BTG 129 - Gun Shy

[Music] hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the guard on today's episode I'm going to talk about the phenomenon known as being gunshi right where you can see a fighter has a hard time pulling the trigger and they're very tentative so everything is like half step They Don't Really fire as many strikes as they normally do they don't go for as many takedowns and they kind of just let the loss happen to them and you might wonder from the outside what the hell is going on here like just punch the guy and it sounds very simple from the outside but from the fire standpoint it is very difficult for example the just yesterday we had UFC 3113 got Uncle off with erera and uh if you don't want to hear spoilers you could turn it off right now well I won't even spoil it for you I'll just say the fighter who lost was claimed to be very gunshy31 right where maybe you went for let's say a jab and on the first time you threw that jab this guy slipped and ripped you with a right hand boom and you know and hit you pretty hard now you might be a little gunshot because you're like man the first time I threw a jab he really let me have it I don't want to throw that jab anymore right but like your strategy may have been throwing the jab a lot and all of a sudden it was just shown that that's not a good strategy and you might have a hard time shifting especially if you didn't set up multiple game plans like I talked about previously as a result now you're kind of well you're Frozen because you don't want to execute your game plan but you don't also don't have anything else available this will make you very gunshot because now doing nothing seems better than doing something right because you know the something could lead to you getting ripped with a right hand while doing nothing seems like less risky right you're not exposing yourself as much so to speak so that's one tendency of being gunshy31 what it is uh uh sometimes it's also kind of on the same grounds but maybe slightly different it's just a confidence issue right if you don't feel very confident in your abilities or something has happened to make you doubt your abilities and your confidence drops all of a sudden now you don't feel like you can throw that right maybe in previous fights you were the predominant Striker and now you're fighting one of the best strikers ever even when the strategy wasn't disproven right like he didn't rip you or anything that but like in your head you can see it man like I might not be able to pull this off of this guy and you could see this happen quite a lot especially when you're training right uh at least for me I'm a black Bel I've been you know training for almost 30 years now so uh more often than that I'm training with people who are much less skilled than I am and when they go to Grapple me a lot of them like uh they're very scared to do anything because especially when it's Kimura related because like oh this I'm the Kimura Master this and that like it's obviously not going to work on him right so they don't even try uh to do anything flashy or even what they would consider to be my expertise because they figure I know all the ins and outs of it and that is just another form of being gunshot right like you're not playing your game because you lack the confidence to play it all right so I would say those are probably the two that we can boil it down to you're either afraid of something happening because something already did happen once and now you're don't want to have to relive that or you have a confidence issue and your lack of confidence is causing you not to really commit to anything both of these are big problems and if you're not able to overcome them it can cost you the fight uh you're also going to lose quite a a bit of fans because everybody hates to see somebody who just doesn't launch right uh and I'm sure you can recount many people in MMA history that have done this and they get booed so let's talk about how you can address this one being afraid everything in fighting has a risk that's for certain even the greatest plans and strategies from the greatest athletes can fail and can be countered and sometimes these can end in disastrous F fashion for yourself but that's life right and you have to be able to take chances if you're going to try to win this doesn't mean if you have some tactic or some technical motion that you're doing that has been shown to end up in a disaster to keep repeating it and ignore the fear if the fear is valid for example maybe when I went to shoot a double leg the guy was able to stuff my head and drop into a guillotine and I barely survived um and I escaped maybe it's not advisable for me to go for that shot again do I have another form of a takedown that I can execute right uh especially if I happened twice in a row maybe I shot a second time and the same type of result happened I'm like well clearly there's something wrong with my shot technique or his shot defense is so great that like he's pulling me into this guilting every time and I'm end I'm ending up losing the exchange this is when the fear is I would say is valid which is yeah like we're replicating the same result over and over again it would be insane to continue to repeat it but this is why I tell people have multiple game plans CU if you only had one you're not going to be gunshot and it's not necessarily even like bad that you were gunshot it's a you came in with a bad game plan right it would be kind of like if I brought like a BB gun to huntter Rhino yeah I'm probably going to be shy to shoot it because it's not effective and I might just piss it off more right like I'm better at just not doing anything and hoping the Rhino doesn't notice me right uh so it's kind of the same deal if you have a bad game plan and you didn't have anything else to bring to the table you're like well I better just not do anything and hope that he makes a mistake right and uh that's obviously not a great strategy so if you feel that you do have a valid concern or fear about your game plan this is when you need to be able to shift in your game plans I had recently been able to watch uh my grappling matches in the ultimate submission Showdown uh they actually finally released it on I think it's tubi.tv tubi.tv I'll post a link to it later on because I'm going to review my matches and do breakdowns uh but in my match with Travis lutter I initially had the game plan of pulling guard and there was a reasoning behind that which was they had a weird R set but not to get too deep into it if you were able to control your guard for the three minutes you would get a point in the reverse so I wanted to gain this system because it was a first to 12 points to win I'm like I want to score the first point by pulling guard and that worked I scored the first point however uh uh in his turn to play guard he just stood up and he didn't want me to play on top so I'm like oh I'll pull guard again and I'll score another point this is a I mean I could technically beat him just by playing bottom right even if I'm not able to sweep or submit him but on the second pass on the second time around rather he was able to pass my guard and then he he scored a guard pass and then I was able to recover and then he passed again and then I recovered he passed again like he clearly exploited a weakness in my guard at the time and you know it took me three of them to realize if I let him pass one more time the match is over so I was able to then I had a fear now like this guy can pass my guard right uh if I keep playing the bottom game I'm going to lose so I changed my strategy entirely which is now I'm going to wrestle with him and I'm not conceding bottom position at any cost that changed the whole match the match went from him slicing through my guard to now we had this battle for top position and the match went like another 12 minutes or something like that after I made that decision so that is the value of being able to shift strategically this is hard for a lot of uh athletes to do because normally when you're in a training camp your coach and you convene he watches in st's tape and then he figures out what is the best way for you to win and typically a coach is only working on one game plan with you because this is their best estimation of what's the best path to Victory if they don't set up contingency plans like okay like this is what we think is going to be the best game plan but just in case we have this Reserve game plan Game Plan B and if you're thinking more like me then there's also a game plan C right but at the very least having two if you're not going to have just one at least have two because Fighters usually have a difficult time switching because by our nature we have a lot of perseverance and we tend to be stubborn and these are normally ad admirable traits right like we want fighters to be able to even in the face of adversity and lots of resistance to continue to persevere and you let their will overcome the opposition but that doesn't always work and this is when your stubbornness can work against you because if you don't shift your game plan you like you know what I'm just going to keep doing the same thing because this is what we trained this has to work you're not going to force that square peg into the circle hole right so you're just going to get clobbered right or worse you might realize it's not going in and then you just do nothing and that's when you become gunshot so in my belief we need to shift strategy when you see a fighter has become gunshy31 because you're not obviously not comfortable executing plan a if it's not fear it's lack of confidence then we need to instill urgency and boost up our athlete right because somebody who lacks confidence they need to be Walken up right um this is a little more difficult to coach because every athlete's different the psychology for every person is different I was just talking about this to my wife there day some people need to be smacked around right uh they you need like aggressive push to get them to really amp up some people just need calm assertive voice to get them to where they need to be right uh you know so it just depends on the ath and as being the coach that's part of knowing your athlete you have to understand their what makes their gears move and how you can get them turning when they're not turning so somebody who lacks confidence is like the game plan sound is just that he's not executing it and he's kind of stuck right like I said he's just Failure to Launch he's just there and kind of hoping for mistakes to for him to capitalize on and he's just sticking in the fight rather than fighting the fight you need to get them uh you need to give them that confidence you need to give them that push you need to create that urgency in them in order for them to win that might be as simple as telling them you're losing this fight you need to you know go in there and you need to bring the fight to him it might be tell reminding them about their training their past experiences telling them things that they have done remember what they're fighting for uh like I said it's going to vary depending on the athletes motivations but you need to tap into their psyche and get them to believe and even if they don't believe they get them to believe in if they can't believe in themselves believe in the training believe in the game plan right like we worked on this for months have faith because we need them to be able to execute because short of that uh you can't force him to drink water [Music] right you can lead the horse to water you can't make it drink so it's the same type of deal so this is the part of being a coach that is stressful is when your player is not responding to the commands that you're giving it you're kind of helpless um and this is why like I said it's important to understand your athlete what their motivations are what are trigger words and these are things that you should be reviewing them in advance right the type of qwords that you have that fire certain signals in them you know uh if you have a particular name for a combination or for a technique and you say that ideally that's when they execute said movement pattern or technique when you rehearse these things in advance it makes it easier for them to respond especially if you have a high trust situation where the athlete is very trusting of the coach in the case of my brother and I I always had very high trust and if he said something I was doing it you know and uh that's usually the best way these things work right if you don't have good trust then you also I mean that's a big problem because now even when you're telling the athlete to do certain things if they don't trust it they're not going to do it so they're just going to stay in being very gunshot so in my opinion if you're a fighter if you don't have a high trust for your coach you probably shouldn't have that person as a coach and that's not to say it's a coach's fault it's just for whatever reason there's a lack of trust it's not going to really work out well right you need to be be able to have full faith in whatever the coaching staff is telling you because that's going to put them in the best position to help you because otherwise those people in the corner are just a distraction then if they're not saying things that make sense to you because you have to remember as the athlete they are a third or a second set of eyes really and then if you have two or three cornermen you have a fourth and fifth set of eyes that are seeing things that you're not able to see and if you can't can't find the benefit of those that's a problem now I always tell athletes regardless like whatever I say is in my opinion what you should do but as the athlete of course you always have the option of following it or not and it's not taboo to dismiss one idea but accept like eight or nine other ones right but if everything I say you completely ignore obviously that's problematic because now I'm a distraction rather than being an asset to you and we're not working for each other right but if I say 10 things and you do eight of them 80% acceptance rate that means I helped you 80% of the time that's admirable that's good right uh so that's another aspect of this as well because sometimes In the Heat of battle people forget the game plan especially if you've been knocked around the head a few times and you're starting to get tired the coach is there to help you reinforce the game plan be that second brain for you and help push those ideas and um so sometimes maybe you're not so much gunshy31 right which is I can work on multiple game plans and be able to cue my athlete to switch game plans and necessary uh if there's a confidence issue we need to be able to build confidence or instill faith in the game plan and have the athlete work on those as an athlete themselves if you are feeling like you're you're second you're guessing yourself the entire time you need to Rally yourself and rather than rely on someone trying to help you like your coach instill belief in yourself and say I can do this I've trained hard for this I've done all the right preparation I've have the best training in the world I can come out here I can win I can enforce my game plan right and I believe in myself and my abilities I believe in my coaches I believe in my game plan and I'm going to try to execute right and that and that and rather remove that scratch that I'm not going to try I am going to execute right I always tell people trying implies failure we're doing right doing you're actually doing it right you're trying it says well I might work I might want when I do something it's working right so that's important you have to have that stubbornness in yourself like I said this sometimes to the Dual edge sword here but uh if you're gunshy31 or something and if it's not working then we have to be able to shift be able to recognize again don't rely on your coaches to it's good if they recognize it and are able to kill you off a game plan but it's better ideally if you can recognize it yourself like after one go like oh this is not working I need to shift the game plan B right my shots are not working I need to switch to upper body clenches right or you know like that that jab is not you know coming through clean I I need better footwork or better faint before I initiate so as a fighter we need these things and we should be working on our confidence outside of the fight so that when we get in the fight it's already high level and this is where positive affirmations work journaling doing visualizations we should have our confidence level very high by the time we step in there whenever I have athletes that were being being prepared for a fight or for a match the main thing I tell them is as long as you do everything properly in training and you do all the proper preparations and you you eat clean you sleep well you're doing the mental work you're doing your visualizations being nervous being anxious that's part of the process that's part of your body getting yourself ready for combat but just know that the moment we step into the cage or we step on into the mat that all that work that you did is going to dial in at that very moment and all the anxiety and the nerves and maybe even the second guessing are going to disappear because the moment you step on you know it's time and this is what the past three months have been about right and whatever didn't what felt may have felt off is going to feel on cuz there there's no more running away because understand that your body and your mind can be a coward right like it doesn't want to fight right it it understands there's considerable risk in fighting and that's why you watch people in Street altercations there's a lot of taunting words shoving posturing we're trying to we're showing a Bravado of force and hopes that that one our opponent is going to deescalate and back away right if you really wanted to fight you wouldn't say anything I would just swing on you so when people are talking to each other before a fight it's because they don't want to fight they are now men typically they puff up talk big you know just like animals do when they stand up and they try to look as big as they can to try to scare the other uh person away and then usually what happens other person will try to mirror and there're you know until a point where if neither person backs down that's when the fight happens but if they really wanted to fight it's very simple if I see someone I want to fight I'm just going to walk up to them and swing on them right that's how you get the fight started uh everything else before is an attempt of deescalation right so your body is constantly going to try to find a way out but there's at a certain point where it knows it's a point of no return right and in my opinion that is when you step on the mats right or that's when you enter the cage because once you're in there there's no going back and at that point that's where I find at least for myself if there was any hesitancy or timidness or you know like ah all the those feelings disappear because now my body knows okay it's time to get serious right so I always found that reassuring and that's always worked for me that once I stepped in there I felt the best I've ever felt I could have had times so I've come in and I've had just about all my Pro fights I had an injury of some sort whether separated shoulder a knee injury pop ribs like I I was not fortunate in that regard and uh you would never know it when I competed because body is like okay we don't need to feel this right now right it's not going to help us here clearly I'm going into combat I need to just get everything DED in and ignore most of the pain signals so that type of work I feel is helpful for getting yourself DED in and if you're doing a lot of mental prep I feel you're going to have much less time uh much less concern of a being overly fearful or not having confidence now I will say one other aspect of this that I didn't consider but just reminded myself now is overthinking and this is also part of being gunshot and I think it's somewhat similar to either lack of confidence or being fearful but I guess just in case different words reach different people and you might be overthinking during your fight right where I'm I'm fighting I'm here I'm like okay in my head like I need to throw this one two but okay do I throw it now or he's moving forward he's moving back uh and now you're caught in this uh paralysis of analysis right where you're you're trying to think of what to do and thinking and fighting don't go well together right uh thinking is a very slow and clumsy process thinking is done outside the cage by the coaches when you're fighting it's generally advisable to flow right you want to be in the zone that's what I was talking about entering the cage and get into a flow state where now I'm just reacting I'm going through the game plan I'm not actively thinking I might have flashes of thoughts or ideas in my head that allows me to execute moves but it's not so much that I'm analyzing like the positions of each thing and thinking what are the best options here like no it's just flowing right the only times where thinking usually come into play in combat is when you're stuck and that's not a good thing that typically means you are not prepared for that particular situation and you have to think your way out of it just like if you're go back to grade school and you think of a test problem that you weren't prepar for and then you have to try to think your way through it I know for me like I think back to college I mean like Cal calculus 3 and I encounter a problem that I don't understand or I can't instantly recall the formula I need so now I'm like thinking crap okay how do I piece this together what's the formula I need you know is this and that is slow versus when I recognize a problem and I know the format and the formula okay it's just processing right I'm just flowing so ideally when we're fighting we're flowing but if you find that if you're in a fight and you're thinking a lot the best way I feel to override that is just to take actions right um I believe I believe my brother took this quote from H God God I forget the name of the book now but it's active mind still body still mind Active Body right so if you're mind's very active chances are you're not moving as much right because you're using a lot of resources to think whereas when your body is moving a lot your mind tends to be Stiller because you're focusing on all these different motions excuse me so if you are gunshy31 once you start making connections and he starts firing back you're going to have to react to counter strikes and that will generally pull you out of that thinking process because now you're in you're having to flow to be able to react to the fight and uh especially if you remember what the game plan is just okay execute the game plan execute the game plan right and start going through it so maybe it's throw a few Jabs and then uh push the guy into the corner go to upper body clinch and then sweep right so like just start moving into that game plan right don't think about the the perfect time to do it just start doing it uh and that could help get you out of a overthinking process so three different ways where gunshin this can play uh a role that at least I identified in this video which is one being fearful two lack of confidence three overthinking and hopefully I've addressed those enough to give you some insights on how you can deal with it if you do have some issues with this and you feel like uh I missed something that could be helpful for you feel free to let me know and I can expand on this a bit more but uh I think for the majority of people that would probably cover uh I I said at least like 80 to 90% of what people experience when they're gunshot