Constructing Confidence

Here's another good article from Lockflow.com.

Constructing Confidence
by Marshal Carper

Confidence is a vital component to success in any part of life. In combat sports, having confidence in your techniques and in yourself can mean the difference between victory and defeat, between your hand being raised and going to the hospital to have your face put back together. While confidence issues tend to occur in the early stages of training, when a student is first learning the ropes of grappling, confidence issues are not limited to neophytes. Even seasoned veterans can find themselves questioning their abilities, especially following a loss or in the face of a serious challenge.

Though confidence may be largely internal, confidence in yourself begins with external factors. In the case of grappling or mixed martial arts, before you can be confident in your techniques and your ability to achieve victory, you must find coaches and instructors that you believe in. If you are constantly questioning the skill level of your instructors and the validity of their advice, you will never have faith in the techniques that they teach you.

When your instructor gives you information that immediately benefits your game, such as technical adjustments during your drilling or coaching during sparring, your confidence in your instruction grows. If you trust the source of your knowledge, you are on your way to having confidence in your technique and have taken the first step to having confidence in yourself.
Learning to trust the advice your coach gives you is relatively easy, especially if they have an impressive competition record or have produced quality fighters, but developing confidence in your techniques can be a bit more difficult. When you first use a new move, your movements are uncoordinated, sloppy, and jerky. As you rehearse the move over and over, the connection between your brain and limbs strengthens, making your movements more efficient and smoother. Eventually after thousands of repetitions, the move becomes instinct, and you can perform each step of the technique without conscious thought.

To have confidence in a technique, you must have practiced it enough to make instinctual, but that is not enough. Move from compliant drilling into drilling with resistance. Drilling with resistance generally requires isolating a position and a scenario with a training partner. To be truly confident in a move, you must have executed it successfully in a live situation multiple times, and this can be difficult. Being conscious of your training practices is essential at this point.

In Gracie Submission Essentials, Helio and Royler Gracie recommend trying a new move on the lightest, least-skilled training partners as possible. If you’re a blue belt, of course a training partner at blue belt or higher is going to shut down the move you just learned. Your favorite guard sweep may be at the blue belt level, but your brand new arm bar set up is still at the white belt level.

Just like in a video game, the skills you use repeatedly improve and become stronger. Skills you don’t use stay low or deteriorate. Individual techniques are the same way. So start on the new guys and work your way up. Raise the skill level and weight of your opponent as you get more and more comfortable executing a technique in real time against a live, resisting opponent. Once you are catching people at or above a skill level with a move, you will have developed confidence in that move. Creating a collection of these effective moves brings you that much closer to having confidence in your ability to enter into a contest and come out victorious.

With a game plan of well-rehearsed moves at your disposal and a trusted coach on your side, the next step to having confidence in yourself is taking your game that is effective in the gym to competition. There are plenty of well-written guides dedicated specifically to easing pre-competition jitters, so I won’t rehash what has been said better by others.

I do, however, want to add that part of easing pre-competition jitters and having confidence in yourself stems from knowing that you have prepared well. These pieces of advice are important and will certainly help you develop confidence in your abilities, but the most important factor to developing confidence is having the work ethic and dedication necessary to train consistently and intelligently.

Good luck.