powerDOJO

Category: Mindset

  • Rocci’s On A Roll!

    Rocci Williams first started training using my programs in 2009. I did an interview with him on this site over a year ago. He’s still going strong and has been fighting regularly.

    Here’s an email he sent me on May 3, 2011 about his most recent fight that has some interesting MENTAL TRAINING tidbits in it:

    “I won my fight how I said I would, I wrote it down – it went like this. he threw a couple of jabs of course I moved then I think as he threw the rear kick I tagged him a little from then he wiped his nose, i knew then he didnt like to get hit (wrong sport gumbo) I knew what was comming – he shot I stuffed it and put him on his back from here I got the crucifix landed one elbow, he said to me that he had enough (sorry dude, your in the wrong sport) so i proceeded with some more elbows and knocked him out – 64 seconds in the first ohhh yeah!! my celebration was longer lol.

    Not once did I question my fitness, and I really really trained my arse off for this one, again I have to thank you for that, but also to say thanks for recommending the Renegade Mindset on your site cos these guys have given me that killer confidence, I now actually love to fight. every opportunity I was putting the ear phones in and just taking all that mindset in.

    next fight is set for September, sort my niggles out and do a little strength training
    thanks again

    Rocci”

    Eric: Awesome, thanks for sharing Rocci. Lots of golden lessons shared on how to mentally prepare for a fight.

    If you want to develop the KILLER CONFIDENCE too, I suggest you check out the Renegade Mindset for Fighters program that Rocci swears by.

    It’ll help minimize your pre-fight nerves and allow you to show your skills. Highly recommended for any fighters who want to have their best performances in the cage:

    ==> http://ericwongmma.com/renegade-mindset/

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  • Jon Jones’ Most POWERFUL Weapon

    Jon Jones absolutely dominated the legend Mauricio Shogun Rua and no one is more deserving of holding the UFC Light Heavyweight belt than he.

    Not only did he totally dominate Rua and pretty much everyone else he’s faced inside the Octagon, he does so with creativity.

    For a quick recap of some of Bones’ career highlights, check this vid and make sure your jaw doesn’t fall off your face:

    Jones’ rise in mixed martial arts has been nothing short of meteoric.

    Here are a few reasons, in no particular order, why Jones has gotten SO good SO fast and is the youngest man to ever win a UFC belt…

    His Body Shape and Size (anthropometrics for you biology nerds)

    Jones is 6’4″ tall and has ridiculously long arms and legs and broad shoulders, making him a physical freak in the LHW division.

    You can’t train these factors and Jones’ has been blessed with a great physical make-up no doubt.

    Don’t think for a minute though that body shape and size are the key.

    We’ve seen guys with similar body’s before, guys like Kendall Grove.

    So physicality is useless without…

    Endurance, Strength, Power, Co-ordination, Agility,
    Quickness, Speed and Balance     (the 7 Biomotor Abilities)

    I first learned of the biomotor abilities through Tudor Bompa’s book Periodization, then took the concept further through my study of Paul Chek’s material in his Advanced Program Design course.

    Basically, you can rate a sport’s requirements of each of the abilities listed above and then develop your training program accordingly.

    The thing is, with MMA, it pretty much requires relatively high levels of each biomotor ability, making the training program quite complex since it has to balance the development of each of these (sometimes competing) abilities.

    For example, a marathon runner is one of the highest expressions of endurance, so an MMA fighter doesn’t need or want to be at that level, whereas powerlifting is the ultimate show of strength and likewise a fighter must be strong but doesn’t have to put up elite powerlifting totals.

    Trying to be both an elite marathon runner and powerlifter is literally impossible.

    So training and developing the abilities relative to the needs of MMA is key.

    Jones has got an amazing blend of all of these biomotor abilities as shown in his fights.

    Not only that, but it’s also…

    His Ability To Rapidly Learn New Skills

    I knew he was a wizard when I first heard that he learned skills from YouTube.

    But it’s one thing to learn a new technique from videos, it’s another thing to use it in the Octagon.

    As we’ve seen from his first couple of fights in the octagon to now, he’s been picking up and using new skills along the way.

    When he first fought in the UFC, he showed off his flashy spinning elbows and kicks vs. Gusmao and some brutal takedowns/slams vs. Bonnar.

    But now, he’s added new flashy moves, such as the Superman Lead Elbow and Leap Frog to Back vs. Bader.

    More importantly, he’s added a whole lotta substance to his flash, such as the vicious elbows from top position vs. Vera and Hamill, his submissions vs. Bader, Matyushenko and O’Brien and now his complete arsenal of weapons were on display vs. Shogun.

    Bottom line – the kid learns fast and he doesn’t stop learning.

    But you’ve come here to learn about Jon’s most powerful weapon.

    Ariel Helwani did an interview where I believe Jones himself reveals the key to his rapid rise.

    The whole interview is worth watching, but the ‘secret’ is at 2:39. Check it out:

    OK, now I have 2 questions for you:

    1. What do you think about this?
    2. What fight would you rather see, Jones vs. A. Silva or A. Silva vs. GSP?

    Leave your answers in the Comments section. GO!

  • 4 years, 1 big disappointment

    The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver juts finished up, and what a finish! There were so many lessons to be learned, but one story sticks out in my mind which I’ll get to in a sec…

    The men’s hockey team won gold in a nail-biter of a game that ended in overtime over a tough US squad…

    After the win, people were spilling out on the streets (I was one of them) to yell and act like a fool… Good times!

    But when all is said and done, there’s one story that I’ll remember forever…

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  • What’s Your ‘Sacrifice’?

    “The only question to ask yourself is, how much are you you willing to sacrifice to achieve this success?

    – Larry Flynt, Creator of Hustler Magazine”

    Yeah, I know that Larry Flynt may not be the most inspiring of sources for a quote, but his quote is relevant to what I want to talk about and it was one of the first that came up when I searched “success sacrifice quote” in Google.

    I’m writing this post after meeting with Joe, a mixed martial artist who wants to have his first MMA fight in April 2010.

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  • Your Newest Skill: Mental Training

    There’s a new skill in town, and it’s not a hidden form of karate or a secret indigenous-tribal martial art – it’s mental training. Actually, it’s not that new, it’s been around forever, especially for some of the more mainstream individual sports like golf and tennis.

    But now in MMA, some of the top guys are touting the benefits of keeping your mind in peak shape, guys like:

    mma-fighters

    So, to keep you guys on the CUTTING-EDGE, I did an interview with Bill Gladwell and Stephen Ladd, 2 guys who have a different approach to mental training than the traditional sports psychologists and have helped many MMA fighters be more confident, stay relaxed, and truly unleash their skills in a fight.

    Check out this interview and get some KILLER tips to improve your mental game:

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  • Why Being Different is Good

    About 2 weeks ago a buddy of mine talked to me asking if I wanted to play hockey in a ‘beer’ league once a week because his team needed a couple of players.
    baby-hockey1

    For those of you who weren’t born with a hockey stick in his hand like we are in Canada, a ‘beer’ league is simply an adult hockey league, where generally the focus is more on drinking beer after the game than playing hockey. And that beer is usually of the Molson or Labatt varieties.

    I thought about it for about 2 seconds and decided to get back on the ice and see how I was. It would be a good time, I haven’t played in 2 years and there were a bunch of guys I knew from high school on the team.

    Well our last game was last week and here’s what happened.

    I walked into the dressing room and started getting ready and 2 of my buddies from high school said something to the effect of, “Wong, you’re fucking ripped, are you on the Bruce Lee diet or something?”

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  • “I don’t give a crap!”

    If you don’t know who Brian Cain is and you’re a true MMA fan, you soon will. Brian is mixed-martial arts’ top sports psychologist, working with some of MMA’s best fighters including GSP, Rich Franklin, and Keith Jardine, to name a few.

    I recently spent over an hour on the phone interrogating Brian about how to become a black belt in the mental game. Here’s an excerpt of our conversation:

    Eric: So that’s letting guys – or that’s helping guys let their game happen. So I think that’s huge and for anybody listening today, I think taking those two points away is just gonna really, really help your game. So-

    Brian: I can give you a third one too I think Eric that ties right into both of those.

    Eric: Okay.

    Brian: What I call, “I don’t give a crap attitude.” And there’s two types of fighters out there. There’s two types of “I don’t give a crap attitudes.” And I can tell you that Randy Couture has the right type of “I don’t give a crap attitude” but unfortunately there’s a lot of fighters, especially at the amateur level, guys that have a lot of ability that never make it, that have the wrong kind of “I don’t give a crap attitude.”

    Here’s what I mean. The wrong type of “I don’t give a crap attitude” is the guy that will slack in his training and slack in his conditioning and think “Aww sports psychology I don’t need that. I’m not crazy at all. I’m not screwed up in the head or any of the . I can miss that conditioning session. I’ll miss out for it and work twice as hard tomorrow.” Et cetera, et cetera.

    And then when they step in the cage because they’ve slacked, because they had the wrong type of “I don’t give a crap attitude” they go in the cage and now they think, “Oh my God, what are all these things I didn’t do. I’m not as prepared as I should be.” And they go out and they fight not to lose and they usually don’t perform well. But the have some ability and they can succeed for a certain amount of time, but once you get to the highest levels of fighting which is martial arts, right, or UFC, those guys don’t make it.

    The right type of “I don’t give a crap attitude” is the guy who works as hard as he can everyday in training. He has the strength conditioning coach. Has a sports psychology coach. Has a nutritionist. Does all those things, leaves no stone unturned. Works as hard as he can. Has a game like mentality, you wanna call fight-like mentality where they treat every training session like it’s a fight, right? The same type of mentality, the same type of energy, the same type of specialness for the training session that they would give to a fight.

    Yet, when they start walking to the cage, when Bert comes into the room and says, “Hey baby it’s ready to go, time to go. Let’s rock and roll.” They say, “I don’t give a crap.” What they mean is, I don’t give a crap about results because they can’t control that. I don’t give a crap about the fans because I don’t control them. I don’t give a crap about Dana, Joe Silva, UFC, because I can’t control them. And I don’t give a crap about my opponent because I can’t control what he’s going to do – I’ve done everything I need to do to be successful. I’m gonna go in there, put it on auto pilot and trust my training that I’m gonna execute the way that I’m supposed to. Because I don’t give a crap about anything else other than going out there and fighting my fight. Those are the guys that have the most success.

    I asked Brian everything I could think of that would bring your mental conditioning to a whole new level. Luckily for you, I recorded the whole thing and now, you can get the entire 73 minute interview and companion manual FREE.

    => CLICK HERE to find out how.