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

It'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

most 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

Not 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

You 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

When 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

To 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

Yeah, 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

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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

Attempt 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

Jerry 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

I'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

And 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

Basically 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

um

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

Drilling 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