Yesterday I had a disasterous showing at a smoker MT fight. Almost everything that could concievably go wrong went wrong.

Going in to the fight, I thought that I would overcome my opponent with evasive footwork, superior boxing, fluid combinations, and takedowns off of kick catches. I knew, from experience, that I would get molested by knees in the clinch. But so long as I could avoid it, I wuold be golden.

Ironically, everything was backwards. Once I felt the pressure of the crowd, the match, and my opponent, everything went to hell. My "boxing" degenerated into inaccurate haymakers, my footwork disappeared altogether, and my combinations were almost as nonexistent as my catches. On the bright side, I blocked pretty much every knee that came at me in the clinch, and landed a takedown on nearly every occassion that we locked up. That one positive facet of the match is voided by my greatest failure of the night -- my inability to NOT hit him in the balls.

I would have been disqualified three times over for the amount of crotch shots that I landed, and NONE of them were intentional. I have no clue why/how this happened. My best guess would be because he was so much taller than me, my stomach was level with his groin. And because there were a billion other thnigs going on in my mind, I was unable to adjust.

That isn't really the problem, though. The problem is that when I'm in a match, it seems that everything that I know and work on goes out the window. They say 'you fight how you train,' but that's clearly not the case in my situation. In sparring -- regardless of the intensity or level of contact -- I am not a wild fighter. In both kickboxing matches that I've had, I fight as sloppily as humanly possible. Except, I actually threw combinations in my first fight.

After the fight, my coaches told me that I played his game -- that I got lured into a brawl. This is definitely true, but I have absolutely no idea of how to 'be myself' when I'm out there. Once the match begins, my conciousness mind disappears until after it is over, and I just turn into this desperate wildman who never appears in sparring. The fighter that I am in training -- including hard sparring -- has never shown up in a striking match.

In grappling, which is a lot slower, I'll eventually wake up and start fighting like myself. But in competition of any sort, my mind seems to slow down, and the pace of a kickboxing match is just way too fast for me to keep up with.

Anyways, I'm just not really sure what to do or how to procede. All I know is that I have to get back into the ring as soon as reasonably possible, but... well... yeah.

Any advice, similar experiences, whatever is very welcome.

I was being myself in my ju jitsu competition last week.I got the DQ for thai kicking the guy in the head.
While in training i throw these "controlled" krotty kicks,but in competition i just go all out.

I've never fought in competition before, so am not really qualified to comment, but I have experienced something very similar. I used to play jazz in a band, and would practice for hours and hours and hours, yet when it came time to play in front of an audience, I found that I could only perform between 60-75% of the ability I had when practicing - I forgot things, I fluffed stuff that I could nail blindfold, and tensed up when it was my turn to solo.

I called it "ability suck" and learned to adjust for it when playing by taking the easier option until I'd settled in, but it was plain old performance anxiety added to the terror of potential humiliation. Unless a person has wonderful mental discipline or a good set of relaxation techniques, the only way to overcome it is to get as comfortable in performance as you are in practice, which in your case means enough fights for it to stop being a big deal.

I've never fought in competition before, so am not really qualified to comment, but I have experienced something very similar. I used to play jazz in a band, and would practice for hours and hours and hours, yet when it came time to play in front of an audience, I found that I could only perform between 60-75% of the ability I had when practicing - I forgot things, I fluffed stuff that I could nail blindfold, and tensed up when it was my turn to solo.

I called it "ability suck" and learned to adjust for it when playing by taking the easier option until I'd settled in, but it was plain old performance anxiety added to the terror of potential humiliation. Unless a person has wonderful mental discipline or a good set of relaxation techniques, the only way to overcome it is to get as comfortable in performance as you are in practice, which in your case means enough fights for it to stop being a big deal.

Bingo!! *shuffles off with dazzling jazz hands

You already admit it is the crowd. I sparred people that had this problem. If we videoed to help, they played to the camera, and everything went out the window.

Sounds like that is your problem.

Hopefully Omega, Kat, Kid and other fighters can give you some pointers on focus. Maybe you need to design a ritual that makes you think of it as a sparring match.

I remember at our training place, there was this guy who was the best kick Boxer I've ever seen. Not only that, but he had such a cardio it was almost ridiculous. When sparring, he was a beast, perfect movements, perfect combination, perfect fluidity. Then, during his very first Kick Boxing match, he was as stiff as a crowbar, his footwork was reminiscent of a penguin and he ended up KTFO in less than 3 minutes. Sometimes, I think that the stress can be a very dangerous thing while in a match. Maybe you should work it out to control your stress before an important match.

I called it "ability suck" and learned to adjust for it when playing by taking the easier option until I'd settled in, but it was plain old performance anxiety added to the terror of potential humiliation. Unless a person has wonderful mental discipline or a good set of relaxation techniques, the only way to overcome it is to get as comfortable in performance as you are in practice, which in your case means enough fights for it to stop being a big deal.

Yeah, I'm gonna enter a kickboxing tournament at the end of May to try and get more experience. It's just kind of frustrating, though, because I thought I had gotten rid of my competition anxiety. In my last fight, which was MMA, I competed in front of several hundred people. And after about 30 seconds or so, I got my head into the game. But as I mentioned in the original post, grappling slows everything down and maybe that's the only reason why.

But yeah, if nothing else, perhaps my best bet is just to compete as much as humanly possible. Nothing better to do over the summer anyways.

Hopefully Omega, Kat, Kid and other fighters can give you some pointers on focus. Maybe you need to design a ritual that makes you think of it as a sparring match.

Could you give me an idea of what such a ritual would look like?


I remember at our training place, there was this guy who was the best kick Boxer I've ever seen. Not only that, but he had such a cardio it was almost ridiculous. When sparring, he was a beast, perfect movements, perfect combination, perfect fluidity. Then, during his very first Kick Boxing match, he was as stiff as a crowbar, his footwork was reminiscent of a penguin and he ended up KTFO in less than 3 minutes. Sometimes, I think that the stress can be a very dangerous thing while in a match. Maybe you should work it out to control your stress before an important match.

ROFL!11!

Yesterday I had a disasterous showing at a smoker MT fight. Almost everything that could concievably go wrong went wrong.

Going in to the fight, I thought that I would overcome my opponent with evasive footwork, superior boxing, fluid combinations, and takedowns off of kick catches. I knew, from experience, that I would get molested by knees in the clinch. But so long as I could avoid it, I wuold be golden.

Ironically, everything was backwards. Once I felt the pressure of the crowd, the match, and my opponent, everything went to hell. My "boxing" degenerated into inaccurate haymakers, my footwork disappeared altogether, and my combinations were almost as nonexistent as my catches. On the bright side, I blocked pretty much every knee that came at me in the clinch, and landed a takedown on nearly every occassion that we locked up. That one positive facet of the match is voided by my greatest failure of the night -- my inability to NOT hit him in the balls.

I would have been disqualified three times over for the amount of crotch shots that I landed, and NONE of them were intentional. I have no clue why/how this happened. My best guess would be because he was so much taller than me, my stomach was level with his groin. And because there were a billion other thnigs going on in my mind, I was unable to adjust.

That isn't really the problem, though. The problem is that when I'm in a match, it seems that everything that I know and work on goes out the window. They say 'you fight how you train,' but that's clearly not the case in my situation. In sparring -- regardless of the intensity or level of contact -- I am not a wild fighter. In both kickboxing matches that I've had, I fight as sloppily as humanly possible. Except, I actually threw combinations in my first fight.

After the fight, my coaches told me that I played his game -- that I got lured into a brawl. This is definitely true, but I have absolutely no idea of how to 'be myself' when I'm out there. Once the match begins, my conciousness mind disappears until after it is over, and I just turn into this desperate wildman who never appears in sparring. The fighter that I am in training -- including hard sparring -- has never shown up in a striking match.

In grappling, which is a lot slower, I'll eventually wake up and start fighting like myself. But in competition of any sort, my mind seems to slow down, and the pace of a kickboxing match is just way too fast for me to keep up with.

Anyways, I'm just not really sure what to do or how to procede. All I know is that I have to get back into the ring as soon as reasonably possible, but... well... yeah.

Any advice, similar experiences, whatever is very welcome.

These sayings are only partially true. From my perspective you're not taking your sparring matches seriously enough. When I get ready for a fight I only surround myself with guys that will keep me safe but still beat the **** out of me. Those sparring partners know that I'm looking to knock them out and if I go light to make me pay.

If you're going to fight then all your heavy sparring should be done in this manner. Don't do anything that you haven't practiced over and over and over again.

Now that I'm retired I'm that sparring guy. I will beat the crap out of any of my guys leading into a fight. If they can match me then they realize that they're sparring at a higher level.

You also have to decide on a game plan when you get in there. Are you going to slow the match down or are you going for broke in that first round. Everything has to build into that game plan. For the record I spent the first few years looking for first round KO's and getting them. I would use smokers to work on my conditioning and force myself into later rounds as practice.

These sayings are only partially true. From my perspective you're not taking your sparring matches seriously enough. When I get ready for a fight I only surround myself with guys that will keep me safe but still beat the **** out of me. Those sparring partners know that I'm looking to knock them out and if I go light to make me pay.

How serious should I take them? (I'm not trying to be a smart aleck or anything, but that kind of went over my head.) The way I see sparring right now is as a way I can put what I know or what I'm working on into practice. I just go in there, looking to impliment whatever tools or strategies I'm trying to hone at that time. I, of course, try to get the better of my partner but that's not always the first thing on my mind.

Should I try to make the sparring more competitive?

As for the intensity and contact level, I feel like it was pretty good. A lot of it was full contact; albeit we didn't try to finish each other. Like when someone would get hurt, the other guy would ease up on the contact or disengage for a few seconds. But the sparring was serious, in the physical sense.

Agreed on the point about sparring. When you're trying to prepare for competition, you need to really bring the intensity and keep the pace as high as you can possibly manage. Think about how much intensity the most aggressive bad ass opponent is going to bring and make sure you try to go beyond that in every aspect of your training. The best sparring to get you prepared for a fight is sparring with someone who will be totally unforgiving, going blow for blow with you, and never letting up. You need to be able to stay 100% competitive from bell to bell, every single round. Even when I' don't have a fight coming up, I always attempt to have double the work output as my sparring partner so I can be prepared to bring the fight as much as I need to when I fight.

Another important factor, maybe even more important if you feel like fighting in front of a crowd is the source of your problems, is how focused you're being when you train. When you hit the bag, do you ever let your eyes drift away from the bag? Is your sparring casual enough to where you can get away with looking away from your sparring partner or let your mind drift even for a split second? You have to really make sure you're constantly on the ball and totally 100% focused 100% of the time.

As a novice fighter, evasive/counter fighting strategy is going to be hard to pull off because being in the ring is still too scary/exciting for you to properly relax. Relaxation in the ring is really only something that comes with experience fighting, so strategically it's best until you reach that point to just go for high aggression, explosiveness and just plain out working your opponent.

Other than building your confidence through the right kind of training and experience in the ring, there isn't much you can do to improve your ability to relax and do your thing. After a while you get to a point where you just know yourself and know how you fight and fighting just becomes like a reflex. Right now your reflex is to panic or lose focus and swing for the fences, which just means you need more experience being in the right sort of high intensity, competitive mindset. As you get more experience fighting, you start to understand better how you need to train to make sure that when you fight is as much like when you train as possible.

How serious should I take them? (I'm not trying to be a smart aleck or anything, but that kind of went over my head.) The way I see sparring right now is as a way I can put what I know or what I'm working on into practice. I just go in there, looking to impliment whatever tools or strategies I'm trying to hone at that time. I, of course, try to get the better of my partner but that's not always the first thing on my mind.

Should I try to make the sparring more competitive?

As for the intensity and contact level, I feel like it was pretty good. A lot of it was full contact; albeit we didn't try to finish each other. Like when someone would get hurt, the other guy would ease up on the contact or disengage for a few seconds. But the sparring was serious, in the physical sense.

How fast do you think the pace of your sparring is? Are there periods of 2-3 seconds or longer where neither person is throwing a strike? Hitting hard and going full contact, in my opinion, is somewhat besides the point. How competitively are you going blow for blow with each other? If one throws two shots, does the other person IMMEDIATELY come back with 4 more? Are you throwing a combination, and then stepping back like you're done, or are you staying on each other, never giving each other room to breath or regain their composure?

I know it's easy to think you're sparring at fight level because you're hurting each other and getting tired, but the important part is really how unrelenting you're being with each other. When I'm sparring and I have a fight coming up I try as best I can to be constantly attacking from bell to bell.

I have no idea how your sparring sessions go, so don't take this as a criticism, I just want to make sure you understand what's expected of fight intensity level sparring and training.

How fast do you think the pace of your sparring is? Are there periods of 2-3 seconds or longer where neither person is throwing a strike? Hitting hard and going full contact, in my opinion, is somewhat besides the point. How competitively are you going blow for blow with each other? If one throws two shots, does the other person IMMEDIATELY come back with 4 more? Are you throwing a combination, and then stepping back like you're done, or are you staying on each other, never giving each other room to breath or regain their composure?

I know it's easy to think you're sparring at fight level because you're hurting each other and getting tired, but the important part is really how unrelenting you're being with each other. When I'm sparring and I have a fight coming up I try as best I can to be constantly attacking from bell to bell.

I have no idea how your sparring sessions go, so don't take this as a criticism, I just want to make sure you understand what's expected of fight intensity level sparring and training.

Hmm... I really hadn't thought of it this way, and I see your point. My sparring isn't quite at the level that it needs to be. Going down the checklist you gave me... Yes, against some there are 2-3 second intervals of inactivity. Blow-for-blow is pretty good; it's pretty hard for either person to throw a combo without getting hit as well. I, myself, tend to disengage after a combination, since that's how I fight best. Most of my partners stay in and keep hitting if I can't get away.

So yeah, I guess I need to come back with a new approach. I'll try to be on the offensive as much as humanly possible and get a higher rate of activity going.

EDIT:

And yeah I do have a tendency to drift when I hit the bag. There are occassions when I drift in sparring too, but I get pounded for it.

I'm glad you see what I mean :)

Taking your time and knowing when to attack are definitely great skills to have and to work, and I don't exactly mean you should always be throwing a kick or punch every second. Basically what I mean is that you should be putting constant pressure on your opponent, whether it be striking or maneuvering offensively to set up your opponent. You just want to make sure that you're setting the pace and never letting your opponent dictate the fight in any way. If you're going to finish a combo, you then should be setting up a trap for them to move into your next combo.

You still want to be strategic and not just charge forward, you just want to be constant and unrelenting in the implementing of your strategy.

When I spar under the guidance of my boxing coach, whenever I'm not doing something to make my next attack he yells "You takin' pictures?"

A lot of this will be redundant with the PM I sent you earlier, but I want to post some of this in public to get the perspective of other posters.

First off, the fight was not "disasterous". Yes you were wild at times, and yes you didn't look as slick as you do in sparring, but you did not lose the fight by any stretch.

That said, you are unusually relaxed during sparring. You have been doing it a long, long time. I think the fact that you were trained as a little kid by your dad is important. Sparring is not "pressure" for you in the same way that it is for other fighters of your experience level. You dad is a skilled dude, and (from what I can tell) a pretty stand-up kinda guy. I'm sure you have a deep, ingrained sense of security and safety when sparring that comes from your experience growing up sparring him. This is a huge asset, but has a hidden downside in the sense that "fight or flight" is going to be a very unfamiliar brain state when you are trying to apply your skills.

Everyone gets stage fright. Everyone. This applies just as much at Kareoke night as it does at fight night. People get brain-lock. I'm going to make two suggestions. One is pretty reasonable, and one is likely to get me flack. Firstly, you have to spar people who you are at least a little afraid of. Maybe that's somone in your gym (PR?) or maybe it requires a stranger. Try paying a walk in fee at Sityodtong and sparring there. Theat might get your nerves going.

Secondly, watch that tape, and the tape of that SanDa fight you lost and analyse your "fight or flight" style. This is your survival mode style until you outgrow it. Adopt this style in sparring from time to time. Refine it. You are fighting MMA guys, Thaiboxers and SanDa guys, not competitive boxers. The price you will pay in the ring for standing in front of your opponent and loading up your punches is not as great. If you're going to lapse into this mode sometimes, make sure your haymakers are landing; Make sure you have a workable defense (blocking/parrying/covering) when your footwork disappears. In short, force yourself to fight in that mode enough to make it familiar. Like it or not, it is your default "under pressure" style for the time being. Make it work for you until you are able to avoid this state of mind when "crunch time" comes.

I enjoy watching you fight. You are not falling apart as much as you feel you are. When you are an old man, you will look back and say "Of all my awards I am most proud of the 'Golden Rochambo' award I got that night"

Edit: I'm adding this after reading Scrapper's excellent post (below). His point about focussing on a few uncomplicated techniques is a great one, and so I'm going to ammend my admittedly odd suggestion of 'refining' your 'wild' mode to saay that you should go the extra step of making a very few uncomplicated improvements to that 'style'. Think about the top 2 or 3 (or 1!) things you would change about it (ie: 1-2 instead of Haymaker) and practice making the substitution. In competition, make that your goal, to throw a 1-2 (or whatever) each time you would throw a haymaker, and let the rest take care of itself.

After my disastrous first MMA fight (the bell rang, I dropped my hands and stared stupidly into a straight left that literally broke my face) I completely re-vamped my fight prep.

For my second fight, I sparred only with the pros and made myself really attack them. Naturally, they responded to my increased intensity with their own increase. Knowing I was pushing my luck with guys who could kill me brought me closer to the stress level I needed to get comfortable with.

Secondly, I adjusted the priority of things I trained. I focused more on the ultra-basic stuff; and what to do when you are in a bad spot. If a technique had more than three steps, I got rid of it. Which is not to say that I couldn't execute it, I just knew that until I had some experience under my belt, I needed to focus on the nuts and bolts. I could get fancy when I had better ring sense.

It made sense to me because I remember when I first started competing in judo, I got so nervous I froze up and got creamed. The next time I went out, I told myself over and over again that I was going to land just one throw (sode makikomi) and focus on nothing else. Literally, I did not even care about winning, I just promised myself I would get that one throw no matter what. It worked. I forgot about the crowd, and just tried like hell for the damn throw. I am proud to say I went 85 matches before I lost again after that day.

The point is, you have got to do two things at the same time:
-Get more ring experience. There is no substitute for it. End of story.

-Focus on the small things you CAN handle right now, and block out the bigger event. Pick one or two things you simply MUST do your next time out and try to ignore other distractions.


At least, this is what worked for me. YMMV