Gareth Lewis is the head instructor at Lockdown MMA at the Poneke Dojo in Wellington.

Each week, he provides a his thoughts on different aspects of MMA, aka "Mind-Dump".

Check out what Gareth has to say this week below.

When competing, the mental side is the most important thing. After all the physical work has been done, getting the mind right is key. 

When it’s time to compete, the person who has a better mental process has a big advantage when the victory is on the line.

This idea came into my head recently as one of the Lockdown crew recently competed in a BJJ comp.

We did some preparation through drills and likely scenarios,but it was the chat after the comp that I found to be the most interesting.

When I say after the comp, I meant to say after the win and 3 submission victories – after that, we had a chat.

We talked about mindsets and where she was mentally going into the comp. Prior to the comp, it was a simple plan: get the takedown, get top position,and get a limb or neck.

Being female, her competitors are most likely used to spending most of their BJJ life on their back and it would make them sense to put them where they are used to – on their back.

 When talking mindset, I have been known to be a little single minded, get the win. Obviously, there is more to it than that and what was mentioned was the balance point for competing.

You want to be relaxed, as anything you do well in life you are relaxed while doing it. But too relaxed and you can get beaten by someone who is motivated by the win.

Then, if you are just focused on the win then this can create pressure in your head, where you become tentative in competition which can also lead to a loss.

Once you lose after being relaxed you are frustrated that you could’ve done better, you lost to someone that you know that you can beat.

Compared to losing after putting pressure on yourself for the victory, then anything short of the victory is a failure. Then if you are lucky, you think this makes you worse at BJJ and even worse as a person (have been there).

This might sound over the top but when you put everything into a certain outcome and you miss, this can hit you very hard. 

One process is to focus on the things that you have control over which I call inputs. This is your training, your preparation, your plan and your skill against another in this area.

These things you can control. If you focus on good inputs, then the process becomes a little easier.

The process or the match is always tricky as there are a lot of variables involved, mainly someone who has trained to beat you.

The outcomes are always very hard to control and that is exactly why we should not worry about them too much. This is easier said than done, no one enters a comp planning to lose.

Then if we lose, we feel we let down our coach and our club which is just not the case. In any given match, there is one winner and one loser, and we can’t always win.

As most of us compete as an addition to training, and since in we are not professional athletes, the outcome should not be such a concern.

Let’s face it, if losing a match in a comp is the worst thing that happens to you that week, that is a pretty damn good week.

Especially in wrestling and BJJ as the worst possible thing that can happen (getting pinned or taped out) happens almost every training.

So, it is not like we are not used to it, it also doesn’t hurt to get pinned or tapped out assuming you tap in time. This means that all that gets hurt is your pride and some of us deal with that better than others. 

Therefore, the balance point mentally is different for everyone.

If I paint with a broad stroke here, the more intellectual someone’s game is, the more likely they will need to have a bit more focus on the win.

These people often overthink things and can get paralysis by analysis. This is compared to people that are more physically dominant who need to focus more on relaxing and the process as they can quite often move without thinking too much about it. 

Also, those with physical gifts have often succeeded in physical endeavours using brute force, now they need more than just that to win.

For most, it is a learning process of what works and what doesn’t. Some people deal with nerves well and get better with some pressure, while others wilt under the bright light. But what you can be sure of is those with a plan will do better.

This gives you something to go towards in the match, they can be basic goals but gives you a direction as without direction you are going nowhere. Overall focus on the inputs as you are in control of those the outcome of the match is just a by-product of the inputs and the process.

Two of these things are very hard to control so to help mental balance just focus on those things we can control.

If someone is better on the day, then that happens – so be it and move on, don’t dwell on it. Same if you win, it was your day today, enjoy it then move on.  

-Lockdown MMA.