What’s it like fighting in a cage? What are they thinking? What are they feeling? How do you describe their frame of mind? And why is it like that?

I’ve been fighting MMA for almost eleven years. For me, it’s like a different place, a different dimension, a different way of thinking. I feel nervous energy swirling around in my chest, like an itchy force so strong it might explode like a volcano. As soon as the ref says “Fight!” my surroundings fade away into a cloudy blur, the past and the future no longer exist. Time speeds up on my feet, and slows down when I’m on the ground. In between rounds, my brain won’t absorb anything my cornerman says to me after we leave the corner.

I started wondering if it’s the same with everybody. So I peeked into the minds of different fighters with different experience levels to try and understand.

How clearly can people think?

“I can think super clearly,” said UFC fighter Mike Pyle. With 15 years since his pro debut and a record of 26-9, he is the most experienced fighter I interviewed. “I have to train my body, but I also have to train my mind, so my mind is at its clearest, most vibrant, fully alert.”

“The Ultimate Fighter” season 19 contestant Josh Clark (5-2 MMA, 8 years MMA experience) describes how things have changed for him. “I’ve had twenty-eight fights all together including boxing, pro MMA and amateur. Everything has slowed down,” he said. “When I first got in there, it would be tunnel vision for me. It was more instinct. I’d get hit, and I’d start panicking and want to take it to the ground. There’s all that adrenaline going through your body. That keeps you from being clear-minded. After I spent over a year and a half in the boxing ring, whenever I got hit I couldn’t take it to the ground, so I had to learn how to overcome the anxiety. I HAD to keep it standing. I feel like (all that boxing experience) elevated my overall game.”

“Hurricane” Heather Clark (6-4) spoke about time perception in fights. “I remember my first amateur boxing fight I did when I was nineteen, and time did slow down. When I was (fighting) in the corner of the ring, it felt like time almost like stopped. I was almost outside of my body. It was a very weird thing. In the corner between rounds, it was really fast and strange, and I was kind of looking around. I never really felt that again afterwards, though.”

Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt and UFC vet Vinny Magalhaes (10-7 MMA) adds to this. “For some reason in my last few fights, it feels like everything is going too fast. I think it’s more about experience than anything else. The more experienced you get, the faster the fights go.”

Brittany Decker (0-1) talked about her debut MMA fight in DEEP-Jewels in Japan last month, where she found herself on the wrong end of a close decision. “(Coach) Kenji Osawa is one of the most technical strikers ever, so we drilled the perfect game plan so much. Then, when that first punch landed on me in the fight, this natural killer instinct kicked in. It was just like ‘survive.’ It was like, ‘Someone just punched me really f*cking hard in the face!’ And I wanted to kill her. So all technique went out the window. I had no idea I was in the ring. I had no idea what ‘moving’ was. It was either ‘I knock her out or she’s going to kill me.’ A totally different person took over. Watching later, I saw a whole different image of myself. In my fight I couldn’t do anything I drilled in practice.”

Vinny Magalhaes said that when he competes in jiu-jitsu competitions, it feels a little more natural than MMA. “Maybe because I’ve been doing BJJ for longer. It’s like, your body reacts. It’s not like your mind thinks what to do, it’s just what you trained.”

A common factor all the interviewees agreed upon turned out to be experience. The more experience someone has, the more comfortable they feel. The more comfortable and in control of the situation they feel, the clearer they are able to think, the more analytical their minds can be. The time perception must come from their experience and comfort levels. Therefore, no matter how good you are at the gym, everyone matures through actual fight experience. “You mature in life, and you mature in sports,” Mike Pyle said. “MMA is a very violent sport. You have to be ready to pull the trigger at any time.”

Muay Thai amateur fighter Serena DeJesus’s (2-0) comment adds to this. “When you go up against someone you know you’re kicking their butt, your focus seems to be more slowed down, you feel like you’re more in control. You feel you own it, like it’s yours. As soon as things start turning sour, or if you’re out of your element, like if I’m grappling or getting hurt in general, my focus gets a little shaky. I have to readjust and distance myself a little bit to breathe, calm down, and figure out what to do next.”

Brazilian jiu-jitsu brown belt Casey Milliken (3-4 MMA, actively competes BJJ) stated, “For me as an individual, I don’t feel safe or centered until I get in the clinch. It’s like everything is very blurry and super fast when I’m standing. Part of that is just being less comfortable standing- I’m more comfortable in jiu-jitsu. When I get that clinch, everything becomes much more lucid. I can hear, for example, announcers talking about what I’m doing to this guy, and I can tune in all my coaches. That didn’t happen right away. It took me five, six, seven fights before I started to actually tune in and take in my surroundings.”

“It’s just going to be a matter of time,” Mike Pyle said. “In my earlier career, I had 16 or 17 submissions. In the latter part of my career, it’s knockouts. More and more comfortable, more and more confident, is what it is. People might say they’re not comfortable standing up. It’s that they’re not ‘confident.’ There is a difference between those two, though. For example, if I’m in a clinch, I’m more comfortable (not getting hit) but I might not be confident.”

The most important thing an MMA fighter or aspiring fighter can do to help their career is to get a lot of experience competing in different disciplines.

“Honestly, it’s helped me a ton the past couple of years doing a lot of jiu-jitsu tournaments,” said Casey Milliken. “Just being able to get a lot more centered and focused on what I really need to focus on, which is my technique. Get in there and get the job done, rather than being all nervous and wasting my energy.”

Josh Clark said, “Your breathing is important, and you breathe best where you’re the most comfortable at. Take somebody out of their comfort zone, then they’ll get tired, and that’s when you’ll see what kind of fighter they are. So you’ve gotta be comfortable in striking, grappling and wrestling. You’ve gotta train it all. Not just in practice every day, but you’ve gottta go get in these grappling matches in front of an audience. That’s when it really counts – when everybody’s watching.”