Pain vs Reward

Why would anyone choose to show up somewhere everyday to get pushed beyond their physical limits, yelled at to do it again and again, then get punched, kicked, knee'd and twisted into submission, forced to "tap out" and do it over and over again? As MMA fighters, this is the question we have to answer most often. This question  is not one that is often asked by the general public. Few of them are aware of what really takes place in the gym preparing for the big events that so many love to watch. Most folks have no idea how much work goes into building an MMA career. This point is made only too clear by the casual fan who sits on his couch and firmly believes that he could hang with the average MMA fighter. There's also  the internet warriors who love to constantly bash and critique fighters that have 1000 x more training and experience than themselves. Last but not least is the kid who walks into the gym after watching the latest season of the Ultimate Fighter and proclaims "I want to fight in the UFC", or worse yet, the guy who says "I'm fighting in the upcoming ABC event and I need to train some MMA". These examples clarify how uninformed most people are about what it really takes to become an MMA fighter.

THE REAL STORY

Any of the girlfriends or wives of the fighters will tell you that they lead very boring lives. Boring of course is a relative term, boring in terms of how most people think and feel. Every day in the gym, constantly drilling the same moves and the same exercises over and over again, constantly watching what they eat, constantly in pain. For the wannabe fighter, this is too much to take. For the true Martial artist though, this is anything but boring. For the Martial artist, the gym is a sanctuary, a place to get away from all the trivial distractions of life. We are not thinking about work or the economy or politics. We know that our wives are going to be pissed at us, but it's okay, our outside problems will work themselves out. It's a place where everyone understands why you are there, why you push yourself. They are there to push you when you're having an off day and expect you to do the same for them. We are all in it for the same reason, to forge our bodies and more importantly to forge our minds, to become unstoppable. Our team is our family. No one on your team will ask you why you do it, they all know why.

WHO'S ASKING

The question "Why am I doing this?" usually comes from within. On those days when you are feeling particularly sore and things didn't go too well. Maybe you got tapped out by the new kid or maybe you were just one step behind your sparring partner and got hit more times than you'd like to admit. Maybe it's just late in the week and you're worn out and you start to wonder....Why? All your outside friends are going to the beach and having a BBQ with some beers and it sounds a lot easier and more relaxing than going to the gym. It's that guy on your shoulder saying "You don't need to train today, one day isn't going to make that much of a difference". Problem is, one day turns into two, and so on and so forth. We all have that voice, it's the voice of weakness, rationalizing all the reasons not to train. For some it's just a fleeting thought but for others it's a constant background noise and if it's not silenced, they start listening. The reason some ask themselves that question more often than others is because they don't really have the right answer. Some of the wrong answers might sound like this: "It keeps me out of trouble" or "So I can show all those people who doubted me" or worse "If anybody thinks they can take me, tell them to shut up and step in the ring".

WHY FIND YOUR WHY?

One of the most common words of wisdom passed down by Success Coaches is to find your "why" because if your why is strong enough the "how" doesn't matter. You will figure out how to achieve something when you know why you want it. The reason why we train so hard and step in the ring is different for everyone but after training for more decades than many others have years, I've come up with a pretty good answer. That answer comes in the form of another question which is; What am I capable of? How good can I get? The only way to find that out is to train like crazy and step into the ring to compare myself with others. I now ask myself as a coach. What am I capable of? And I always know why I need to be back in the gym. I know that I am capable of training world class athletes. If anyone is wondering what they are capable of, the answer is, anything you believe. I'd much rather answer that question to myself now than to ask later - What could I have done if only I had stuck with it?

Aloha, Coach Ermin