Hey...
Your definitely getting great advice here from the posts already, and I would implement it if i were you. But so far its all on physical preperation. I admire your discipline with the training program your doing and still being in school, but it would be a major error to neglect the mental preparation. I notice your training doesn't involve visualisation, meditation, hypnosis, NLP, All great tools for any fighter.
So here's a little something to get you started with the mental prep.
It's an article I wrote for a mag on "tapping into fear"
Let me know how you get on, and if you like it check out * <a href="http://www.demandvictory.com/">
http://www.demandvictory.com</a> for more
Cheers, Brian.
Fear as a friend - Exactly how to “Tap into fear” by Brian Masters
In keeping with the
http://www.demandvictory.com promise… Here is a step by step process, with no BS, for tapping into your fear, no jargon, no psychobabble, all tried and tested.
Saying to a fighter “Tap into your fear” may seem like good advice but it’s exactly like telling a sprinter “Run faster than everyone else”. Both pieces of advice are useless unless you know how!
1. The first step is to accept the fear is there, Don’t try to deny it or make it leave, take a deep breath or two and simply accept. Fighting against it fear make it worse. Like if I say to you, whatever you do, don’t think of a pink elephant. First thing you think of is a pink elephant. The more you try to not think of it the more you actually do think of it.
2. The next step is to choose a positive thought, like happiness for example. Now, strange as this might seem, just try it, I promise it works. Choose a reason to be happy (or whatever positive thought you had) about being fearful. As in, what are the reasons to be happy about feeling fear? The first one’s that spring to my mind are: Firstly you should feel happy about being fearful because at least it means you are alive! That’s always good. Then you feel happy about being fearful because it means your brain and body are functioning normally, you would probably be a danger to yourself and others if you never felt fear and it would also probably mean you were insane if you never felt fear. What other reasons do you come up with for being happy about being fearful?
3. Next, take it one step further. Choose another positive state of mind or thought. We’ll use the example of ecstatic here. Then think of a few reasons you are ecstatic about being happy about being fearful. EG: you’re ecstatic about being happy because it means you have a level of control over the fear now, your ecstatic about being happy, about being happy fearful because now you can just get on with the fight and have the extra energy for the fight! You could keep going here. Like thinking of reasons to be euphoric about being ecstatic about being happy about being fearful, the limits are endless!
4. My personal favourite step. Go back and try to be fearful without any of the other positive states of mind coming into your head. You’ll find it impossible to hold the fear in your mind without it being changed, even slightly, by the positive thoughts. And as we said at the start, the more you try to resist the positive thoughts or deny they are there, the stronger they will become.
Just like any other part of your training, the more you practice it, the better you will become at it. Remember: Your mind is like a muscle and requires decent training to keep it at its strongest. If you don’t give your brain a workout every so often, you are killing it off slowly. So now you have a great work out, step by step nice and simple, so no more excuses!
Feel free to send me an email with any feedback, questions, comments etc… to
askbrianmasters@gmail.com and I’ll help you out with what I can.
Brian Masters is Not responsible for effects of this information. It is strictly for entertainment purposes only, as in this is not medical advice. This is just me sharing the story about what worked for me.
Copyright © 2009 Brian Masters,
http://www.demandvictory.com