a fighters mentality

The mentality of a fighter is the key to success. Raw talent or technic is nothing without a good mentality. A fighters mentality affects his approach to a fight, the way he trains, how he rests, and pretty much everything. People draw these conclusions that a fighter has to be ferocious and fired up before a fight. Or that they have to be calm, cool and collected. The truth is it all depends on the person, people handle different things different ways. 

I know a lot of fighters who fight because it gets them attention. They don’t take it as serious as I do or other successful fighters. In this case the fighters who fight for the wrong reasons don’t really train as hard as some who do this cause they love it. At the same time you want to have a balance. A balance between hard training and rest, between focus and not taking yourself to seriously. If all you do is train, train, and train. It doesn’t matter how tough you are you’ll get burned out on it, and you wont enjoy training or fighting as much anymore. Lots of great fighters have “valleys” in there careers. A point where they fall, lose a fight, or just lose there edge. This is the defining moment wether you fight through or accept defeat. This is the part that tests your mind.   

Entering the MMA world

Becoming a fighter, its not as cool and fun as it might sound. If you want to become a fighter first you have to join a gym, memberships at fight gyms are very expensive. For most people in our local area to join a fight gym they would try to join the Peoria Athletic Club or PAC.  This gym is located between East Peoria and Morton but will soon be moving down by Bradley. PAC is a good gym with good trainers and a nice facility, but it is outrageously priced. For 100 dollars a month they will let you take there classes and you have to put up with the “know it all” gym owner. I personally will not step foot in this gym unless it’s a Saturday morning sparring, which is free, and the only day the owner isn’t there. The owner is a stuck up guy who has spent a million bucks to get his black belt, yet he can be submitted by people who don’t even have a belt.

Another gym it Central Illinois Combat Club, or CICC, which is a gym that I love. Located in Canton Illinois, which is a bit of a drive from Peoria but it is still worth the four day a week training program. The gym provides a great diversity of fighters/trainers. The owner, a man lets most of us train there for free doesn’t even take credit for being the coach. It is a family mentality, and whenever you came to train you also teach we learn from each other and there are no egos! We are all simply there to get better and train. If you are just entering MMA it will cost 30 dollars a month to train at this gym. These are the two main fight gyms in central Illinois, there are also programs at worlds gym, and align life chiropractic. But both of these programs are “run”, or comprised of fighters that also train at CICC or PAC . Entering any program will cost money, but once you become a good training partner, they might let you slide on the payments.     

Anybody wearing a Tapout shirt

Mma is a very fast growing sport but you’ve got to be careful of some of these “fans”. Personally Im a very competitive person I always have to win, be better than you, or be above you period. Now this is both a good thing and a bad thing its good because it drives me to be better, its bad because Im constantly comparing myself to people around me. 

Something that I’ve noticed about a lot of guys is they wanna be known as the tough guy to. I can’t tell you how many guys that say they are “fighters” and they train at these tough gyms. Which usually the “tough” gyms are the places I train and the fighters there are my friends. Somehow these guys will talk all day to people about there fighting and hard training. Then I try to talk to them about training and its pretty obvious that they have never stepped foot into a fight gym. Much less any of the gyms I train at. I don’t like to tell people that I fight until I get to know them or someone else I know tells them. My english class and part of my business class are the only people outside of my close friends and high school who know Im an MMA fighter. I don’t always like the attention and you immediately become a target for the guy in the class who thinks he’s the most macho. So if somebody is telling you how hard there training is, they could just be trying to be the “macho guy in the room”.