Issue 068

October 2010

Everybody loses at one time or another. Get your head straight and get back on the road to success with these important strategies. By S&C coach and mindset consultant Travis Steffen.

You sweat. Working at a breakneck pace with your training partners in a hot room, you bang through round after round. You rep out hundreds of squats, push-ups and crunches. You skip junk food for weeks on end. You’re in great shape, and you’re ready to step in the cage. 

But when fight night finally arrives, the unthinkable happens: you lose. It doesn’t matter how it happens. Losses affect people in different ways. Some are able to handle losses well and bounce back fine, while others endlessly replay their losses in their minds, letting it eat at them until they are a shell of the fighter they once were. 

Don’t let this happen to you: learn from a loss. Here’s how.

How much do you care?

Fighters who jump into the cage to impress their girlfriends typically don’t have big problems coping with losing. Athletes who are more emotionally invested in the outcome of a competition, such as aspiring or professional fighters, are more likely to react negatively.

Many great fighters overcome losing not by viewing it as failure, but as holes in their game highlighted. This is one of the reasons that some mixed martial artists maintain losing a fight can sometimes be the best thing to happen to their career. Look at Georges St Pierre in 2007, overconfident and arrogant as the newly minted welterweight champion. His shock loss to Matt Serra taught him a valuable lesson in humility, and he’s been unstoppable ever since.  

If you went into a fight as a huge underdog, a loss may not weigh too heavily on your mind as you probably half-anticipated the outcome, but if you expected to destroy your opponent and were the victim of a GSP-Serra-style upset, losing can be extremely difficult to overcome. That’s why you’ve got to take measures to eliminate the negative thinking that often comes after being declared the ‘runner-up’. 

What goes on inside your head?

After a loss fighters tend to make a number of assumptions, about why it happened, without even realizing it. Examining the checklist of common assumptions and then mapping out a path to improvement can be a great way to cope with coming second.  

Controllability: Was your loss within or outside your direct control? In MMA your performance is typically assumed to be completely within your control (unlike that of a team sport). 

Causality: Did you fail to execute your game plan, or did your opponent employ a strategy you weren’t prepared to deal with? Take a good look at the factors that led to your loss. Do you attribute losing to something you did wrong, or something your opponent did well? 

Intentionality: When you lost, did you put yourself in that position on purpose, by either a conscious decision or a lack of preparation, or did you simply make an uncharacteristic error, such as a slip or a rookie mistake? 

Universality: Is the reason for your loss common among other competitors, or was it due to something that only happens rarely? For example, did you fail to move your head properly (common) or did your opponent catch you in a crazy submission such as a gogoplata? 

Globality: Was the reason for your loss an isolated incident (such as a flaw in your game that you.didn’t know you had) or is it a problem you’ve known about for some time, such as a lack of takedown defense or cardio?

Excuses, what ifs and fears

Sports psychologists always look to eliminate the negative talk that goes on in an athlete’s mind. Common thoughts an athlete might encounter include: 

“I can’t believe I lost that fight. I should’ve won.”

Believe it. The sooner you can come to terms with the fact that you lost, the sooner you can begin to take positive steps towards bouncing back.

“If only I hadn’t been injured I’d have won.”  

If you were injured leading up to the fight, there is no functional reason to think like this. Instead, you can either examine why you took a fight with an injury serious enough to affect your performance, or revise your training regimen so as to maintain a high intensity while staying injury free. 

“Those judges were ridiculous. I don’t see how I lost that fight.” 

The common adage ‘never leave it in the hands of the judges’ applies here. Once the fight is over, you no longer have control of the outcome – therefore you shouldn’t dwell on loss any further. Instead of chewing over the decision, focus on how you could improve your performance so you can finish a fight before it gets to the scorecards.  

“I’m really embarrassed. How did I lose to that guy?” 

First of all, know that feelings of embarrassment are the precursor to making excuses for why a loss occurred, and you should always look to avoid making excuses if you want to come back stronger. When you ask yourself how you lost, sit down and really dissect it instead of simply shaking your head in bewilderment. 

Your plan of attack

If you’re dwelling on a loss, make a conscious effort to snap out of it. Shift your focus to something more productive to help you get back to your winning ways, such as examining your performance and making the necessary adjustments in your training. These improvements may be small – such as technical corrections in your footwork or submission defense – or they could be drastic, such as moving to another gym with better coaches and training partners. Either way, positive action eliminates negative thoughts that can be detrimental to your future as a fighter. 

 If you’re coming off a loss, congratulations! You’ve just been granted a valuable opportunity to improve aspects of your game that were weak, and you now have a few new psychological weapons in your arsenal to help you get back on track. Sit back, close your eyes, breathe deeply and say: “I’ll be back – and I’ll be better than ever.” 

Travis Steffen is a strength coach, fitness specialist and athletic mindset consultant. You can contact Travis at [email protected], or via his website, www.workoutbox.com