Intimidating

An overlooked part of today's competition  based martial arts programs is a psychological approach to the match that takes place before the match even happens.  Your body positioning positive or negative can dictate your opponents thoughts about you. 


I recently felt this phenomenon at a recent tournament. Knowing who one of my opponents was going to be, I saw him in the bullpen prior to match.  Normally, I try to pretend no one is around me and that anyone who is around me doesn't matter to the point they barely even exist.  However this time I caught my opponent staring at me and as I looked at him in the eye a sudden involuntary movement came over my body, and I quickly broke the eye contact.  Immediately, he had to have known I was nervous.  I ended up losing the match.


Now I'm not saying that the brief lack of confidence in my actions dictated the match; he very well could have just been simply better than me.  However, I believe it made a difference in his view of how the match was going to go.  Take a look at this short video of Mike Tyson on intimidation.

So how can we prevent making "tells" in our body's actions prior to a match?


I will be hitting on this topic in the near future....