Issue 193

November 2020

Getting your gray matter into gear is as important as honing your grappling if you want to succeed inside the Octagon. We review some of the best ways you can make your melon ring ready

Brawn without brains may help you build an impressive beach physique, but champions know mastery of your mind is the true key to success. Israel Adesanya doesn’t make his opponents look slow by moving faster than them, he does it by thinking faster than them. Here’s Fighters Only’s guide to supercharging your battle brain.

PERIPHERAL VISION

It’s the punch you don’t see that knocks you out. Peripheral vision is essential to being able to defend yourself but, assuming that you don’t have your opponent’s fingers in your eyes, it’s the processing speed of visual input in your cerebral cortex that makes the difference. 

Top fighters are now beginning to use state-of-the-art vision training tools such as the Dynavision D2 to enhance their reaction speeds. Popularized by IndyCar and Formula 1 racing teams, this machine can help to improve a fighter’s ability to see incoming blows. 

HITTING THE TARGET

Research from sports like baseball and cricket, where high-speed perception and reaction times are easily studied, is unlocking our understanding of how we see. Human eyes don’t soak up all of the information at once from what’s in front of us; instead they make saccades, fast movements, and take a mental snapshot at each point that our brains build into a mental picture.

The bad news? This means that we never really see anything in real-time, always with a ‘brain-lag’. So how do we hit a moving target? Through prediction. Our brains can estimate where an opponent’s chin will be at any given time. The good news is that we get better at this with practice. So the best way to train your brain to predict human movement patterns is to spar with a variety of training partners. So, get your mouthpiece in and go train that brain! 

However, if you don’t want to be punched in the head today, a Brock String can also be used to train saccade movements and improve your depth and distance perception. Named after optometrist Frederick Brock rather than the former UFC heavyweight champion, this simple string with three beads can make a huge difference. It costs only a few dollars and standard training drills can be found on YouTube. 

THE MIND’S EYE

Visualization is often touted by sports psychologists as an effective route to superior performance. And fMRI brain scan studies by B Calvo-Merino and others back this up and reveal that watching performers execute skills can trigger activation of the same motor centers in the observer’s brain.

This effect can be duplicated by internally visualizing the same movements. So watch your UFC DVDs and imagine it’s you in the cage throwing bombs instead of your favorite fighter.

PLAY FIGHTING

There’s been a lot of publicity surrounding ‘brain training’ games and apps in recent years; the industry is now worth an estimated annual $225 million. Unfortunately, for those who wish to train for a UFC belt on an iPad instead of in the gym, many claims have not held up under scientific scrutiny. Crosswords and sudoku have been shown to be as effective as apps for maintaining mental sharpness, while other skill improvements have been shown to be task-specific – great if your only goal is to be great at playing brain training games but less so otherwise. But there is some consolation for console players, at least according to a Nature magazine study by Green and Bavelier; your ‘working memory,’ the ability of your prefrontal cortex to retain information and widely regarded as a measurement of your mental horsepower, is improved by playing complex video games such as EA Sports UFC 3 or Call of Duty: Black Ops. Perhaps that’s why so many top fighters have graced the pages of Fighters Only’s ‘Talking Video Games’ articles...

5 SIMPLE STEPS TO UPGRADE YOUR BRAIN

OBSERVE, ABSORB, IMAGINE

Put yourself in the shoes of top fighters when you watch your next PPV and mirror their movement patterns inside your head.

GET THE EYE OF THE TIGER

Use a Brock String to fine-tune your depth perception.

EMOTIONAL CONTENT, 

NOT ANGER

Consult a sports psychologist and learn to use your emotions positively.

PLAY FOR GAINS

EA Sports UFC 3 and similar video games can help you learn new moves whilst also boosting your brain power.

SEE INTO THE FUTURE

Improve your movement prediction by sparring with a wide variety of training partners.