C.I.A Program

2006-01-22T22:50:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

All my Blogs hav moved to my NEW membership site at www.mymalife.com See you there!

2005-12-07T02:58:00.000-08:00

Why You Cannot Be Athelete & Coach

I was chatting to Chris Haueter (Machado BJJ Black Belt) while he was here in South Africa. He brought up an important point,

“That the coach cannot be the athlete and the athlete cannot be the coach”.

I will elaborate more here on what the discussion further entailed. As coaches we often spend so much time coaching other people that we let our own training slide. It is equally difficult at times for us to motivate ourselves to train and spend time on our own personal game.
There is a very different mind-set when you are the student. Chris was saying that when he goes to one of his peers schools and just falls in as one of the students he really enjoys the feeling and being pushed. Even more so he cannot cheat himself in training. When you are the coach you know exactly when you are going to call time and you make all the decisions on what will be worked on next. This also means that if you are attempting to get your own training in while working with your students you are susceptible to cheating by making rounds shorter when you feel tired or purposely avoiding training specifics of your game that may be your weakness. When you train with someone who is coaching you, you cannot do this, plus you never know when the round is going to end or what is coming next. This is where you change from being a coach to becoming the athlete.

I feel all coaches should go and train in their peer's gyms. But unfortunately because of ego and over inflated self-importance many wont. It is almost as if it is embarrassing to say that they still have a coach or to mention who got them to this point. They simply would like every one of their students to presume or believe that everything they coach they came up with themselves! The result many aspects of their game suffer. The other pitfall is that many coaches measure themselves on how well they do against their own students, if they are beating them all the time, they simply believe that they must be good. This is often far form the truth. What I find in these cases is that the coach has become stuck in his own bubble, thinking that since students continue to join-up and that he can handle most that walk in the door that there is very little left for him to learn. The end result really is that there is no one to help him improve his weaknesses and overall game, so his weaknesses become that of his students as well. It is a vicious cycle.

When you train with your peers and set your ego aside you begin to learn. Chris was watching me coach a BJJ private a couple of weeks ago. He commented afterwards that it was really awesome to watch me coach as he found himself saying, “I coach that but not in that way”. As a Black Belt and someone who has been in the game for longer than most I found it very humbling for him to say to me that he learnt allot from me coaching. I found the same thing happened when watching him coach. Although I knew the material been taught like the back of my hand, I found useful tips and progression of coaching that material that I otherwise would never had realized had I not put myself in the position as the athlete and not the coach for once.

On a similar vein, Coaches also fall into the trap of thinking that seen that they can now give the person who coached them game, why should they still train with that person? This is the type of mentality that will make your life in MA very short indeed. Even though I can beat one of my coaches hands down does not mean that I cannot continuously learn from him and in fact I should. That person is often the one that brought me from nothing to something, he has a better understanding of my strengths and weaknesses than anyone, he also wont be afraid to tell me the truth and what needs to be work on. Something your student obviously won't ever do.

Chris echoed this sentiment, as do I that we often find that once a person develops a game and moves out and begins to coach on their own they stop training with their original coach or at the very least it becomes irregular. If these guys would only realize the importance of being the athlete and how being that athlete they continue to grow. Unfortunately for many they either don't realize this or they purposely avoid it- because of ego and perceived self-importance many stop growing the minute they move out.

To conclude Chris had a wonderful analogy for this. He equated it to a Lions Pride. When food is scarce (People still requiring the knowledge) then the male Lions stick together. Once that is no longer the case (People feel they have acquired enough knowledge) they move off to create their own territories and find their own Lionesses (Their gym, to make their mark). They still remain friendly to the head Lion in case one day the climate changes and food becomes scarce (Essentially as long as it suits their needs and is on their terms). So the Head Lion, the one who started the pride, the one who nurtured the baby male Lion cubs to adulthood, who taught them how to survive and yes how to create their own territory, becomes 'prostituted' and 'used' for self-centered gain from those he gave the opportunity to become independent, to bring about their own territory and to make their mark. This is perfectly fine in the bush where survival of the fittest reigns supreme; unfortunately many coaches still think they are Neanderthals!

Cheers,

Rodney King
info@alivenessnow.com

2005-09-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

Is You Coach Destroying Your Confidence?

“Confidence is an unconditional state in which you simply possess an unwavering state of mind that needs no reference point. There is no room for doubt; even the question of doubt does not occur…This unconditional confidence contain gentleness, because the notion of fear does not arise; sturdiness, because in the state of confidence there is ever-present resourcefulness; and joy, because trusting in the heart brings a greater sense of humor. This confidence can manifest as majesty, elegance, and richness in a person’s life.”

- Venerable Chogyam Trungpa,
Shambhala: The Sacred Path Of The Warrior

Above is one of the best descriptions of confidence I have ever read. Confidence in Mixed Martial Arts is very important; it can essentially make or break your ability to effectively continue your training, night in and night out.

Unfortunately too often it is not your fault that your confidence never reaches it’s full potential. I have seen coaches time and time again destroy their athlete’s confidence by not understanding how to build it and the fragility of this often-elusive quality. I myself have been a culprit of this in the past, simply because my own agenda, my own fears where more important that the individual training with me. Now that I am no longer a ‘young punk’ coach, I understand this!

Sparring is probably the main culprit for a loss of confidence in athletes. Many times the coach is not on top of what is going on when his students are sparring, often allowing it to get out of hand and to escalate way beyond the athletes comfort zones. Not realizing that each athlete will develop at different rates, students are allowed to spar without specific instructions to take it easy or without specific outcomes that are to be achieved. What this type of environment allows is an open playing field for the bullies. These people who often carry the most fear in their hearts see this as an opportunity to dominate other people with their physical will. This is simply an attempt to avoid confronting the real reason they are there, their fear, so instead in an attempt to prove to themselves and everyone else that they are not, they knock people out. Coaches themselves are huge culprits in this respect, especially when it may seem that one of their students may be getting the better of them. It is not uncommon for many coaches to literally beat their students up in order to keep them in their place and also ensuring that they know who the top dog is.

This day in and day out of uncontrolled sparring, unnecessary beatings and sparring with out direction destroys athlete’s confidence. What every student needs to know is that confidence and the increasing there of, are directly related to past performances. If your memory of past performances are sparring sessions that you felt you where totally unprepared to handle then your confidence will drop, you will begin to doubt your future in the sport and you will begin to find excuses to quit. This environment also makes it difficult to ask questions, to raise concerns, and if you do you are seen as a wimp by the rest!

Imagine if you could come into class every night and spar, never getting hurt intentionally, where every match is a learning experience and every sparring night has an end goal. Added to this your coach is on top of the pulse of the class, publicly reprimanding anyone who gets out of hand and reinforcing positive affirmations for good technique over using just attributes!

This is something I try to do in every session with my guys. I have learnt from past experiences and I know that when I spared my students to knockout ‘just because’ or I allowed other students to do the same, we where all essentially afraid. Today I start every sparring session off with a reminder, “If after I have asked you to not hit hard, work good technique and have respect for the ability of the opponent you face, including lowering your level to his if need be- and you still find it necessary to hit hard or you want to hurt the person in front of you- then you are afraid, because only people who are afraid find it necessary to do that”

Rodney King2005

Rodney king is a full time professional Mixed Martial Arts and Boxing Coach. For more information on training with Rodney e-mail him at info@alivenessnow.com or call him on 27-83-757-8592 or check out his web site at www.rodneyking.tv

2005-09-28T10:06:00.000-07:00

Take ACTion!

When you train in Mixed Martial Arts you will often be faced with roadblocks. For most of us the challenges sometimes seem insurmountable and we are not always sure how to overcome them. We make excuses for our inability to get past these obstacles or we shift the responsibility and blame to someone else. This often falls upon the coach! As an athlete no matter if you are just a ‘weekend warrior’ putting only a few hours of training in a week or a pro-am fighter, the first thing you need to realize is that your coach is not responsible for your performance, you are!

If there is an aspect in training that seems to difficult to overcome such as a technique or strategy that you keep making mistakes on or you are struggling with your conditioning and mental game then you and only you must accept responsibility to overcome these roadblocks.

You can do this by first keying in to a simple formula, essentially you need to A.C.T.

1. ACCEPT
Like it or not, and most of the time you wont, you need simply to accept your current situation. I hear athletes who continuously complain about the difficulties they are having in training, in fact they complain so much at times that the wasted time spent on complaining could have more than likely resulted in a solution being found.

It serves no purpose to complain about difficulties you may be having, simply accept that you are and then….

2. CREATE
You need to create the desired state required to overcome the obstacles you are facing. Now that you have accepted your current situation you need to create a way to overcome it. Start of by writing down what the desired result you are seeking should look like, then work backwards from there listing all the processes that would be required to accomplish this outcome. If you don’t know what those processes should be sit down with someone who knows, possibly your coach. Once you have that outlined begin to….

3. TAKE action!
You take action by focusing on each process incrementally, one step at a time. This whole process may seem simple but you will be amazed to find out how many people who when faced with an obstacle simply just give up because they cannot get it right the first time. Nothing of value comes easy- you have to work to achieve it. If you set out action steps to get there and you focus on achieving each one in succession, without trying to take shortcuts, then you will arrive at your destination before you know it.

ACT Today!

Rodney King2005

Rodney is a certified Mental Game Coaching Professional with PeakSports in the USA. For more information, including consultation in mental game coaching for your martial arts training contact Rodney at info@alivenessnow.com or call him on 27-83-757-8592 or check out his web site at www.rodneyking.tv

2005-08-27T23:45:00.000-07:00

Focusing On The Process

Are you like many people that are focused constantly on winning and seeing results? In today’s world people care too much about winning and loosing. Too often people project themselves forward to their final destination before even making the journey to get there. Simply this means anticipating victory (or loss) before you have even taken part in the event.

When you take the focus away from winning (Or the possibility of loosing) and shift to focusing on the process you remove your self from paying attention to end results of your actions. When you focus only on end results you are subject to becoming caught up in self-doubt, fear and anxiety. This will lead to worry about consequences of your performance! These fears and anxieties make it impossible for you to perform at your best. Performing at your best requires you to remain centered and to not focus on the end results you want. When you focus only on winning-fear, anxiety and hesitation will set in and you will not be able to play free of these emotional roadblocks that invariably hold you back.

Am I saying that you should not want to win? Not at all, but do we really need to focus on that? We all know we want to win and we all know we don’t want to loose. But to focus only on winning before you have actually ‘won’ causes an expectation. When this expectation of winning does not seem to come true you will begin to doubt your ability to get back on track. When you doubt yourself you are unable to focus on the process and now your only thoughts are focused on trying not too loose. All of these are task irrelevant cues and have little to do with the ‘subject’ at hand. This subject is the process and getting back on track is focusing on that process!

Great performances are achieved when one does not focus on the future or past, but rather focusing on the here and now. In that here and now, the present moment, the only thing you should be focusing on are the processes this means one move at a time and one play at a time. In order to do this you require confidence in your ability and equally important is knowing exactly what is required in order to make a certain play work. These are called task relevant cues. In my sport of Mixed Martial Arts I know when sparring that there are four aspects that I am focusing on at any given time. These are balance, defense, structural tightness and my conditioning. When I feel that I am not doing to well in a sparring match my focus turns to the process, this process for me is one of the aspects I have listed above. “Am I not doing well because I am out of balance”, “Am I not keeping everything structurally tight”. By focusing on the process instead of the end result of winning I am able to keep calm and centered under fire.

If for example I found myself loosing (This in itself is subjective, because often you are doing just fine, but your mind is telling you otherwise) if I shift my focus to just making the victory happen I am probably going to loose severely. The more I make mistakes and the more I try to fix them by getting anxious and saying things to myself such as, “I am loosing, I have to win this match, “if I don’t what are people going to say”, “I am going to embarrass myself if I loose this match, I have to finish this now with a knockout”. The more I think like this, the more I get off track, become distracted and remove my focus from the process. This will cause me to make forced errors, to force an outcome before working all the steps to get there. A great example of this is when you see a person sparring and initially he is doing quit well. At some point during the match the tables turn in favor of his opponent or his opponent catches him with a solid punch. Immediately he becomes angry this makes him loose his game plan and he tries to retaliate with everything he has often with intense anger and frustration. When you look again he has either burnt himself out and cannot continue because he is so tired or he inevitably gets knocked out.

Instead what he should have done was remain calm and focused on his task relevant cues, the aspects that make his game work. It is these aspects, the process that affords you the victory. I have been in these situations countless times where someone is ‘out boxing’ me and the temptation to allow the anger to take over and the frustration, or self-doubt is always very strong. At that moment I have to ‘fight’ that temptation and remember to focus on the process, I know what I need to focus on to win and I never think of winning ever. Simply I go back to the process, “Why I am I doing badly”, “Why am I getting caught”. I check to see which task relevant cue I am not on top of “Is it my balance? “ Is my structure is too loose?” “Am I getting cocky by dropping my hands” and so forth. I re-focus my attention on the process, on my task relevant cues and remove my attention from the outcome or what’s gone before. When this happens I enter the zone- and the game unfolds simply as it was intended to be!

Rodney “Chico” King Sep 05’

Rodney King is a certified Mental Games Coaching Professional with PeakSports in the USA. If you would like to find out about mental game coaching for your martial arts or boxing training e-mail him at info@alivenessnow.com