In July, Flow Athletics partnered with Muay Thai Guy to launch a pre-fight rituals contest. This post is a follow-up on all the awesome writing that was submitted and how much we learned from our readers.

Sean (the Muay Thai Guy) and I wanted to know,

How do you stay calm, focus your mind and prepare for a fight?

And were willing to give away some great swag to find out. Prizes included Flow, patches, a limited edition Flow Athletics rashguard and the best book on fighting ever written.

The swag must have been enticing, because you all gave us some great answers!

Sean put it best:

Getting your mind right before a fight can mean the difference between a dominant win or a lack luster loss. It’s important to focus your mind and calm your nerves before you get in the ring to throw down… but how do you do that?

Read the top placing entries for yourself. I don’t know about Sean, but I got the chills when reading these. And there’s good practical advice to take away as well. Pay attentions to successful patterns!

Grand prize: Fight Before The Fight

By Alban

Training camp sucks. It’s intense, demanding and really makes you hate going to the gym. It makes you go from feeling excited about fighting, to just wanting to beat that guy up bad and getting this whole thing over with.

As the day approaches I’m surprisingly calm, until I walk into the gym and see the ring. That’s when it all hits me, like “am I really going to be in there with someone who really wants to hurt me?” I really start to think about my decision, but that’s just my nerves and I know it.

When I’m in the gym and I’m waiting for my name to be called, I really don’t want anyone talking to me unless I talk to them first. I like total peace, well as much peace as one can find in a gym full of testosterone and violence. But all in all, I just want peace. I have to calm down and assess the situation, meaning I have to tell myself that I trained for this. That guy is just as scared, excited, nervous & pumped as I am. A couple fights before mine I always walk outside and take a deep breathe. I have to get away just for a second and collect myself. If I told you I wasn’t scared, I’d be lying, but quite frankly, that’s what keeps me going. It’s the fear of losing, the fear of getting embarrassed and not performing to my ability. I’m not worried about getting hit, I worry about not living up to what I’m capable of. Because if you lose, using “you didn’t get the best of me” isn’t a good excuse. I knock back a carb packed drink about 15 minutes before, usually a Gatorade pouch or something common like that. Then it’s just a waiting game.

The guy calls my name and without even realizing it, I’m hauling ass up the stairs and into the ring. I’m up those steps in seconds, but to me they’re the longest steps I’ve ever walked up. I never show how nervous & scared I am, ever. I step in, and lean back on the corner with my hands on the ropes, with a look of disinterest on my face. It’s the best thing I can do as far as mind games go. My logic is, if he sees I look like I don’t care, maybe hell think ill fight like it too.

Once that bell rings though, I’m usually a robot. I don’t really think at all the first round, I’m doing whatever I did in training. My hands feel faster but at the same time weaker from all the nerves. After that adrenaline dump, and I recompose myself, is when the easy part begins.

Not easy in a sense that I don’t respect my opponents skill level, but in a sense that, all those emotions & feelings are gone. Training camp, was so much harder than these next few minutes. Now it’s just a matter of me, not beating myself.

Runner Up: Revolution Muay Thai – Uriel “Crazy” Figueroa pre-fight ritual

By Uriel Figueroa

First things first after all the drama of training, cutting weight, weighing in and all that crazy crap first thing I do when I get to the arena is find my locker room, immediately I find it, hunker down lay out all my gear that I will need and go through a run through and make sure I have my wraps, gloves, mouthpiece, and cup. Next thing I do is find out what fight number I am and around what time I should be fighting, than I check out from the real world and enter the warped reality of “Crazy”.

First and most important thing I do is immediately head to the ring, step out on the ramp and imagine my walk out music, I walk out to the ring envisioning the crowd, step into the ring, seal it and immediately run through the worst case scenarios in the ring through shadowboxing, so for example I practice getting cornered on the ropes or in the actual corner and figure out what angles I’ll need to cut and where I should do it as the ring may be a little larger or smaller than ours in the gym as well as the rope configuration could be different which will play a factor in how I bounce and pivot off the ropes.

After about 10 minutes of this, I head back to the locker room and suck on as much water as I can, for some reason on fight nights I always feel like I just ran a marathon in 105° weather! All while chowing down on my Whole wheat sandwich with peanutbutter and broken reeses pieces bits with banana. I must eat this EXACTLY 30 minutes before the show starts, if I don’t I start to freak out…

Next thing I do is when the show starts I crash out and take a good 30 minute power nap, once I wake up I get my hands wrapped, my team mates rub me down with Namman Muay, 2 fights before my fight I start warming up. First fight is very light movements with talking about our game plan, second fight I tear in to the pads for the last 2 rounds with kicks and teeps and some punches, but mainly kicks and teeps to get my hip flexors loose…I’m a big kicker so for me this is my main focus in the warm ups. My match is up, I put on my skull bandana that covers my mouth, pop in the mouth piece, slap on the Mong Kon and head out for war.

Runner Up: Tunnel Vision

By Joshua Heflin

To start out I should say I am brand new to Muay Thai. I have had only two fights so far, but have one both. So I have not yet found a home for all the emotions that come into play with a fight. I started Muay Thai a year ago, and can safely say I am an addict. So when offered my chance to fight It took only seconds for me to proudly say back, “yes, get me in there”. I have always dealt with an anxiety problem. So I knew this was going to be something of a milestone for me. I knew I would look back on this night with pride, joy, and honor. I took my fight on 3 weeks notice. The final week leading up to the event was the worst for me. I had butterflies, and I was trying to size up an opponent who had no face yet. I started to go over the fight from beginning to end every night while laying in bed. Telling myself that I trained for this, and bled for this. That this would be my moment, and I wouldn’t bend to the will of anyone else.

Then came the day of the fight. I started to go over my game plan. I ran over, and over again what I was going to implement in my game plan. The smell of namman muay kept snapping me back into the present. I found myself time and time again having to block out the chaos that was whirling around me and focus myself. I felt me need to hype myself up, or work myself into a fevered anger. I felt as if I was sitting in the eye of a hurricane.

Watching the confusion, and anxiety rush around me from a safe observation point. I kept pounding it into my head the things I wanted to rely on. I wanted to make sure that I kept my ears fixed on my coach, and work on using a few combinations. I didn’t feel the need to mean mug anyone, or try to “flex” on anyone. Again this was the first time I had been in the ring. I had such a plan and idea of why I was going to do.

In all I don’t have a game plan yet. I’m still new to this. But I know I find my peace in the chaos and the tunnel vision that washes over me. That there is no need to act like a hard ass. That your limbs do all the talking and thinking for you. Will the way I handle pre fight stress change in the future? Almost certainly. But I will not run from it, I won’t hide from it. I will welcome it with an open mind and continue to forge myself as a Muay Thai boxer for the rest of my life.

Thank you,

Joshua.

I think digging into a fighter’s mindset, pre-fight, is fascinating. Let me just reiterate, that The Fighter’s Mind is the greatest book on fighting ever written. Getting words to paper like this and truly being honest with yourself about what happens during that quiet before the fight can teach you a lot about yourself. You can read all the entries on Sean’s contest page.