Monster in the Cage e Book

www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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Copyright @2013 by Jeff Joslin Enterprises. All All rights reserved. This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced in any form without permission from Jeff Joslin. Anyone practicing the exercises, drills, tips and techniques in this book does so at his or her own risk. The author assumes no responsibility for any in juries resulting from the practice of the information contained herein. Also, one should consult with a physician before making changes to nutrition, training regiments or engaging in any demanding physical activity. This program includes Autogenic training methods which is contraindicated for people with heart conditions or psychotic psycho tic disorders.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Why I wrote wrot e This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Chapter 2: My First Mind Training Experience Experie nce . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Chapter 3: A View on Life + MMA Fighting. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Chapter 4: The “Mind Tra Training ining Zone”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 Practice Positions Positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Week 1 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Week 2 Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Week 3/4 Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 Mastering the Basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Chapter 5: Finding the Culprits Through Self-Analysis Self-Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31 Self Analysis Analysis of Best & Worst Worst Performances . . . . . 31 Jeff’s Best Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 Jeff’’s Worst Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 Jeff

Chapter 6: Creating & Practicing Your “Fighter Creed” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 Jeff’s list of “Fighter Creed” phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Putting your “Fighter Creed” Phrases into Practice . 41

Chapter 7: An 8-Week Mind & Boy Preparation Gameplan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 8 Weeks Weeks to 3 Weeks Weeks Before the th e Fight . . . . . . . . . . . 43 3 Weeks Weeks to 1 Week Week Before the Fight Fig ht . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 During the Week Week Before the Fight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Walking to and Entering Enterin g the Cage . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 Between Rounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Chapter 8: Applying Applying the “Mind Training” System Outside of Fighting. . . . . . . . . .50 Changing Your Mindset and Breaking Bad Habits with the “Mind Training” Training” System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Combating Negative Thinking on the Spot . . . . .. . .52

Chapter 9: Closing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 Appendix I - Quick Reference Reference Sheets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Appendix II - Practice Schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Photo Gallery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63


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CHAPTER 1 Why I Wrote This Book Without the right mindset you will fail! There is absolutely no doubt about abo ut it. Winners win because they posess a mindset that virtually brings success to their doorstep. It's the reason that some people peop le seem to be successful at everything they try their hand at; The reason why the rich get richer and a nd why many unsuccessful people can't seem to break free from a lifestyle that is lled with failure and loss. The mind is much more powerful than we know. I've come to believe that our most consistent thoughts are responsible for the results that we've achieved up to this point in our lives; both the positive and the negative ones. The more I learn about the mind, through study and personal experience, the more I realize that all physical things start out as a simple thought. I began to realize the power p ower of my own mind, or what I dreamed might be some sort of super power at the time, when I was a kid. Two emotionally charged instances stick out in my mind and I can remember each of of them vividly. I'm very hesitant to share them with you due to the fact that they may make me seem like a crazy person! But I’ll share them anyway. anyway. It's just that the more reading I do on the subject of mind power, power, the more I believe that we all have a special power within us that we've barely tapped into. The power of belief; be lief; An amazingly powerful thing that all successful people h ave learned to harness with extreme prociency proc iency.. Okay, back to my story...and remember while reading on that I'm not no t crazy! A little little strange at times according to my wife, Corene, but I like to think she means that in a good way :). Over 20 years ago, my youngest brother Brian had become very sick. He was only a few years old at the time. The doctor had found sugar in his urine and believed that he may be diabetic. After my mother told me about the possibility of him having the disease I was terried! I remember k neeling beside his bed while he slept, crying and praying for God to give me the disease instead of him. Ten Ten minutes later, I felt oddly calm. The heavy pleading within my mind had nished and I somehow felt unwaveringly condent that my little bro would be b e okay. I have no idea why I felt that wa y because it really doesn't make much sense to me now, but I truly did.

A few days later we found out the great news that Brian wasn't diabetic. I can't describe how much of a relief that was! Oh yeah, I didn't get sick either which was also good news although I would have accepted it as long as my little brother was feeling well. He was just too young --and innocent-- to have to deal with that sort of thing. Let's pause for a moment to send out another "I'm not crazy" reminder reminder.. Okay, read on. A similar experience happened to me again some years later... While in my early twenties, my mother pretty much died directly in front of me. She dropped to the oor in our bathroom after a massive heart attack stopped her heart completely for more than four minutes. It was the worst moment of my life! I had heard the saying "I'm so stressed, I'm pulling my hair out" before but never fully understood it until that day . I recall literally trying to rip the hair out of my head while waiting for the paramedics to arrive. As I aimlessly stomped around the house in a panic, my mom lie motionless and lifeless on the cold bathroom oor oo r. I will never forget how helpless I felt at that momen t. It was sickening and still


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brings a tear to my eye. Somehow, the team of paramedics managed to revive my mother. I can still remember the terrible sound of them shocking her, over and over again, with their debrillator. After rushing her to the hospital they gave her some medicine --designed to destroy blood clots-- and began be gan to keep watch over her in the intensive care unit. At the request of the doctors, my family slept in the hospital that night. Looking back, I don't think they believed she was going to survive. That night as my father, brother and I slept in a cold room located within the hospital, I had a vivid dream. In it, my mother approached me and spoke to me in a way that felt so real! She softly told me not to worry and that she would be ne. I believed her. From that point on, I no longer felt nervous. I believed that my mother would somehow work her way back to being her old self again. Even during a short period of time when she didn't know who I was and spoke to me as if I were a complete stranger, I still believed that she would fully recover. She spent over a month in the hospital but eventually my mom came back to us. Miraculously she had sustained absolutely no brain damage even though her heart had stopped beating for more than four minutes on that terrible night in our bathroom. It was pretty amazing! The weird thing is that 10 years ye ars after her incident, while speaking to a friend of mine that is a paramedic, I found out some very interesting information. He told me that the people he works with still discuss my mom and her heart attack situation. Supposedly she had less than a 10% chance of survival but everything somehow worked out perfectly. Everything that needed to be done in order to give her a chance to live had be done awlessly by everyone involved. The odds had been greatly stacked against her yet she still managed to pull through. I don't why, but after that very rst night’s sleep sleep in the hospital I knew that she would be ne!

No doubt, it must seem strange for me to think that my thoughts had anything to do with the turnaround of my brother or mother's health. In fact as I mentioned earlier in this chapter, chapter, I'm very uncomfortable sharing my thoughts regarding the matter as I write this. Maybe it was just pure luck. In fact it very likely could have been. It's just that anytime in my life when I've believed unquestionably that something would occur, o ccur, it always did! When it came to setting and accomplishing goals throughout my martial arts career, I started with that same sort of unwavering belief in myself and what I could achieve. It has worked out very well and I've been able to accomplish many of my personal lifetime goals. After retiring from ghting, I believed without question that I co uld build a successful business, become a better person --I had some issues--, a better father to to my kids and a better husband to my wife. I've managed to accomplish all of those things as well. It denitely wasn’t easy but nothing worth doing or having ever is. Before, during, and after my ghting career, The question was never “Will something happen?”; it was always “When would it happen?” and “What would it take?”

Belief was a huge part of any a ny success that I achieved but bu t it wasn't the only thing necessary. I've found and still nd that it takes a combination combination of three very important things things to successfully achieve any worthwhile worthwhile goal. The 3 things that make up a my "Success Formula" are: 1) An Unwavering BELIEF that you can accomplish your goal. www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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2) An intense BURNING DESIRE to succeed at what you're doing. 3) Unstoppable PERSEVERANCE until you've successfully achieved what you’ve set out to accomplish. I've used this 3-step success formula to accomplish many rewarding things in my life. Here are the ones that I'm most proud of (in chronological order): 1) I earned more than 200 20 0 rst place nishes in martial arts competition, won several World Championships in Karate competition and became the highest ranked Black Belt bo staff competitor at the NBL's (National Black Belt League) World World Championship in 1996. Despite what 'Napolean Dynamite" said, I've learned that chicks don't really care about bo staff skills. I know kno w, it’s tough to believe but it’ it’ss true :). 2) I became the rst Canadian in history to win an international Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Championship (PanAmerican BJJ Championship 2002) after learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu from video tapes and seminars because we didn't have anyone here in Canada to teach us back in those days. 3) I won the Apex Fighting World World Welterweight Welterweight Championship Belt after knocking kn ocking out Nuri Shakir (rst person to KO him in 35 ghts)

4) I signed with the Ultimate Fighting Championship and an d fought on Spike TV against top rated Welterweight Josh Koscheck on Miramar Base in front of 5,000 marines and 2.5 million viewers on television. That was cool! 5) After I was forced to retire from professional ghting too early in my career (due to an injury), I set a goal to make it back to the UFC as a coach. Months later I received a call from 17-time UFC Veteran Veteran Spencer Fisher. He asked me to be the head coach for his UFC 120 training camp! I had never met him before but somehow he decided, after watching my past ghts and YouTube instructional videos on the internet, to choose me as his coach.

After spending 6 weeks living his basement and helping him prepare for battle, we fought and won in London, England. It was so nice to be back in the UFC Octagon and the entire camp played out exactly how I believed it would. It couldn't have gone any better! 6) In the summer the 2011, I promoted --with a friend of mine-- the rst ever MMA event in my hometown of Hamilton, Ontario. We We broke the paid attendance a ttendance record in Ontario for MMA Events (other than UFC of course). We We had Chuck Liddell Lidde ll and “Big” John McCarthy in attendance as special guests, and a ght card lled with some super exciting ghts. It was a ton of work but I’m very proud of how it all turned out. 7) In late 2011 I started acting. For my very rst lm role I won a "Best Supporting Suppo rting Actor" Actor" award --out of the 60 international lms that were entered-- from the Los Angeles Movie Awards. Awards.

8) Most importantly, importantly, I used the success system to save my marriage during a time when my wife and I were extremely close to divorce; After retiring from ghting things turned really bad at home. It was like I was a white belt at anything other than ghting someone. I was depressed, insecure, jealous and had put up monstrous emotional walls over the years to protect myself from facing those shortcomings. Unfortunately, Unfortunately, those walls blocked out my happiness as well and kept my wife and I from developing any real closeness. Without Without a ght to train for, I started to go out to the bars every weekend and party with my friends. I was doing anything and everything I could to avoid facing my situation at home.


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Things were so bad that it took my wife over a year to start liking me again as a person. I had ha d to totally re-invent myself. It was by far the biggest challenge of my life! At times it felt as though a knife was ripping through me in an effort to make me give up the ght. It was all a ll worth it though and I'm very proud to say that I've succeeded. I slowly became a good husband --and friend-- to my wife and a better father to my two wonderful children in the process. 9) I've built our martial arts school up to the point where we now have more than 400 active students and have won the award for best martial arts club in our city more than 10 times! 10) I've taught myself how to create my own websites, edit videos, create logos and employ many other design skills that have saved me tens of thousands thou sands of dollars. Everything that you see on www.jeffjoslinmma.com, www.jeffjoslinmma.com, www.joslinsmma.com www .joslinsmma.com and www.mmaquickstart.com www.mmaquickstart.com I was able to put together without having to pay an a n outside source. Just an unwavering belief, a strong desire and the perseverance needed need ed to learn the skills necessary. I will admit though that the huge amount of time I spent on the computer teaching myself those skills did cause some ghts with the wife along the way way.. I made sure to do my best to make it up to her. 11) After more than a year in development I launched my online MMA training program for beginners, MMA QuickStart, in December 2010. Now, hundreds of people from countries all over the world have learned the basics of MMA through the use of the program. It's so awesome to receive email from India, Austrailia and other far away places from my online students saying that they have been be en striking their opponents better than ever before after using the MMA QuickStart program. Deep down, I truly believed that I could accomplish each of the above things without question. Please don't take that statement as something coming from an arrogant mindset because that is very far from the truth. It's just that I strongly believe we need to think that way in order to achieve our dreams. We We can't hope or wish for something to happen; that will never work! We have to know, someplace deep within ourselves, that we will succeed at anything we have a raging desire to accomplish. a ccomplish. It's only a matter of time! I’ve wanted to write this book for a very long time! My goal is to share with you the same "Mind Training" Training" system that I've used to achieve goals in martial arts competitions, regular life, and more specically professional MMA ghting. I’m pumped to help you get started on your path towards optimal MMA performance and am very excited to see where you can go with it. The 3-step success formula described earlier is only a starting point. In the next six chapters I will share with you a system of mental relaxation exercises, ex ercises, positive thought programming drills and several other mindset strategies that will help you perform at your best. The info and strategies I will be sharing with you will help you achieve great success in the cage, rid yourself of any pre-ght insecurity or nervousness and allow you to enjoy every moment of doing something that many people think is way too scary! Even better, is that you'll be able to tweak the system, as I have many times, and use it to achieve success at things outside of ghting as well. Even Eve n though I'm retired from ghting I continue to use the system in everything that I do. Get ready because here we go!


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CHAPTER 2 My First Mind Training Experience My rst experience with “Mind Training” took place way back in 2002. It wasn't something that I was searching for at the time; Honestly I don't think I even knew that there was such a thing back then. It all sort of happened by chance. Well Well I really shouldn't say chance because I have a strong belief that when you are at a time in your life when you are ready to learn something new, your teacher will appear. Haven't you had a similar experience in the past? A time when someone came into your y our life and taught you something --sometimes a not so enjoyable lesson-- that you desperately needed to learn lea rn at the time? It's happened to me so many times!

I had been preparing for the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Pan/American games for many months; training everyday at my martial arts gym in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. My goal was to win the gold go ld medal at what was known as the second largest BJJ tournament on the planet --the World Championship being the largest of course. I was a purple belt at the time and felt very strong with ground grappling skills. My stand up game, which in Brazilian jiu-jitsu is made up of throws and takedowns, was lacking somewhat so I began travelling to Burlington, Ontario once a week to attend a judo class with a very well known instructor and friend of mine, Ron Angus. The Judo training was excellent! The workouts were gruelling and a nd I had many great training partners --some nationally ranked-- to spar against but it was what went down during the nal ten minutes of every training session that changed my life forever. After practice, Sensei --which means teacher in Japanese-- Angus would have us all lie on the oor in a very relaxed position for a minute or two. I still can remember the huge amount of o f sweat, built up over two hours of rigorous training, puddling beneath my head as I lie motionless on his mats. I know, it's kind of gross so let's move on to the more important stuff. Once there, Ron verbally guided us through a bunch of mind training exercises. I'm not going to lie; It felt really strange to be lying down on the sweaty mats, eyes closed while tying to focus on the numerous and slightly odd phrases that were emanating from his mouth. In a short amount of time his verbal instructions led me, and I’m sure the rest of the students as well, into a state of complete relaxation; rst by having us let go of the tension within our feet, the stiffness within our calves and a ny tightness we could pinpoint within our thighs. His deep, calming voice called for us to release every ounce of tension that was situated within our upper bodies. Minutes earlier e arlier my heart had been pounding po unding within my chest but my pulse had slowed and I was completely relaxed. It felt amazing! While in that state of relaxed concentration, Mr. Angus had us envision a goal of our choosing. The rst thing that popped into my mind was the image of a bright gold medal. I wanted to win the Pan/American Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu championship! The competition was a month away and I really wanted to do well. Ron's voice guided me to thoughts of the competition itself, encouraging me to think of victory and how fantastic it would feel when it happened. Even though the entire event occurred o ccurred solely within my mind, it felt surprisingly great! My mental images were so vivid that I could cou ld feel a smile cross my face as my imaginary friends cheered, hugged and high-ved me moments after I was presented with the gold medal.

I would repeat this mind training process --under Sensei Angus' guidance-- every week a fter our Judo class. Each time I did, it seemed easier to follow Ron's direction into the state of relaxation. My visions of victory became clearer and brighter; They also seemed loaded with greater detail and much more feeling. By the time I had arrived in Florida for the Pan/American Championship, I had won the gold medal more than ten times in my mind. On the day of the tournament, I beat every single opponent that I faced and became the rst Canadian in history to win a gold medal at an international Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu championship! I was so happy!


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The bad news is that I didn't d idn't get to throw anybody with my new judo moves! Every person p erson that I fought ended up “pulling guard”, which is falling to their own back on purpose to start the ground ght. That was a little disappointing after working so hard on my judo. Looking back though, the most valuable thing Sensei Ron Angus had taught me --although I didn't fully realize it at the time-- was that the mind was a powerful instrument that could be trained and focused on attaining any goal one wishes to achieve. Thinking back to that exciting moment in my career, I also recall having an unwavering belief in myself which denitely helped me to win the gold medal that day in Kissimmee, Florida; In fact, I had a strange and slightly awkward moment, moments after the win, while sitting on the spectator bleachers with my friend and student Rowan.. Still slightly out of breath due to all of the action and excitement, I said to him "Nice, I got that one out of the way!" "What?" he said as a surprised look crossed his face.

I quickly realized that I may have h ave just sounded like a cocky c ocky asshole! I totally didn't mean it like that and tried to brush it off by quickly changing the subject. I'm sure he was a little puzzled as a s to why I had just said that. The reason? Well, Well, it's because I had already mapped out a game plan for my martial arts career. I had promised myself that I would win a major BJJ tournament before b efore beginning a career in professional MMA. Up to that point, it had been an internalized game plan but when I spoke those nine words to Rowan while sitting on those bleachers, it was the rst time that I had let it out into the world. I was pretty pretty embarrassed to say the least. I had also decided, as part of that same career game plan, that I would start ghting professionally in mixed martial arts at the age of twenty-seven. Why twenty-seven? I think it was because my idol, Royce Royc e Gracie, was that age when he tore through his competition at the rst Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event. Also, I gured that by then I would have the very well rounded skill set necessary to take on anyone inside of the cage. There was absolutely no way that I was going to step into the rough sport of MMA without the belief that I would one day make it to the top.

A month after winning that shiny golden Pan/American championship medal, I turned twenty-seven. Six months later I was battling inside a cage as a s a professional mixed martial arts ghter. The event was at a nightclub in Montreal --with go-go dancers in cages and everything!-- and I made a whopping one hundred dollars for a minute and a half of ghting action. I won by knockout in the very rst round against a very tough opponent. Things were happening h appening exactly how I had h ad UNWA UNWAVERINGL VERINGLY Y BELIEVED that they would. It was pretty crazy! You can't hope and wish for good things to happen to you in life. You You must absolutely know that you will achieve anything you have h ave a burning desire for, through relentless perseverance and an unwavering belief in yourself! It's always just a matter of time. It was within that six month window between the BJJ Pan/Ams and my rst pro MMA ght when I really started to learn more about "Mind Training". The learning rst came in the form of a book and then from a source you would never guess: a comedic hypnotist. Let me explain.

I had purchased a soft cover book b ook called “Yoga for Athletes” Athletes” by Alan Kolgar. I wanted to add some stretching www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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exercises to my martial arts training regiment to help he lp me improve my exibility exibility.. The Yoga Yoga content within the book was great but what I found far more valuable were the mental training ideas that were contained within several of the books chapters . Remember the saying that when you are ready for something, the teacher will appear. Well Well this was another instance of that happening h appening to me. There The re were so many great Yoga Yoga books on o n the store shelf that day and I somehow managed to choose the one that would change my life for the better in many ways. Some may call that good luck but I believe that it was meant to happen.

The "Mind training" information within that book totally ch anged my life and instantly made me aware of what Sensei Ron Angus had been up to months earlier e arlier at his gym; The more I read, the more I became aware of the process that he had used on myself and the rest of his team while we were lying for lengthy amounts of time on his sweat drenched mats. He had hypnotized us! How do I know? Because the state of mind he had put us in, was very similar to a time --when I was in my early twenties-- that I was put under by a comedic hypnotist hypno tist at a local bar in my hometown. Tony Tony Lee was his name and he literally had me running runn ing around a stage in my underwear for what seemed like half of the night! The good news is that he took it easy on me --I think because I had taught him martial arts in the past-- and didn't make me do the ultra-embarrassing stuff that I had seen him make others do during his previous shows. Thankfully I didn't have to do the act where he makes a guy suck on an elongated balloon that is being held by some other dude at crotch level. Writing this makes me realize all over again how lucky I was that he let me off easy that night! If you're a bit of a sceptic when it comes to hypnotism, don't be. It really works! That night in Hamilton, Ontario at “Whiskey Joes” it took away all of my inhibitions and made me feel as though I was watching a movie of someone else doing the ridiculous things that Tony had me doing on stage. The state of mind Tony Tony put me --and others-- in when he hypnotized me made me more susceptible to suggestion. In your case, as a ghter, g hter, it’s it’s that same state of relaxation that you'll you 'll need to attain in order to effectively train your mind to consistently think thoughts of a positive nature. Thoughts that will help you avoid and replace the undesirable negative thoughts and images that tha t will try so hard to enter your mind before and during the heat he at of competition. Okay, that's enough about my rst experiences with "Mind Training". I hope you're very excited to get started on the path towards optimal performance. If you y ou are, you should be! be ! It’s It’s awesome stuff! If you aren't excited, close the book now and I'll give you back every penny you paid for this book, no questions asked.

In the coming chapters, I'll explain my take on how you can gain control over every one of your thoughts and turn them into an incredible asset; a powerful weapon for kicking ass inside the cage, on the mats and in everyday life. On the very next page, we'll start with some mindset strategies that I've found very effective in keeping things fun for me inside and outside of the cage. You'll You'll perform at your best when you're enjoying yourself so turn the page and let's get it on!


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CHAPTER 3 A View on Life + MMA Fighting The road to success is not an easy one to travel. If it were, everyone would be successful; Everyone would achieve their goals because no one would give up when faced with the type of adversity that successful people consistently overcome. Many years back I met Ronnie Ron nie Coleman at a jammed packed event in Toronto. Don't know who he is? He's the monster of a man who has won the Mr. Olympia competition a record 8 times! One thing he said, while speaking to a large group of spectators that had h ad come out that night to meet their body building hero, really hit home with me. His statement was geared towards the sport of bodybuilding but it also speaks volumes about the challenges we all must face in order to be successful at anything we do. "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder bodybuilder,, but don't nobody want to lift no heavy-ass weights!"

In other words, everybody and their brother wants to be successful, but few people peo ple are willing to put in the work necessary to achieve great success. That being said, travelling the challenging road to success can be a very rewarding venture. Most often, as you’ve probably already learned, the journey ends up being the most enjoyable part of all; The feelings of excitement and anticipation while closing in on a goal often being much more powerful than those felt after accomplishing it. I feel that the key to happiness is to keep setting new goals and to constantly create new and exciting chases for yourself in life. That is of course once you achieve your current goal. Always aim to nish anything you start before moving onto to something new. new. I've actually had to step away from writing this book for the past month or so because of other commitments but I'm now back at it and very inspired to nish it. My motivation comes come s from the thought that the info I'm sharing may be put to very good use by you after reading it. Personal improvement is a goal that I’m in constant c onstant pursuit of and I strongly suggest you do d o the same. Start by aiming to improve yourself in some aspect of you life by as little as 1% every single day. day. Take Take courses, read books, talk with a mentor, hone your skills through practice p ractice or do anything else that you feel will help you become better at your yo ur activity of choice. Before you know it, this steady pace of self-improvement will produce great results. I'm totally sure of it! This type of self-improvement strategy is very similar similar to what we martial artists do everyday through our training; becoming a little better at passing the guard, throwing punches, defending take downs or improving any a ny other skill we're focused on improving at the time. Keep in mind that improvement takes time and that any gains you make will be extremely difcult to become aware of on a daily basis. Trust Trust in the fact that the small improvements you make daily will compound into a noticeable amount very soon. Until recently it never made sense to me why a movie star, who had all the money they'd ever need and the love and respect of so many people, pe ople, would try to commit suicide or drink/abuse d rink/abuse drugs to the point that they would die. That type of occurrence always seemed like absolute craziness to me. However, I must say that it has really motivated me to work on myself in a balanced way by improving my skills as a person, father and instructor; not only as a mixed martial artist. I no longer believe that happiness will come when I achieve a certain goal in the future. I always remember to be happy right now because of o f the many blessings I already have in my life: my health, the beautiful person I’m married to, the fun job I have, my awesome children and the great friends I have to name my most cherished ones. I chase goals to add even more happiness, motivation, excitement and fun to my life. www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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I didn’t always think so positively however; Often feeling as though my life would be better once I achieved the career goals I had set for myself. Although Although my experiences as a professional ghter taught me a lot about happiness and life in general it was nothing compared to what I learned about those very same things after I hung up the gloves. When I retired from ghting because of post concussion syndrome back in 2007, 20 07, I couldn't practice martial arts. I couldn’t jog; or hit a heavy bag; drill a technique or exercise at all without feeling sick. A lifetime of contact sports --hockey, kickboxing, boxing, MMA and wrestling-- had caught up with me and my last concussion, which occurred while training to ght Chris Lytle at UFC 72, put me out of commission for more than a year and a half. For the entire duration of that horrible time period, it felt as though I had a massive hangover; Without the party of course; Every time I raised my heart rate, eve n a little bit, I felt much worse. My personality changed drastically as well. I become irritable, highly emotional and had a very hard time nding any enjoyment in life. It was a tedious and tiresome struggle to recover but I am happy to say that today I'm back to my old self. Actually Actually I jokingly call myself Jeff 2.0 --to my wife wife mainly-- because of the improvements I've made to myself over the years. That's a good thing because my wife didn’t like the Jeff 1.0 version very much. When I did start to feel a bit better, I still couldn't train so I turned to books and audio les to quench my thirst for learning. As a lifetime martial artist, the personal development process had been such a big part of my life; Reading allowed me to continue to improve myself in ways that were very new to me.

I learned some amazing stuff! Things about life, achieving goals, developing friendships and overall happiness. Some of the things I read about, a bout, I had already been bee n implementing throughout my ght career ca reer with great results: Things that I had learned through trial and error and from my parents during my upbringing. The books also contained many ideas and concepts that were completely new and extremely refreshing to me. Throughout the remainder of this chapter, I will be sharing with you some of the ideas, concepts and a nd mindset details that I've acquired and put to good use over the years. I'm certain that some of them will help you reap the same benets they've provided me during and after my professional ghting.

Never Fear Failure Failure is one of the most valuable things you can experience. Never fun, but valuable nonetheless. It shows you that some type of change c hange needs to be made to your approach if you wish to accomplish your goal. You You must learn from each mistake, modify your course by making any adjustments you feel are necessary and try not to repeat the same mistake twice. Anyone who has succeeded at something will have a long list of past failures that has lead them to where they are today. If they say that they don't, it's safe to bet that they 're lying. MMA Application:

Aim to experience most of your martial arts failures in the gym, not during competition. It’ll be a lot less painful that way! While training grappling, constantly try to play against y our opponent's strengths. When sparring/ rolling never avoid the people that give you the most challenge. ch allenge. Always remember that the more you sweat in training the less you'll bleed during competition! When training with students that are less skilled than yourself, allow them to put you into dangerous dang erous positions so that you can practice your defenses and escapes. Never worry about getting tapped out in training. This constant practice of surviving and escaping troublesome situations will greatly prepare your for battle. www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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Before and during an MMA ght, never worry about the possibility of failure. Instead, do your homework in the gym by training your ass off during the weeks/months leading up to the ght. Come ght time, whatever is meant to happen will happen. Relax, ght hard and have an unwavering faith in your preparation. The ght is the reward for all of the hard work and countless hours you’ve put in at the gym so enjoy it! With With the right mindset, it’ll be so much fun for you! Also, remember that losing a ght is not the end of the world and like Randy Couture once said to a small group of us one day after training at team Quest in Portland, Oregon “If that's the worst thing that happens to you in life, I'd say you're doing pretty damn well! If it does happen, get back to training as soon as possible, work on xing any holes in your game, and use the defeat to fuel you to train harder than ever before. Know that, after your next win, nobody will be talking about your loss.

Others Will Try to Bring You You Down: Down : Be ready for this one because it will undoubtedly sneak up and surprise you. When you vocalize a goal that you’ve set for yourself, some people will say that you won't be able to accomplish it. They'll say that it’s too difcult for you or that there’s too much competition out there. They may ev en say that you don't have what it takes. Expect that this will happen because it denitely will, especially when yo u’re chasing a goal that is excitingly unique. Never allow yourself to be hurt by words and avoid becoming overly defensive at all times. Simply ignore their negative comments. It’ll be a challenge to do so and you'll nd it even tougher when those comments are coming from the people that love you most. It's happened to me in the past. Before I made it to the UFC, during a time when my wife and I weren't doing well we ll nancially, nancially, she began suggesting that I should get a regular job. I know that she did it because she loved me but I had to ignore her request. Why? Because at the time I had a mental game plan of how my life was going to play out and ghting in the Ultimate Fighting Championship was absolutely going to happen. Chasing a dream goal seems like a very risky idea to other people. That is expected but why should we let someone else change our life’s path. Should we take less risk and settle for mediocrity? No way! We only live once so let’s make the most out of every second that we h ave here on Earth! Believe in yourself, work hard and achieve your dreams! I haven't even touched upon the “haters” yet. Your success will create jealousy. The people that catch the jealousy bug towards you will be lurking in the shadows talking bad about you to others while desperately hoping to see you fail miserably. They can be very hard to identify identify.. Sadly, they will often be very nice to you when you’re face to face making it even tougher to recognize them for what they really are. Ignore these “Haters” and just keep doing the great things you're doing. Their punishment for such negative behaviour? It’ll be the sting they feel every time --and there will be many-- you accomplish another exciting goal. I suggest you use any hater h ater negativity --or the unintentional negativity from loved on es-- that you experience to fuel you to really kick ass at what you're doing. It's a chance to show everyone what you're made of and that you can rise to the top in whatever you have a burning desire to do. If you truly have 100% UNWA UNWAVERING BELIEF in yourself, you'll let nobody stop you or bring you down with their negative comments. From you own perspective, strive hard to build other people up instead of trying to tear them down. Do this and the law of reciprocity will see that you're paid back with success many times over ove r. MMA Application:

I remember a time, right before one of my earliest professional bouts, when another ghter a pproached me


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to warn me about my opponent's o pponent's stellar striking ability. ability. He told me that I should try and take the ght gh t to the ground immediately. I'll admit that it did made me a bit nervous to hea r him say those things but my mind training kicked in immediately and I took his words as a challenge. I mentally afrmed myself that I had been striking very well during my training camp and quickly recalled a number of tough toug h training sessions that I had pushed myself through against some very talented training partners. Those thoughts immediately infused infused me with a calm condence. I felt totally ready to throw down on the feet with the guy I was about to face. More than ever before in fact. When the ght began I did exactly ex actly what I had envisioned; I let my strikes y until I knocked him out in the very rst round. So remember, if you've done all of your homework ho mework in the gym before ght gh t time, never let anyone's words lessen your belief in yourself or your abilities. You’re You’re ready for battle so take their talk as a challenge! Proving them wrong is a fantastic feeling!

You'll Never Achieve Great Things without Sacrice If you wish to achieve the object of your burning desire, know that doing so will require plenty of sacrice. The time you'll spend developing your skills, putting in the work, studying books, watching videos and practicing visualization will be substantial. The good thing is that if you truly have a passion for what you're y ou're doing it will not feel like work at all; hours will pass in what seems like a fraction of the time. Think back ba ck to the days when you were a kid playing a video game. It was so much fun! Time was a blur, you barely ate or drank anything for hours on end and before you knew it it was ve o'clock in the morning. It's that type of passion and focus that’ will lead you to greatness in anything that you do in life. Try to nd an activity a ctivity that inspires you to feel that way again and it’ll be easier for you to make the sacrices necessary to achieve great success. MMA Application:

Be ready to pass on partying with your friends so that you can train. Be prepared to eat a healthy diet and skip out on fast food in order to give your body the fuel it needs to perform well and recover recov er quickly. While I was making the climb to the UFC --and training 2-3 times every day-- I did not get to spend as much time with my young son Tayzen as I wanted to. My relationship with my wife was also very strained because of my intense training regiment. If you do not make sacrices along the path towards achieving your goals you will never cross the nish line.

Expect Obstacles Along the Way Get ready to hit some major bumps on your path to success. Obstacles may appear in many forms: money problems, relationship problems, injuries or a number of other things. Remember that no matter how insurmountable the obstacle in front of you seems at the time, you can get past it and in doing so will become more skilled at dealing with similar problems in the future. Again, call upon the 100% UNWA UNWAVERING BELIEF you have in yourself and hit the obstacle head on until you blast your way through it. MMA Application:

Before I made it to the UFC, I hit some major obstacles. I was turned down by the "Ultimate Fighter" reality show after being told I was "too quiet". q uiet". That was minutes after making it to the nal 10 (of 300) in the skills testing portion of the tryout. That was such a letdown! In two very important professional ghts, both in Queb ec, I was ripped off horribly by the judges. Once versus Jon Fitch (The ght made the Top Top 5 MMA ripoffs in history list + you can see it on youtube) and the other


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against Jonathan Goulet. You You have to see these two ghts to believe the crap that went down. Soon after those ghts, I hit another roadblock when I sustained a number of injuries that kept me out of action for nearly a year. I persevered and when I returned to ghting I became the rst person in 34 ghts to knock out Nuri Shakir (he had fought UFC vets Thiago Alves, Marcus Davis and many other tough ghters) and won the Apex welterweight world championship belt. I then got the call to ght Josh Koscheck on Spike TV! It was such an awesome feeling to nally hear from UFC matchmaker Joe Silva after overcoming so many obstacles along my path towards making it to the big show. show. I was nally a UFC ghter! That was another instance of things playing out exactly how I 100% BELIEVED that they would.

Look into the Mirror First A very high percentage of people blame outside circumstances for any a ny lack of success that they experience in life. They complain about people they know, their current situation and constantly criticize and condemn others for their weaknesses and shortcomings; Never for one moment do they take a glimpse within themselves for what may be the real cause of their many problems. I heard a great quote a while back that made a lot of sense: "Insanity is doing the same things over ov er and over again and expecting different results". results". If things aren't the way you want wan t them to be in your life, I suggest that you rst analyze yourself y ourself for weaknesses , aws and unproductive habits. h abits. First make sure that you’ve set some worthwhile goals for yourself then study the way you're pursuing those goals. Think hard about any adjustments that you could make in your approach that might prove helpful. Make changes to your overall game plan, learn new skills, develop new habits and do anything else that you think could help you attain your ultimate goal. If those new adjustments don’t work, repeat the entire self-analysis process of improvement and try again. Trust me, it's through this type of methodology that you'll get exactly where you want to be!

Never waste energy criticizing or condemning other people for their shortcomings. Nothing good ever comes from it. Also, Also, keep yourself from complaining about abou t the things in your life that you’re able to change. Instead just change them! In a case when you can't change things, use your energy in a positive way and work on improving yourself and your life game plan until you get the results your looking for for.. MMA Application:

Be realistic with your yourself when it comes to your skills. Constantly ask yourself these --and any others you can think of-- very important questions. Do I need to work on o n my striking more? Is my ground game or wrestling skill set lacking in any way? Am I in the best possible physical shape I can be in come ght time? Am I training with partners that push me or a m I sometimes avoiding the toughest guys in the room?

It can be tough for a mixed martial artist to admit weakness or recognize holes in their game. If you are that type of ghter, I can tell you right now that you will never make it to the top unless you change your mindset. Once you are able to see yourself in a realistic light, you'll be able to start doing the things necessary nece ssary to turn your weaknesses into strengths. If you keep ignoring your shortcomings your opponent will quickly and maybe painfully make you aware of them on ght night. That would suck! Always Always be humble, self-aware, and ready to www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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do what it takes to turn your weaknesses into strengths.

Enjoy Doing what you are Passionate About About Sometimes in the past I've found myself in a bit of a rut; feeling burnt out ou t and tired of doing what I do. It's during those times that I seem to put less than normal energy into my martial arts teaching and look forward to getting home and doing absolutely nothing but watch TV or sit around. What was I thinking?!

I've come to realize that I've been living my dream for a very long time. Even though I was forced to retire from ghting way before I was ready to do so, I am extremely ex tremely happy. I get to help people achieve their martial arts goals and get into better shape as I pass on all of the fun stuff that I've learned throughout my lifetime of martial arts training. I've had the exciting opportunity to ght on national television several times and have been lucky enough to travel to Europe, Brazil and many other great places over the years. My lifestyle makes me extremely happy and I now do my best to show my appreciation by giving my all to everything that I do. You You know what? Any positive energy that I put out there seems to come back to me tenfold. That fact has been a great realization for me and I am now n ow very appreciative of the things I have in my life. Any else that I achieve, earn or develop is a bonus! MMA Application:

If you are truly passionate about martial arts, you'll n d it easy to skip out on hanging out with friends so that you can spar or work your y our skills in the gym. The sport denitely has an addicting affect on those that catch the bug. You'll nd yourself constantly thinking about your upcoming workouts, competitions and sparring sessions. Come ght time, nerves can sometimes make things seem much less fun. The stress you feel may make you question why you signed up to ght --or compete in the tournament-- in the rst place. That feeling is totally normally and I've felt it myself several times in the past. Remember that competing and challenging yourself is the best part of all! It's the reward for all of the hard work you've put pu t in at the gym in preparation p reparation for that very moment. So get in there, have fun, enjoy the heat of the battle and don't worry one bit about the end result. I know, I know, that last one is tough to implement but stressing about the end result will sap every bit of fun from your experience. The good news is that you're much more likely to knock out or submit your opponent when you go in the ght without worrying about the end result. It's totally true, you'll see!

As a mixed martial artist you should always feel proud p roud and powerful! Most people wouldn't have ha ve the guts to challenge themselves like you do d o on a regular basis. Win or lose you become a better martial artist and a stronger person every time you immerse yourself into the res of competition. Congratulations!

Always Choose Excitement over Nervousness Think about a time when you were ultra excited about something. The feelings you felt are very similar to those that you experienced during times when you were really nervous about something aren't they? That's because the two emotions, excitement and nervousness, ne rvousness, are pretty much identical. This means that you get g et to choose which way you interpret the intense sensations running through your body right before you make a presentation, go out on a rst  rst date, or battle a big sweaty dude du de inside a cage. Always direct yourself towards feeling excited rather than nervous. It will help you excel at your task and will make a potentially scary experience feel fun www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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instead. Remember that It'll be easier to veer yourself towards the excited side of thinking when you've prepared yourself for the upcoming task, so do your homework and know what you need to know before you are called to perform. MMA Application:

When you feel butteries in your stomach, or even worse the feeling that you want to run away immediately regardless of the consequences --like I did before one match early in my career back before I truly learned how to train my mind-- , know that it is normal. Come to realize that you are not nervous and instead super excited about the ght; Excited to show the skills that you've been working on; pumped up to ght hard for the victory; and happy to be nally ghting for a mere fteen minutes after training hours upon hours, for weeks a t a time like an absolute madman in preparation for this very moment.

Fear is a Sign to Prepare Fear is a great thing! This is one of the most important lessons I've learned over the years. I used to dread the feeling of fear. It would burn inside me, make me feel sick to my stomach and cause me to want to run away from it as fast as possible. Over time I've realized that the feeling of fear is vital and extremely useful. It's a powerful powe rful and important message that we must listen to or else! *said in an evil voice of course* It speaks to me in in a deep, dark voice telling me "Jeff! Get ready for _________!" The blank word changes depending on the situation but for me I've had fear present itself to me in many different forms. Here are two examples that stick out in my head: 1) When I was in high school, fear forced me to start training in the martial arts again --I had taken a few years off to play hockey-- because a guy at my school kept bothering me and I knew that we would end up ghting each other sometime soon. After we fought, in the middle of the school cafeteria --ended up being a tie-- ,I never missed a martial arts class from that point onward and eventually achieved my BURNING DESIRE of ghting in the UFC. Had I not felt fearful of ghting that guy in high school, who knows where I would be or what I would be doing right now. now. I don't think I'd be writing this book that's for sure. 2) Two Two years ago, I co-promoted a professional mixed martial arts event in my city. Having never done it before, I denitely felt a lot of fear. fear. Fear that I wouldn't do things right, worry that the fans wouldn't come to watch, fear that the ghts I put together would be not be very exciting along with many others fears. The immense pressure and fear that I felt, forced me to work incredibly hard for nearly three months putting things together. I faced numerous obstacles --many so huge that I felt sick to my stomach!-- along the way but the fear of failing fueled me to push through every one of them. In the end, we had a packed house of more than three thousand spectators on ght night. Even better, the ghters fought amazingly and everyone had an awesome time! I think the entire process aged me a few years but I'll admit that I was very proud to have completed the task because there were denitely times when I didn't think that I could. MMA Application:

When you sign the dotted line and are set to ght a given opponent you yo u will most likely feel some fear. That


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is a good thing. In fact, the more fear you feel the better in my opinion. Harness that fear and an d use it to fuel you during your training. It'll have you in the gym earlier and keep you there until late; It'll keep you from missing classes for lame reasons and will force you to do all of your homework in the gym. Conquering fear, time and time again will give you the condence needed to succeed in the ght game. Always remember that feeling fear is a very good thing!

Call Upon Your Past Successes A good way to quickly thrust yourself into a great mood is to spend some time thinking about your past successes. When I wake up in the morning, I like to think about three positive things I've accomplished in my life. This process makes me happy at the very v ery start of my day and res my mind up in a positive way. way. Never dwell on past failures. Doing so will cause you to instantly feel depressed. Even though it's only a thought, you will experience similar feelings to what you felt back during the times when you came up short. Instead, chalk down past failures as lessons learned and a nd as mistakes you’ll never repeat. Always look forward to achieving success at many new and exciting things in the future. MMA Application:

As you train for an upcoming ght, think often about your wins at grappling tournaments, boxing matches or any other competitions that you've succeeded at in the past. Recall the times when you had a great training experience or overcame adversity during a tough martial arts challenge. Anytime you feel negative thoughts creeping into your mind --which will happen from time to time--, be sure to veer your thoughts back towards the past successes you've had in the sport.

If you're new to the sport and are yet to have a great number of successes to call upon, you must instead use your imagination. Imagine the feeling of being be ing successful in a ght or competition. compe tition. Envision successfully pulling off your punches, kicks, submission attempts, escapes and other techniques with ease. Think about how proud your friends and family will be of you after the event and how awesome victory will make you feel inside. Do this imagination exercise regularly and I'm certain ce rtain that you will soon have many man y real successes to use as mental ammunition while you prepare yourself for other upcoming battles.

You're Building Skills for Life! Challenge will bring out the best in you so always be where the challenges lie. Constantly move towards the things that place you out of o f your comfort zone --positive things of course-- and you y ou will greatly speed up your growth as a person. The skills and mental me ntal toughness you'll build in the res of o f pressure, competition and challenge are invaluable and can be applied to everything and anything you do in life. Never be stagnant or comfortable with what you are doing. That spells the end of your personal growth. Achieve the objects of your personal desire by completing challenge after challenge. That's what life is really all about! MMA Application:

You might think that the skills you're developing dev eloping through MMA training will have no use to you after you're done competing but I can tell you that you're completely wrong about that. The skills you develop by facing tough challenges, setting goals, working through setbacks and persevering until the job gets done can also be applied to any of the many exciting tasks and challenges you decide to take on after your martial arts career is done.


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After retiring from ghting I've become a professional MMA coach, a commentator, a radio show co-host; I've also won an award as an a n actor, learned how to create my own websites, and wrote this book! None of those things would have been possible without the discipline and mental focus that I've developed throughout my career as a professional MMA ghter. ghter. At the end of your ghting career, you too will be able to apply your skill set to be successful at anything you want to do in life. There is no limit to what wha t you can accomplish!

Believe in Victory! When you truly believe that you will succeed at something you will remain active and do your best in pursuing that goal. Some goals are so challenging that they can only be accomplished when you are 100% committed to being successful no matter what it takes. Doubt will often cause you to hesitate or pull back a bit. That is a recipe for failure. Go into every situation in life believing, be lieving, scratch that, knowing that you will succeed and you'll be amazed at the incredible things that you can accomplish. MMA Application:

Go out with guns blazing! I mean it. There is nothing worse than nishing a ght and having the feeling that you could have tried harder h arder or given a bit more of o f yourself. You You have only 15 minutes --sometimes 25 min-- to ght hard for the win. Have faith in your preparation, believe in your skill set and show the crowd and your opponent what you're made of. You You didn't spend hundreds of hours h ours in the gym to come to the ght and just give your opponent the win did you? Of course not, so make sure you believe in your success and go out there and take what you deserve.

Focus on the Present I was on twitter the other day when whe n I came across a tweet that I thought was truly a great one. one . Here it is: "Forgot about YESTERDAY!! don't give a RATS ASS abo ut tomorrow!! RIGHT NOW!! is my FOCUS!!!"

That quote is very blunt but truly awesome in my opinion. Going through life with the wrong mindset can cause us to spend precious energy and time dwelling on past failures or worrying about what will happen ha ppen in our near and distant futures. Think of your mind as a rechargeable battery, with a limited amount of energy to use each and every day. It makes it easy to see that spending a large amount of that precious, limited energy thinking about the past or future is a complete waste. It'll leave us with very v ery little juice to put towards the most important time frame of all: the present moment. On the other hand, if we use every bit of our mind battery's power to focus and achieve things in the present moment we will create pasts that are lled with great successes and future's that we can excitedly look forward to. Be sure to always focus on the present moment and give your all in everything that you are doing at the time to make great things happen. MMA Application:

Okay, so you may have lost to your upcoming opponent in the past and now it's causing you to worry about a bout your upcoming rematch with him/her. Maybe you saw an intimidating photo of your opponent on facebook or watched a YouTube YouTube video of him or her smashing some person p erson during a old ght and an d are now letting your nerves get the better of you. Don't think about these things; They will drain you! www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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Instead, think about the things you need to do every day in order to prepare yourself for battle. Map out your training regiment and designate the things you need to do every day inside and outside of the gym. Then simply use all of your energy --both mental and physical-- to complete every task in your yo ur training game plan. Do that and you will be more than ready for what your opponent will bring to the cage on ght night. Do that and your opponent will be the one that has to worry!

Drop the Chocolate Bars! - Nutrition is Vital In order to get the greatest functionality out of your body and mind you need to keep it fueled up at all times. A solid nutrition plan will help do that. It will also keep you in a good mood and provide you with the energy needed to do the things you'll need to do in order to accomplish your goal. I remember times in my career when I didn't follow a optimal nutrition plan and struggled to nd the energy to train more than once per day. It wasn't that I was overly tired from the rst session --although sometimes I was--, it was that I just didn't feel like training again some days. It seemed to be more of a mental thing than a physical one. Once I got hooked up with a Nutrition Plan --big thanks to Dennis Bietler!-- before my ght vs. Jon Fitch, things changed immediately. I was able to easily train two times per day and sometimes even three times within a 24 hour period! I felt energized all day long and noticed a huge improvement when it came to my physical recovery as well. I was much less sore after a fter training which was great and I always felt excited about my upcoming training sessions. MMA Application:

As a ghter, It's necessary to drink a lot water throughout the day and eat a small meal every three to four hours. The real trick is to never allow yourself to feel hungry hungry.. It's during those hungry times that you'll yo u'll stop by a McDonalds drive through or whatever fast food restaurant is most convenient. At least that's been my own experience in the past. Eating clean and following a solid nutrition plan will also help you make weight for your ghts and have you looking really good inside the cage. It doesn't hurt to have some ripped up abs while you ght on television that's for sure. For my last 3 ghts I weighe d around 186 lbs with 6% body fat. I got some crazy pics taken during those ghts that showed showed muscles on me that I never knew I had. It was crazy! crazy! I'm denitely not looking exactly like that right now as I'm writing this. My diet after retiring from pro ghting seems to be on point around 50-70% of the time. When you're actively competing I suggest that you aim for a 90%-95% rate of adherence to your nutrition plan for maximum results. To help you get ripped and feel good throughout the day, I want to share my actual pro ght/competition nutrition plan with you. You can view it on my website at www.jeffjoslinmma.com/mmanutrition www.jeffjoslinmma.com/mmanutrition . Be sure to comment on that blog post and let me know how it's working for you.

Well, we've come to the end of the chapter. I hope that the mindset concepts con cepts we’ve gone over help you out in your training and everyday life. I know that they've helped me tremendously to achieve my goals, reduce stress and become a happier person overall. I'm very certain they will do the same for you. In the next chapter I'm going to teach you the process of getting yourself into the state of relaxed concentration that I call the "Mind Training Zone"; The same state of mind that Sensei Ron Angus exposed me to way back in the day. Get ready because here comes the good stuff! www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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CHAPTER 4 A State of Relaxed Concentration - AKA The “Mind Training Zone” It's impossible to think a negative and a positive thought at the exact same time. This is not just something that I've read about abo ut or learned solely from listening to someone speak at a lecture or seminar; It's something that my many years of competing in the martial arts has taught me as well. Early in my competitive career I'd nd myself thinking about an upcoming competition in one of two completely different ways. The rst, on a good day when a positive mind set had somehow taken dominant control over my thought process, would consist of me envisioning myself winning all of my matches convincingly and seeing myself ghting with great composure and effective technique.

On bad days however, things would be completely co mpletely different; I'd feel uptight, stressed out and physically drained even though I hadn't even fought yet. The moments leading up to a match never seemed fun or exciting to me on those days. I simply just wanted to get things over with so that I could go home. My mind was charged up in a very negative way. The sight of my opponent would cause c ause me to dwell on how strong they looked or on how fast they had just beaten their their rst opponent into submission submission during an earlier match. I was no longer thinking about my game plan or my attacks because I was too busy worrying about the things that my opponent could be planning to try on me. Anytime my mind was charged up with positive thoughts I loved each and every moment of competition day but on the days when my mind set was stuck in a negative gear, I absolutely hated being there! Leave your mind untrained and you'll have no clue as to which mind set will present itself on ght day; You'll simply have to wait and see. Hopefully it's the one that allows you to kick some serious ass and end up victorious; Not the energy sapping, fun killing, stress inducing type o f mind set that will lead you to crumble beneath the intense pressure of battle.

The good news is that there is a battle tested way to build a positively charged mind set and ultimately improve your ability to keep the helpful, productive thoughts within your mind from being sideswiped by the unproductive negative ones. In a very short period of time, your mind will become be come a well-trained guardian, strongly defending you from the type of thoughts that are guaranteed to keep you from succeeding. As negative thoughts appear within your mind they will be deected immediately, swept away swiftly and choked unconscious by your well trained mind. Simultaneously Simultaneously,, positive thoughts will quickly take the place of the demolished negative ones and keep you on the track of optimal performance. When Sensei Ron Angus had me lie on his mats, after a fter those exhausting Judo practices, more than 10 1 0 years ago, I had my very rst lesson in mind training. By the time I fought in the UFC, roughly 5 years yea rs later, my mind had become an impenetrable mental fortress. Negative thoughts didn't stand a chance of getting inside of it. Despite the fact that I was ghting for the very rst time inside the UFC Octagon, against one of the organization’s rising stars, in front of more than 2 million viewers worldwide , I wasn't nervous one bit. I felt ready to kick ass! I still remember smiling with incredible excitement as I took my rst step into the thirty-two foot octagonally shaped cage that night. The same cage that I had UNWA UNWAVERINGL VERINGLY Y BELIEVED, fteen years earlier, that I would one day be ghting in. As my opponent , Josh Koscheck, entered the cage I could envision nothing other than landing hard strikes on his face repeatedly repeatedly.. I landed the rst punch punc h of the ght, which drew blood, fteen seconds into the very rst round; After that we battled our asses off for the entire 15-minute ght. It was one of the best moments of my entire life!


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My rst ght in the big show could have been a very scary thing. In fact, I still see very talented and experienced ghters vomiting in the back ba ck of dressing rooms at smaller shows because they feel so nervous on ght day. It doesn't have to be that way at all. In fact it can be quite the opposite and I'm very excited to show you how you can make certain that you feel great leading up to and during the thrill of your ght.

The system I will be sharing with you is the same system that I've used, tested and tweaked over the years. It will help you keep your mind in an optimal state, all the time, with very little effort. You'll You'll always be ready for hard training, mentally sharp for competitions/ghts, and extremely --almost eerily-- calm under p ressure. I also believe that you'll nd great use for this system outside of the realm of g hting as well. It will help you believe in yourself and blast through the obstacles that we all face in our everyday lives. I've used it to rebuild my marriage, develop writing and acting skill sets, and to teach myself dozens of o f other valuable skills extremely quickly.. The list of ways you can use the mental training system I'm going to share with you is virtually endless. quickly

Alright it's time! *in my best Bruce Buffer voice* Time to develop your skill at getting into the "Mind Training Zone" We’re going to be doing some “Autogenic Training” which is a relaxation technique develope d by the German psychiatrist Johannes Heinrich Schultz and rst published in 1932. If you want additional info on the subject, there are many great books and websites out there that have a lot of excellent info regarding AT AT (Autogenic Training). Since the process involves deep relaxation and strong concentration, I want you to start off by doing your best to eliminate all external distractions. It'll make it easier for you to attain the altered state of mind that we'll be aiming to achieve. Find a quiet place that is free of anything that may distract you during your practice session. Next, we need to get you into a comfortable practice position. I've used two different practice positions with great success throughout my ca reer, one is a lying down posture and the other is seated. At times, when I had the option of using either type I would always choose Option #1, the lying down position. Whichever one you choose to use is totally up to you. It's useful to become procient at both of them because sometimes your location or situation will limit your ability to use one position or the other. For example, if you’re practicing while travelling home on a bus you probably won't want to lie down on the oor for obvious reasons.

Practice Position (Option 1 - Lying Down) Find a place where you can lie down at on your back, body fully extended with your arms hanging down by your sides and your feet spread shoulder width apart. You You may put a pillow under your head if you like as long as your neck remains in a very natural position. Keep your arms a rms down on the oor close to your sides with your palms turned upwards in a very v ery relaxed position. Allow your feet to turn open a bit so that your toes point slightly outwards. Make certain that you will be able to remain in this position for several minutes without having to shift or move about. In other words make sure that you’re very comfortable before moving on.


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Practice Position (Option 2 - Sitting) If you are unable to lie down to practice you can do the relaxation exercises exercises from a seated position position Find a chair and sit comfortably. With both of your feet at on the oor --use a towel beneath your feet if they can't reach the ground--, lean back against ag ainst the backrest of the chair and place your two forearms on the armrests. If the chair doesn't have armrests, lean forward and rest each of your forearms on top of your thighs allowing your legs to bear the weight of your y our upper body. Always keep your hands and a nd arms from touching each other. Make sure, whichever way you sit, that you remain completely relaxed and free of all bodily tension. You'll need to be sitting in this position for several minutes so it’s best that you're very comfortable. Once in your practice position, I want wan t you to close your eyes ey es and allow yourself to completely relax. Obviously Obviously,, if this is your rst time reading through this chapter you'll need to keep your eyes open so that you can read on and learn the entire training process before practicing. When you are actually performing your "Mind Training" exercises your eyes will be closed from this point onward. With your eyes still closed, your next step will be to mentally repeat of a variety of phrases --I will share them with you later in this chapter-- to guide yourself into a state of passive concentration. You'll You'll be employing several different types of mental suggestions to do that: thoughts of heaviness, warmth, and relaxation. These thoughts will make your muscles more sensitive, decrease your yo ur level of tension and cause you to fully relax. The process will also greatly improve your ability to concentrate. Keep in mind that the heightened state of concentration you're aiming to achieve during this relaxation process will be attained passively pa ssively.. You You must not try to force yourself yo urself to become totally relaxed. Instead you will use visualization and your imagination to let yourself you rself fall into the optimal "Mind Training Zone". In addition to a large number of relaxation phrases, I will also be sharing with you the mental imagery that I use in conjunction with each phrase. I’ve found the use of imagery extremely helpful in getting myself into my state of relaxed concentration co ncentration --aka my "Mind " Mind Training Zone". You’re You’re welcome to use some or all of my images but feel free to replace them with imagery of your own creation if you nd they help you to better experience the sensations you're aiming to feel in practice. As you become inc reasingly skilled at relaxing yourself into a highly concentrated state, you'll gain greater g reater control over your body and an d mind. The result? You'll You'll nd that you’ll be able to get into the "Mind Training Zone" much more quickly and with greater ease. I’ve found that the best way to learn the process of getting yourself into the “Mind Training Zone” is through a 4 week practice program: The same way that I learned it originally. The routine requires daily practice for short periods of time with new skills being introduced every week for a month’s month’s time Your Your practice sessions will be very brief and you’ll only be required to spend 4-5 minutes/3 times per day on it. During the rst week of practice you'll focus solely on your arms, breath and heartbeat.

During the second week, you'll focus on both of your legs, Throughout the third and fourth weeks, you'll be focusing on your legs and a nd arms plus you'll be adding your y our solar plexus, facial muscles and forehead to the mix. Once you've mastered the basics, after 4 weeks of dedicated practice, and have the ability to quickly and easily ease yourself into the "Mind Training Zone", you'll be ready to move onto the next chapter of this book where we'll begin to analyze your thoughts. Our goal will be to pinpoint pinpo int which thoughts assist you in performing very well and which ones cause you to perform in a less than optimal way. www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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Here we go...time for the rst week of training!

WEEK 1 - Exercising Both Arms Once in the practice position of your choice, I want you to begin your relaxation process by peforming the "Preparatory Breathing Exercise": "Preparatory Breathing Exercise"

With your eyes closed, focus your mind on your breath. Inhale and exhale through your nose using an even rhythm. Aim to match the length of your inhalations with the length of your exhalations (ie. count up to 4,5,6 or 7 while inhaling then count back down from that number while exhaling). Breathe comfortably. Continue this breathing exercise for several minutes, continually releasing (as you exhale) any bodily tension that you become aware of during the process. Allow your muscles to relax, soften and go completely limp. With each inhalation feel your stomach rise as it lls up with your breath, then allow your chest to ll up and rise upwards as well. On the exhalation, allow your chest to drop rst followed by the lowering of your stomach. Never force your breath. Breathe easy easy.. Keep your breath soft and quiet at all times.

After a minute or two, when you're feeling noticeably relaxed, move on to the mental repetition of the relaxation suggestions below: Advanced Preparatory Advanced Preparatory Breathing Breathing Option: Option: Once you have some experience with the "Preparatory Breathing Exercise", you can make it more challenging and effective by changing things up like this:

While making your rst inhalation/exhalation, slowly count 1 second per breathing action. Next, inhale while counting up to 2 and an d then exhale while counting cou nting back down from 2. After that, slowly count up to/down from 3 for each inhalation/exhalation cycle, then up to/down from 4, then 5 and so on. Repeat this pattern until you've hit the 8,9 or 10 second mark --which can be very challenging-- and then work your way back downward through all of the numbers until you reach 1 again. As you breathe, allow your muscles to relax, soften and go completely limp. Keep your breath calm and quiet, never forced. Once this opening exercise is complete, you will be very relaxed and ready to move on to the mental repetition of the relaxation suggestions listed in great detail below.

Tips to Using the Relaxation Suggestions Listed Below The process of mentally repeating the relaxation suggestions below will allow you to slip into a state of relaxed concentration. Slowly repeat each statement within your mind over and over again for the allotted number of repetitions. Take Take your time with each phrase p hrase and use vivid visual imagery -- I've included some of the images that I like to use, below, in italics-- to reinforce each phrase as you y ou repeat it within in your mind. This will help enhance the effectiveness of the suggestions phrases.

Relaxation Suggestions (Phrases are in Bold) "I am totally calm, my whole body is relaxing" (repeat 2-3 times)

Jeff's Imagery: I see the tension within my muscles transform into liquid form. I imagine it dripping slowly out of me; from the bottom of my feet and out of the top of my head as I completely co mpletely relax.


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After you relax, you will then allow yourself to induce the feeling of heaviness: hea viness: "My arms are relaxed" (repeat 2-3 times) "My arms are heavy, very, heavy" (repeat 3-4 times)

ce ment. They are impossible to move. I Jeff's Imagery: I imagine that both of my arms are made of thick cement. visualize them sinking heavily into the ground. ground . I imagine someone stepping into the room and trying to lift my cement arms off of the ground. I see them failing miserably at doing so. In fact my arms don't even budge. Don't worry if you are unable to feel much heaviness at rst. With practice the feeling will be much more noticeable.

After practicing this heaviness sensation, I want you to focus on the sensation of warmth: "My arms are warm, very warm' (repeat 3-4 times)

Jeff's Imagery: I imagine a super warm day in the summer and picture the burning hot sun beaming down on both of my arms heating them up quickly!

Again, the feelings of warmth will become more pronounced with practice. Just keep at it! Next, you'll change your mental focus point to your breathing: "My breath is calm and regular, I am breathing easily" (repeat 4-5 times)

Jeff's Imagery: I Imagery: I focus on my breath, noticing how easily I'm nding it to breathe in a calm and quiet manner. I feel that with every breath I become more and more relaxed.

Your focus should be on your breath; how quiet it is and how relaxed you have become due to the ease in which the air is owing in and out of your body. The heart is your next area of focus. If you have a heart condition I suggest that you consult with your doctor before engaging in this exercise: "My heartbeat is strong and quiet." (repeat 5-6 times)

Jeff's Imagery: I visualize my heart beating strongly, quietly and steadily in my chest.

The goal is for you to try and feel the quiet beating of your heart. The quiet rhythm of your yo ur heart will help you relax your mind. In turn your relaxed mind will slow the beating of your heart he art allowing you to relax even more deeply. Lastly, every training session should end with three suggestions that are designed to return you to your normal self: Activation Suggestion 1 - "The feelings of heaviness are disappearing" (1 time)

Jeff's Imagery: I imagine my arms becoming less heavy. Activation Suggestion 2 - "Strength is returning to my arms, I am feeling fresh and re-energized" (1 time)


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Jeff's Imagery: I imagine electricity travelling throughout my entire body making me feel lighter, more awake and energized! Activation Suggestion 3 - "Deep breath, open the eyes, exercise the arms" (1 time)

After thinking through these three activation phrases, I perform pe rform the three actions in that exact sequence. seque nce. First I slowly take in a deep breath and imagine that the inhalation charges me up with a huge amount of strength and energy.. I then snap my eyes open and quickly jump to my feet. Once I'm standing, I circle my arms forward in a energy rapid circular motion for several seconds to remove any feelings of heaviness.

Nighttime training note: If you're planning on falling asleep --while practicing in bed at night-- after the exercise, skip the three activation suggestions and allow yourself to drift off to sleep instead of re-activating your body and mind at the end of your practice.

Practice Tips for Week 1 and All Remaining Weeks 1) Aim to practice for the same amount of time every day. If possible, set regular practice times during the day and do your best to stick to them. 2) Less is more in the case of your mind training. Trying for too long or too hard will only create feelings of stress which will hurt your progress. Practice for a maximum of 5 minutes per session and don't worry about the times when you're having difculty getting into the "Mind Training Zone". 3) Always nish your practice with the activation suggestions even if you don 't feel any of the sensations that you’ve tried to produce. 4) If you feel that you need to spend more time to master a specic week of the training, take whatever amount of time is necessary. On the other hand, if you notice that you've y ou've felt the desired sensations in a very ve ry strong way for two days in a row, you can move onto the following week's exercise early.

5) Like physical training, you will only progress and improve through regular training and practice. With With regular practice your relaxation will become deeper de eper and you will be able to visualize things much more clearly c learly..

Week 2 - Exercising Both Legs "I am totally calm, my whole body is relaxing" (repeat 2-3 times)


After you relax, you will then allow yourself to induce the feeling of heaviness: hea viness: "My legs are relaxed" (repeat 2-3 times) "My legs are heavy, very, heavy" (repeat 3-4 times)

Jeff's Imagery: I imagine that both of my legs are made up of heavy cement. They are impossible to move. I visualize them sinking heavily into the ground. ground . I imagine someone stepping into the room and trying to lift my cement legs off of the ground. I see them failing miserably at doing so. In fact my legs don't even budge.. budge. .


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Don't worry if you are unable to feel much heaviness at rst. With practice the feeling will be much more noticeable.

After practicing this heaviness sensation, I want you to focus on the sensation of warmth: "My legs are warm, very warm' (repeat 3-4 times)

Jeff's Imagery: I imagine a super warm day in the summer and picture the burning hot sun beaming down on both of my legs heating them up quickly!

Again, the feelings of warmth will become more pronounced with practice. Just keep at it! Next, you'll move onto focusing on your breath: "My breath is calm and regular, I am breathing easily" (repeat 4-5 times)

Jeff's Imagery: I Imagery: I focus on my breath, noticing how easily I'm nding it to breathe in a calm and quiet manner. I feel that with each breath I become more and more relaxed.


strongly,, quietly and steadily in my chest. Jeff's Imagery: I visualize my heart beating strongly The goal is for you to try and feel the quiet beating of your heart. The quiet rhythm of your yo ur heart will help you relax your mind. In turn your relaxed mind will slow the beating of your heart he art allowing you to relax even more deeply. Lastly, every training session should end with three suggestions that are designed to return you to your normal self: Activation Suggestion 1 - "The feelings of heaviness are disappearing" (1 time)

Jeff's Imagery: I imagine my legs becoming less heavy. Activation Suggestion 2 - "Strength is returning to my legs, I am feeling fresh and re-energized" (1 time)

Jeff's Imagery: I imagine electricity travelling throughout my entire body making me feel lighter, more awake and energized! Activation Suggestion 3 - "Deep breath, open the eyes, exercise the legs" (1 time)

After thinking through these three activation phrases, I perform pe rform the three actions in that exact sequence. seque nce. First I slowly take in a deep breath and imagine that the inhalation charges me with a huge amount of strength and www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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energy. I then snap my eyes open and quickly jump to my feet. Once standing, I kick and swing my legs around energy. a bit to remove any feelings of heaviness.

Weeks 3 and 4 - Relaxing the Entire Body "I am totally calm, my whole body is relaxing" (repeat 2-3 times)


After you relax, you will then allow yourself to induce the feeling of heaviness: hea viness: "My arms and legs are relaxed" (repeat 2-3 times) "My arms and legs are heavy, very, heavy" (repeat 3-4 times)

h eavy cement. They are impossible to Jeff's Imagery: I imagine that both my arms and legs are made up of heavy move. I visualize them sinking heavily into the ground. I imagine someone stepping into the room and trying to lift my cement limbs off of the ground. I see them failing miserably at doing so. In fact my arms and legs don't even budge.. Don't worry if you are unable to feel much heaviness at rst. With practice the feeling will be much more noticeable.

After practicing this heaviness sensation, I want you to focus on the sensation of warmth: "My arms and legs are warm, very warm' (repeat 3-4 times)

Jeff's Imagery: I imagine a super warm day in the summer and picture the burning hot sun beaming down on my arms and legs heating them up quickly!

Again, the feelings of warmth will become more pronounced with practice. Just keep at it! Next, you'll move onto focusing on your breath: "My breath is calm and regular, I am breathing easily" (repeat 4-5 times)

Jeff's Imagery: I Imagery: I focus on my breath, noticing how easily I'm nding it to breathe in a calm and quiet manner. I feel that with each breath I become more and more relaxed.


Jeff's Imagery: I visualize my heart beating strongly, quietly and steadily in my chest.

The goal is for you to try and feel the quiet beating of your heart. The quiet rhythm of your yo ur heart will help you www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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relax your mind. In turn your relaxed mind will slow the beating of your heart he art allowing you to relax even more deeply. Once you've completed the heartbeat suggestions, you will focus on two new areas: the solar plexus and the face. "My solar plexus is warm, warmth is pouring into my solar plexus" (repeat 5-6 times)

Jeff's Imagery: I start off by visualizing my solar plexus being warmed by an imaginary sun burning brightly above me. I then picture p icture a small re burning within my stomach and a nd that the air that I'm taking in during my inhalations fuels that re, making it larger. With With each breath, the re grows in both size and strength. The intense warmth produced by that re begins to spread throughout my entire body warming everything. "My facial muscles are relaxed and my forehead is pleasantly cool." (repeat 5-6 times)

a nd jaw completely, allowing my mouth to drop open slightly while doing so. Jeff's Imagery: I relax my cheeks and I then envision a cool, wet towel lying on my forehead. The contrast between my cool forehead and the warmth I'm feeling throughout my entire body helps me to relax deeply. Lastly, every training session should end with three suggestions that are designed to return you to your normal self: Activation Suggestion 1 - "The feelings of heaviness are disappearing" (1 time)

Jeff's Imagery: I imagine my arms and legs becoming less heavy. Activation Suggestion 2 - "Strength is returning to my arms and legs, I am feeling fresh and reenergized" (1 time)

Jeff's Imagery: I imagine electricity travelling throughout my entire body making me feel lighter, more awake and energized! Activation Suggestion 3 - "Deep breath, open the eyes, exercise the arms and legs" (1 time)

After thinking through these three activation phrases, I perform pe rform the three actions in that sequence. First I slowly take in a deep breath and imagine that the inhalation inha lation charges me with a huge amount of strength and energy. I then snap my eyes open and quickly jump to my feet. Once standing, I swing my arms around in a forward circular motion and kick/swing my legs around a bit to remove any feelings of heaviness.

Once You’ve Mastered the Basics Once you've put in your four weeks of training you'll nd it very easy to get yourself into the "Mind Training Zone". From that point onwards you have the option of practicing while using shorter phrases like "Arms and legs heavy" or "forehead cool" to speed up the relaxation process. I've always used the full length phrases in my training and stuck to the order in which I’ve placed them out for you above. At this point however, you can also opt to change up the suggestion order if you feel that they may work better for you in a different formation. For example: you could focus on your breathing or heartbeat rst and then progress to your arms and legs afterwards.


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Also, once you’ve obtained a solid level of prociency you may lessen (or even omit) the amount of time you spend on the “Preparatory Breathing Exercise” in order to speed up your practice sessions when you are short on time. Whatever you do, be sure to master the basic skills rst, in the order they are presented above while using the full length phrases. After that you can make any adjustments that you feel are needed to suit yourself. yo urself. The only thing that matters is that you are able to effectively allow yourself to fall into a state of relaxed co ncentration. While in that state of mind you’ll be able to strengthen your ability to think and react positively before or during your ghts/competitions.

The next step is to tailor your mind training in a way that will allow you yo u to bring out the best in you when it counts! Optimal mental performance, 100% of the time sounds great doesn’t it? Turn the page to take the next important step towards achieving exactly that.


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CHAPTER 5 Finding the Culprits Through Self-Analysis Now that you know exactly how to get yourself into the “Mind Training Zone” we’re going to put that ability to great use. Over the years I’ve been very fortunate to have learned a lot about mind training from coaches, other ghters, a comedic hypnotist, numerous books and many online articles. Over time, I experimented with all that I had learned to see what would work best for me. I quickly changed change d the things that didn’t help me achieve desirable results and continually found myself ne tuning the system so that it became specic to MMA ghting.

One book, Dr. Aladar Koglar’s “Yoga “Yoga for Athletes”, taught me a lot about self-analysis and mental suggestion. It armed with me with tools designed to help h elp me identify what was going on o n inside of my mind when I was performing at both my best and my absolute worst. Much of what I share with you in this chapter is based on the system of self-assessment that I learned from that very informative book. When in a state of passive concentration conc entration you are highly receptive to suggestions and mental images. It is during that time that you’ll soon be applying the use of personalized suggestive phrases that will strengthen your ability to think positively which will in turn help you y ou to perform in an optimal way. They’ll be the same type --or very similar-- of suggestions that you’ve given yourself, without trying or even knowing, anytime you’ve performed at your best in the past. You You will put the personalized positive suggestions you create into practice several times per day to reinforce positive thinking, increase condence and strengthen your mind’s ability ability to deect negative thoughts. In order for you to effectively create suggestions specically for you and the sport of MMA Fighting we rst need to nd out what was going on within your mind during a time when you performed at your best. To do so I need you to rst get yourself into “Mind Training Zone” through the u se of the relaxation process we went over in the previous chapter cha pter.. Once you nd yourself in the state of relaxed concentration conc entration begin to think about a time when you performed perfectly in the past. Maybe it was at a tournament when all of your matches seemed easy despite the competition being tough, or a pro-ght when you felt great before and during the bout. It could very likely be a time when you surpassed everyone’s expectations --including your own-- and rose to the occasion, achieving great results while engaging in a very challenging activity. You You know those times; when everything just seemed to go the way you had hoped they would!

From deep within the “Mind Training Zone” I want you to experience your “Best Performance” moment all over again. Do your best be st to recall everything that you can. ca n. Try to feel the same feelings, hear the same things, and see the same stuff that you saw when the event actually occurred. Once you’ve completely re-lived that kick-ass experience in your mind, reactivate yourself and immediately answer --writing your answers down on a sheet of paper-- the following questions to the best of your ability: What kind of self-talk was running through your mind? What are some of the things you saw? What did you hear? What was your emotional state? What was the overall state of your body? What was your level of arousal? --> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 What was your level of concentration? --> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9


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What was the level of your self condence? --> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 What was the level of concern about your performance? --> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 What was the level of your nervousness? --> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 What was the level of tension in your muscle groups? --> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Once that is done, I want you to do the exact same exercise again, but this time I want you to replay -within your mind-- a moment in your life when you performed at your absolute worst. As a martial artist it could be a time when you got your butt kicked badly during a competition; An event where you felt so nervous beforehand and performed terribly during as well. Again, replay the entire event while in your “Mind Training Zone” to induce the same feelings that you felt at the time of that “Worst Performance” event. Do your best to recall everything that you saw and heard at the time then answer a nswer --write the answers on a sheet on paper-pa per-- the set of questions below immediately after re-activating yourself: What kind of self-talk was running through your mind? What are some of the things you saw? What did you hear? What was your emotional state? What was the overall state of your body? What was your level of arousal? --> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 What was your level of concentration? --> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 What was the level of your self condence? --> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 What was the level of concern about your performance? --> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 What was the level of your nervousness? --> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 What was the level of tension in your muscle groups? --> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Now that you have the answers to your “Worst “Worst Performance” and “Best Performance” question sets, you can begin to see the kind of things that need to go through your mind in order for you to perform optimally; You’ve You’ve also discovered, through this self-analysis, your optimal levels of arousal, concentration, condence, tension and nervousness/excitement. This newly discovered information is extremely valuable as it will help you to create your personalized “Fighter Creed” suggestions in the next chapter. Great job! Before we move on to that next and very important chapter, cha pter, I want to share with you a breakdown of o f my own “Best Performance” and “Worst Performance” Performance” experiences as an example on how I’d like you yo u to break things down into great detail:

JEFF’S BEST PERFORMANCE - Fight vs. Jon Fitch (Freedom Fight MMA - 2005) What was your level of arousal? --> 6 What was your level of concentration? --> 10 What was the level of your self condence? --> 10 What was the level of concern about your performance? --> 3 What was the level of your nervousness? --> 2 What was the level of tension in your muscle groups? --> 3 Things I saw:

I saw only my opponent and the ring we were ghting in. I had tunnel vision that was focused only on Fitch.


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What I visualized:

I was thinking about winning the ght in exciting fashion. I felt there was no way this guy could beat me. I recalled all of the hard training I had done to prepare for the ght. I imagined putting on a great show for the fans. What I heard:

I heard very little. Even when the entire crowd was chanting my name at one point during d uring the ght, I couldn’t hear it. I didn’t hear the referee speak to us even ev en once. My Self-Talk: Self-Talk:

I told myself that I was unstoppable. I knew that I would never quit. When I felt him tire I knew that the ght was mine. “Come to Canada and try to beat me buddy, yeah right!” When my teeth were knocked knocke d out I remember thinking “You’re “You’re in trouble now Fitch!” My Physical Physical State:

I felt very strong and extremely durable. After three rounds of ghting I felt that I co uld still do more rounds. I was having fun throughout the entire ght. Event Description: Description:

When people ask me about ab out my favourite MMA ght, this war against Jon Fitch always seems to pop u p in my mind rst. It’s It’s a tough choice though. thou gh. My ght with Josh Koscheck in the UFC was a fun one too but there was just something very special about the intense battle that Jon and I shared. It was a pretty crazy scrap that was denitely the best performance of my martial arts career. career. The pro MMA ght took place in Gatineau, Quebec as part of the Freedom Fight MMA card. Originally I had signed to ght UFC vet Jeremy Jackson but after he ended up pulling out of our bout bo ut due to injury, I then agreed to ght future UFC’er Mike Guymon who stepped up to take the vacated spot. Two Two weeks before the ght, gh t, he too pulled out of the match --I’m not sure why--. It was then that they told me that my new opponent oppon ent would be a guy named Jon Fitch.

Fitch had a really impressive record and had beaten some tough guys but by that point in my training camp it didn’t matter to me who they brought in to ght me. I felt ready for anything! a nything! I had done all of o f my homework in training and my skill set was ready for any type of ghter. I also gured that the more tou gh guys I beat, the faster the UFC would call to sign me to their roster. During the weigh-ins, I felt in the zone; very calm and excited to be there. I was in top shape physically and mentally I was just as strong. I had been training my mind as much as my body: three times per day for the last three months and it was really helping. I felt no nerves at all and could easily see myself knocking Fitch out during our ght which was set to take place the very next day. I was also pumped to ght hard and put on a www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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great show for the Canadian fans. On the day of the ght I felt extremely calm. I remember lying in the ring several hours before the ght, doing my last pre-ght mind training exercise and knowing kn owing that I would do well that night. After a solid twenty minute warm-up consisting of some shadow ghting and pad work with my coach, I heard them call my name. Thirty seconds later, I made my way out o ut to the the ring. The energy from the crowd fueled me immediately immediately.. I felt strong, fresh and lled with excitement! ex citement! As As I jumped over the top rope and landed inside the ring, I felt as though Fitch didn’t stand a chance. The ght began and I worked hard to take control, winning most of the rst round after landing many strikes and some ground and pound attacks after scoring a take down. At one point, when I was on top of Fitch, I heard his corner men yelling for him to sweep me. I remember thinking “Yeah “Yeah right!” as I carried on with my attack while shutting down all of his sweep attempts. My mind was where it needed to be and my body was responding perfectly. perfectly. Then all hell broke loose! With less than a minute left in the rst round Fitch broke my nose and knocked out both of my teeth. Dazed by a powerful hit, I fell back rst onto the canvas. I instinctively tied Fitch up in my guard gua rd for the remaining fteen seconds of the round and kept myself safe until the bell sounded.

I didn’t know it at the time but I had ha d been hit by an illegal head butt, well more like a head smash, and that was what had knocked me down and caused my face to become heavily damaged. The worse part was that the referee missed it too! I would have had ve minutes to shake away the cobwebs and regain my senses but instead had to continue ghting right then and there without pause. Fortunately I somehow managed to survive until the bell signalled to end that rst round. As the second round began I denitely still felt shaky a nd disoriented. The good thing was that I started to see red --in other words got really @#$%*$# angry-a ngry-- and was very excited to pay Fitch back for knocking me down with what I still believed was a punch. The second round was lled with back and forth action, neither of us landing much in terms of take downs or strikes. It was a very close round of ghting. g hting. Near the end of the round I started to feel as though I was getting my legs back under me and was beginning to feel strong again. I also started to hear Fitch breathing heavily and noticed that his attacks and defenses were beginning to slow down.

“Time for some payback” I said to myself as the bell b ell rang to begin the third round. round . Feeling fresh, energized and ready to ght I turned up the pressure. Seconds in, I pulled off o ff one of my best boxing combinations, smashing Fitch’ss mouth so hard with an uppercut that he thought his lip fell off --he told me that while we were at the Fitch’ hospital together after the ght--. It was an outside slip followed by an uppercut-hook-cross combination. When it landed, Jon backed up immediately and I pressed forward hard with a strong follow up attack. This is when the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced during a ght happened. As I was about to laun ch an attack I noticed that Jon was looking to get the referee’s attention. attention. He was signalling that he wanted to stop the ght and a nd kept pointing to his lip. I backed away as the referee signalled to stop the bout at Fitch’s Fitch’s request. I thought I had won the ght! Sadly and strangely I was very wrong. For some unknown reason --still unknown to this day-- the referee allowed Jon to have a two minute time-out to nurse his lip. When the break was done, Jon decided to continue ghting and the ght nished with me on the attack for the remainder of the round. I scored many more strikes and took Fitch down to the ground at one point as well. When the bell sounded to end the bout I felt an amazing rush of happiness sweep throughout my body! I pumped my hands into the air in victory and waved to the crowd to show my appreciation for their support throughout the gruelling ght. I felt so proud of myself for nishing so strongly after coming bac k from that knockdown in the very rst round. Blood was pouring out of my nose and my face was pretty swollen but I www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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had absolutely no doubt that I had won the ght. gh t. I had truly felt unstoppable from start to nish.

When the decision was announced, I was shocked! --in fact I already had raised one of my hands in anticipation of my victory--. The judges had somehow given a split-decision win to Fitch. None of the craziness was Jon’s Jon’s fault; that lies with the referee and judges. The ght did make a “Top “Top 5 ripoffs in MMA history” history” list which was kind of cool. c ool.

No matter though, none of the controversy took away from the fact that I truly performed at my best that day, day, both mentally and physically. physically. A negative thought never entered my mind throughout the entire ght even during the worst of times. My positive mind set, developed deve loped through the same mind set training you’re learning in this book, and the unwavering belief that I had in my pre-ght preparation caused me to push hard for victory regardless of the circumstances. I think as ghters we all have a day when we are tested to the fullest. A time when we truly nd out what we’re made of. Without a doubt, that day in Gatineau was my test and I’m extremely proud to have risen to the occasion! JEFF’S WORST PERFORMANCE - Grappling Match - Finals of Adu Dhabi Qualier vs Dennis Kang (2002)

What was your level of arousal? --> 10 What was your level of concentration? --> 6 What was the level of your self condence? --> 7 What was the level of concern about your performance? --> 10 What was the level of your nervousness? nervousness? --> 8 What was the level of tension in your muscle groups? --> 8 What I saw:

I saw the large crowd. I could see the span of the entire gym before and during the match. What I visualized:

I imagined my opponent being tough to take down. I was thinking about what attacks he would try on me. I was not really excited about the match. What I heard:

I could hear the crowd cheering. I could hear the referee speaking to us. I could hear people close to mat talking to Dennis and I. My Self-Talk: Self-Talk:

“I can’t lose in front of so many people I know” “He looks pretty strong.” “I have to watch out for his takedowns” “I think he’s quite a bit heavier than me” www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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My Physical Physical State:

I felt uptight and tense. I felt weak and tired before the match even started Event Description: Description:

Deciding which performance of my martial arts career was my worst was a pretty easy task for me. A long time ago in a galaxy...wait galaxy...wait,, no; more than ten years ago in Toronto, Ontario I grappled against fellow MMA’er MMA’er and UFC vet Dennis Kang in the nals of the Abu Dhabi qualier no-gi event. Without any knowledge regarding mind set training at the time, I came into this match totally unprepared mentally.. At the time I didn’t know how much my thoughts were playing against me but looking back mentally ba ck now, after all that I have learned about ab out the power of positive thought, it’s very easy for me to see how ho w weak my mind state was during that match and how ho w it caused me to perform terribly. Before the grappling match, while sitting off to the side of the matted surface that we would soon be battling on, I kept thinking about the huge importance of the match. “I can’t can’t lose in front of so many people that know me.” ran through my mind over and over again.

Thinking about not losing really made me try my best; my best to not lose that is! That’s That’s drastically different than actually trying to win the match. I began to dwell on my opponent’s strengths and started to wonder what things he would try on me when our match began. These thoughts made me instantly feel week and fatigued even though I was well rested. I was not looking forward to the match at all and the entire situation seemed to lack the feelings of fun and excitement that I would normally feel before facing tough toug h competition. Once the match began I did not do well. I found myself so busy watching and waiting for what he was going to try on me that I didn’t try a single technique techniqu e back on him. For Fo r ten minutes I did nothing but defend! I was doing a pretty good job of stopping his attacks over and over again but couldn’t seem to gain any advantage. My mind was solely on defense, stuck in the type of mind set that could never achieve victory. What happened in the end? I lost the match. Even though it was only by 1 point --which I gave away because I pulled guard-- against a very tough competitor I consider it to be my worst match of all time. Mainly because I never could have won it: Not with the way I was thinking that day day.. I had absolutely no fun, I lost the match, and didn’t do anything cool out there on the mats. It totally sucked! Fortunately, before I started competing professionally as an MMA ghter, Fortunately, ghter, I learned about “Mind Training” and was able to become much stronger mentally. mentally. If I hadn’t done so, there’s no doubt that I would have had some pretty rough ghts throughout my pro MMA career and probably would have started my career off with a loss instead of a win. My negative thoughts would have been able to creep up on me and take away all of the fun from a sport that I love doing so much.

If you look at the differences between my “Best” and “Worst” “Worst” performance breakdowns you’ll notice that they are drastically different. I’ll bet yours are quite different as well. When I rst ran myself through the analysis process described above I realized for the very rst time just how much of role my thoughts had played during my past performances. That awareness was the rst and ve ry important step for me in gaining control over o ver my own mind. I’m sure that it will be the same for you. www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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Now that you’ve discovered the type of thoughts you need to think in order to perform at your best we can start having you create the personalized phrases that you’ll soon be drilling over and over again within your mind. With practice and time, the phrases you’ll create after reading the ve ry next chapter will stand strong within in your mind; continually deecting any negative thoughts that attempt to enter your head before or during a ght, training session or martial arts competition. compe tition. Turn the page and let’ let’ss get to it!


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CHAPTER 6 Creating & Practicing Your “Fighter Creed” We’ve come a long way from the beginning of this book. boo k. You’ve You’ve spent the last 4 weeks or o r so practicing the process of getting yourself into the “Mind Training Training Zone” and I’m sure you’re feeling pretty good at it by now. now. That’s great! You’ve also learned, through your “Best” and “Worst” “Worst” performance analysis process, which type of thoughts are allied with you in your personalized war against poor performance. You’ve You’ve exposed the enemy by drawing out and recognizing the thoughts or images that are guaranteed to severely hinder your performance. In addition to that you’ve also become aware of your optimal mind/body levels of arousal, muscular tension, self-condence, concentration, performance concern and nervousness/excitement. In this chapter we’re going to use every bit of that newly discovered and highly detailed information to create your personalized “Fighter Creed”. What is a “Fighter Creed”?

It’s a list of short, unique phrases that we’ll soon be using to transform your mind into an It’s a n extremely powerful tool. One that has the ability to halt negative thinking, destroy self-doubt and wipe-out anything else that could cause you to perform poorly when it matters most. By creating, training and bombarding your mind with your personalized, positively charged “Fighter Creed ” phrases on a regular basis (3 times a day for 3-5 minutes per session) you’ll you’ll be more than ready for anything your opponent will bring to the cage on ght night. You’ll also be able to use the power of positive thinking to keep yourself excited about your training; Fully ready to do whatever needs to be done in the gym before an upcoming MMA ght or martial arts tournament. To help you create your y our personalized phrases, I want you to read through your answers to the questions on your “Best Performance” & “Worst “Worst Performance” analysis sheets. Grab a sheet of o f paper and while following the guidelines/tips described below write down as many phrases that you can think of. We’re not going to use them all so just write everything and anything that comes to mind: 1) Begin by creating phrases that reinforce the thoughts you’ve had when performing at your best in the past. 2) Develop phrases that counteract and negate the chance of negative thoughts taking hold within your mind. 3) Create Phrases that help you maintain your optimal levels of arousal, muscular tension, self-condence, concentration, performance concern and nervousness/excitement.

Focus on creating four different types of phrases during the creation process: Phrase Type 1 - Afrmation of Practice - Phrases that afrm all of the hard work you’ve put in at the gym during your practice sessions. These phrases will be the powerful foundation of your positive thinking mind set. Phrase Type 2 - Self Condence - Phrases that strengthen your self-condence and reinforce your belief that you can succeed.


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Phrase Type 3 - Final Instructions - Phrases to be used in the dressing room, as you walk to the cage, as you hear your name being announced and moments before the bell sounds to start your ght. Phrase Type 4 - During the Fight - Phrases to be used during the ght itself.

When creating your phrases follow these rules: 1)Use the self-talk, thoughts, images and feelings that you’ve experienced during your best performances pe rformances of the past. 2)Re-arrange and change any negative thoughts/feelings that cause you to perform poorly into positive phrases and helpful self-talk. 3) Phrases must always be positive. Never speak to yourself in a negative way. (ie. use "I am strong!" rather than "I am no longer weak!") 4) Always use the present tense. Imagine that what your are suggesting to yourself is true right now! 5) Keep your phrases short, clear and simple. Don’t use long sentences or big words. 6) Your Your phrases should be made up of words that you use regularly when you speak. Don't use words that are uncomfortable to you. 7) Create phrases that can easily be associated with visual images. This will make it easier to strengthen and reinforce them within your mind. Once you have written down every positive phrase that you can think of, go through your list and choose the ones that you nd most empowering. Write them down as part Write pa rt of your "Fighter Creed" list. Remember that your you r list will be a work in progress and that you can always tweak or change it anytime you feel like doing so; Take out phrases, add phrases or change the wording of a phrase if you think it’ll make your “Fighter Creed” list more effective; Shorten any phrase that feels too long and lengthen the shorter ones if you desire to do so. You may even feel that your list needs some different/additional phrases to be more effective for you. Make those changes. Keep making changes and experimenting with your list! If negative emotions/thoughts arise before, during or after your training/ghts, create phrases that deal specically with that new problem and add them to your list. Through constant practice and renement reneme nt you will end up with a "Fighter Creed" list that is highly effective and uniquely yours. I've never shared my "Fighter Creed" with anyone before but I want to share it with you right now to give you an idea of how to set things up. My list didn’t change very much between the start of my pro career and my last ght as a professional because it seemed to work very well for me right away. I can tell you that once I trained my mind as much as my body, I went into every one of my ghts ready to ght hard and win. I never worried about losing or what my opponent was going to do to me. I was always excited, energized and ready to ght! (one of my phrases :)) You You can feel the exact same way, I know it!


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Here's my "Fighter Creed" list of phrases: Afrmation of Practice (Phrase (Phrase Type Type 1) "I trained hard" "I trained very well" "I’ve trained more than ever before" "I’ve done all of my homework"

Self Condence Condence (Phrase Type Type 2) "I can beat anyone!" "I know I can do it!" "I’m a monster in the cage!"

Final Instructions (Phrase Type 3 ) "I am excited, energized and ready to ght!"

During the Fight Fight (Phrase (Phrase Type 4) "Stay low" "Stay loose" "Have fun and let the skills y!" "I'm the commander, I'm in charge" That's all of them! The same phrases that I drilled into my head at least three thousand times throughout my martial arts career. career. Feel free to use any an y of them in your personal list if you feel that they suit you, your yo ur ghting style, your way of thinking and your overall mind set. Next, I'm going to break down my list further by sharing the things that I would envision while thinking through each individual phrase. The visual imagery you use in combination with your phrases is what helps your mind accept each phrase as truth. I also feel that it makes practicing much more enjoyable.

Jeff's Phrase --> Jeff's Visual Imagery Afrmation of Practice (Phrase (Phrase Type Type 1) ha rd sparring "I trained hard" --> I picture moments of my training camp that were very intense (ie. my last hard session, my cardio and strength work, grappling non-stop for more than an hour at a t a time etc.) "I trained very well" --> I think about all of the technical work I put in with my coaches and the wide variety of training I did to cover the many skills needed during an MMA ght. "I’ve trained more than ever before” - -> This one was tricky because if I didn't train more than ever before it wouldn't be believable. So I always made sure that I did do d o more for each and every ght that I had. Visually I would quickly picture an ultra-fast mental slide show of o f my entire training camp. It would last only a few seconds at most. "I’ve done all of my homework" --> I would take a bit more time with this one: rst picturing myself being successful at wrestling practice, then kicking ass during striking training, then grappling smoothly in BJJ and pushing extremely hard during my strength/conditioning workouts. Of course this requires that I actually actually did do all of that while getting ready for the ght. Faking it won't do the trick. Some guys take ghts without doing


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their homework in the gym. That's just not me.

Self Condence Condence (Phrase Type Type 2) "I can beat anyone!" -> I would see myself standing tall, in great shape, ready to take on anyone in the world! I wouldn't just say the phrase in my mind, I would be yelling it within my imagination. "I know I can do it!" -> Another mental yell to reinforce the previous phrase. "I am a monster in the cage!" -> I would picture myself stepping into the c age as something other than human: A ghter ready for striking, grappling, and wrestling. A monster ready for an absolute war inside that cage. The type of ghter I would never, ever want to ght.

Final Instructions (Phrase Type 3) "I am excited, energized and ready to ght!" - > I would see myself bouncing softly with a light sweat covering my body. I see the cage as my home h ome and can't wait to show the crowd my skills once I get ge t in there. I'm not worried about the outcome of the ght at all. I've done all of my homework in the gym and what will happen is meant to be. I'm ready to simply enjoy the moment.

During the Fight Fight (Phrase (Phrase Type 4) bod y weight low and feeling ready to attack with both strikes or "Stay low"- I see myself keeping my body takedowns at all times. "Stay loose" - I see myself having fun, moving well, and attacking with extreme speed and relaxation. "Have fun and let the skills y!" - I see myself enjoying the moment and being excited to give the crowd the excitement they’re waiting to see. I see myself letting go and ghting hard to win! "I'm the commander, I'm in charge" - I see myself as larger, faster and stronger than my opponent. I see myself easily imposing my will upon them anytime I wish.

Putting your "Fighter Creed" Phrases into Practice Now that you have the ability to get into the "Mind Training Zone" and have created all of your personalized “Fighter Creed” phrases, it's time to work them into a daily practice routine. Start off each practice session by getting yourself into the "Mind Training Zone". Begin with the "Preparatory Breathing Exercise", then run through the Relaxation Suggestions (ie. heaviness, warmth etc.). When you nish with the "cool forehead" exercise do one last scan of your entire body bo dy to search for any remaining tension. If you nd some, let it go during one on your exhalations. Next, slowly run your "Fighter Creed" phrases through your mind while following these three rules: 1) Focus on one phrase at a time until you have mentally absorbed it. 2) Use vivid mental imagery to back up and reinforce each of your phrases. 3) Think of ght day when going through your phrases in your you r mind. Imagine that it's ght time!


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Once you've worked your way through your entire “Fighter Creed” phrase list, take some time to envision the actual ght being played out. This is called "Situational Visualization". Visualization". Imagine yourself winning the bout in many different ways. Sometimes scoring a quick KO or landing a slick submission early on in the ght. Other times, picture yourself winning a tough ght in the second or third round or by outlasting a very tough opponent in a three round war. You can even picture yourself escaping troublesome situations with ease. In the end though make sure that you always win in very impressive fashion. After that, imagine what will happen after you win: the high ves, smiles and kind words you'll receive from fans, friends and family. Even though it’s it’s just happening within your mind at this point, it still feels good!

Lastly, picture the insane rush of excitement Lastly, e xcitement and the happiness you'll be feeling while sitting in your dressing room after your victory victory.. All of your hard work and sacrice just paid off!

You're the winner and a true warrior! The next and nal step of your practice session is to leave your state of relaxed concentration by activating yourself. Use the same Activation Phrases you learned in previous Chapter 4 to do so then go back b ack to your daily routine repeating the above practice routine 3 times per day, everyday. everyday.

Here's is the Entire 5-step "Mind Training" Practice Sequence in List Form: 1. Do the "Preparatory Breathing Exercise" 2. Run through the Relaxation Suggestions within your mind to get yourself into the "Mind Training Zone". Be sure to use vivid imagery to strengthen the suggestions. 3. Slowly recite your "Fighter Creed" Phrases within your mind, one at a time, while using vivid imagery to strengthen the suggestions. 4. Use "Situational Visualization" to see yourself succeeding at the activity. 5. Return yourself to your normal state of mind through the use of the "Activation Phrases" Repetitive practice of this "Mind Training" process will make it very easy for you to think positively when you need it most. Negative thoughts will not stand a chance of taking root in your mind. They will be quickly and aggressively be deected away and replaced by your personalized "Fighter Creed" phrases. It's those positively charged phrases that will help you perform at the best of your abilities. In time, through diligent practice, your mind will become a very powerful weapon for you. Fights --and other competitions-- are often lost before the rst punch is thrown a ll because of a ghter's weak mind. Train you mind and you will never have to worry about that happening to you. In the next chapter I'm going to layout a schedule for you that starts 8 weeks out from a ght and nishes when the bell sounds to end your yo ur bout. In it I will be sharing with you many additional mind set tips, training ideas idea s and other useful information that you’ll be ab le to put to good use u se while preparing for ght day. They will help you become an absolute "Monster in the Cage!"

Opponent's look out! www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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CHAPTER 7 The Fight is Coming! - An 8-Week 8-Week Mind & Body Preparation Gameplan Fifteen intense minutes spent scrapping against a powerful, we ll-conditioned and highly skilled ghter inside of a cage is not what most people consider to be an enjoyable experience. I am denitely not one of those people and since you’re reading this book I don’t believe that you are either. With With the right preparation, both mentally and physically, beginning as many as 8 weeks before a ght, competing as a professional ghter can be one of the most exhilarating and fun experiences that you and I will ever experience. In this chapter I’m going to share with you yo u my personal approach to making ght time fun. First off, know that doing so is not an easy task. You You will need to dedicate an enormous amount of time to prepare your body and mind for intense battle. As soon as you sign the dotted line on a ght contract --and even sooner ideally-- you need start doing your homework. If you haven’t gured it out by now: Homework = Everything you need to do before a ght, inside and outside of the gym, to give yourself the best chance of winning.

When it comes to school, you fail when you neglect doing your homework. Skip out on your homework before a ght and the consequences will be severe. Yes you will lose your ght but things will most likely turn out much worse for you. There’s no need for me to elaborate about the bad things that happen to unprepared ghters during a ght because they the y will not happen to you. yo u. You You will do all of your homework in training and your mind will be so well trained that you’ll be able to think positively and ght to the best of your ability no matter what happens on ght night. By the time your training camp is done you will be an absolute monster in the cage that’ss ready for anything. that’ an ything. Here’s a run down of the things I would do, to prepare myself both physically and mentally, starting as many as 8+ weeks out from a ght.  ght. At the end of it all I always felt extremely condent an d so physically/mentally strong that I was super excited to face my opponent inside of the cage. When creating your training camp game plan feel free to use any of it that you like or nd helpful:

8 Weeks - 3 Weeks Before the Fight 1) Go on Walks - Book some time to go for walks and use that time to visualize the way you want things to be. In the case of an upcoming MMA ght, picture yourself training training hard, eating healthy and staying free from injury.. Think about the actual ght injury  ght itself; imagine yourself being calm and relaxed throughout the bout. See yourself being very excited to be there, performing at your best, having fun, winning and being congratulated by your family and friends afterwards.

To achieve success, it's very important to visualize v isualize specic, desirable outcomes over and over again on a regular regu lar basis. Going for slow walks will give you some time to do that. Remember to always expect the outcome you desire and know that it is certain! Feelings of doubt and fear will lead to failure. Avoid Avoid these two feelings at all times, especially during the weeks leading up to your ght. 2) While Driving - Record your personalized "Fighter Creed" phrases on a CD and listen to them while driving in your car. Be sure to do it when you're alone in the car so that your friends won't think you're a complete


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weirdo. If you have an audio editing program you can add some background music --many suggest baroque-- to the sound of your voice to make it more enjoyable to listen to. 3) Maintain your regular "Mind Training" practice schedule - At this point in your training camp, aim for 3 practice sessions per day (3-5 minutes per session). Consistency Consistency is key. It's It's better to practice two times per day regularly than four times one day and just one time on the next. 4) When practicing your striking, wrestling or submission skills:

a) Be certain and condent. Never doubt the outcome of your actions in sparring, rolling or wrestling. Execute every technique with success expected.

b) Do not stress about the result of your efforts efforts in training. Relax and give your best concentrated effort. Know that with every training session you will become greater prepared for the battle that lies ahead. ahea d. c) Don’t Force Things - Always have a "Let it happen" mentality during sparring. Do not overanalyze or over think your actions during the heat of the moment. Just get out there and do it! Before and after training is when you should assess your past performances, make mental notes and decide on which adjustments should be made to your training. d) Play Against Your Opponent’ Oppon ent’ss Strengths - This far out from the ght, it’s important to play against your training partner strengths during training. For example, if someone has a great guard, try to get into their guard and practice passing it or ground & pounding from within it. It's vital that you y ou focus on building up the weakest aspects of your game at this point in your training camp; Facing other peoples strengths with help you to do that very quickly. Also be sure to do plenty of technical training by drilling ground movements, striking combinations and take down attacks/defenses on a daily basis. When drilling ground and wrestling techniques be sure to practice each movement on both sides. I usually do 5 reps on one side then 5 reps on the other side then allow my partner to do the same. Keep working on the same technique for several 10-repetition sets if it’s a movement that is newer for you. Ten repetitions of a your “bread and butter” techniques will be enough to keep them sharp and enable you to move through drilling them more quickly. 5) Do Do your homework! - Most importantly, train in every discipline you'll need during your upcoming ght. Strike, wrestle, grapple on the ground and do your conditioning work. Do not neglect any aspect of your training! If you have an injury that prevents you from doing one of those four essential training elements, I suggest pulling out of the ght. You You don’t want to go into the cage with only a fraction of o f your skills prepared.

As a pro ghter, you should expect to be constantly sore and tired from intense practice. In addition to that you will often have to deal with lingering minor injuries --brought on from a vigorous training camp of course-while preparing for a ght; That is totally normal and a part of the game however if you nd that you are unable to train hard for a long period pe riod of time because of an injury injury,, that is a problem that you should never ignore. You You will probably never feel 100% come ght time but aim to be as close to that perfect percentage as possible.

3 Weeks - 1 Week Before the Fight 3 weeks out from the ght, it's time to turn up your training! You You should be very tired after every session and your sparring/grappling/pad work and other exercises should all a ll be ramped up to push pu sh you past your limits. It's all about increasing volume and breaking down the body before you allow it to rest, strengthen and peak during


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the nal week before the ght. Be sure to get plenty p lenty of rest during this period of training and stay away from people that are sick! If you catch the u or a bad cold it could put you out of training for a few days and disrupt the momentum that you’ve worked so hard to build. I actually stop shaking peoples hands at this point in my camp so that I lessen my chances cha nces of getting sick. I use the st bump greeting instead.

During training, start to play to your strengths and constantly attack your opponent's weaknesses weakne sses during standup sparring, wrestling and grappling training sessions. Different than when you were many weeks out from the ght, I want you to now n ow try your best to absolutely dominate your opponents in training. This will build your condence and kick you into a highly aggressive gear. Score many submission holds and be very tough to tap out when up against someone that is more skilled than you. Get into the habit of showing no mercy for your opponent --obviously without hurting them-- in your training. Let your skills y and build the momentum that you will soon carry over into the cage on ght night. Work your wrestling skills in a very challenging but safe way. I want you to do water matches, for added conditioning, at least once per week in addition to your other wrestling training. Water matches work like this: Choose a partner and drill a specic takedown on them repeatedly for a 1 - 1.5 minute round. Have your partner give in to the takedown instead of resisting it. Do it as fast as you can ca n with very little time between each repetition; As soon as your training partner is back o n their feet after getting taken down put them down to the mats again quickly. Work Work your double legs, high crotch, single leg takedowns plus any upper body throws that you’d like to pull off during the ght. Do four or ve different sets of this drill in a row,, changing the takedown attack every round, at the end of a wrestling/grappling session. It’ll greatly build row your conditioning and help you remain thoughtless with your takedown attempts. I'll warn you now though, It's ridiculously tiring and not much fun at all!

If you haven't been already a lready,, start wearing MMA Gloves during all of your grappling training. It’ll help you get used to the feel of your MMA gloves before the ght so that their thickness and weight do esn't distract you during the ght. MMA gloves can restrict your ability to apply chokes and make submission attacks feel different than they normally do. Keep wearing big gloves (10-12 ounce) when working on the hand mitts and heavy bags though; It'll keep your hands safe and free from injury. Your conditioning training program should also be ramped up as well during this two week period and you should begin to despise your coach and his nasty workouts every time you do them. Don't worry too much though, the hard work will soon be over and your body will have become a well trained machine that's ready to kick ass! Push yourself through every conditioning session knowing that every workout you perform will give you more fuel to use during your ght. My nal preparation workouts were so tough that I used to swear at my coach repeatedly as I was dropping d ropping down to do the next exercise. #$%^ you Eric Wong! You should have your nal sparring session 8-10 days before ght da y. It’s going to be a tough one! I want you to ght a fresh partner for every 1/2 round for 5 full rounds. round s. That means that if your upcoming ght is a pro bout you should be inside the cage sparring for 5 x 5 minute rounds with your sparring partners switching up every 2.5 minutes. Make sure that each new sparring partner is fresh, rested up and ready to push you hard. The break between each round should be no more than 1 minute in length. You’ll You’ll be exhausted afterwards --if you’ve chosen the right sparring partners of co urse-- but I promise that the ght will never be worse than that. Book yourself a full body massage for sometime later that day to jump start your recovery recove ry.. It’s a great feeling knowing that your hardest training session is behind you.

During the Week of Before the Fight With the hardest training sessions behind you it's time to lighten your training load. The goa l now is to allow www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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your body to completely recover recove r from the previous two weeks of extra intense training. Your Your workouts this week will still be intense but the duration of o f each session will shorten with each passing day. Change your training schedule to the following --or something similar-- for the week leading up to your ght (when the ght g ht is on Saturday). What you work on during those days is up to you yo u but I will share with you what I usually do before my ghts:

Monday - 1 hour of training I do a minimum of 30 minutes of striking and 30 minutes of grappling / takedown work. For striking I work on the hand mitts or on a heavy bag. Grappling wise I do some regular rolling while being very careful of who I choose as a partner. I do not want to tweak something or eat an elbow/knee while rolling. Years Years back, I had my eye cut wide open one week before ghting for the King of the Cage championship belt --I had to pull out of the ght!-- because one of my grappling partners kneed me in the head from the bottom of my side control. That sucked! Don't let it happen to you.

Tuesday - 1 hour of training Similar to monday, I do a short but very intense workout focused on striking. 20-30 minutes straight on the hand mitts usually does the trick and I make sure to wear my MMA gloves while doing it. Remember, never use MMA gloves while hitting a heavy bag because it's much too dangerous for you hands. Since Sinc e the 4 ounce gloves g loves are quite a bit smaller than boxing gloves, hitting the hands mitts with a pair of o f them on allows me to make the necessary adjustments to my striking range. MMA gloves also feel much lighter than the bigger gloves so it's during this training session that I get used to that difference. Be sure to still use hand wraps under your MMA gloves to prevent a possible last minute injury to one of your hands. For grappling, I spend a half ha lf hour rolling. My partner gives me very little resistance and constantly puts me into positions where I can practice my attacks: guard passes, ground and pound techniques, takedowns, escapes and so on. I still keep the intensity high and make sure that I break a good sweat while rolling. I nd that 4 x 5 minute rounds is usually enough grappling for the day.

Wednesday - 45 minutes of training With the weigh-ins only 2 days away, I put in 3 intense rounds of 5 minutes eac h on the hand pads --with MMA gloves on-- for striking and 15 minutes of technique drilling to keep my grappling skills sharp. I drill my takedown and ground attacks in a smooth, steady and safe way.

Thursday - 20 minutes of training and weight cut A round or two of shadow ghting followed by 3 x 5 minutes of light and fast pad work is all that I do this close to ght time. It's mainly a quick review of my high percentage striking combinations. I break a good sweat early in the day and afterwards a fterwards focus on getting my body weight down in preparation for the weigh in tomorrow. tomorrow.

Friday - Weight Cut and Weigh In I spend the day getting my weight to where it needs to be. I then weigh in, make weight and drink again! Man those Gatorades taste amazing by that point! p oint! I slowly get back to eating normally and have a tasty steak dinner that night. After that it’s it’s back to my hotel where whe re I jump into bed, close my eyes, think great thoughts and allow a llow myself to drift off to sleep.


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Fight Day This is a very exciting day! Finally I'm able to eat regularly and no longer look skinny and drawn out from the weight cut --since I have a long face I always look like an alien at the weigh-ins! Here’s how my usual ght day Here’s d ay goes, starting from the time I wake up until the exciting moment when the commissioner calls my name to walk out to the cage. Feel free to use anything from from it on your ght day if you think it'll be helpful:

1) I wake up and take a shower. As the water hits me, I imagine that it washes away any tension that I’m feeling within my body. I completely relax as I envision all of that useless tension washing awa y and disappearing down the drain. 2) I eat small meals every two hours or o r so and drink water steadily throughout the morning and afternoon. This recoups my lost body weight and most importantly rehydrates me. 3) I check my weight on o n my scale often (I always bring one on e with us). It's kind of cool to see my weight back up to the high 180's after weighing in at 169 lbs. 15-20 hours ho urs earlier. earlier. I also nd it mentally empowering as well. 4) I lie in bed throughout most of the day and try to sleep for a few hours if possible. If I can't ca n't sleep I always stay off of my feet and rest; saving my energy ene rgy so that I can unleash it on my opponent later that night! 5) I run through my "Mind training" routine every three or four hours and can feel myself becoming increasingly excited to show the skills that I've worked so hard to develop in training. 6) I keep my conversation with friends, family and coaches very light. I joke and talk with them about anything other than the ght. Thinking or talking too much about the ght can be mentally draining. I am extremely condent by this point because I know that I've done all of my homework in the gym. I’m one hundred percent certain that my ghting skill autopilot will kick in come ght time and do a great job. Knowing that, makes the hours leading up to a ght a very peaceful time for me. It's a very special moment that I've missed very much since retiring. 7) When we get to the event even t venue, I quickly nd out where my dressing room is and immediately throw all of my stuff into that room. When possible I head out to the cage (or ring) and lie down on the canvas inside. It's then that I run through my nal "Mental Training" practice session. I usually make it a pretty long one --between 5-10 minutes long--, taking in the sounds of the arena, the feel of the canvas beneath me and the lights that are shining brightly above. Being in the exact same spot that I will be soon ghting in helps me to prepare my mind for battle. Upon completion of my suggestive phrases, I take some time to picture myself ghting at my best, in that very spot; ghting hard, landing strikes, scoring takedowns, catching submission holds and dominating my opponent oppon ent until my hand is raised in victory v ictory.. Before my rst ght in the UFC I was unable to do my nal “Mind Training” session in the cage because the under card was already underway when we arrived at the venue. I ended up doing it while lying down in the dressing room instead. If you unable to gain access to the ring or cage c age beforehand for your nal na l session, don’t worry too much as any other place can work as well. After that nal "Mental training" practice is done, I no longer joke around or do anything that might shake me from my "Zone of optimal performance". I feel no nervousness, remain very relaxed and feel completely ready to scrap. Once back in my dressing room. I usually lie on the ground --using my gym bag as a pillow-- and stay off of my feet as much as possible. I remain in that position until roughly 45 minutes before my ght however I


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do get up to take a quick peek into the arena every now and then. Doing so allows me to take in the crowd and use their energy to re me up even more. I also use that time to check which ght they are up to, on the bout card, so that I know when to start my warm-up. 8) Roughly 30 minutes before my ght time --sometimes I have to guess because ghts can end quickly with KOs-- I jump to my feet and run through my pre-ght body weight motion warm-up routine. That takes about three minutes to complete. I then begin to shadow ght for ve minutes under the guidance of my striking coach Vito Brancaccio who works me on the hand mitts immediately afterwards. We We take our time between combinations so that my heart rate doesn’t become too elevated. When striking, I always make sure that my punches, kicks, knees k nees and elbows are all thrown using maximum speed and snap and that I do only enough work to break a good sweat. I throw some simple wrestling drills, such as pummelling or light sprawling, into the warmup routine as well. While warming up, always remember that you never want to waste an entire en tire round of energy doing so. That's the biggest mistake I see new ghters making. In fact, I think I may have made it myself, way back in the days, before my very rst pro-ght.

My coach continues to keep me warm, with the padwork drills, until I'm called to head to the cage. It's important to make sure that you head h ead to the cage with a light sweat going on, never ne ver dry. dry. Wearing Wearing a long sleeve shirt or sweatshirt during your warm-up can denitely help with that. Lastly,, I hear "Jeff Joslin! Let's go!" Lastly It's time to head to the cage! It's an awesome moment! I'm very excited for you to be there too!

Walking to and Entering the Cage During the exciting minutes spent backstage, while wh ile you await your time to the walk towards the cage, it's very important to keep repeating your self-condence phrases within your mind. Continue to repeat repe at them to yourself during your walk towards the cage as well. For me it is always a mix of the following phrases: "I practiced hard" "I trained very well" "I’ve trained more than ever before" "I’ve done all of my homework" "I can beat anyone!" "I know I can do it!" "I’m a monster in the cage!" "I’m excited, energized and ready to ght!"

As you make your walk to the cage, take your time and enjoy the moment! Whether the crowd is cheering for you or against you, use their energy to power you up. It can be a very powerful weapon for you. As you take the very rst step into the cage, imagine that the canvas zaps you with an huge amount amo unt of positive energy. energy. Some things that run through my mind as I bounce around the cage before the ghter introductions begin are: "This is what I've trained so hard for!" "I belong in this cage!" "It's my home!"


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"Finally it's time to show my skills!"

I almost feel bad for my opponent as they walk to the cage to face me because I feel super prepared, extremely excited to ght and so ready for battle! Once the bell rings to start the ght, I turn my ghting autopilot on and simply enjoy the moment!

You must do the same. Enjoy your moment because you my friend are a warrior!

Between Rounds As soon as the bell sounds to end a round, and the one minute rest period begins, you must calm your mind immediately.. You immediately You will waste a ton of energy en ergy if you keep on thinking intensely about the ght, your opponent o pponent or what happened in the previous round. Think calming thoughts, relax every muscle in your body and gain control over your breath. Forget about any mistakes that you made in the last round as they do not matter at all! Listen to your coach's words and allow yourself to recover completely. When you hear the “Canvas Slap” sound signifying that there is only 10 seconds left in the break, run this very important phrase ph rase --or something similar in your own words-- through your mind: "I'm fresh, re-energized and excited to ght!"

Then, get back in there and ght your ass off!

Well, I think that's about it. All of the same mind set and training tips that I've used for many years to make ghting against a well trained, highly skilled ghter, a very fun thing. Feel free to use the things you like and nd useful. Also be sure to add or subtract things as you build your own experience in the ght game. Over time, you'll have a system that is uniquely un iquely yours; one that you can c an share with your own students and training partners.


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CHAPTER 8 Applying the “Mind Training” Training” System Outside of Fighting In the big scheme of things, our o ur pro MMA careers make up only a fraction of our lives. Even Eve n though it's a ton of fun and will give us many of the biggest adrenalin rushes we will ever experience, it won't last forever. The good news is that you'll be able to apply a high percentage of the information, strategies and exercises that we've gone over in this book to other aspects of your life as well. I've done it with great success and I know that you can too! Mind training can help you perform at your best while doing any activity that interests you. It'll help get into the "Zone of optimal performance" before business meetings, presentations, school tests, or while playing other sports, The list of situations where having a laser-focused, positive thinking mindset could benet you is virtually endless. The good news is that by practicing the "Mind Training" system for your MMA ghting you've already learned everything it'll take for you to apply the process to other activities: Here are the steps you must take to do so:

1) Get yourself into the "Mind Training Zone" and do a "Best" and "Worst" "Worst" Performances analysis --like you did for MMA in chapter 5-- for the activity you are looking to improve your performance in. This analytical process will provide you with the positive thoughts, images and feelings that help you perform well and the thoughts and imagery that have caused you to fail at that specic activity in the past. 2) Create a master list of many personalized phrases p hrases designed to reinforce your good thoughts or counter your negative ones. Write down anything and everything that comes to mind. When creating your phrases, be sure to follow the many basic phrase creation rules that we rst went over in chapter 6: 6: a) Use the self-talk, thoughts, images and feelings that you have experienced during your best performances of the past.. b) Re-arrange and change the negative thoughts/feelings that cause you to perform poorly into helpful self-talk and positive phrases. c) Phrases must always be positive. Never speak to yourself in a negative way. (ie. "I am strong!" rather than "I am no longer weak!") d) Always use the present tense. Imagine that what your are suggesting to yourself is true right now! e) Keep your phrases short, clear and simple. Do not use long sentences or o r big words. f) Your Your phrases should be made up of words that you use in regular speaking. Don't use words that are uncomfortable to you. g) Create phrases that can easily be associated with visual images. This will make it easier to strengthen and reinforce them within your mind. 3) Create a "Success Creed" by b y grouping your favourite phrases from your master list into the following 4 www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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categories: Afrmation Afrmation of practice, self-condence, nal instructions and during the action.

4) Begin putting your "Success Creed" to work through regular practice. Start by getting yourself into the "Mind Training Zone" through the use of the relaxation suggestions sugge stions that you learned back in Chapter 4. Again you'll be focusing on the feelings of relaxation, heaviness, warmth and so on, just like before. Once you nd yourself deep within the state of relaxed concentration, begin to slowly run through your "Success Creed" phrases within your mind. Take your time with each phrase making sure to completely absorb each one before moving on to the next. Upon completion of your nal success phrase, spend some time visualizing yourself being wildly successful at whichever action you're aiming to perform very well at.

5) Lastly, Lastly, after you've gone through all of your phrases and have visualized yourself kicking ass at your imagined activity, activate yourself --by using the activation phrases-- and return to your regular activities. Be sure to repeat the practice of this entire en tire routine, 3 times per day (3-5 minutes per session) for best results. 6) Rene and improve your "Success Creed" on a continual basis. Make adjustments to your list whenever you feel it’s necessary or anytime that you notice negative thoughts beginning to hurt your performance.

Changing Your Mindset and Breaking Bad Habits with the "Mind Training" System Over the years, the "Mind Training" system has been extremely useful in ridding myself of bad habits and unproductive ways of thinking. While growing up I learned that I had many of them! It's a great feeling knowing that you can change, through dedicated practice, anything you don't like about your personality or mindset. You You can truly be the way you want to be and crush all of your limiting beliefs and negative behaviour patterns in nothingness. All it takes to make that type of change is regular practice. The trick is to use the “Mind Training” system, focused on your personalized success phrases, to steer your mind away from any thoughts that cause you harm. To create the changes you're looking for, your "Mind Training" practice routine will look like this: Get yourself into the "Mind Training Zone" and run through a list of phrases that you've created to counter your less than ideal thought patterns or habits. After your nal phrase becomes fully absorbed within your mind, the next step is to use your imagination in 2 different ways: 1) Spend some time visualizing your life as a s it is right now and the consequences con sequences you will be certain to face if you don't change the bad habit, adjust the unproductive behaviour or squash the negative way of thinking that is causing problems for you . Use vivid imagery while picturing the people you yo u might hurt, the pain you'll feel or the damage you'll cause if you are unable to change. It's not fun but it will help motivate you to improve yourself. 2) Next, envision yourself acting and thinking in the exact ways you desire. Picture yourself in the same situations that tend to bring out your undesirable thoughts, reactions or behaviours and put your imagination to work. See yourself reacting and behaving be having in ways that you feel are ideal for each situation. With regular practice you will nd it much easier to behave in the ways that you've been imagining. You You will have effectively formed a habit, through the use of your imagination, that creates positive results rather than nega tive ones. Never rush yourself while practicing the two imagination exercises above; Take Take your time and allow your mind to completely absorb any and a nd all of the vivid images your yo ur create. Afterwards. Afterwards. it's very important to reactivate yourself by running through the mental activation phrases listed in chapter 4. Go on with your day as www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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you normally would and remember to repeat this "Mind Training" exercise 3 times per day (for 3-5 minutes per session) to ensure positive results.

Combating Negative Thinking Thinking on the Spot Thoughts can be very powerful. Negative ones have the ability to instantly put you in a bad mood even if they were created solely by your imagination. Bad moods can quickly cause you to act in ways that are unproductive and often damaging. Growing up, I was very jealous when it came to my relationships with women. I'm not exactly sure why, but for some reason I would always assume the worse in every situation that involved my girlfriend at the time. My imagination would often run wild, creating images that would drive me insane. When I was retired from ghting and began spending more time with my wife, that old jealousy issue resurfaced and caused me much trouble. When I realized that my unfounded jealously was about to cause a divorce between my wife and I, I decided to ght back against it. I attacked my weakness as aggressively as I had fought against any of my past opponents inside the cage. In the end e nd I won the battle! I regained control over my mind and more precisely my reckless imagination. I now trust others and nd myself expecting the best from people. If they break that trust then that is their own weakness, not mine. I changed myself because it just didn't make sense for me to allow my imagination to create havoc in my life for no good reason. Here are a couple of techniques that I've used, in addition to the "Mind Training" practice process, to constantly ght back against negative thinking. I think you'll be able to nd good use for them in your MMA training and everyday life as well. 1) When I begin to think in a negative way I immediately stop the process proce ss by doing something to break up my pattern of thought. Sometimes I force myself to smile and laugh out loud. It's pretty much impossible impossible to think negatively when you are smiling and laughing. Try it right now and you’ll see! Other times I yell "no" loudly to myself as I imagine my negative thought getting crushed into dust. 2) When I begin to feel stressed out about something that has happened to me or could potentially happen to me, I think about life; about how short of a time I have on the planet and how in the end most things that seem so important at the moment don't really matter much at all. I focus on being good to people and on building my relationships with my family, family, friends and students. I do my best to make the most out of every day that I have ha ve here, rather than wasting energy and my limited time worrying about things that are unimportant or o utside of my control. With this chapter coming to a close, I truly hope that the strategies we've gone over help you to become the best you can be at whatever you choose to do outside of ghting. The elimination of bad habits and the development of a mindset that will squash negative n egative thoughts as soon as they appear will take some time; it'll take some hard work and dedication but it's denitely worth it in the end. Out of the hundreds hund reds of ghts that I've had over the years on the mats, in the ring and within the cage, the toughest one by far has been the ght within myself; When I faced that battle head on with all guns blazing, it was then and there that I started on the path to becoming a much happier person. You You know what else I noticed? The people in my life became much happier too. We all have things within ourselves that we can work on, strengthen, adjust or destroy in order to improve the quality of our lives. Unfortunately most people never neve r look into the mirror long enough to identify their own shortcomings. I call for you to be different d ifferent than that! Constantly search out and attack your weak spots with www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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the 100% UNWA UNWAVERING BELIEF that you will succeed in becoming be coming a stronger, happier person because of it. You can and will become beco me the type of person that you have a strong BURNING DESIRE to become. Through UNSTOPPABLE PERSEVERANCE in the war against your weaknesses/bad habits you'll will get exactly where you want to be. I'm absolutely sure of it!


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CHAPTER 9 Closing I’m not going to lie. I’m feeling a bit sad that we've come to the end of this book together together.. It's been so much fun writing it and like I said earlier in the book, I've done a lot of reminiscing about my ght career during the process. It's brought back many great memories! At the same time, I'm very excited for you! Excited that you get to experience the exhilarating rush that competition brings. I'm also very grateful that you chose c hose to invest your time in reading this book. Thank you so much, it really means a lot to me. I hope that the content within this book helps you have an enormous amount fun in the sport of MMA, achieve great things and experience the ght game the way it's truly meant to be experienced. I also hope it helps you punch your opponents in the face more than ever before. I mean that in the nicest way possible of course :). Always remember that when you're done ghting, all of the skills that you've developed through the res of competition can easily be applied to anything else that you do in life.

You're a warrior for doing what you do. Always remember that! If you have any questions q uestions along your path to the top feel free to email me anytime any time at [email protected] and if you're looking to learn more about MMA through training tips, videos and training programs, I've got it all for you at the following four places: Sign up for my MMA Training Newsletter at --> www.jeffjoslinmma.com/thekopunch Follow me on Twitter - @jeffjoslin Join my Facebook Crew- www.facebook.com/jeffjoslinmma Check out my videos on YouT YouTube ube - www.youtube.com/jjent Come train with me in Hamilton, Ontario - www.joslinsmma.com

Train hard, train smart and most importantly have fun!

Jeff Joslin


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APPENDIX I Quick Reference Sheets (Relaxation Suggestions) Relaxation Suggestions Week 1 - Relaxing the Arms "I am totally calm, my whole body is relaxing" (repeat 2-3 times) "My arms are relaxed" (repeat 2-3 times) "My arms are heavy, very, heavy" (repeat 3-4 times) "My arms are warm, very warm' (repeat 3-4 times) "My breath is calm and regular, regular, I am breathing easily" (repeat 4-5 times) "My heartbeat is strong and quiet." (repeat 5-6 times) Activation

"The feelings of heaviness are disappearing" (1 time) "Strength is returning to my arms, I am feeling fresh and re-energized" (1 time) "Deep breath, open the eyes, exercise the arms" (1 time)

Week 2 - Relaxing the Legs "I am totally calm, my whole body is relaxing" (repeat 2-3 times) "My legs are relaxed" (repeat 2-3 times) "My legs are heavy, very, heavy" (repeat 3-4 times) "My legs are warm, very warm' (repeat 3-4 times) "My breath is calm and regular, regular, I am breathing easily" (repeat 4-5 times) "My heartbeat is strong and quiet." (repeat 5-6 times) Activation

"The feelings of heaviness are disappearing" (1 time) "Strength is returning to my legs, I am feeling fresh and re-energized" re-energized" (1 time) "Deep breath, open the eyes, exercise the legs" (1 time)


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Week 3 & 4 - Relaxing the Entire Body "I am totally calm, my whole body is relaxing" (repeat 2-3 times) "My arms and legs are relaxed" (repeat 2-3 times) "My arms and legs are heavy, very, very, heavy" (repeat 3-4 times) "My arms and legs are warm, very warm' (repeat 3-4 times) "My breath is calm and regular, regular, I am breathing easily" (repeat 4-5 times) "My heartbeat is strong and quiet." (repeat 5-6 times) "My solar plexus is warm, warmth is pouring into my solar plexus" (repeat 5-6 times) "My facial muscles are relaxed and my forehead is pleasantly cool." (repeat 5-6 times) Activation

"The feelings of heaviness are disappearing" (1 time) "Strength is returning to my arms and legs, I am feeling fresh and re-energized" re-energized" (1 time) "Deep breath, open the eyes, exercise the arms and legs" (1 time)

The 5-step "Mind Training" Practice Sequence: 1. Do the "Preparatory Breathing Exercise". 2. Run through the Relaxation Suggestions within your mind to get yourself into the "Mind Training Zone". Use imagery to strengthen the suggestions. 3. Recite your "Fighter Creed" Phrases within your mind while using imagery to strengthen the suggestions. 4. Use "Situational Visualization" to see yourself succeeding at the activity. 5. Return yourself to the normal state of mind through the use of the "Activation Phrases".


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APPENDIX II Autogenic Training (Mind Training) Practice Schedule Date

Length


Comments

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PHOTOS FROM THE T HE PAST AST... ...

Top Left: Jeff in his rst  rst Karate Gi

Above: Jeff and his hero! (Dad) Far Left: Jeff at the NBL world karate championships in ‘96 Close Left: Jeff as a teenager competing in Karate Below: Jeff becoming the rst Canadian in history to win gold at an international BJJ tournament (Pan/Ams ‘02)


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Above: Jeff’s rst MMA ght vs. Kyle Sanford (He won it by KO in the 1st round)

Top Right: Jeff jabbing Jon Fitch at Freedom Fight ‘05 Right: Jeff repping Team Canada alongside many other future UFC ghters Below: Jeff’s face after absorbing a head butt in the 1st round at Freedom Fight. Bottom Right: Jeff winning winning the Apex Welterweight World Championship


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Top Left: Jeff’ Jeff ’s nal conditioning workout before the ght against Josh Koscheck. A guelling 25 minutes of circuits with Coach Eric Wong Wong in the rain!

Top Right: Keeping things light and fun with Coach Vito Brancaccio on ght day! Left: Jeff in the “Mind Training Zone” an hour before ghting Koscheck on Spike Sp ike TV. TV. Bottom Left: Jeff makes his way to the Octagon to ght for the troops at Miramar Base! Bottom Right: Jeff featured in an article in Hamilton Magazine.


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Above: Hamilton’s First Ever MMA Event - “Slammer in the Hammer” took place in June, 2011

Jeff working 17-time UFC Vet Vet Spencer Fisher on the hand mitts during his 5 week stay in Iowa as coach

5 Wins for the Joslin’s MMA team in Michigan

Jeff as commentator/interviewer for the “Let’s Get it Spencer wins at UFC 120 in London, England (Jeff On” MMA event behind him clapping!) www.jeffjoslinmma.com

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In character as the psychotic“Willy Basin” in the “Secret Cross”

On the set of “The Secret Cross”

Jeff’s wins Best Supporting Actor at the Los Angeles Movie Awards! Awards!

Joslin’s MMA - Voted Hamilton, Ontario’s Best Martial Arts School more than 10 times!

Kaiya and Tayzen Joslin with their Daddy Jeff www.jeffjoslinmma.com

Jeff and wife Corene

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Alman, Brian M.,Lambrou, Peter,Self-Hypnosis: The Complete Manual for Health and Self-Change,1992 Caneld, Jack, The Success Principles, 2006

Covey, Stephen R, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,1989 Dyer,Wayne,W.,Excuses Be Gone! 2009 Greene, Robert, The 33 Strategies of War, War, 2006 Hill, Napoleon, The Law of Success, 1928 Koglar, Aladar, Aladar, Yoga Yoga for Athletes, Minnesota, 1999 Malt, Maxwell, Psycho-Cybernetics, 1960 O’Briain. Cathal,Powerful Mind Through Self-Hypnosis: A Practical Guide to Complete Self-Mastery Self-Mastery,2010 ,2010 Orlick, Terry Terry,, In Pursuit of Excellence, 2007 Robbins, Tony, Awaken the Giant Within, 1992


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