Visualization, Mental Skills & Toughness for Combat Sports w/ Mona de Lacey (SSOF Podcast Ep. #4)

Mona de Lacey1:47

So I had to go back to the drawing board, make sure that, figure out what went wrong with both the physical side and the mental side of things. And to be honest, on the physical side of things, things were actually going really well. It was on the mental side of things where things went wrong on game day.

And that's why I believe the mental side of things and learning how to master your mind is so important. Because yes, it takes a lot of grit and hard work to get to where you want to be, but it also takes a lot of willpower. It takes a lot of really digging deep to find why you are doing what you are doing.

And that was ultimately what I needed to find in myself again, especially after I performed badly on the international stage. And we have something in weightlifting which we call you bomb. And when you bomb, you ultimately miss all your lifts on the international stage.

And you can just imagine preparing for an event which is the second biggest event to the Olympics. You prepare for this event for four years, and you go on stage and you bomb. And then you prepare another four years and you bomb.

And when I got to my 2018 Commonwealth Games, which like you said 16 years later, I really that last four years I didn't just grow as an athlete, but I grew as a person. I made some changes to my mental side of things when it came to training.

I went back to the old Mona when I used to do my martial arts. I used to do a lot of mental training extra on top of my physical training. I used to do things like visualization. I changed my self-talk. I didn't just push through injuries. I told myself the main thing to get to the top is also to be healthy, both physically and mentally.

And I really think that made the massive difference when stepping on that international stage. And then a few extra little things that I did along the way was I knew I got very nervous stepping on the international stage, and I knew that had to change because I'm going to step on the international stage my whole life.

And not just with sport, but even when I speak to people and I do public speaking and I work with athletes, I always put myself out there. So how am I going to do that and not feel as nervous?

And first and foremost, I had to come to terms with stress is not a bad thing. You don't have to perceive stress as a threat. It's not a life or death situation when I step on that stage. So it was about controlling my nerves, using it to my advantage.

And with all of that, I had to figure out ways in how I'm going to get myself to perform at my best at the Commonwealth Games. And that included things like working on my anxiety, doing breathing exercises, going back to the things that worked for me, like listening to music, having a routine.

So I had to perfect all of those things in training in order to take all of those mental tools with me to game day at Commonwealth Games when I won that medal.

James de Lacey5:54

So we're going to dive a little bit into some of these strategies in a bit, but I wanted to touch back on that resiliency, mental toughness. I'm sure there's people listening now that are wondering or maybe wanting to become more mentally tough to be able to push through hard situations, become more resilient.

Is there a way they can do that? Is this something that can be trained, or maybe you're just born with it, or is there something that they can do essentially after listening to this podcast, some exercises they can do to help essentially become more mentally tough and more resilient? Is it just down to finding your why and knowing why you're doing something, or is there more to it?

Mona de Lacey6:23

Well, being mentally tough, I always believe it's a very broad term that gets thrown around. And people always think to be a top-level athlete also you have to be mentally tough all the time. That is also not true, because athletes are humans too and we go through things. We go through life situations, and often these things affect your performance. It affects your sport. It affects how you feel when you go into training sessions.

So that doesn't mean that when those things affect you that you're not a mentally tough athlete, or when you step on stage and you bomb it doesn't mean that you're not a mentally tough athlete. I believe a mentally tough athlete is the person who then also bounces back from the disappointment, but also bouncing back in a clever way, like going back to the drawing board, realizing that something went wrong, and then also knowing that when you start to train, because there's all these mixed emotions already of feeling disappointed, feeling sad, feeling angry.

You've put four years of your life basically on hold to prepare for this event and you failed on the international stage. And it's about, like you mentioned, also finding your why again. And then just starting to enjoy the process.

And I found that by not just working on the outcome, which was winning a medal at the Commonwealth Games, but I knew in order to get there I need to go to the drawing board and figure out how am I going to do this, but also enjoy the process at the same time. Because I think there's nothing worse than going into your training sessions every single day and not enjoying it, feeling like it's grueling, feeling like you're doing all this work but you're not liking it and you hate going to the gym and the environment. When you do those kind of things, then obviously it's not going to help your performance.

James de Lacey8:20

Yeah, it's a big misconception with mental toughness is you have to do random workouts, hours at a time until you're almost vomiting, and if you don't quit then you're mentally tough, whereas that's not the case at all. That's straight coaching, and if that happens you should probably move gyms as a side note.

But if we come back to the strategies you've used to help develop essentially these mental skills that can carry over to performance, obviously everyone knows they can train physically hard. But if you get to competition day, you see people who essentially, what you would call gym athletes, ones that are great in the gym, train so well in the gym, come fight day or competition, they the bed. And it's very rarely down to the physical preparation by then. It comes down to what's happened in the mind leading up to that competition.

So let's cover some strategies that's going to help essentially you guys implement these things within your own training, within your own training weeks that you can take over to competition. And let's start. You mentioned the first one was visualization is something that you came back to when you were preparing for your next Commonwealth Games.

So cover for us, what really is visualization and how can a combat sports athlete use it to their advantage?

Mona de Lacey9:49

So firstly, visualization, also called by a lot of people... or if you had to Google it...

So firstly, visualization also called by a lot of people, or if you had to Google it out there, it's also called imagery. So it's basically you are rehearsing an image in your mind. So basically if you had to watch a YouTube video of yourself, you would see that video in your mind replaying it.

But to make visualization really effective, it's really important to make sure that you use all of your senses. So there's a lot of little components that goes into visualizing successfully, and that includes all of your senses. When you perform the movement, you want to be able to hear what is happening around you. There may be crowd, you may be hearing your coach. You might be feeling the mat that you on.

So it's very important to make sure that you have that feeling sensation too. For example, with me and weightlifting, I need to be able to feel the knurling of the barbell. If you grab a person, say you do jiu-jitsu, you must be able to feel the person's gi that you're gripping. I'm not sure if you guys call it a gi?

So yeah, you need to grab the gi. You can imagine yourself tightening your belt. If you do boxing, you can feel potentially the sweat dripping down your face, even potentially tasting the sweat in your mouth. Because when you train really hard and you compete, you have that sweaty taste in your mouth.

And there's so many components that goes into it. And the brain doesn't really know the difference between reality and imagination. So you can essentially trick the brain in order to not know if this situation that you are visualizing, if it's reality and if it's imaginary.

But the important thing is also you need to remember when you visualize, it's important to visualize in the real time. So if you are visualizing, for example, a new skill that you are busy learning, you need to make sure that if that skill takes you 2 minutes to perform, you need to visualize that skill for 2 minutes. If it takes you 5 minutes, you need to visualize it for 5 minutes.

But then on the other side of things, people also visualize to boost motivation and confidence. So you can again go and visualize now the past, or one of your favorite past achievements that was really amazing, and you can go back to that imagination or thought in your mind. And you can imagine every single emotion and thought and feeling and the hearing and everything around it, and essentially that will also boost your motivation.

So if you ever feel that maybe training's not going as well or you're just lacking motivation, going back to the drawing board and going to write down, for example, what was your past favorite achievement, and then going and visualizing it can really be an effective tool in order to just boost that athlete's motivation.

James de Lacey12:46

You mentioned visualizing in real time. For example, maybe if you're throwing, maybe in boxing you're throwing jabs, crosses, whatever, you're talking about throwing those punches in your mind in real time. Would you ever do slow motion visualization if you're trying to learn the skills?

Mona de Lacey13:21

Yes and no. It's very important again, if you are learning the skill, to be able to visualize also in slow motion, because that means you can visualize every single component to it. But then once you've learned the skill, I would then not slow it down in slow motion. I would perform the skill then in real time.

It's just important to make sure, because if you visualize it in slow motion, you are not going to perform the skill in slow motion unless you are maybe learning a new skill or a beginner athlete. So I would always recommend in real time, but it is also valuable to be able to break the movement down into slow motion when you are starting off learning the skill.

James de Lacey13:51

What if you want to not so much visualize certain skills, but what if you've had a fight coming up? Would you visualize a whole round of a fight for essentially anything and everything that can happen?

Mona de Lacey14:19

Again, that definitely depends. If you just want to visualize a certain movement or skill that you've been working on and you want to visualize yourself executing this skill against the opponent, then I would just visualize that moment of it.

But if you want to go and really visualize the whole fight, maybe you've been analyzing what your opponent is doing and you want to visualize in your mind exactly how the round can play off, and that includes things going right and even things going wrong. So there's in the past, there used to be a lot of controversy with people visualizing if something goes wrong.

But visualizing if something goes wrong also gives you a plan B and a plan C to make sure that if your opponent does this, you can do that. If your opponent scores a point, you can do this. So by visualizing if something goes wrong, but then also visualizing on top of that when things go right, is really valuable. So you're not just always visualizing the good stuff, you're also visualizing maybe the worst case scenario.

What could happen? For example, I don't know if you fight MMA, being on your back on the floor and having someone ground and pound, whatever, what you're going to do in that situation. You can visualize exactly, because at the end of the day you are preparing yourself for any scenario.

And being prepared for any scenario means that when you step into that ring, if something happens and it throws you off your game, you can immediately bounce back because you can tell yourself, "Oh, I've done this a thousand times before in my mind. I know how to deal with this situation if this person does this or that or whatever it may be."

James de Lacey15:55

So for the listeners listening to this now and they want to start visualizing after this podcast, how long should they do it for and when are the best times for them to do their visualization?

Mona de Lacey16:20

So with regards to when to do visualization and for how long, it really just depends on the person. There's no right or wrong. I would however always recommend that if you are totally new to learning how to visualize, I would obviously recommend doing it at the shortest time possible, even if it's just 2 minutes at a time, just to learn how to use all of your senses.

Because at the end of the day, the more you can use all of those senses, the better you can visualize and the more you can trick your brain into not knowing if this is reality or imagination, and the better the result will be at the end of the day.

So again, start off with something nice and slow, or 2 minutes at a time. And then as you get used to the 2 minutes and you feel you can solidly visualize for 2 minutes, I would then increase it to 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes. And then obviously the better you get at visualization, then you can start to visualize things like your rounds.

And you can visualize, if you want to learn a new skill, maybe the whole skill or technique or the movement you want to try will take you a couple of minutes. Then you can visualize that. Or if you then want to go and visualize to boost your motivation, you can then go and visualize for say 5 minutes at a time. I mean, there's some people who can literally visualize for up to 30 minutes. It just takes training.

You need to train your mind the same as what you would train your physical skills. And that's actually what I want to come to, because a lot of people think, "Oh, I can just start to visualize now and I'm going to be successful." You will most probably not get anything out of visualization at the start when you try it.

But it's also the same thing as if you had to learn a very difficult skill for the very first time. It might actually irritate you more than anything else, because you're not going to feel you're really getting the effectiveness out of it. And by practicing it over and over again, like I said, you will be able to be better at using all of your senses, being able to trick your brain, being able to get that boost of confidence out of it.

And then coming back to when to visualize, I again, this is, it depends on the person. But what I do recommend is you can go and start before your training sessions. So say you have a new skill or something that you've been training for for quite some time and you want to execute that skill in your training session, I would definitely start off by doing my visualization training right before my training, even if it, like I said, 2 minutes or 5 minutes or whatever it might be.

And practicing it in training first. Don't go and visualize for the first time, especially after this podcast, before competition, because it can throw you off your game. You don't know how you are going to react to that experience.

You want to make sure that anything you do in competition is something that you've practiced numerous times in training. And that also goes for your mental training. So make sure that you practice your visualization in or before training every single day, or three times a week or whatever it might be, for numerous weeks before you go and do this before competition.

James de Lacey19:49

Perfect. How do I do that if I'm going to go to class and visualize? Do I sit there with my eyes closed? Can I do with my eyes open? Do I need to sit like a Zen Buddha?

Mona de Lacey19:49

Yeah, that's a good question because a lot of people perceive visualization as, you mentioned, sitting like a Zen Buddha. You definitely do not have to do that. If you've seen some elite fighters or even in

Athletics, or doesn't matter what sport, often you will see someone just before they go onto the mat or maybe they're warming up during their warm-up session, you'll see they'll just close their eyes and maybe they'll do some shadow boxing. And with that shadow boxing they will basically almost imagine themselves being against their opponent. And you can do exactly the same thing. You can do it standing as part of your warm-up, you can go to the side, lie down for a couple of minutes.

You can do it, say for example, after you've done your weigh-in. If you do your weigh-in and a couple hours later you have your first fight, you can go into your warm-up room if you've got a nice comfortable spot—that's a good time to visualize. So basically there's no, again, right or wrong answer of when to visualize, but again it could be used for numerous reasons.

Like you might before your fight, go after your weigh-in and visualize how the fight is going to go and play off. And you don't want to visualize also to an extent that you start to sweat, you get your heart rate up and you feel anxious, because if you do that, that will affect your performance negatively.

So if you go and do your visualization like right before your competition or a couple of hours before your competition, you want to make sure that you basically just rehearse what you've learned and what you're going to be doing on the mat or in the ring and just basically playing around with it and almost use it more as a confidence booster instead of you going and using all of your emotion where you feel nervous and anxious.

Because if you start to feel that, then you need to again go back to the drawing board and figure out what are you visualizing that's causing you anxiety. And maybe that thing that you are visualizing just needs to be dialed down a bit in order to use it to be more effective come competition day.

James de Lacey22:17

Yeah, we'll touch on that pre-fight nerve stuff soon. But I wanted to ask you about the visualization further with, would say, shadow boxing and shadow wrestling and kind of imagining what the opponent is doing and reacting to it—would that count as like a visualization session?

Mona de Lacey22:17

Yes, because at the end of the day, especially if you're doing it by yourself or if you do this by yourself, this is again you imagining you have an opponent in front of you. And this is what I used to do with my kumite sessions, which is fighting in karate. I used to imagine what my opponents would do.

I would do my bobbing and weaving. I would do my pivots. I would do whatever I would do, my striking, the things that I would do—and not to full force, but I would do half the movement. And in my mind I would see myself performing the skill fully.

James de Lacey23:11

Yeah, I think that's important for anyone who's doing maybe their conditioning solo, shadow boxing, shadow wrestling, whatever—don't just go through the motions of using your techniques. Imagine what's happening in front of you with an opponent, and you can factor that in. That doubles up now, mental and physical together.

Mona de Lacey23:11

Yeah. And there's one thing I just want to add, and I've obviously told James the story before, and it's basically I used to do visualization actually from a very young age without actually knowing that I was training my mind to actually do what it's supposed to do. And only years later I'm so grateful for learning this valuable skill.

And during my life as an athlete there were times where I neglected my mental training, and it definitely, definitely showed and it definitely did affect my performance. And that's why before my last Commonwealth Games where I won the medal, I knew I had to go back to the things that used to work for me, and that included my mental training.

And what my dad would do is I would wake up in the morning at say 5:00, because I still used to be in school at that time. Wake up at 5:00, I would then watch either I think it was Bruce Lee and there was another person—I can't actually remember now who his name was—Benny the Jet.

James de Lacey24:11

Benny the Jet Urquidez.

Mona de Lacey24:11

Yeah, I used to—yeah, my dad obviously told James all of the stories. So I used to watch them over and over and over again. And then once I watched certain techniques or drills that I was going to train in my training session that day, I would watch the videos, then after that we would stop the videos. Then for 30 minutes I would lay down and visualize myself performing the skill exactly the way Benny the Jet did and Bruce Lee did. And I would then go into my training session and then perform the skill. And we did this time and time and time after again.

And when I won my first karate world title, that's actually a way to prove how good it is to actually do visualization training. I competed against—I was in the final event and it was against a Japanese girl, and she was the previous world champion. And going into this fight, firstly I felt super confident because I knew I trained really hard to get to this point.

But then secondly, when the fight started, I felt like I was in this position a thousand times before, because in actual fact I tricked my brain—so I was in this position a thousand times before, because that's how many times I visualized.

I visualized myself firstly winning the world title. I visualized myself when I'm in that fight of the final fight, how I would score my points. So there were certain drills and techniques that I drilled in my mind over and over again. And what the girl did from Japan, I knew exactly what to do. I scored with a mawashi geri—some of you might know it as a roundhouse kick—and that was the final point to win the world championships.

And I gained a lot of respect from the Japanese team. I remember afterwards the Japanese Sensei came to me and he invited me to sit by their table to eat—I think it was lunch or dinner with them—which is a really big thing in the martial arts world. Because these countries, basically karate was born there, and to be invited to sit by their table was a huge honor for me. And how they respected me and how they came to me and was so impressed by my skills really meant a lot.

But because I was so young, I didn't really understand even the concept of like almost like how I got there. And it was only years later when I started studying the mind, when I did my honors degree in sport psychology, that I realized that I've actually been training my mind for a very long time. I just never knew how powerful the mind actually was—never labeled it.

James de Lacey27:19

Never labeled it.

Mona de Lacey27:19

Yes. I literally just thought I was imagining things and going through the stuff in my mind. But I never knew that this was an actual thing, like I said, until I actually started studying it, doing research, learning more about how powerful the mind is. And now I'm actually really glad that I can be in a position now that I can help my athletes and people out there like you to teach you how powerful the mind is and helping you start from, hopefully now when you guys are watching this video.

James de Lacey27:49

Yeah, there's some great research on visualization and imagery. For example, patients that have their wrists in a cast so they're immobilized for four weeks—just thinking and visualizing about doing maximal wrist extensions, doing this, just thinking about that over four weeks is enough to essentially attenuate that decline in strength. Then you've got, I guess, the famous study that people always quote regarding shooting free throws—the group that just visualized shooting free throws versus the group that shot free throws had similar results in terms of their performance.

So I mean there's lots of good research behind it. Mona's used it most of her athletic career now with great success. So it's something that I think if you're going to implement anything from this podcast, start there and you can kind of move forward.

But I want to move forward to probably a common—probably one of the most common, I guess, issues that combat sport athletes have—and that might, that would be pre-fight nerves. So how can essentially an athlete turn pre-fight nerves into something that's more of an advantage than them coming out and maybe having this big adrenaline dump and end up gassing out?

Mona de Lacey28:46

Yes. Now that's a very good question, because I again was that athlete who I would get myself super high—like my adrenaline would raise super high in weightlifting—and it would affect my performance. I would ultimately step on the platform and I would have no strength, no power, jelly legs.

James de Lacey29:22

Jelly legs, sweating, yeah, heart rate being sky high.

Mona de Lacey29:22

Feeling the feeling of butterflies. And I want to talk to you in a minute about how powerful that is. But then on the flip side of things, I've also been that athlete where I've just been—so my arousal levels has been so low—that I would actually feel super tired and fatigued. And again, I had to then boost myself or find something that's actually going to raise my arousal level.

And this is also something, if you know a bit about psychology, you will know there's something called an inverted-U theory, which is you finding your optimal level of arousal to perform at your best. If you fall below that continuum, say for example you are at a five, but that day of competition you are at a four or a three or a seven or eight, ultimately those—

All that falls without or above and below your continuum level, that will affect your performance. So you need to make sure that if you perform best at a five, you need to be able to get yourself to a five. And we'll speak about some techniques that you can get yourself up, or if you're that athlete who is so psyched up and your butterflies are going and you're losing so much energy, how to then bring yourself down.

So it's very important to make sure that you are firstly aware of what happens when you go into competition or when you go and, say, you're performing a difficult skill, or say you are going against an opponent that's maybe really good and you just don't want to make a mistake, or you're fighting against your Sensei.

What do you guys call it in jiu-jitsu? Professor?

Say you're fighting against your professor or someone that you don't want to make a mistake with. You want to show them that all this hard work that you've done, you want to be able to show it off, but sometimes the nerves just get the better of you. So what I always say is draw a line, and this is also something that's in my brand new sport psychology course too that we'll talk about later on.

But I say draw a line, make a one and a ten on each side and then figure out where you fall in that line to perform at your optimal level. If you are a seven, a six, a five, a four, whatever it might be, but figuring out firstly where you perform best at.

James de Lacey31:27

All right, so let's give an example of someone who is just nervous and they get too psyched up before they go. How can they bring themselves back down?

Mona de Lacey31:56

Now that's a good question because that happens to the most of us. James actually has a very good example of what happened to him when he was super aroused by listening to hardcore headbanging music hours before his fight, that when it came to when he had to go onto the mat and perform, he couldn't perform because he was already so tired. He used all of his energy. And you are that athlete, you don't perform well when you have so much energy you can run through a wall.

James de Lacey32:27

I need to be down.

Mona de Lacey32:27

Yes, so you're the athlete that needs to get down. So ways that you can bring yourself down are some simple tools that you might actually know of already, but you just don't maybe realize how to implement them or actually how powerful they are. One thing I always say is music is a great way to either bring you down or even bring you up. Because if you are super anxious and you're already super aroused and you perform best at a five, then the best thing you need to do is listening to some calmer music in order to just get your heart rate down.

Now that's the first thing that you can do, or listening to music that you actually enjoy, that's nice upbeat, but nothing too hectic. You don't have to listen to things that's going to put you to sleep, but just something that's going to make your heart rate go down and kind of make you not focus on the fight. The second thing that you can do is breathing techniques.

Now if your heart rate is super high and you're super anxious and you're sweating and you're just feeling so aroused that you're basically buzzing and you're all over the show, it's just literally stopping what you are doing, breathing in through your nose. I always say breathing in for four seconds and then breathing out for four seconds.

So you want to do this, it can be anything from three to five times or even more if you want to, but it's a great way just to kind of bring you down to that level, help you feel more focused, help you feel more in the zone and just help you feel more relaxed overall. Now that's also another great way to kind of just bring you down.

Another great way is, say for example, you are doing your warmup but you are already so aroused and you've been so nervous for hours and hours and hours. I would possibly recommend you to not do a very, very high intensity warmup because you've already used so much energy prior to that warmup that that warmup is just going to be causing you to have extra stress, extra arousal.

And when you step onto that mat, you're not going to have much energy left to fight your opponent. So you want to make sure that you keep as much of your energy. So I would rather then go and do a lower intensity warmup. And again, it doesn't have to be so low that it's something like yoga or anything like that. You don't want to go to the extremes, but you just want to bring it down a notch.

Then another great way is, for example, say you are starting to stress days before the competition, because this is also possible and this has also happened to me before, where you are so aroused and so stressed that you can't sleep, you're irritated, you're edgy. I mean, my husband has experienced me being like that too. So the things then that actually helps first and foremost is having a routine. So when you have a specific routine and you know if I do this and this and this, come competition day I'm ready, so that also includes right before the competition.

If you normally go and sleep at 10:00 at night, don't go the week before your competition and go and sleep at 8:00 every night, because I promise you, you will probably find that because you are not used to it, your brain will be so wired and you will end up not sleeping at all.

So try first and foremost, have a routine. That's very important. But make sure that you've already set this routine during, say, your off season, so that come competition season you have mastered what your routine already is. And then I would recommend not changing this routine but keeping it as close as possible to the day that you compete, so that you can go into competition also feeling like this is just another training session.

This is not a, I don't have to perceive this as a threat. It's not a life or death situation. I'm going out there and I'm going to showcase my skills that I've been working on.

James de Lacey36:25

What if my usual routine was pounding a few beers? Would you change that then?

Mona de Lacey36:55

Well, actually, I probably wouldn't. If you pound one or two beers and you find that that actually relaxes you and it doesn't decrease your performance and you don't have a weight issue, then definitely, if you feel that that helps, I wouldn't not recommend it. Going the night before and getting hammered, in fact, I wouldn't get hammered at all for weeks before my competition. Because especially if it's very important to you, you will make sure that everything that you do will be to help your recovery and to help you perform at your best.

But definitely, if drinking a beer the week before your comp or the day before your comp helps you just fully relax and you've done this many times, by all means I'll stick with it.

James de Lacey37:26

Nice. I want to come back to now the people that maybe struggle to psych up. Maybe they get to the competition, sometimes you can feel it, you can feel real sleepy. I know for myself, I want to feel that way before I compete because then I can bring myself up a little. But maybe what happens if you come to competition maybe and you just struggle to get yourself up? What can they do?

Mona de Lacey37:56

Great question. I know I've said that a lot, but it's really, I mean, so many people struggle with it. Again, when I was that athlete in martial arts, I struggled with being super sleepy and where I just couldn't wake up. When I would walk on the mat, I didn't feel aggressive, I didn't feel assertive, I didn't feel confident. And with weightlifting I kind of need to do it the other way.

So there's certain ways again that you can kind of boost your energy levels and boost your arousal levels in order to get you to that level where you perform the best at. And simple examples, again I always go back to music because music is a great way to just boost your energy, boost your motivation. Another great thing is visualization.

So if you feel sleepy, I would visualize myself not being at the beach lying on the sand on a towel, because that again will make you feel sleepy. You would want to visualize yourself doing something energetic so that you can actually start to get the heart rate going in order to then perform at your best.

So another thing that I used to do is I used to prance around up and down before my fight, because first and foremost that warmed me up and I would do my shadow boxing and I was in my own world. And secondly, it made me feel confident. And by doing so, it also kind of intimidated my opponents because a lot of them would just kind of sit and wait.

And seeing them, or having them see me perform my skill and shadow boxing, and at first again I was really young so I thought to myself, well, I hope I'm not embarrassing myself doing this. And my dad was like, no, this is what champions do.

So I did it and it was great. It warmed me up. If there were sessions or competitions where I would just sit, maybe the referees told us...

All to just sit before we go onto the mat, I would actually feel lethargic when I stepped onto the mat and I would just not have that energy and oomph. So for me, walking around, doing shadow boxing, visualizing, that's the thing that would boost my motivation and it also helps a lot of athletes as well. And then also you can go and do a bit of a higher intensity warm-up that again helps you just to feel a bit more energized, get the blood going.

And yeah, basically those are some of the ways. Also breathing. Now instead of doing just super deep calming breathing, I would then do a bit more aggressive breathing, but also not shallow breathing, because if you shallow breath or do shallow breathing, you will actually not get air into your lungs and you'll end up feeling that you might actually get super nervous or you will actually feel like you're going to pass out. So we don't want to put you into an extreme state with again optimal performance.

So yeah, just make sure that whichever of these tools and tricks you try, make sure you try it in training. And also a tip that I would give you is, out of all of these tips that I've given, if you can just take one tip and use it, it's enough. You don't need to do five or six things in order to boost your arousal levels or bring your arousal level down. If you can find one that works for you and really master that technique, then that's all you need in order to help you perform better.

James de Lacey41:45

That's perfect. You mentioned how obviously with these skills, just like any other skill, you want to essentially train them at training before you bring them to competition. Let's jump to routines. You mentioned about a pre-fight routine as a way to calm your nerves. Does that pre-fight routine differ from a pre-training routine? Should it differ? Do you need to essentially practice that routine in training first?

Mona de Lacey42:20

Definitely. You want your pre-training routine to be almost exact as what it would be pre-competition routine, because again, like I said previously, if come competition and you have a different routine, it might actually throw you off. So you want to make sure that, because the body already likes routine, you want to keep it as similar as possible.

Yes, there might be a few things that would be changing. For example, say you are cutting weight. Maybe you are used to drinking Gatorade in training, but now all of a sudden you have to cut some weight, maybe you'll switch it to water or do low-sugar or no-sugar carb drinks. Or it could even be things like, maybe before training sessions you can't always listen to music in between your sessions or in between your fight, but in competition you can.

So I would try and do it as close as possible to what I would do in competition in training. But again, if there's extra little things that work for you in competition, then I'm sure that there's always a mock competition where you guys have a little mock competition in training and then I would practice those skills then if it's something that's going to be different to competition, to just make sure that it works.

Or what I will do is if I don't have an opportunity to try it in a more competition, if you can compete in a smaller local competition, that's also a great way to try out new things if you want to.

James de Lacey43:49

I would also add, your routine should include what you eat before. You don't want to—for me, I know exactly what I'm going to eat before training and when, because that's when I know I feel best. The worst thing you could do is then change it on competition day, eat something different at a different time. You're just essentially rolling the dice doing something like that.

Mona de Lacey44:13

Definitely. I mean, like you just said now, if all of a sudden, now before your competition, say you've cut weight and now you've never eaten pizza before or donuts or maybe fried chicken or whatever it might be, everyone has their preferred thing that they like and they say to themselves, "After weigh-ins, because I've cut weight for so long, I'm going to have this and this and this and this," and then as soon as they step onto the mat, they have zero energy. They feel bloated, they feel lethargic, they feel sick, they want to vomit.

So again, if you're doing things like that and you are cutting weight, I would then again in my off-season experiment with foods that give me energy, or I would work with a professional to make sure that I don't waste all my hard work. And come competition day, I mess it up because all of a sudden all I want to do is stuff my face with food rather than—do that after your competition instead of right before where you're going to compete.

James de Lacey45:13

Let's continue down the routines route here. So we've covered pre-training and pre-competition routines. What about during competition routines? Obviously in striking arts, you're going to have potentially routines you do between rounds. Within the grappling art, you might have routines you do between fights where you have a little longer break. Are there things that you should do in these break periods?

So in these one-minute breaks in most striking arts, is it something that you should do there versus someone who's in a jiu-jitsu competition who's got maybe five to 20, 30 minutes between fights? Is there something—do they do something completely different?

Mona de Lacey45:47

Definitely. But again, this is very individualized. And there's also, during that little period, if you for instance have numerous or different fights, or you are doing something like boxing where you have like a one-minute round, or you're fighting in an MMA fight and you have, I think they have a one-minute round in between their fights, then what would you do in that one-minute round that's going to maybe help your next four or five minutes of fighting? If that's what you mean.

So there's a little something that I haven't spoken about and it's probably one of my favorite chapters that I also cover in my course. It's called the mistake ritual. Now the mistake ritual is a little small something that you can perform that will in essence reset your brain and refocus you for the next what's to come.

So this is a great way, for example—and this again should be practiced in training first because you need to kind of find or master your mistake ritual in order to then perform it, either like you said, if you have say 30 minutes before rounds or fight, or if you have one minute. So I have two versions that I like to give at least, depending on if they need to do it immediately and fast and they need to kind of reset their brains.

But then there's another mistake ritual that you can perform that's just a longer version of it that you can most probably perform if you have something like a 30-minute or an hour break between your one fight and your other fight.

Now what I like doing is, first and foremost, again I always go back to the breathing, because the breathing is such a powerful tool. Like I said earlier, it can help bring you down to a level of focus, flow state, in the zone, like some of you know it. And it can really also calm the nerves, but also if you are at a low and you're just not feeling energized at all, that breathing can actually help boost your energy.

So with the mistake ritual, you will perform some breathing for two to three rounds, again the four seconds in, four seconds out, in through your nose, out by your mouth. The second thing you would then perform is a reset word or an affirmation. Now I would encourage you, if you're listening to this podcast, write down a little mistake ritual that you want to maybe try out and try this out the next time you are maybe in a stressful situation, or you are in a situation where you just completely need to reset your mind, refocus, and kind of carry on and be successful.

So yeah, the second thing is get a reset word. Now this could be very individualized again. I like saying things like, "Come on, Mona," or I like saying, "Be present," or "Focus," or "Eye of the Tiger," because I used to—

James de Lacey48:50

Your favorite song.

Mona de Lacey48:50

My favorite song. It's so funny, it was actually when we got married, this was our walking song after we got married.

James de Lacey48:50

She wanted to be Rocky.

Mona de Lacey48:50

Well, essentially Rocky is my favorite movie. But the Eye of the Tiger has a lot of special memories to it because it was a song I would listen to over and over and over and over and over again before heavy training sessions and before competition. So this song used to be my energy booster and motivation booster. That's why I'm saying—

James de Lacey49:26

That was your reset word.

Mona de Lacey49:26

Reset word. So that was my reset word because I had such a deep connection with the song. And that is why I also say music can be very powerful to help also just enhance your performance, because it boosts your mood and your energy levels.

It doesn't have to be anything like that deep. It can be something random, like pineapple, banana, anything you want to. I literally, I have one of my clients that actually uses the word "banana," and it's so funny, but it's the word that gets her laughing if she's been dealing with anxiety or she's been stressed.

She will say to herself, she'll do her breathing, she'll say to herself "banana," and she wears a little elastic around her wrist and she'll flick the elastic, and then this helps reset her mind and that helps her refocus. Now Mel Robbins does a very similar thing, but it's not the whole mistake ritual, but she does a whole thing where she counts backwards.

So she'll count 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and that basically resets the mind and it helps you then to kind of boost your motivation and then go out there and kind of just forget of the past and forget what was happening a couple of minutes or a couple of seconds ago and focus on what's to come.

Because at the end of the day, the reason also why our performance gets affected, especially I would say in martial arts, is if something didn't go as planned and say an opponent scores against you or he's maybe up in point and it all of a sudden rattles you. It throws you off your game, it just messes with your self-confidence. Now it's about how am I going to regain that confidence in like 30 seconds in order to just reset my mind and be like let go of the past, focus on the future.

So your reset word can even be like "present moment" or "focus on the future" or "this is a new round." It can be anything you want. But by performing that little mistake ritual, and when you do the longer version of it, the only thing that you will add different is with your reset word, you will also visualize a past experience that you did really well in.

And that is just an extra way to boost your motivation and just kind of have your brain focusing on something different other than what happened a few seconds ago, and then that will help boost your confidence. So that is a great little routine that you can do in competition, but again very individualized.

It could be things like if you are used to in training drinking Gatorade. I always go back to Gatorade because it's something that I drink during my tough training sessions. I know a lot of athletes do that too. They drink some sugary drink just to help them recover, help them boost the energy a little. Or it could be something like eating gummies, and whatever it might be in order to just kind of boost that sugar levels, and that's their little routine.

I used to with my weightlifting, I used to always have a nougat bar. I know if you're American you might not know what a nougat bar is, but I would go and Google it. Because it was so funny, my first World Championships I told my coach in America I need to get a nougat bar before my competition because this is just part of my routine.

And we literally went to look the whole for Dallas for nougat, and no one knew what nougat was. And it was one person that was like "wait, I think they call it nugget or something," but they call it something completely different and they were like "oh, it's that," but no one knew what nougat was.

But I needed this thing because that was part of my routine, and I made sure that everything I needed I would get prior to. And then I knew I would between my snatch and my clean and jerk I will eat my nougat bar or just a part of it. But that's just a way of me of kind of resetting my brain to be like "okay, snatches is finished, now it's clean and jerks."

It could also be things like you tapping your boxing gloves together or something like that. Just little things and little ways that just kind of get you going. And that routine, first and foremost, it helps boost your confidence, boost your motivation, and just help you feel like you are in control. That's actually the main reason of why you do routines.

James de Lacey53:48

And we'll probably talk about post-training, but two questions first. Can you be too reliant on a routine whereas, for example, say you couldn't find your nougat, you would be absolutely down and out if you relied on that routine? Secondly, what if I had the perfect first round or first fight, everything went to plan? Do I still want to do something like that where I'm resetting the mind, or is there something else that I do to continue the momentum?

Mona de Lacey54:18

If you have something that works for you and it means continuing the momentum, I would absolutely do that. So then you wouldn't do that mistake ritual. I wouldn't do the mistake ritual. That's why I call it, it's called the mistake ritual, because it's literally there resetting your mind if a mistake happened. So if you are already in that mindset and you're doing well and what you are doing is working for you, I wouldn't go and include the mistake ritual because it's not needed. It's mainly just needed for if something ought to happen that throws you off your game.

James de Lacey54:45

Gotcha. And I can't remember now the second question.

Mona de Lacey54:45

Can you be too reliant?

James de Lacey54:45

Oh yes.

Mona de Lacey54:45

Yes, you can definitely be that. This actually happened to me many years ago. I had a few good luck charms that I would always have with me in competition. I would have it with me at the World Championships. It was just something I, it was just my little good luck charm that I carried with me everywhere. And it actually got stolen at one of my competitions, but it took a lot mentally in order to say, because in the beginning I was like "my lucky charm is stolen, I'm probably going to lose," because this is my thing.

And you'll be surprised how many athletes are superstitious, and it might be placebo, it might not be. But if something works for an athlete, I would always recommend carry on with that thing. But like you said, if something happens to that thing and you're too reliant on it, what then?

A very good is also someone that can have a mindset shift and then basically tell themselves, "this is something, my lucky charm got stolen, that's out of my control, but what's in my control is my performance, all the hard work I've put in, and knowing that I'm ready, my mindset." That is then the thing that you can rely on.

James de Lacey56:16

Would you then recommend if someone was, someone listening to us was creating a routine, try create a routine that doesn't rely on maybe something that could, you know, maybe something that's hard to find in another country or another place? If, for example, you're nougat, if that was your routine and you flew to whatever country and they just don't sell that thing there, would you then recommend maybe trying to create a routine where no matter where you go you can have it with you?

Mona de Lacey56:48

Well, I would say that I did learn a lesson that now when I travel countries, I buy my nougat in my own country. Take, so then I take it with me. So that is a great way of making sure that if I do travel to another country and they don't have it, so go and do your research. Okay, if it's something like that, if they have it, pack it, pack it with you in your bags. If you can't take it with you in your bags for some or other reason, then I would most definitely have a plan B or even a plan C.

And then the other thing is what's also really important here, say for example you have a necklace that maybe your grandmother or your father or someone gave you, and you'll often see people, especially very religious athletes, and I also love that about them, they'll always have little crosses around them and they'll kiss the cross. And I'm a very big believer in, like I said, if there's something that works for that athlete, it doesn't matter what it is.

Believing in the fact that their strength or their power is not necessarily coming from there, because they did the work, but just knowing that this is the little thing to just help boost their motivation, I will most always, always, always, I will recommend the athletes to have it.

But then again, if for some reason, say the judges say "okay, you can't wear that for some reason," I know then some athletes have a tattooed on them or whatever it might be. So I would, yes, I would most definitely just have a plan B or a plan C that if something like that does happen. But then also just remember that always go back to the realization that you did all of the work to prepare for this competition.

So it's about knowing what's in your, knowing that, you know, what can I control? I can control the fact that I did all of my training and preparation for this competition. Now it's just about believing that you can execute.

James de Lacey58:36

That's perfect. Let's touch finally on the post-competition routine. So maybe after a fight or training, why would I want to do anything else, and what would I do if I had to do something else?

Mona de Lacey59:06

So after a fight, and this is probably after a fight, after a training session, that is the most valuable time. And the reason I say this, because that valuable time is the time that you are going to set yourself up for success for your next competition or your next fight or your next training session.

So I'm a big believer in saying after you've competed, don't wait a day or two or three days or four days. Wait maybe a couple of hours or even less after your competition. Sitting down, writing down everything that went well in the competition, the things that maybe didn't go as well, but basically reflecting on how the competition went.

Then basically saying, "Okay, I know this and this and this went wrong, this is what my emotions were." And the reason I say do it as quick as possible after your competition is because the emotions and the thoughts are still very much fresh. You'll even find that the next day you might have forgotten some of the emotion you felt directly after your competition, and that emotion might have been either really helpful to boost your motivation, or you would have had maybe some emotion or self-talk or whatever that actually decreased your performance because you basically talked yourself down.

And then those are things that you can go back to the drawing board and be like, "I need to practice my self-talk, I need to practice certain skills." And you might actually forget some of those things if you had to do this the next day. So like I said, post-competition, like couple of hours after, is so valuable. So I wouldn't neglect that. I would make a point of always going and reflecting on how competition went.

And the most important part is you want to critique but not criticize. Because when you criticize your performance and downplaying and telling yourself you were useless, you were just not good enough, you're not worthy of whatever, like those are very strong and powerful words, and breaking yourself down isn't going to be conducive to performing well in the future.

So you need to go and make sure that you critique your performance and you still write down the things that didn't go as well, but also focus on the things that did go well, even if it was just one or two things. But focus on those things as well.

And then if the things, if it didn't go as planned or whatever, for whatever reason, you then close the book, close that chapter, burn it. Burn it. Because now you are working towards your next competition. Because a big downfall for athletes is focusing on the past and focusing on past performances way too much and dwelling on past negative performances, and they never get out of it because they always seem to go back to that fight where that person threw them off their game and it totally messes with their mindset going into the competition.

But closing the chapter and being like, "This is closed. From tomorrow I'm starting to work towards my next competition. Whatever happened in this fight happened. It's the past. I'm letting go, but I am still learning from it." That's the important thing.

James de Lacey1:02:57

Last question for you. Is there a post-training routine? Is that different?

What do you mean if it's different? Would you do a different routine post-training versus post-fight?

Mona de Lacey1:02:57

So when it comes to reflecting, no, I wouldn't do anything different. I would also go after my training session and go and reflect on how training went. That's really important. But what could change, for example, post-competition is maybe post-training session you would have a protein shake or an ice bath or an Epsom bath or whatever it might be. But maybe after your competition you will just maybe do your reflection and your cool down.

But just finding what's going to be really good for you and that's going to set you up for success. But again, even with your post-training and post-competition routine, keep them as close as possible to each other. And again, the most important thing is when you do this reflection is not to dwell on the past. And like I said, very important, do not criticize yourself.

James de Lacey1:03:59

This was awesome, Mona. I hope that you guys got a lot out of this and found some practical things that essentially you can implement now. If you wanted to take your mental skills journey even further, if you go to the description there's a discount code there, "BEAST," and if you use that you get $100 off Mona's course. And that course Mona has as a video course, but she also has a workbook that you can use to go through the video course with.

So essentially it's like having Mona coach you while you're doing your mental skills. So instead of just trying to sit there and blindly figure out what you're going to do, you're going to have exercises you can work through yourself to actually essentially train your mind and have some structure to it, just like you would have structure to your physical training. But thanks for coming on, Mona. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about you and learn more about your sports psychology?

Mona de Lacey1:04:49

Firstly, I do want to say that if anyone does purchase the course, they can, I always love feedback. And if you guys have any questions, you can always email me at mona@helpingpsychology.com, or you can also reach me through my social media, which is @powerful_pretorius. So my Maiden surname.

James de Lacey1:04:49

I'll put everything in the description.

Mona de Lacey1:04:49

You'll put it all in the description. But also if you would like to listen to some more of my mindset videos, you can also go to my YouTube channel, which is Mindset and Weightlifting by Mona. So basically those are my social media where I really branch out with regards to the mental side of things and training.

James de Lacey1:05:19

Yeah, perfect. Thanks for coming on then.

Mona de Lacey1:05:19

Thank you for having me.