still burnt out because I would work at my optimum tolerance level and my nerves would gas me fast. In sparring, I never tried to prove I could win by stopping people and winning at sparring every day. I would spar what I need to improve and would grind people down with pressure, working on my weaknesses. I always remember being told to practice – putting yourself in trouble and getting out of trouble. I would often train depleted, compared to my opponents, and build confidence through proving to myself, what I could do and what I could resist.
Learn to take shots, learn to hurt, learn to suffer, and learn to endure. Know what you can endure, and your confidence will grow.
I am naturally shy, and I often was never aggressive enough in fights. I would talk to myself all the time and I had to learn to do positive self-talk, write quotes I would read back to myself and beat down the demons in my mind, daily. I changed and trained myself to be happy with my performance because I had a set style and plan that I would do my best to follow in a fight, no matter what. I improved constantly, even after I stopped fighting, and my students improved, never forgetting I needed to set an example. I had many a bad sparring day, but I learned from it, and I was good at the grind. The longer the class, the better I would do, which become counterproductive to a 5 round fight but better for pride and resilience. I never did much pad training; I did loads of bag work and loads of sparring with fitness and running every day. Everything intense I did was focused on how I could be intense in fighting, every long session I did was to train myself to never quit. I taught myself to be more aggressive because you will lose if you expect to win on skill and fitness alone, you have to have mongrel, and you have to train it. You do not have to be a prick; you just need to have competitive aggression and a will to never quit. Losing is fine if you do your best and never quit. I’ve never had a great student that I haven’t coached by standing in front of them and seeing what they’ve got under pressure. This didn’t always develop love, but it did work, and it did create many champions.
The standard and level of fighters is improving all the time, and the sport is dramatically better overall. A lot is given to fighters, and a lot is available to fighters now. The ones that don’t take it for granted will also be better people but with the lack of respect, expectation, gym hopping, lack of loyalty, and ‘me, me, me’ training styles, some character is being lost proportional to the amount of attention one seeks on social media. An amazing fact is – Phoenix has won 72% of fights over a 27-year period. Think about how incredible that is in a super tough and ever evolving sport! From a club in small state with very few shows, we always have to travel, always have to take on hard fights and with a cunt of coach who doesn’t let people pick and choose fights and believes every fight should be a step up. Now people have a choice of clubs if it gets too hard for them, they can blame others. When my generation trained to fight, we had to travel to even train and make the most of what we had. This develops better character than being given what you believe you are entitled to.
Antman
