Keep Your Guard Up!

I had some good fun at the weekend, playing with various methods of getting results with my Personal Training sessions. Now, as any good hypnotherapist would, I use embedded commands, metaphors, voice tonality and hypnotic language patterns with my clients while training them. It makes sense to use your skills in one area to help you in another. Rather than meet problems head on, you can gently lead your clients to where they need to be covertly, often during other tasks or just generally chatting during the recovery periods. It gets the results far faster. And I have to be honest – I have great fun doing this!

So while I have enjoyed utilising my linguistic skills, and even inducing covert trance states in my clients, I hadn’t actually utilised physical hypnotic phenomena yet to get results with my fighters – until last Saturday that is.

One of my clients, who (as all my clients do) works very hard and diligently, had an issue with his guard. He just couldn't maintain a good solid guard, his hands dropping far too low. I was having a really good ‘play’ psychologically that day and suddenly I had a 'light bulb' moment. I quickly utilised an adaptation of a simple hypnosis suggestibility test during a demonstration of what I needed him to do for his guard. And this had incredible results on my client, who suddenly was keeping a very, very tight guard perfectly and effortlessly.

I tested this over a few rounds, and the change was almost miraculous. So, as every geek like me would, I decided to test this result. Thoroughly.

I proceeded to totally ‘beast’ my client with pads, he hit more pads in twenty minutes than he’d probably hit in his entire life. I took him through such an intense workout that when he finished the beasting, he couldn’t even lift his water to his lips.

And then I gave him a very technical five minute round of boxing pads, firing the trigger for keeping his guard at the start. His guard was perfect. His techniques came even better as a byb-product. The expression on his face was amazement combined with a little confusion, and of course a lot of sweat! I must have looked like an 8 year old at Christmas.

Later that day I got a text from him, saying “I’m still scratching my head. How you made me keep my guard up even when I was well and truly f***ed is beyond me!”

Of course, I replied, in the immortal words of Lee Francis (Avid Merrion) playing David Blaine – “It’s all...because...of the magic!”

But, the best bit is, I didn’t make him keep his guard up – he did it himself. A little combination of physiology combined with the power of suggestion, something that even the most inexperienced hypnotist could handle, and he quite happily kept his guard up there himself. I hadn’t actually done anything!

Perhaps it is really good to allow experience from one area to cross over to another. It has left a client and me really happy – and I’m still grinning with how stupidly simple the whole thing was to achieve!

Can You Get In The Right STATE For Fighting?

This is the third of a series of articles originally published by the now defunct online magazine MMA Unlimited (so don't click on the MMA Unlimited link - it won't work!). Its part of a series of articles, and while my knowledge has now moved on, it hopefully makes interesting reading.



Would you like to be in the optimum physical and mental state for every fight? Do you want to achieve consistency? Fed up with sometimes just ‘not being on form’? Then this article will tell you not just how to have your mind and body in the best state for fighting, but how to achieve it every single time you get up to fight. Just imagine, right now, getting your fight state right every time.

A state can be defined as being made up of your internal representation (your state of mind) and your physiology (your state of body). If you change your internal representation, or your physiology, you will change your overall state. The state we are in determines our external behaviour, and our external behaviour produces the results that we get in life.

The knowledge of states is the key to change work, as with change work it is usually the external behaviour, and therefore the results that the client will achieve. So we work on the mind to change the body and therefore the behaviour, and with this we change the results.

You are in charge of your state of mind. And that’s all of the time. If you are in a bad mood, well, sorry, that’s down to you and no-one else. Only you are responsible for the way that you feel about anything. So lets say it again for clarity – you are in charge of your internal state. Realise this, and realise this now – you are the boss, you are in control, and as such you don’t need to be influenced by internal factors. And now you understand this, you know that there are no reasons why you can’t be in the optimum mental state for fighting.

In this same way you are in charge of your body. Your brain controls every function within you. It is not the fact that you are hot that makes you sweat. The brain receives stimulus from the five senses that you are getting hot, and therefore it makes some adjustments, and you sweat to cool down, amongst many other physiological actions. But the body only reacts because the brain tells it too. If it didn’t, your cooling system wouldn’t kick in. Under hypnosis, where it is often easier to communicate with this part of the brain, it is easy to induce sweating, control blood flow, control heart beat – any psycho-physiological action in the body.

You can experience this psycho-physiological now. Close your eyes and imagine holding a big, juicy lemon. See the colour and feel the texture it in your hands. Hold this lemon to your nose and breathe in. Smell the lemon. Now take a knife and cut the lemon in half. Smell it again, as you lightly squeeze the lemon, and imagine the juiciness inside. Imagine what it would be like to bite into this lemon and the bitter sharp taste in your mouth. Did you smell the lemon? Did you taste the lemon? Did your mouth start to salivate? If you did, congratulations, you’ve just had a positive hallucination in the waking state. And you’ve also realised how easy it is for a hypnotist to help you experience things. Most importantly you’ve just experienced that the mind controls the reactions in the body.

In fact, the control of blood and the health of the body is an area of my field I am studying like mad. And that is made even more poignant with my links to the military. With hypnosis it is possible to take a severe trauma victim and control blood through a wound, control body functions and basically adjust the body’s ‘life support’ system. Imagine how much more effective medics would be with this knowledge?

But let’s get back to our type of fighting. So to recap we are in charge of our state of mind, and in the same way we are in charge of our state of body. So what would be the optimum for each?

For the state of mind I would say that sensory awareness and focus on task would be of optimum importance. The increased sensory awareness will provide the stimulus for your mind, and therefore your body, to react to. You need to be alert in all respects, concentrating only on the opponent and your corner’s instructions, sharp and clear, sticking to the strategy, and yet have flexibility in response. In change work we have a saying that the greatest success comes to those with the greatest flexibility in approach. In fighting we need the ability to adapt to every eventuality during the fight.

The body obviously needs to be warmed, mobilised, and ready for action. At the same time it needs to be relaxed, like a coiled spring, the energy stored, ready to instantly react as required during the fight. It needs to be able to work efficiently, precisely, explosively. This is where you want the effects of the limbic system to come into play, but under your control. The very physiological reactions that nerves and anxiety produce in your body to get it ready for the freeze, flight and fight responses are what we need to induce in order to produce the perfect fighting state for your body.

I call this state in my hypnosis sessions the ‘perfect fighting machine’, because that is what you are aiming to be. Have you noticed that in the two paragraphs above I have only focused on the positives? The mind needs to be efficient, and focus on what to do, and no ‘what not’ to do. For example I said to ‘concentrate on your opponent’ and not ‘be free from distractions’. For you to think about being free from distractions, first you need to think about what the distractions! That’s taking ‘processing power’ away from your mind. So concentrate on what you want – now is not the time to start thinking about what you don’t.

Try this – don’t think of a blue tree. You have to think of a blue tree to not think of a blue tree! Get the point? I’ll leave that one for you, and the discussion as to whether the unconscious part of your awareness hears negatives or not can go on between psychologists who have the time to think of it. I just concentrate on what works.

So, how do we get into the perfect fighting state – every time? The key to achieving this is to set an ‘anchor’. An anchor is a trigger to bring about a specific response, and this anchor can be set in any of the five senses. Ever heard a song, or smelt something and it takes you instantly straight back to a memory that’s so real you are almost there? These are examples of anchors, and our lives are littered with them. In sports have a think about all the little rituals sportspersons have; they are all forms of anchors. One great example that springs to mind is the Johnny Wilkinson spot kick. The whole set up is a series of anchors, all to achieve a set effect. In terms of fighting the most appropriate senses for an anchor to be set would be a touch or a word either said internally through self talk or in a specific way by your corner.

If you want to see anchors within fighting search ‘Youtube’ for my fights against Tank Abbott and Julius Francis. In my fight against Tank I won the hard way! As soon as the referee said “fight” I had this crazy self talk flash through my mind, something like “what’s it like to fight Tank Abbott when he’s fresh?” and I charged straight in and you can see the result! Instead of following the strategy of running around and waiting until he got tired, I had the ‘pleasure’ of seeing what he can do when he is fresh. It still hurts just thinking about it!

Now, I didn’t want this to happen again so before I fought Julius I worked with a hypnotherapist friend of mine, and my coaching team, and we installed a series of anchors to keep me on the strategy that we had decided upon, and to remain in the state of ‘perfect fighting machine’. If you watch that fight I didn’t put a foot wrong. I could have finished the fight much earlier, but we wanted a risk-free win, so I stuck 100% to strategy. As a side note, we set many anchors all for different reactions, and one was that if he had hit me we’d used being hit by him as an anchor, so I would instantly react with the right shot from my experience of techniques, whilst doubling in awareness and strength at the same time. Scan through my Youtube videos and you’ll find an early video of one of my clients sparring for the first time with this post hypnotic anchor installed to great effect.

So how do you set an anchor? Well, the first thing is to get into the state, and there’s two ways of doing this. The best way is to be ‘in the moment’ for the strongest anchors to be set. So when you are sparring, and you are just ‘buzzing’ everything going so well, and your reactions are so fast, and your ability is just incredible – anchor it.

If, and you should have, read my previous articles you know that the mind cannot distinguish between vividly imagined and reality. So, close your eyes, and remember a time that you were fighting at your best. See what you see, hear what you hear and really feel the feelings that you feel in this great fighting state. Notice where the feelings are in your body, and notice the movement. Imagine the movement intensifying, and start to spin the feelings more and more and notice how they intensify. Build it and build it. And as you do so, imagine yourself performing not just to the best that you have performed in reality, but suspend belief a little, and take it even further. Move quicker than your opponent. Move sharper. Have more explosivity and have better techniques. Experience what it is like to be better than you have ever been before. Change your physiology, sit or stand upright, allow your breathing to quicken, feel your pulse race, relax your muscles and let them become relaxed but like coiled springs ready to explode, really allow yourself to feel what it is like to be in the best ever possible perfect fighting machine state. And that’s when you anchor.

I find that hypnosis makes this mental process of setting anchors so much easier. The guided process of hypnosis can really allow you to ‘experience’ the state far better, shortening the process and making it even more effective. I’ll be releasing hypnosis MP3’s and CD’s particularly for fighters later in the year, of which one will be purely for the setting of anchors for ‘the perfect fighting state’. Keep tabs on my website, www.garyturner.co.uk and of course on www.mmaunltd.com for announcements in this respect.

To set an anchor you first need to decide on what would make a good anchor, or trigger, to set that state around. Anchors I have used successfully in the field of fighting are rubbing the glove against the nose, a specific single word from the corner said in a command tone, a squeeze on the shoulder from a corner man, and tapping the gloves together. But find the right one for you. Now, I’m bound by client confidentiality, but maybe you can watch out for a few professional fighters I’ve worked with over the last year, and spot the glove tapping before the fight. See how they build their state as the glove tapping increases, their mind and their physiology reacting to the anchor. The anchor needs to be specific and unique.

So when you get yourself into this state of the perfect fighting machine, just before the peak fire the anchor for a period of 5-15 seconds. Make sure you fire the anchor in exactly the same way, the same pressure, the same direction, the same word, or the same voice tonality. Fire the anchor in the specific and unique way. Make sure you release before the peak of the intensity, you don’t want to anchor a decline!

Once you’ve set an anchor, carry out a ‘break state’. Dance like a chicken or something stupid. OK, you don’t have to do that, but you do need to do something different to change states. I like using humour, because, well, its fun!

Once your state has changed test fire the anchor. If you have the intensity right during the setting of the anchor, and are firing the anchor with exactly the same unique stimulus, the feelings and state will start to come flooding back. It may come back only lightly at first, especially if you are not ‘installing’ using hypnosis, so keep repeating the process of setting the anchor, and it will get stronger and stronger each time. The anchor will eventually be as strong as you need it to be.

One word of caution is that you can ‘wear out’ an anchor. Fire the anchor when you need it or to ‘top up’ the response from the anchor. If you use it too much, at inappropriate times, then you will weaken the anchor and it will fade. The mind learns incredibly quickly, so bear that in mind.

So my suggestion is for every fighter to build the appropriate anchors in, and then fire them just before you fight. You will then enter the ring/cage/mat for competition in the perfect fighting state, having the perfect fighting mindset, the perfect physiology, for the perfect fighting result. And this can be achieved consistently every time.

Now, as you’ve read my first two articles you know that this is a series of articles. As such I’m telling a story, I know where I’m going. We’ve started with the base information, stress and the limbic system. We’ve then applied this base to nerves and pre-fight anxiety, and shown how to bring these under control. And in this article we’ve discovered how to bring the limbic system into play to help us get into the perfect state for fighting. And if you read these articles several times, take note, there’s a lot more information to help you hidden away as well. We’re building towards the fight, and this happens in the next article, where I’ll be showing you how to build the optimum awareness, recognising everything that your opponent is doing. And then in later articles we’ll be using this awareness to apply the principles of the limbic system and start to influence your opponent, know what they are going to do before they do, and manipulate them, all to your great advantage. Because we want to win, don’t we?

The General and his Soldiers

I was lightly sparring with a client last night working on skills across a single fifty-minute round. My aims were to get him to ‘flow’ with his techniques, just allow his shots to flow, and flow without restriction. And there was constant obstruction – he just couldn’t react quickly enough to counter, evade, or to take an opportunity.

Now, his technical ability is exceptional, and his conditioning too – I mean, how many of you think you can fight for a continuous 50minute of Thai boxing sparring? So I had to look closely to see where the blockage was. And in doing so I realised that I would never see the blockage, because it was in his head.

His analytical conscious mind was getting in the way.

He would see an opportunity to gain entry for a combination and then think about how to take the opportunity. So while he was thinking, the opportunity was missed.

The same was happening for his counters, his evades and every area of his game – his conscious mind was just not allowing him to do what he needed to do.

Let’s make an important distinction. This client can sense what he needs to, and has all the knowledge and technique to back it up. He knows what he can do, what to sense for, and how to apply what he wants to do. He can fight. The only problem is that his conscious mind was getting in the way and not letting him do it!

I needed him to release his conscious mind and just let his unconscious mind do the work. In sparring, padwork, running and many other forms of training you are in a nice trance anyway, so while we continued sparring I utilised the power of stories to get through to his unconscious. No point in working on a trance induction – I just worked with the one he was already in!

As we continued to exchange I told him a ‘shallow metaphor’ based on a young Army General commanding his troops. Early in his career this General would set the strategy and command his troops but always be involved, wanting to experience the battle with his troops, wanting to check that everyone knew what they were doing, and that everyone was alright. By doing so he just got in the way, preventing the soldiers from doing everything they had been trained to do, it placed them at risk, and made winning battles a great effort. He was a burden rather than an asset.

As his experience grew the General grew wiser, he learned to recognise that his troops could do their training unaided, and that he could separate himself from the battle, his mind and attention better spent on attending to the overall direction and strategy. In doing so he allowed his troops to follow his orders and their training, following the orders instantly without hesitation, just reacting, and achieving with incredible effectiveness and skill. And as a result battles were being won and victories achieved with near effortless ability.

At the end of the metaphor I saw the lovely confused expression on my client’s face, the sign that every hypnotherapist knows well, that the story was being sorted and filed, new options are there to be considered. Within ten minutes my client was testing me, speeding his reactions up, taking opportunities, his techniques freely smoothly, a new confidence showing on his expression.

I quizzed him afterwards and he told me that he wondered what the hell I was on about, babbling away about soldiers to him whilst we continued sparring. And a short while after the story had ended, he told me his mind kind of ‘zoned out’ and his arms and legs kind of moved with the techniques on their own, reacting and flowing to the stimulus of me fighting him. And while his arms and legs were reacting, his mind was thinking about what to do, whether to pressure, whether to tag and move, what overall skills to work on.

Job done.

Sometimes it’s nice to carry out sports performance work with clients ‘in the field’. Whereas sometimes I will use a more traditional approach with my sports clients, sitting in a chair, a therapy style setting, it is definitely fun to spot an opportunity during training and utilise it from there!

Until he hits you that is…

Can you control PRE-FIGHT NERVES?

This is the second of a series of articles originally published by the now defunct online magazine MMA Unlimited. Its part of a series of articles, and while my knowledge has now moved on, it hopefully makes interesting reading.



Do you know what pre-fight nerves are? Know the difference between feeling nervous and having anxiety? Do you get either or both before a fight? Are your performances affected as a result? If so, this article will explain what they are, why they happen, and most importantly will let you know how you can bring them right under your control.

In my last article I explained the limbic system and the effects it has on our physical and mental state. If you haven’t read it, please do so, as it will provide you with all the background information you need to get the most from this article. With knowledge comes understanding, and with understanding it is easy for you to put what follows into practice. Don’t skip a step, there are no shortcuts here.

Now, imagine you are back stage before a fight. Start to notice what you would see, what you would hear, and start to allow the feelings to come back inside you. Really do this now. Really take on the experience of being in your changing room right now. See what you would see, hear what you would hear, and really allow those feelings to enter your body. Your body is warmed up and ready, you know you are about to compete. The show’s runner lets you know its time, and you stand, your time for action. Think about what is about to happen. What will happen as you walk out and experience the crowd for the first time? What will you experience as you walk towards the mat, ring or cage? How will you feel the first time you see your opponent? Notice the feelings growing in your body. Really take on these experiences, right now. And if you do this, you’re having these feelings, aren’t you?

Your body can’t differentiate between a vividly imagined experience and reality. So if you really imagined the fight scenario above, you will have started to get the feelings rising in your body. Did you? Did you get the butterflies in the stomach, the dry mouth, the increased heart beat, the shortness of breath, the feelings of energy and adrenaline starting to pulse through your body? And did you get any or all of the other feelings from the autonomous nervous system, the perceived threat response, as explained in my previous article? And now ask yourself, how familiar is that feeling? For us fighters, the feelings are ones we know too well!

If you felt those feelings as you followed this process above, you may have just realised something. You create these feelings. And you can remove these feelings. You are in control of these feelings. Bear this in mind for later in the article where I show you how to handle nerves and anxiety, and remove them completely.

Now, here’s an important distinction. We need to feel like this in order to perform at our best. We need our limbic brain to fire up our sympathetic system, the stress response, to prepare our body for action. If we don’t, we will not perform. As fighters the sympathetic system is our friend, providing us with the energy and reactions, switching off optimising our system for competition. So we actually need this feeling to be there!

The problem is that we only need that reaction for when we compete. The remainder of the time we don’t need it. So you may find that on the run up to the fight you are having trouble sleeping, your appetite may be dropping off, and the perceived pressure of the fight may be crossing over and affecting your behaviour in your daily life from work through to relationships. All this is a wasted and unnecessary use of the sympathetic system – we only need this to kick in as we fight.

Now, experiencing nerves and feeling anxious are related but not quite the same. Being nervous is when you are worried about something you have to do. Being anxious is when you are worried about something that might happen, or has happened. And therefore both can kick in when you are going to fight. The responses are the same – the limbic brain mobilises the sympathetic system fires up getting you ready for the GAS (General Adaptation Syndrome), and you all know the feelings of nerves and anxiety.

Have a look again at the definitions of nerves and anxiousness in the paragraph above. They are both concerned with worry, but have a look at the time references. The worry is in the now, but the event you are worried about is either in the past or the future. The past has already happened, so don’t worry about it, take your learning from what has happened and don’t worry about it any more! Let it go! You can’t change what has happened. So worrying about it is a waste of time.

The future hasn’t happened yet, so there is uncertainty. That uncertainty causes you to worry. This worry fires up the sympathetic system and the nerves and anxious feelings start. If you allow the worry to build the sympathetic system will fire up more and more and you may even start to experience panic attacks. So the way to reduce nerves and anxiety is to remove as much uncertainty as possible.

I think of the mind being the body and the body being the mind. They are so linked that I find it easier to think of them connected in this way, inseparable. Perhaps you could too. I’ve already written that the body cannot distinguish between a vividly imagined event and reality, so we can use this to help remove uncertainty about the fight. So, as you get nerves or feel anxious, take note of what it actually is that is making you feel that way. What element about the future is worrying you? The worry is the start of any nerves or anxious feelings.

Once you have identified what the worry is, you can use your mind to ‘play out’ your own movie of the alternative options. For example, if you are worried about a technique that your opponent is famed for, like a devastating kick or takedown, then visualise your opponent executing this move. Then, in your mind, run through the ways that you would want to see yourself react to it. How you would want to counter, how you would want to evade. Find the response that would be most appropriate for you. Then, really flesh it out and make it real. See yourself in your own little movie. Start noticing every little detail of your opponent’s move in the movie. Make the colours and brightness and sound and feelings as real as you possibly can. See what he does to set himself up for that move. Then see you responding in the perfect way that you want to respond. Following it all the way through until that segment of the movie is complete. Then run that movie from just before the move all the way through to just after your perfect execution of your response.

This exercise ‘hardwires’ your brain, telling your body in advance how to respond. You are removing uncertainty. When he does ‘X’, I will then do ‘Y’. If you are removing uncertainty, you are removing worry. If you are removing worry, you won’t be getting the nerves or anxious feelings. And yes, it can be that simple! But please, follow the steps exactly how I’ve written them, as there are some important elements included in the steps.

As a by-product, this exercise will also be improving your fight ability. Visualisation is a powerful tool. NLP is all about modelling how someone does something. For example, this article is based on the works people have done on modelling nerves and anxiety. The same is applied to sportspeople. When successful sportspeople are modelled you will always find that they visualise. Tiger Woods visualises his shot before he plays it. See bobsleigh drivers and skiers going through every twist and turn on the course before they compete. Formula 1 race drivers visualise their driving of every turn, lump and bump of the course they are about to race. If you don’t visualise, you will not be the best fighter you can be.

So you can carry out this exercise all the way through all of your uncertainties. Remove the uncertainty and you’ll kill off the worry, and in turn the nerves and anxiety. But what if you can’t? What if those worries pop into your mind, and you feel the nerves and anxiety building?

Apart from the psychologically negative impact on your preparation for a fight these feelings can also have a negative physiological impact. If the sympathetic system fires up too early before the fight, your metabolism will be running too fast, and you can lose your energy and focus for the actual event. Pre-fight nerves and anxiousness can ruin performances. And that’s just on the day of the fight – these feelings can also ruin preparation in the weeks running up to the fight. You only need those feelings for the actual fight itself.

There are many simple methods that you can use to remove the feelings of nerves and anxiety as they appear in your body. I’m going to teach you one, really simple way, that you can get using straight away to help banish these feelings as they appear. Imagine these feelings appearing in your body, these familiar feelings of anxiety and nerves, and then turning them off almost like flicking a switch. It really is that simple.

Anxiety is a right-brain problem. It is a pattern response to the trigger of worry. You basically have a strategy that says ‘uncertainty leads to worry leads to stress leads to nerves and anxiousness’ and this happens in a certain way in your brain.

Anxiety and nerves form a positive feedback loop in the brain. The feeling builds as the sympathetic system fires up, and by concentrating on the feelings it makes you more nervous and more anxious. So we need to break this pattern response, this strategy, this positive feedback loop.

Now, as these feelings result from the right hemisphere of the brain, there’s a very simple technique we can use to break the way you get anxious. As soon as the feeling of anxiety starts if we engage the left hemisphere of the brain the neurological response is changed and you won’t be able to follow your strategy of getting anxious.

As a generalisation the right hemisphere of the brain controls the left side of the body and the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body. Take a ball, a screwed up piece of paper, something that size, and throw it between your left and right hands. Your hands must be across the body, your hands wide apart to engage both hemispheres of the brain. With the strategy for anxiousness broken, you won’t be able to get the full feeling, if at all. The positive feedback loop is adjusted so that anxiety will actually start to trigger calm!

This is just a really simple method to reduce nerves and anxiety, just by knowing how we process these feelings in our brain. I’ve chosen this as an example method for several reasons, not least because it is so damn simple! But also it can be utilised to enter a state of heightened sensory awareness, something that every fighter needs, and there’ll be more on this coming in the next article.

What I’d like you to do is get a feeling of anxiety back in your body. Notice where it is moving within you, and spin it faster and faster until you really can feel the anxiety building. Breathe faster and feel your heart beating faster. Take short breaths. Feel the tingles in your hands. Really create the feelings of anxiety, and calibrate it, give yourself a rating from 1-10. Then try the technique, and notice how the feeling subsides, and you may notice that the anxiety disappears completely as you calibrate after the exercise. After you do this several times you will actually begin to anchor the reduction in anxiety just by picking up your object, or even thinking of the exercise. There you go - a really simple method for reducing anxiety based on how the brain works.

The best thing is that the brain doesn’t work in this way just for fighting. The brain works this way on any nerves or anxiety, whatever the cause in life, whether work, personal life, exams, public speaking and other performances – anything. Try the exercise above on other nerves and anxiety in your life and notice how the nerves and anxiety fade.

Now, if it didn’t work, you may be doing an element wrong, or need appropriate coaching in terms of controlling anxiety. There are many other simple methods that can be used, which can be taught by a coach, and then utilised by the individual. There can also be deeper rooted issues that may need resolving which may include past limiting emotions, limiting beliefs, or ‘parts’ of you at conflict. You may also have that ‘little nagging voice’ inside your head, preventing you from being the best you can be. You could always contact me via my website should you wish to discuss any matters in more depth.

I started this series of articles with the base information on the limbic brain and how it creates the GAS in our body. This article you are reading now helped with self understanding of this response by investigating how we start to produce the response in our body, and how we can control it. Now we can recognise it within ourselves, and understand it a little better, we are well on the way to inducing stress responses in our opponents, setting them up in a loop where you can hit them at will. Imagine setting your opponents up in a loop where you just can hit them, and keep hitting them, and there’s nothing they can do about it once you start! But that’s in a later article. Next I’ll be looking into simple ways of getting into the right physiological and psychological state for optimum performance – how you can set yourself up for victory right from the start.

How many senses?

Have you ever wondered how many senses we actually have? It’s five, right?

Perhaps its time to think again.

Now, I used to teach that there were seven senses, and it looks like I was wrong. The seven were made up of the usual five senses – sight, sound, feelings, taste and smell, plus a couple more. I used to teach that the sixth sense was ‘experience’ that gave you that intuition. I’ll come back to the last one.

Several mentors taught me to trust my intuition, whether this was in respect to fighting or even Building Surveying. In fact, I was taught by several top surveyors to ‘trust my intuition’, and if something doesn’t seem right, it usually isn’t, so check it. It didn’t matter if you couldn’t put your finger on why, trust yourself. And often I did, and my intuition was never proved wrong. I’m sure it was information received from my first five senses, though I’m not sure how I knew, I just did.

As I’m studying neuroscience like mad at the moment I keep picking up more and more knowledge and it appears that we may well have a real sixth sense – and for good measure a seventh two!

We know already that many creatures such as homing pigeons and bees (!) have crystals of magnetite in the cells in their heads. This is a natural magnetic material which aligns with the earth’s magnetic field, helping them find their way. Apparently it’s now been discovered that these same particles are found in human brain tissue. As research develops will this be discovered as to our real sixth sense, a sense of direction?

It is being proposed that the seventh sense has everything to do with sex. Many mammals have a vomeronasal organ for sensing pheromones. A pair of pits exists in humans in the nose which is a similar structure to where the vomeronasal organ is found in those mammals. Apparently recent evidence is pointing to this organ developing in the human foetus, though may disappear before birth. Studies are at an early stage and this may well develop into evidence of our seventh sense, or at least show the signs of its history.

So, we have the first five senses, the usual ones, sight, sound, feelings, taste and smell. We can add to these the possibility of another two senses – the sense of direction, and the sense of detecting pheromones. But this still doesn’t explain my last sense. And while you can do your own research into the developments in respect to the sixth and seventh senses, we don’t need to need science to prove the existence of my ‘eighth’ sense.

I was giving my usual talk about using all of the senses in fighting, when one of my clients decided to become vocal about another one, one that I’m apparently particularly strong in. It appears I have a very strongly developed sense of ‘non’-sense…

Limbic System And Fighting – An Introduction

This was the first of a series of articles originally published by the now defunct online magazine MMA Unlimited. Its part of a series of articles, and while my knowledge in these areas has vastly increased, it hopefully makes interesting reading. Perhaps I'll do appropriate updates later in my blogging.

I was also playing with my writing style, so perhaps you can take note of the language patterns and the intent behind them too.



The Limbic System and Fighting – An Introduction

Have you ever felt nerves and wondered where they come from, the reasons why those feelings are there and what they are? Ever wondered why some people just seem to fold under pressure during a fight? Wouldn’t it be great to know what your opponent is going to do, when, how and with what? And how you can play your opponent so you can know when and how to attack safely and effectively without risk?

If you have never studied the limbic system this series of articles will be a journey of discovery in how you can read your opponent accurately, and induce the exact behaviour in your opponent you desire.

Now, I’m not going to give you all the answers – I’m going to leave that for my seminars and future books. But what I am going to do is give you all the base information you need to know where to look to study further and develop your skills. And I will be giving lots of practical advice as to how you can apply this knowledge to becoming the best fighter you possibly can be – and you want to be that, don’t you?

So what we are starting with is the ‘science’ behind the practice. If you don’t understand the ‘why’ you won’t understand how to apply the ‘what’. So bear with me and as you read through the following imagine yourself applying your opponent’s natural reactions to your advantage – literally manipulating them how you want – and without them being able to do anything about it.

My knowledge in this field has come from my studies for NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) and hypnotherapy. As I moved further into the business consultancy world, and in coaching and personal change work, I needed to be able to ‘read’ people better through non-verbal methods – I needed to know exactly what they were really saying through their physiology. Most important was to know when they were comfortable, and when stress was being induced. And this led to my extensive studies of the limbic system.

As you read on you will start to envisage ways that you can use this knowledge not just within fighting, but to every other area of your life where you communicate with yourself or others. That’s your entire life then! Whether working in security or police work, daily pressures of work or life, coaching and mentoring, or just having a row with your significant other, understanding how and why bodies react to stress is the first stage of realisation. So imagine the control you can achieve on yourself and others when you understand the stress reaction, recognise the signs of stress, and know how to induce and control it.

I’ve been ‘experimenting’ with my methods on my sparring partners, some of whom are professionals to international levels, and have been enjoying dramatic results! When applying the methods I can hit without being hit. I control the fight totally, much to the frustration of my partners. And I also have been working with them to teach them the methods, so they can recognise them, and know the ‘antidotes’ to stop them falling for my simple manipulations.

From the above you may think that my claims are far-fetched? But let me assure you that you, yourself, can experience these same results. All you need to do is to understand and practice. Remove any limiting beliefs; this is the application of pure science. And it is all based around how your body handles stress.

All of your behaviour, whether at a conscious or unconscious level, is controlled by your brain, with the exception of some minor involuntary muscle reflexes. The human brain has developed throughout evolution and has been described as having three sections:

Reptilian Brain (Stem Brain)
This handles the body’s basic maintenance systems such as the cardiovascular, digestion, and reproduction.

Mammalian Brain (Limbic Brain)
This is the limbic system and includes emotion and coordination of movement, together with the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS – more on this later!). It is a part of the brain that reacts reflexively and instantaneously, without thought, to the world around us. It is responsible for our survival. The actions of the limbic brain are hardwired into our nervous system and are therefore very difficult to disguise or eliminate. This is the part of the brain we will use to our advantage.

Primate Brain (Human Neocortex Brain)
This is the most recent phase of evolution and is the cerebral cortex, responsible for solving problems, language use and development, memories, and creativity.

In this article we are concerned about the mammalian brain, the limbic system, and the effect on the body that it produces under high stress. When a threat is perceived the stress levels rise in the body and hormone production increases with the onset of the cortisol cycle. Here the adrenal glands start to respond to the stress by producing cortisol, DHEA and adrenaline, preparing us for the GAS response. And this can all take place in milliseconds. And it is the body, not the mind that decides what systems are needed for the perceived threat.

There is a cycle that takes place in the mind during this process. The sympathetic response creates the agitation in the body preparing it for the GAS response. The parasympathetic response calms the body back down again. The sympathetic system switches the stress response on, and the parasympathetic system switches it off again.

When the brain detects a perceived threat the limbic system fires into life. Almost instantaneously the body reacts, unconsciously.

The heart is elevated and blood is redirected to where it is needed. Blood is moved away from the face and skin and into the muscles. This results in your skin feeling cooler yet your core temperature rises significantly. Blood is redirected away from the digestive and reproductive systems, and this leaves you with a shortage of blood and fluid for the stomach, resulting in the butterflies in your stomach, often accompanied by a sick feeling. Blood is moved to the reptilian and mammalian brains and away from the primate brain. This enables your primary survival systems to operate at the expense of conscious thought and memory, regressing you to a primitive state and allowing your emotions to come forward.

The liver rapidly produces glucose to provide energy for the GAS response. At the same time the respiration is increased to fuel the muscles with oxygen. This makes the heart beat faster to push the glucose and oxygen around the body to where it is needed. This causes your heart and lungs to race. The additional energy in your body can cause your legs, and sometimes your arms, to shake.

Your primitive brain responds to the threat by seeking more information as to the nature of the threat. Your focus narrows and your hearing becomes directed to the target.

The waste system of the body is switched off, meaning that it is hard to contract the bladder. I’ve been drug tested after fights many times, and find that the stress of fighting results in me not being able to pee for ages! Sometimes it’s been up to four hours after my fight before I could produce enough urine to fill a bottle.

Once the threat has passed the parasympathetic system produces other hormones to bring your body and mind back to a normal state of relaxation. The blood is redirected, and the waste from the cortisol cycle starts to be processed through your body. Your body and mind revert back from a primitive state to where it is under more normal circumstances.

The effects of the adrenaline and stress hormones coursing through your body take some time to pass, as the hormones and all the waste materials need to be cleared. Your kidneys work overtime and your bladder often fills quickly. Your mouth may be dry. Your hands, legs and arms may shake as a result of the increased glucose and adrenaline.

Now, let’s get back to the General Adaptation Syndrome, or the GAS. This has developed to save us from threat and has been essential for our survival, and we have retained our animal heritage in this respect. This reaction is also known as the ‘freeze, flight and fight’ response.

When we have a perceived threat and we enter a state of high stress our limbic system fires into action and when the stress reaches a critical point we respond with the freeze, flight and fight response. It is important to realise that we react, always, in that order. When the GAS is invoked freeze will always come before flight, and flight will always come before fight. It can occur instantaneously and the transitions between can often be very fast.

So the first strategy for our survival in limbic response is the freeze reaction. Movement attracts attention, so we developed the ability to freeze under a perceived threat. We go still, often accompanied by a cowering or an attempt to make ourselves smaller, reducing our exposure. The freeze response allows us to avoid detection by dangerous predators or in a dangerous situation and gives the ability for an assessment of the threat situation, allowing us to take the best course of action. This is our first line of defence. In fighting it happens instantaneously, and in daily life it happens with much more subtlety.

As the stress levels increase, or continue, the limbic system enters the second strategy for our survival which is the flight response. This is used to escape the threat and to get away. We instinctively distance ourselves from danger.

The final strategy in our limbic defence is the fight response. This is the aggression, the fighting back, the last resort when freeze and flight have failed. This is where fear can turn into rage, and in fighting the response is to hit back.

One of the most important things to remember about the GAS response is that if stress is induced to the right levels, every person, and I mean every person, will respond in this way. It is part of our genetic make-up. We can’t do anything about it. And with this knowledge can come the application to our advantage, our manipulation, to achieve our desired outcomes.

Now we have covered the bare basics you need in order to use this knowledge to your advantage. Of course, to use this to the best of your advantage requires further reading and study, and hopefully you will do this. But for the purposes of these articles you have the information you need.

In the next article I will look at nerves in the context of fight sports, what they are, what produces them, and most importantly – how you can bring them under control and use them to get you in the best mental and physical fight state.

MMA Unlimited Magazine Articles

I was previously asked to write some articles for (what I considered) to be a really good online and hardcopy Mixed Martial Arts (commonly known, descriptively as ‘Cage Fighting’) MMA Unlimited.

Unfortunately the magazine folded, taking my articles with it. Fortunately I still retaining the Copywrite on the content, so I’ll put the series of articles up here.

My knowledge in these areas has moved on and whilst the spirit (and most of the content) is accurate, this is definately not the whole story, and was written in a style for an online magazine audience.

I originally was working on the articles as a writing exercise too, playing with writing styles, seeing what worked, seeing what didn’t. So maybe you can have a look at some of the language patterns I was using in them, and learn from ‘how’ I’m saying the ‘what’ that I am saying.

I hope you find them of benefit.