Momentum Fighters

Momentum Fighters
04/06/2007

A friend of mine recently sent me a book entitled “A Fighter’s Heart” by Sam Sheridan. It is the story of a Harvard graduate who travels around the globe in an effort to train with some of the best martial artists and fight camps in the world. Although I am only half way through, I very much recommend it as a good read. He offers a lot of insight into not just the fight world, but into the human psyche as well.

At one point in the book, he references “momentum fighters”. These are competitors who dominate when plan A is working but are so broken when it fails they can’t get to a plan B. You can see it in their eyes, posture, everything – they just can’t get over the emotional disappointment and figuratively (if not literally) throw in the towel.

As I read this, I couldn’t help but think how this applies to almost everything – school, work, working out, parenting etc. It’s so easy to be excited about a game-plan and the expected outcome. Conversely, it’s a enormous bummer to have it fall apart and be left wondering what to do next.

To connect the concept to training, watch people’s behavior in the gym. You will see some folks almost every day for a month and then they disappear. When asked what happened, they respond with something like “Well, I missed a couple days and just couldn’t get back into it.” Something happened that stopped their momentum and they weren’t able to get that motivational inertia moving again.

No judgement here – obstacles are tough for everyone. I don’t care who you are, dealing with a setback like an injury, sickness etc can really throw you off track and make you feel like all the progress you made is now coming to a halt or even going in reverse. In my experience, this is when you have to act quickly to prevent any bad momentum from building. Assess the situation, come up with an alternative game plan and quickly execute – even if you are not yet fully confident this is the best way to go. The reason being is that it at least puts you in a position to halt the negative and start moving things toward the positive – you can always correct as you go.

I think another component is being aware of your emotioins and avoid feeling too high or, of course, to low. If you get too excited about an action and it's resulting outcome, you are setting yourself up for a long fall if/when it doesn't work. At that point, feeling motivated about changing game plans is going to be tough. Thus, although everyone is different, for me it works best to keep the emotions centered/level. This makes me feel as though I am emotionally mobile and ready to make smooth transitions to another game plan if needed. But like I have mentioned in earlier BLOG's - easier said than done. Like everything, this is a work in progress for me.