Why You Choke In Competition (And How To Fix It)

0:00It's Q&A episode. Welcome. You guys are super fucking lucky because today we got raspberry ape joining us to jump in on answering your questions If you want to leave us a question, you got a bulletproof of BJJ.com hit the podcast tab record us something We love it. We get to connect with you guys here your voices and please tell us where you're from because sometimes we fucking Pine over this for a while. It's really nice to know first question coming in today from Arde Adoa What's going? Kia ora men Arde Adoa here from New Zealand. I am a bluebouts and I'm wanting to ask about Focusing strategies and what strategies You guys used as competitors to help yourself focus and shots composition in soon and Prepared for Let's ask it hand being the match. I've seen very mixed results in competition Half wins half losses half stops half decisions and so I think that

1:01most of my worst performances I was thinking too much and my action times were way too slow and Other times when I was performing well, I don't even know what the fuck happened. Oh shit I know if you can swear but Yeah, but question is How do you guys focus in composition or even in the training room and what advice would you have for young athletes Trying to lock it. Just I appreciate it Cool, shall I jump on that? Yeah, please. Okay, so I'll try and dilute relatively quickly something that I was doing a lot whilst I was sort of in my competitive Serious competitive days. I work with a sports psychologist um Prior, I thought that sports psychologist for people who were pussies and That that that was for people who had problems that they needed to sort out and of course There was a very immature and incorrect opinion of course you go to a strength conditioning coach Not because you're weak, but because you want to get stronger and you go to a sports psychologist

2:04Not because you're mentally weak, but because you want to become mentally stronger So I understood I started to understand the importance of that I started working with a sports psychologist And he taught me a technique we did some visualization stuff and I'll try and I'm not sure how practical this Will be but it will give you an idea of something maybe to look into Which is we essentially made a Conditioning cue For preparation for competition. So this involves sessions of visualizing Watching myself compete to be the ideal competitor that I wanted to do how I walk how I step on the mat And when you're visualizing you want to be very vivid with it. You can smell that nasty sweaty smell You can hear the the the the audience or the crowd shouting in the back You can feel those horrible neon lights the feel of the mat underneath your feet all of that and then watching yourself um, you know kickass basically and and act exactly how you want to act and be confident and

3:04You know win and how you act when you win and then you can visualize not just looking from a third person But actually in the first person and then connecting that to a physical Action and a keyword in your head So that can be whatever the action is the whatever the word is in your head That's a personal thing up to you and also I would visualize stepping into an imaginary circle on the ground Where like all of those things that confidence the strength the power the Chris technique that no nerves all of that stuff. I could step into that I could close my eyes. I could do my action. I could say my word and then boom. I'm stepping into that person and I worked on that for a while and for me it's This was a very very powerful technique where essentially And this this was important because when I was competing at high there was very very serious about competing and The intensity that you need to compete at a high level Is not conducive for life you can't be that professional athlete

4:05When you're at a dinner with your friends or family you can't be that professional athlete when you're sitting in traffic Because it's too intense and that's where you see professional athletes um With drug problems we've getting into fights, you know having having serious issues due to that intensity So what I was able to do by developing these techniques was to separate my competition Self from my rest of the life self you had Daniel Strauss and you had the raspberry ape Their raspberry ape chills out in the back seat all the time until it's time to perform And at that point we pull over I go into the back seat they go into the driver seat and then I can just let him do his thing And that meant that I could rock up to the competition I would fall asleep in the stands beforehand I am completely relaxed because I have the confidence knowing that half an hour before I compete I'm just going to change roles the raspberry ape steps in and he can do his thing So Not a huge amount necessarily a not a complete practical framework for developing that but an idea of the sort of stuff that you can do

5:09To really enhance that psychological advantage That's awesome. That's fucking cool. I am I like to step into the arena and I take out a big fucking bow and arrow Fun and fucking do this. Yeah, I'll show it to you guys someday If I get to be in the zone No, I love that. I'm just gonna offer very quickly because I know we're sure on time Look, I didn't Where you know two different people here, right? I competed at some local competitions up until brown belt But I always found that just for me Dealing with the nerves of competition. I liked to just get out there and be friendly and fucking see friends And so I found socializing and almost trying to distract myself from the gravity of the thing allowed me to Bring my best competition when I tried the other thing And it could just be that I didn't try it enough. I'll do it You know to a focused enough to gray, but when I tried to be really sort of Headstrong about what I was doing. It just wasn't me And so I just offer that as an alternative take. Yeah

6:12Yeah, and I think one of the hardest things to manage is how Psychologically aroused you are like yes, am I too hot or am I on the hunt doing so it's different for different people I'm a bit of a hot monster like I need to get Almost red line and then pull it back a little bit Whereas for some people that's not the way to go So for me the thing that helped me I work with a sports psychologist from when I did Taikwondo was knowing how close you are to being Completely two-site. Yeah, and then you're one getting yourself there But then to pulling yourself back enough to not be kind of out of control And so for me I had one or two things I would do there to Get myself appropriately psyched, but then keep myself inside of that so I could perform properly Yeah, but there it is Sick question I did I cut a broken. Thank you Next one coming in from Jen I haven't been excited about wearing a key for some time However recently partnering with our chemical fight where and I can tell you their keys feel great

7:12The beauty of wearing a hemp key is that they are strong They're going to last the test of time their high quality, but they're light and I would go to say That you couldn't get that kind of lightness in a cotton key and so the beauty of that is especially here in Australia Where it's really hot during the summer having a lightweight key that's strong is an absolute godsend My big fan of our chemical and also the beautiful part of it is is that it's a very environmental friendly Fabric to be using rather than cotton, which is energy intensive So if you want to get your hands on some our chemical fight where gear you should go check it out at alchemical.com.au And if you use the code bulletproof15 you'll get 15% off your purchase Hey guys Jen from Oregon in the United States. Love your show. Um I recently received a diagnosis of mild to moderate vertebral artery dissection Which I am Quite confident happened during a failed triangle attempt

8:17Attempt on me obviously More like a face smash Uh I'm going to be off the mats for probably two to three months um, you know on blood thinners to prevent clotting Uh My question is when I have doctor approval To start movement again what Neck strengthening exercises to recommend or just movement in general um Probably will start Doing my own kind of mat drills before I you know roll with anyone my husband as a upper bubble purple belt So I'll be safe to roll with him as well um after I feel comfortable But yeah just looking for you know general advice movement advice strengthening advice mental Health advice um yeah Love you guys. Thank you so much

9:18Jerry what a legend please Dan. Yeah, firstly. I'm glad to hear that you're okay Um, that's uh, that's a very nasty injury and uh, hopefully all is all right You know, I'm not going to give any advice on on neck injuries on exercises to be honest I give advice for injury stuff if it's something that I am confident about This is something that I'm not confident about. I'm not a doctor So I stay very clear just to be on the safe side. I don't want to give anyone some bad advice there So maybe you have a maybe you have a little bit more uh, but what I will say I mean This will come out I assume after the first episode a good time to listen to that first episode and talk about injuries And look three months is nothing in the grand scheme of things make sure that you're healthy make sure that you're safe And uh and be careful who you're training with and it's one of those things that I I'm aware is a risk and judges So you don't hear it too much, but But yeah, you know in the meantime you can it's a good chance to work on other things if you're able to work out and strengthen other areas Watch some tape go the class and just hang out the two or three months Hopefully we'll fly by pretty fast But if Either if you guys have any advice on practical neck exercises. That's another story

10:22I've I've bulged a couple of discs in my neck before and that obviously not as serious as what you've experienced But um it did disable me pretty hard um two things two things I want to just get to here is one in your return to training Just no triangles right no next stuff like you've got to be super Open with your training partners. Just be like this is no go You know like it doesn't matter even you know It's so tough because you can't always control who you're always but you've just got to let people know that up until the point that you're really confident and you've had that clearance There can be nothing around the neck and the second thing I'd say on the neck rehab is A lot of stuff with neck rehab is movement based and I'd say that the thing that is neglected is actually Isometric strengths is just your ability to Stabilize your head in different positions um And that's really neglected um so they're going to get you to do a variety of things to strengthen your neck But actually one of the most important things you can do is just get all the muscles around your neck You're up a back to keep your spine in alignment and and just get good at that again

11:28And so yeah, hopefully you're consulting a physio But I would encourage you to find a way to get that into your rehab diet Yeah, I think covered it all best deluxe gen Next one coming in from Gray Hey guys, this is Gray from Atlanta Georgia I'm a 64-year-old blue belt about to get my purple belt Michael professor says Double gold pants winner who yeah Hey, what is the deal with all of this ecological bullshit? I don't understand this stuff. It's just positional sparring and they keep trying to rename everything It's a bunch of crap. What do you guys think? See ya Potate oh fucking legend Can I can I just offer something here please we had Greg Soutas on the podcast. Okay. Really appreciate it the chat lovely boat I I I did put something to him which was

12:29Basically what Gray just said and he wasn't able really to tell me that it's any different from our positional sparring Well, he just said you he said that the difference is coaches are using tools of ecological Gigi2 But they don't understand what tool they're using and when and I'm like that's that's that's fair that's fair. So what you're saying is You've gigged out on it harder But it's not that it's not present in a conventional form of Gigi2 And I think that this is the confusing part for maybe for Gray is like aren't we kind of already fucking with a bit of this And what do you have do you have a look at take on ecological if you talked on this before the ecological dynamics is not a training methodology It's a It's not a training methodology. It's a It's a philosophy of how we learn um You know constraint-led approach would be then sort of the result based on the understanding of ecological dynamics Uh the idea is that you learn things by doing them not really by being shown them and that's something that I have believed in for a very long time

13:37um Live is important I think that positional sparring differs from A constraint-led a purely constraint-led approach in that you are Instead of you know positional sparring is we start from side control We start from mount we start from the back and you just go or okay, you're looking to sweep or submit I think where we're moving towards and I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's a good thing Is that we're being much more specific in the tasks and outcomes and wing criteria of these specific sparring rounds. So yes It is specific sparring if you want to it is a type of sparring that is specific But it does not resemble the stuff that most gyms are traditionally teaching And I think more importantly those people that are with a more traditional approach They're spending 45 minutes drilling techniques against non-resistant opponents followed by 25 minutes of sparring Specifically in another 50 minutes of free rounds That's different to a constraint-led approach or ecological dynamic framework Where you are doing essentially zero-resistant or very often zero

14:39Drilling against unresistant opponents. So there is a difference there Yeah, and also if you go a little bit deeper on it and it's not too hard to sort of information out there I would recommend even though you're already the double gold champ Um Do a bit of reading because it actually starts to talk a little bit more about perception and how we understand How we process information. So it does get kind of technical in a way from the outside It looks like the same thing But if you do your own research you will find there is a bit of nuance there So I would recommend to dig a bit deeper the truth is out there Great. Thank you shout out Atlanta Georgia guys. Thanks for your questions go to the website leave us one for the next question Thank you Dan for being in the studio very much about me guys. Yes, absolutely pleasure. See you guys in the next one