Championship Habits

MIKE ZHANG
1) Champions are Driven by Something Deep Within Them.

In the Ring:

Champions do not train for the money or the fame. Champions focus on being the best
that they can be, improving every element of their game from the strategies,
implementation and tactics. A champion is not driven by shallow motives such as
money, anger, revenge etc. The drive to become a champion comes from a place deep
within their soul. The drive must be strong enough so that when the frustrations and
difficulties of training inevitably appear, they will be able to push through. Champions
have something that draws them internally to attaining perfection. It is a deep and
powerful desire. This can be seen in top tier fighters such as Mike Tyson whom trained
3 hours a day in the ring, then goes home and shadow boxes the strategies he just
learned, followed by watching video, then sleeping with the gloves. As Cuz said “I never
met someone that obsessed with boxing”.

Champions are obsessed with improvement, they want to improve and be the best that
they can be. When I was hanging out with a few professional champion friends, I
realized that these guys live fighting. After training three hours a day, they would talk
fighting. Then they would do “tactical” training where we didn’t tire our physical bodies
but trained our minds to go over the proper application of weapons and how to use it.
They were obsessed with improvement.

In Life:

Money comes and goes. If you are only focused on getting rich or other shallow desires,
you might be temporarily successful, but to be extremely successful you need to have
some type of passion for what you do. At the end of the day, if you can only do
something for 40 hours a week, then you probably won't be able to be successful at it.
To be extremely successful, you need to be the best at what you do and that's going to
take time, and hard work. If you're not passionate about what you do, you’re going to do
it for a few years and say that's it. If you look at all the extremely successful people, they
all overcame some type of adversity when they were running their business. There is a
rule called the 10,000-hour rule where to be considered great at something, it takes
approximately 10,000 hours.
2) Champions Understand the Importance of Your Network
In the Ring:

During a bout, only two fighters are involved (third man is the referee). However, the
fight is the easiest part of the whole “fighting” experience. The most difficult part lies in
the weeks, months, even years of training and preparation prior to the fight. It is
impossible to maintain your intensity, and your motivation every single day. We are all
human beings, we all get tired, we all get emotional, and we all will feel sad someday.
To keep yourself motivated, you need to surround yourself with a group of people that
know how to get your juices going. If you have a training partner that will always
challenge you, it could be talking smack to you, being competitive, they will help you
maintain focus.

I do not agree with the idea that 90% of success is just showing up. Showing up is
critical, if you don’t show up to train, you have absolutely no chance to improve.
Showing up to the gym, and not being motivated will not get you the results you need.
However, if your network of people is there to push you and drive you, it will get you
over the humps in your training. In addition, if you get the right people in your network,
you can even develop newer better techniques that will help you grow and improve.

In Life:
You are the average of your five closest friends. If you have a bunch of friends that are
extremely motivated and driven towards your goals then you will more probably be
successful too. However, if you surround yourself with a bunch of losers you will
inevitably head towards that direction. You should be afraid to say goodbye to friends
and adjust into your circle. If you truly want to be successful, you need to change your
network until you are around people who are where you want to be.
3) Champions Know that there are no Shortcuts to Success.
In the ring

Fighting is the most difficult sport in the world. When a fighter is in the ring they become
stripped of any ego and anything fake. In the ring, the individual with only themselves. In
the ring, one cannot pretend to be tough because the truth will be exposed once you get
hit. Anyone can have a plan, but the moment a fighter get punched, they fall back onto
their instincts. At this point, it's their training that will cushion their fall. At this point, they
will find out if they woke up early to run, and more importantly, when they ran did they
push themselves or did they go on cruise control.

“You can map out a fight plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it may not go the
way you planned, and you're down to your reflexes - that means your [preparation:].
That's where your road work shows. If you cheated on that in the dark of the morning,
well, you're going to get found out now, under the bright lights.” - “Smokin” Joe Frazier.

When someone gets hit, their body injects adrenaline and they will instinctively push
their body to defend themselves. If they do not possess the cardiovascular strength to
maintain intensity than that fighter will fatigue quickly. They will find out if they listened
to their coach and hit the bag six hard rounds.

At this point, if they looked around for 2 rounds, then did a half ass job for 3 and took
the last round to cool off, they will find out. When one gets hit, one defaults to what's
been engraved into their mind.

An individual can take short cuts and possibly get off 1 to 2 maybe even 5 easy wins.
However, champions understand that there are no shortcuts to being a great fighter and
that there is only 1 way; the hard way.

In life:

Life may not be as decisive as being in the ring. There are opportunities to take short-
cuts, one can live an average life if they choose to cut corners, and take the easy path.
One can probably get a comfortable job in an office, and not work hard and stay there
for their entire life.

However, to excel and reach greatness, one cannot cut corners. Champions and high
achievers drive themselves to reach heights that normal people do not dream of. If
someone is operating a business, and they want to be in the top 1% of their market then
they better not take shortcuts and make sure that everything is done right.

The great thing is that the reality of success isn’t anything special; it's doing the right
thing day in and day out. There isn’t a secret that makes people millionaires; it’s always
doing things the right thing consistently day after day.
4 - Champions Remove their Lids.

There was an experiment; fleas were placed inside of a jar and immediately the fleas
jumped out. The fleas were placed inside the jar with a lid on it and left for a few days.
When the lid was removed, the fleas would not jump out of the jar, despite being able
to. What is even more interesting is that the offspring of these fleas would develop the
same limitation, despite having no idea why they limit themselves.

In the ring
In combat or any general physical activity, when one’s mind begins to send feelings of
fatigue or pain, their body is at about 20% of its limit. The human body is incredibly
durable and resilient. The weakest link, is the mind.

We often set imaginary limitations on ourselves. When one thinks/asks “Can I do that”
or “Am I talented enough” one places an imaginary lid on themselves. Instead, by
saying “I am talented” or “I can achieve anything, granted I put in the work” will remove
your lid. You will absolutely astound yourself with what you can achieve.
Psychologically, it gives you a massive advantage over your competitor if you “unlid”
yourself and believe in your abilities.

However, it is imperative that the will to fight, should never be confused with the ability
to fight. A fighter who has unlimited belief in themselves without the adequate
supporting action is a fool. Anyone who does not dedicate themselves and put forth the
training to support their self belief will find out quickly that he cannot achieve his goals.

Let me re-instate: “The will to fight should never be confused with the ability to fight”.

In Life
“Unlidding” is for the individual who has limited themselves mentally. These individuals
may often ask “Who am I to do that” or “That’s not for me”. This type of self talk must be
changed to “I can do it, If I Pay the Price” and “Everything is within my Grasp”.
Remember, one’s self talk is not just with themselves, it is them telling the universe
what to attract to them.

The mind is very powerful, by removing your lid and pursuing your wildest desires you
will manifest them into your life. By un-lidding, and focusing all your efforts on one goal
you will automatically become focused, ambitious and goal oriented. Yes, you will fail a
few times, and yes you will experience setbacks. However, those things are mere steps
to success.

How do you know something means a lot to you? What defines something worth
achieving? You define how much something means to you by the setbacks, obstacles,
and difficulties that you encountered prior to achieving it.
Never doubt yourself. Set your goals high and work your ass off.

Unlid yourself, then jump as high as you can, but remember you still need to jump!

5) It’s Not a Sprint but a Marathon

In the ring:
Getting in fight shape can take a few months but the time it takes to develop the skills,
both muscle memory and mental memory can take years. It is not something that can
be done a few times a week, for a few weeks and become a world class fighter. The
only way to improve your technique and refine it to a championship level is by training it
repeatedly.

Sometimes this might mean kicking a bag 300 - 500 times a day 6 days a week (in
addition to your normal training) for 6 month. The key to success in the ring and to be a
championship level fighters is in the consistency of training, not only in the intensity.

In addition to this, as you extend the period of your training, your physical conditioning
may match your opponent. The difference in fighters is often the reaction of the
individual, and what he/she will fall to, his instincts in a fight.

This is only learned by consistently training and engraving the techniques into your
mind. There is no shortcut around this. Engraving the technique in your mind allows
your body to react instinctively, like how you would snap your head when someone calls
your name across a noisy room.

In Life:
Many people overestimate what they can do in one day, and underestimate what they
can achieve over a period. Many people see the result of other people’s
accomplishment and become overwhelmed. When you see an franchise of 200 stores,
or a multibillion dollar company like Wal-Mart. What people fail to see is their humble
beginnings, the beginning of one store, for example, the very first Tim Horton’s. Did you
know that Wal-Mart started as one department discount store in Bentonville Arkansas?

You should set long term goals, however break them down into small tangible steps that
you may do slowly and develop in a sustainable growth. Don’t get sucked into seeing
the result, even with these tech companies that seem to appear overnight. when what
you should be looking at is the 10 years of coding practice, or development practice that
required to build that one product overnight.

When you see, a fighter win a big knockout in one round, don’t look at that one round.
Look at the hours, days, weeks, months even years, that that person trained to pull that
1 round K.O.
6) Championship Understand the Concept of Working smart, not
just hard Work.
In the Ring:

Without a doubt, hard work beats talent when talent refuses to work hard however,
champions understand that there is a certain way to approach training. They seek to
understand how the human mind and body relates to maximum their performance. Do
great fighters train hard? Absolutely. However, do great fighters run 40 km a day? No
probably not because that doesn’t make sense, that would be appropriate for someone
marathon training.

champions understand the proper way to approach training, to work specific energy
systems, to work on weaknesses, to train their technique. As such, they can effectively
use their energy to yield the desired result. In life, and in the ring, you may choose to
fight the current, and do what is perceived as correct. Or, you can stop, think about what
you are doing, and figure out a different way to look at your problem so that you are
intelligently approaching your issue. When I studied (and from experience) the way the
highest-level fighter’s trains, they are not always just punching the bag, or pads as hard
as they can. They sometimes slow things down, and break a specific move down to the
technical details. A straight right hard, can be timed perfectly over a lazy jab. So, the
smart fighter will train this technique slowly, and focus on the execution and timing.
Then after he develops the basics, they will speed it up on the bag. With this approach,
you can intelligently pick and secure the moves.

In war, if there was an army camped behind a fortress, you could choose to send all
your men and try to get ladders, climb your ladder, then get over the wall potentially
losing most of your men. Or, you could camp outside the fortress and kill all the supplies
deliveries until everyone starved to death; while you steal all their food supplies. Both
options will get you the same result, except one will save you a lot of your forces.

In life, this tactic can be applied. If you are given ten minutes to cut down a tree, you
should spend the first 8 sharpening your sword. So, think carefully about your
execution, and how you can work smart, and not just hard. Make sure your going in the
right direction, before mindlessly working away.
7) Champions have a Clear Vision of Themselves.
In the Ring:

The greatest fighters, have a vision of who and what they want to be. After Mike Tyson
got into boxing in prison, his coach took him to meet Cuz and after sparring for only 1.5
rounds, Cuz said “That’s it, that’s the future heavyweight champion”. This was before
Mike Tyson even had an amateur fight. After this point, everything surrounding Mike’s
day was around becoming the heavyweight champion of the world. Training intensity
was always targeted at becoming the heavyweight champion. When Cuz talked to him,
it was always calling him “Champ”, even when Mike Tyson didn’t realize he was a
champ. He was building his confidence, his vision and his self image.

Everything in life revolved around becoming a champion. After training Cuz and Mike
would study tapes, after studying tapes when everyone was sleeping Mike would
shadow box. Then when he slept, he was so focused on becoming his dream, he would
sleep with his gloves.

If you want to become a champion, you must have a vision of exactly who and what you
want to be. Anything outside of this vision, is a distraction towards your goals.
Sometimes, school is a distraction to your education and this is a great example of that.

Would it have made sense for Mike Tyson to go to school? No, because his education
was in the ring, and his goal was to become the next heavyweight champion of the
world. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t need to quit school to become an amateur
champion, however if you want to become the number Champion of the world, you need
to probably train six hours a day and six days a week.

In Life:
To achieve greatness, you need to have a clear understanding of exactly who/what you
want to be. A clear goal gives you a direction and a compass for your life. It also gives
you something to focus your efforts on. This way, you are not looking for things to fill up
empty time. By coincidence quite often, these “time-fillers” are a nothing more than a
waste of time and resources. Anything that is not moving you closer to your goal, is
moving you away. There is no such thing as staying still.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was 15 when he first saw a magazine of body builders along
with a blueprint. At this point he knew exactly who and what he wanted to become. He
began his path to his goal and nothing would stop him. He ate well and trained
consistently every day, never missing a session. His goal was ALWAYS on his mind,
everything he did in his day was oriented towards him reaching his goals.
8) Champions Embrace Fear and make it their friend
In the ring:
Fear is a powerful weapon that every fighter experiences. When a fighter walks towards
the ring, fear is rampant in their mind. They walk toward the ring, but ask themselves
“Why am I even here?” or “Why didn’t I just do something easier like golf or tennis”.
Then as they walk into the ring, they feel like they are walking into the arena as a
gladiator who may very well die. They are so nervous they want to vomit. They walk into
the ring and as their opponent takes off their robe they look at their body and think wow
this person is fit/jacked and ready to go. What is ironic is that both fighters are thinking
the exact same thing.

Everyone gets scared, we are all human beings.

As the fighters walk into the center of the ring, they make eye contact and slowly all
their fear is gone. Now, only instincts kicks in.

Fear is a very powerful weapon that champions use to their advantage. The fear of
getting knocked out, getting embarrassed in front of theirs friends and family is real, so
they keep that in the back of their mind. That thought lingers there are they train and if
they ever want to slack off, that fear stops them.

Fear is there to push you, fear is an element there to protect you. As the late Cuz
D’Amato says, “Fear gives the deer a rush of adrenaline or temporary heightened sense
so that they may escape their predator”. Fear is there to help you. If you didn’t feel fear
before your fight, that is when you know something is horribly wrong.

In Life:
You should not fear, fear, rather embrace it. If you didn’t do things because of fear, well
you probably wouldn’t do much. On the other than if you never feared anything, then
you would just end up doing stupid things. Fear is a good emotion, embrace it and use it
to your advantage.

Frequently, fear is something that is built into your mind. After getting involved with
fighting, I learned to not worry about my feelings of fear. I used to present in front of
hundreds even thousands of architects and engineers, and I got nervous but I asked
myself “what’s the worst that can happen?” and “so what if that happens?”.
9) Champions do not accept failure, they do experience lessons
and steps.
In the ring:
Every fighter falls. Even an undefeated fighter like Floyd Mayweather will experience
failure in some shape or form. It could be an injury to his hand, it could be his family
situation, it could be so many things in life. Life happens, however if champions viewed
these things as failures then they wouldn’t be where they are. Champions such as Floyd
Mayweather always moves beyond their issues and looks at them as lessons and steps.

When Floyd Mayweather lost in the Olympics, he was essentially stripped of 10’s
maybe 100’s of thousands of dollars as a professional fighter. To give you an idea,
Oscar de la hoya in his early professional fights made 50,000 because of his gold medal
while Mayweather made 5,000. This never stopped Mayweather as he focused on what
he need to do to ascend to success.

On the other hand, the guy that beat Mayweather, went on to lose in the semi finals.
Both Mayweather AND this fighter suffered a similar loss. However today, this fighter is
living off welfare and living in an apartment for 500 dollars a month while Mayweather
makes around 300 million a year.

In life:
Never EVER EVER EVER quit.

No matter what happens, do not quit. Every single time you get knocked down,
laugh it off, don’t take yourself too seriously and move on. If you put yourself in a state
of resourcefulness, and never accept failure but look at them as steps you will be very
surprised how the universe will align itself to help you.

Opportunities (sometimes hidden as work, or as a favour for someone else) will

come up, and it's up to you to grab it when it passes you. One of the greatest ways to
experience more success is simply by failing more. Every single time you fail, you may
choose to learn and grow or you may allow it to defeat you.
10 - Champions create chaos to disrupt their enemies, but keep
calm on the inside.
In the ring:
“Control their Emotions to Control their actions, control their actions and control their
destiny” - Driven Fighters

When a fighter is emotional, skilled fighters will take advantage of this. An emotional
opponent is easily angered. Angry fighters are predictable, using only their favourite
weapons. When one fighter can force their enemy to become emotional, they control
them. When the skilled fighter recognizes what weapons their opponent like to use, it is
not hard to select the weapon that is more effective to counter it.

By being able to cause confusion, anger or frustration through action, intimidation, and
even by a conversation, one may take their opponent off their game. One can play with
their opponent’s mind by pretending like nothing hurts. This may put a hint of self doubt
into the opponent's minds and make them question themselves and their abilities.

In Life:
When you are dealing with a large business transaction, you can use some strategies to
force your opponents to make an error by causing disruptions in their day. If you know
that your opponent is easily irritated, perhaps irritate them the night before or even the
moment before the presentation.

Rattle them up, so they make mistakes.

However, through all the smoke, you must remain calm. Only with a calm state of mind
can you be effective and perform at your best.
11) Champions Understand the Power of Self Talk
In the ring:
Fighters fight an opponent in the ring, however the real battle is against themselves. A
fight is very physically straining, but also very mentally and emotionally difficult. The
human body fails not because of its physical limitations but because of the mental
capacity that the brain has been trained to conceive. For example, it is well known that a
bullet wound is lethal. However, in the military, soldiers are trained to view bullet
wounds as non-lethal. Those who view bullet wounds as non-lethal have a much higher
survival rate as the former.

There are many emotions going through a fighter’s mind at each phase of the process.
Starting from the preparation, to fight night. Their thoughts and conversation with
themselves affect their performance. Thoughts become action, which becomes results.
Champions meditate and think about their performance, about where their mistakes are
and about mentally preparing for battle. Going through the process of positive and
encouraging self talk will improve one’s chances of performing well on fight night.

Self talk is not only to encourage positivity but also about the fight. What signal triggers
what move, and what responses are there to those moves. It’s critical that one envisions
these things. After a fight, self talk will communicate how one felt, if there was a victory
are there areas to improve on? If there was a loss are there ways to improve and
changing your mistakes?

In Life:
Positive self talk will help you overcome your obstacles in your life. Remember, quite
often the exact same event can be interpreted in many ways. I always think about the
brothers who experienced the same traumatic upbringing. The two-brother shared the
same abusive, drug dependant single mother yet one of the brothers became vastly
successful while the other became homeless. When asked why each of them were in
their unique situation, both answered: “Of course I am here, look at my past.”

One of them used their troubled past as fuel to their fire while the other used it as water
to douse the flame.

It is up to you to pick how you want to interpret events in your life. Is it going to motivate
you? Is it going to stop you? Is it going to make you laugh? Your self-talk can change
how your filter determines what the events that happen to you means.
12) Championship Fighters Know they know nothing
In the ring:
Combat sports is one of the sports where the more that you do something the more you
will realize that you know nothing. As you start training, you might feel great one day
after your body adapts to training, then you start sparring, and you feel like a complete
newbie again. After you start sparring, you spar athletes of a higher caliber and once
again you feel completely new. Even after years and years of training, you will still meet
someone in this world that will make you feel like a newbie.

Even at the highest level, you don't know everything and are always trying to improve.
That's the only way you will be able to be a top-level athlete is if you are always
continuously learning, improving and staying mobile. If you start becoming stagnant you
won't be able to last. Beyond this, if you have an ego, you cloud your own mind. You
start thinking that you don't need to train, or start to overlook an opponent. One of the
biggest problem with becoming a champion is staying hungry, because many mediocre
fighters become champion once and then say ok I have made it.

Only the greats continue their work and improve and become multiple weight class
champions, hall of famers etc.

In life:
In your own life, there is no way you will know everything. The moment you start acting
like you don’t care, when you don’t respect others and think you know everything is
when people will immediately stop respecting you and you will stop growing. When you
remove yourself off all your ego, and just focus on growth and improvement, you will
allow yourself to reach new levels.

In addition to this, no one likes being around someone that is extremely cocky. When
you are open minded to advice, suggestions, it makes you more likable.
13) Champions are educated
In the Ring
Great fighters are very educated. Education does not only come in the form of school,
personally, I have my master’s degree in engineering from the top institute in Canada
and I can genuinely say that studying required to become an elite level fighter far
exceeds what I did for school. The degree of dedication required to become successful
as a championship level athlete is much more difficult than sitting in a classroom and
taking notes.

Education can be attained through training, time spent with a coach or mentor, or it can
be attained through reading and learning. To become great at martial arts, or even any
sports it is important to study what has been done, how it was done, what works, and
what doesn’t work. Any issue that you have had, someone else has probably done it so
reading and studying is an critical element of becoming a good fighter. Studying
techniques, and thinking about how to execute them.

One of the greatest example is Mike Tyson, in his biography he explained how anything
that he did outside of boxing was in the way of his real education (becoming the
heavyweight champion of the world). His education involved in the gym training,
conversing with elite fighters, studying tapes, thinking about what worked, and
additional foot work/shadow boxing at home.

In Life
This mentality carries over to all aspects of life; as such it's important to educate
yourself not only through school but constantly seeking growth. No matter what industry
you are in, one characteristic that will serve to be beneficial is the hunger for more
knowledge. Whatever job you are doing, education doesn’t stop when you are no longer
in school. The consistent growth will make you a leader in your industry.
14 - Champions expect failures, and obstacles
In the Ring:

Champions expect failures, and obstacles. Champions understand the journey to

anything worthwhile is covered with obstacles. Even at the beginning of the journey,
they have mentally prepared themselves to accept obstacles, not as things that will
defeat them, but as stepping stones.

This type of expect the worst but hope for the best philosophy is effective because it
does not surprise the individual when something goes wrong. I have seen people who
place themselves on such a high alter, thinking that they are the best and when
something goes wrong, they fall from their alter the hardest. On the other hand, the
individual who expects falls, is not surprised, and says on well, and keeps on going.

In Life:

In life, how often do we lock our minds in one way of thinking, or set our goals and
expectations in stone. Then when something surprising comes up, it is so devastating
that it completely shocks the individual? How often do people think so highly of
themselves, then for example, in a relationship when one person breaks up with the
other, the individual who placed themselves on such a high altar falls off and breaks.

If we stayed humble and expected failures and obstacles, when bad things occur it's no
longer a surprise. Of course, how often does the worst-case scenario happen? Not very
often, however it's better to be prepared.
15 - Champions are Leaders and Inspire Others.
In the ring:
In sports like Muay Thai and boxing there is a huge emphasis on successful
senior fighters passing on the art and knowledge to a younger person. The philosophy
is that the skill is a gift that was given to the senior fighter, and therefore it is their role
and responsibility to pass on the gift of martial arts to the generation after.

This has been a common characteristic amongst the highest level of competitors
as the top tier fighters always took time to inspire and help the people around them. It's
almost like the top-level athletes are giving back what they received when they were
coming up. Top tier fighters always took time to re-invest into the younger generations.

The most successful fighters use their achievements to attempt to inspire or change the
direction of less fortunate people such as troubled youth, youth with broken families,
people struggling with drugs, etc. They understand that they are in a position of
influence and carry this in the back of their mind. This guide them to act professional,
mature and how a champion should carry themselves.

In Life:

To be a successful person, it's important that you focus on helping others. Karma is a
real thing. I think if you can add value to other people's lives without thinking about
yourself, you will find that whatever business you are in, you will do well. One key thing
to become not only a better person but also a successful person is helping others. We
must live a life where we go out of our way to help others, it is a characteristic of the
champion.

It is humbling as well as a good reminder for the champion that nothing should be taken
for granted. When you have this mentality of helping the less fortunate, it helps you
realize how lucky and how many amazing things you have in your life. This will help
motivate you to work harder in the other areas of your life as well as developing a more
positive outlook on life.
16 - Champions Obsess Over Clear Goals.

“Thoughts become things.”

One common characteristic among all champions is that they spent time to visualizing
and to think over their goals. Champions obsess over winning that championship belt.
They wake up and the first thought is what they are going to move towards their goals,
they think about it as they are brushing their teeth. They visualize the techniques that
they will execute in training that day. They study tape, and think about what works. They
may do only perform three hours of physical training, but they are training mentally.
Great fighters obsess over their goals. It's not something they do for fun, they have a
goal in mind and they do everything around that goal.

Mike Tyson revealed in his book that he wouldn’t sleep at night because he was up all
night shadow boxing. He talks about how he would watch old fight clips all day to study
his favourite fighters and how they moved. He would sometimes sleep with his gloves
on. From the beginning when cu saw him sparring (age 15) he always said you're going
to be the heavyweight champion of the world. At this point the objective became the
heavyweight championship of the world. Anything outside of that was a distraction.

In Life:
If you want to be successful at anything, you need to be obsessed with it and always
strive to improve. You can’t become successful at anything without become absolutely
addicted to it so that you can be the best at it.
17 - Champions have a Good Sense of Humor
In the ring
When fighters are preparing for a fight, the fight camp can be boring. To pass the time,
you must be able to laugh and make jokes and make it fun. When things are fun you will
be able to do it more enjoyably. In addition, champions can make jokes about things
that normal people would lose their mind over. This is a strategy to stay calm in stressful
situations. This mentality can sometimes be interpreted as someone not being serious,
or someone not taking the situation seriously. It is the exact opposite, the person that
can laugh about problems is the one that can overcome them easier.

In Life:
“Your problems are not real problems.”

If knew the problems that many people in this world are experiencing, hunger, war,
political instability, you would realize that many of your problems are not real. By being
able to laugh at your problems and shake it off, you can make light of any situation in
your life. When you are stable, and do not get too excited nor bummed out about any
major event, then you are able to move past it. A lot of what happens in your life is all
about how you interpret things. You have a force field around you that filters everything.
Whatever comes to you is filtered through this field. This field can decide if an event is
positive, negative or neutral. It also can determine its effect on you. Do you know who
controls this field? You!
18 - Champions Play Chess, Not Checkers
In the Ring:

Champions understand that fighting is not a game of checkers, a very simple one
dimensional game. Fighting is like chess where there are different attacks that offers
different advantageous and disadvantageous. One piece (A) or “technique” may trump
another piece (B), but C may trump B yet A Beats B.

High level fighters understand it is important to select the right technique for the right
move. They also understand that it is important to incorporate other elements such as
mind games. The fighting game at the highest level is very complex and to succeed, the
fighter must fight smart. A fighter that plays the game like checkers, where he/she may
just go for the “koi” with their biggest strongest move will quickly find out that his
opponent will quickly select the right counter weapon and easily defeat him. A smart
fighter will read his opponent and utilize his opponent's weakness and match it with the
fighter's strengths.

An even smarter opponent will purposely move the fight to where the opponents is most
uncomfortable, even if the fighter isn’t comfortable there, but knows that regardless,
he’s still stronger.

In Life:
In life, you won’t win by playing checkers. You must think and carefully and utilize your
opportunities when you have them. You must learn what personalities everyone has
and how you need to respond to that person. To succeed in any business, you must
think carefully about your moves and know when certain tasks many need to be done
for the overall goal.
19 - Champions Create their Own Environment
In the Ring:

Earlier this article it was noted that elite level fighters understand the power of their
environment. Having the right environment is essential to push, challenge and motivate
yourself. However, what happens if you don’t have the right environment? Well, they
must create it. Champions understand that if something isn’t going the way that they
want it to go, then they must go out of their comfort zone and change it.

Even if they don’t know if there is a better environment for sure, they must know that
there is, and that eventually the universe will align and put the right people in their path.
Championship fighters are not scared to go out on a limb if they are not happy with their
current situation to find something new and better.

In Life:
How often do people create stories in their own mind of their limitations? I can’t achieve
this because of reason A, B or C. If you want to be successful and your situation isn’t
allowing you to be successful then you need to change your situation. You are like a car
heading towards your goals, anyone in your car better be doing everything they can to
be helping you reach your destination. If anyone is not, then they are slowing you down.

This is extremely difficult to do because we all get comfortable, and we want to take the
safe route. However, it isn’t important to make the difficult decisions, it is imperative that
you make the difficult decisions you need to reach your goals. Sometimes this might
mean cutting out certain friends, this might even mean limiting contact with family
members, it could mean moving to a new city.

Whatever you need to get into the right environment, you must do. At the end of the
day, if you fail because of your own environment, then it is still your fault.
20 - Champions are Interdependent
In the Ring:
One critical concept is the difference between independence and interdependence. A
high-level fighter is interdependent to not only his team, but also the other fighters that
may be possible an opponent in the future. This is because an interdependent
relationship will be able to move the enough group forward faster than if everyone was
independently working together. Instead of thinking competition, championship fighters
are thinking about teamwork, how to train together to improve everyone’s level. If a fight
happens, then it happens, but the interdependent relationship will be able to move the
team as whole forward.

Unsuccessful fighter will try to achieve everything by themselves, but he/she will quickly
find out that his growth will be limited. The reason is that human nature works better as
a team. One plus one = 3. Elite level fighter will often hold sparring sessions with the
other elite level fighter in their network and discuss strategy. This type of training
dramatically increases the learning curve of everyone in attendance.

In Life:
Interdependence is the ultimate way to achieve teamwork. You should never view other
people as competition but see them as ways you can learn and grow from them. For
example, when in a group work environment an interdependent person will keep their
mind open to new ideas even if they don’t agree. Individuals on a team should share
information and not see this to lose their advantageous over others. Interdependence is
the goal for many companies in the world, with this type of working relationship people
are more positive, happier and
21 - Sometimes You Win, Sometime You Learn.
In the Ring:

Champions understands that life will have its up and downs. If not then you're basically
not living. It’s important not to let the good times get to you head and the bad times get
to your heart. It can be hard not to lose motivation when you put all your effort into
training and working towards a task and then not succeed. However, it is super
important to understand that to reach the stratosphere level of success, you will need to
learn certain things that are only attainable through defeat and/or loss.

Champions keep their mind calm, regardless of his well they do, or poor they do. When
they do well, a fighter will often say “I wasn’t so happy with my performance tonight, I
didn’t like how I did do a,b,c.” similarly, if they lost, they will say “I wasn’t so happy
tonight, I have to go back to the drawing board to continue working on what I need to
work on. The elite level fighter knows that losses are part of winning, and that you will
learn the most from your losses.

In Life:
In your life, there is going to be good moments, bad moments, moments where you
succeed and moments where you fail. If you beat yourself up every single time you run
into an obstacle then you will beat yourself constantly and damaging yourself. If you
keep a calm state of mind and accept failures, obstacles and adversity as learning
opportunities then you keep yourself much more grounded. Keep this in the back of
your mind as your move towards your goals and experience minor steps.
22 - Champions Know How They Want Others to View Them.
In the Ring:
Champions have a vision of what/who they are. From the beginning, they know how
they want others to view them. Regardless of where they are now, they know where
they will be. From the beginning, they work with the end in mind. This keeps them focus
on the big goal at the end of the journey. When they focus on this, it prevents any minor
obstacles from stopping the individual from fulfilling their goals.

In Life:

This is a very powerful tool to change the direction of your life. If you are not happy with
how your life is going, it is important to ask how to do you want people to view you? Do
you want to be like A, or B, or C? When you decide how you want other to view you
then you able to keep that in the back of your mind and then work towards that goal.
When you understand what you want you want to be, you start to lose focus on the
many small insignificant obstacles that are in your life.

23 - Champions Make a Habit of Doing Something They Dislike,

Like They Love it.
In the Ring:

Champions understand that there is absolutely no way they will always feel good. It is
easy to do something when one feels like doing it. When you are feeling great and it is a
nice sunny day out it's easy to go for a run. It's even easier if there's a big group of
people going with you. However, the days that separate the crowd of people from the
champions are the days where no one else wants to go for a run. These days are the
winter months, or when it’s raining, and cold, or even the early mornings. I can
confidently say, no one enjoys waking up at 5 am to go running 5 - 10 km. It's probably
one of the most boring, and relentless activities in fight training. Even being a varsity
cross country runner, where I can run 4-minute km at 60% of my max heartbeat, I still
don’t enjoy running 5 - 6 days a week, every day, 5 - 10 min a day, it's boring, it's not
fun, and it is relentless.

However, you must do it, there is nothing to it, you must have cardio and conditioning to
be a successful fighter.

In Life:

In life, the things that separate the champion, from the average people is in the tasks
that are not fun, repetitive and require attention to detail. However, these tasks are
difficult for a reason, if you want to be a champion, you need to make a habit of doing
things that you don't like, like you love it.

If you want to succeed at anything in life it is actually very simple. It is not the complex
things that makes the difference, it is the small repetitive things that are important. How
one can focus on the small details is what separates the bottom 90% to the top 10%.

As an engineering manager of million dollar projects, I can attest that the costliest
mistakes are often made because of one tiny small element that was made, which led to
a huge issue down the chain.

24 - Champions Take Ownership of their Own Actions.

In the Ring:

Champions understand that they are ultimately responsible for everything in their life. It
doesn’t matter where they are, what their situation is. I have heard stories of twins, who
experience a brutally traumatizing experience, and one becomes successful and the
other become a complete failure. Their reasons when asks was the exact same, they
both said, “Of course I am a success/failure look at my situation.”

Champions understand that how they perform the night of their fight is completely up to
themselves. Champions must recognize their own weaknesses during their sparring
sessions, during their pad work, communicate with their teammates and figure out
where their weaknesses are and work on it. The champion understands that if they want
to be better than the rest, they need to identify their weaknesses and put extra time and
improve it. Champions know exactly what needs to be done, but may need his team to
tell him where to focus on.

Champions, never blame their environment for their outcome for they understand that
their environment changes based on their interpretation, so they can choose to respond
to it like a champion, or make excuses like a loser. Now, the champion mindset
understands the value and power of their environment, however they are ultimately for
cultivating this environment. If your gym or your friends are not supporting you, as a
champion, you must be able to find yourself an environment that cultivates your growth.

In Life:
Your life is in your hands. It doesn’t matter what life throws at you, you can direct your
life and improve your situation through conscious endeavor. A strong leader, mentor or
role model does not try to pass the blame onto other people. If you start blaming others
and trying to show how much better you are, or how hard you work then you
automatically ruin your opportunity to achieve greatness.
It’s up to you to lead by example and inspire others to work harder, if you are a ceo of
an organization, never blame others for why the business is failing, it is your
responsibility to get people to work.

One characteristic of an underperforming organizations can be easily identified. If the

leaders at the top of the organization are “champion” performers. Do they mentor,
inspire and take time to help others succeed? Or are they always blaming others for the
shortcomings of the organization? Do the leaders give credit to other people or do they
try to always make themselves look the best?

If you want to carry the champions mindset over to your business, it is critical that you
take ownership of your own actions.

25 - Champions have Over the Top Self Confidence in

Themselves.
In the Ring:
Champions carry themselves as a champion should. This does not mean they are
cocky, or arrogant but they are 100% confident in themselves. They have this type of
confidence because they know that they have put in the work to have that type of
confidence. An athlete that has put in their work, every single day they worked and
destroyed themselves only to re-build and become stronger will walk into game day
100% confident because they know there is no way their opponent can be more
prepared.

A Wharton/Harvard MBA graduate will more than likely be extremely confident in

themselves at graduation because they understand that they have work extremely hard
and that they will have fantastic opportunities with high earning potential.

In Life:
You need to have confidence wherever you go. Having confidence will make people
respect you, however attempting to pretend like you have confidence without the skills
to back it up will make people lose respect for you very quickly and will make you look
foolish.

In school, one year, I had a big exam during my master’s degree, I needed an A to get
accepted into my graduate program, anything less than A would basically mean I was
kicked out (conditional student). I reviewed every single lecture note three times,
memorized everything, then practiced the previous 10 years of exams about 5 times
each. I walked into the exam, and I knew the answer to the question within reading the
first five words of each question because I found some of the question structures were
similar. I finished that 3-hour exam in 15 minutes; and scored the highest in the class.
This is having the champions confidence. The champion may act confident because
they work extremely hard, and they reap the benefits. People enjoy being around these
kind of people, because they are not cocky, but people recognize that they work hard,
and understand where their confidence comes from.

26 - Great Fighters Train hard, and Party hard.

In the Ring:
One of the less traditional characteristics of champions is that they know how to unwind.
Champions love life. Champions are having fun all the time doing whatever they are
doing. It's hard sometimes to train 20 hours a week, working full time, or being a full-
time athlete doing the same thing day in and day out. It's important to mix it up and have
some fun in your life, and when you are having fun it can help reset your system and
allow you to get back to training/improving.

Champions know the importance of relaxing.

In Life:
“Work Hard, Play Harder”

The human body needs rest. You need to set a clear line between work and relaxing.
When it’s time to work, don’t do what I call “bullshit” work. Don’t have Facebook open,
checking your phone, when you work, hustle and grind for the entire duration. Now,
when you are enjoying, don’t think about work and let loose.

27 - Great Fighters Define their Own “Norm”.

In the Ring:
Champions do not allow outside influences to affect their performance or their game
plan. They define what is normal to them. Some champions train three times a day, at
unusual times, that is fine because they are working to whatever works for them.

Champions do not allow what another people think is normal affect their norm. By
thinking like these champions remove any potential invisible previous barriers that were
set.

In Life:
Today, many people are told exactly what to do, how to think, and how their life should
be. Starting in high school, we start picking courses that will ultimately affect what we
take in grade 12; which will become prerequisites for university or college. The problem
is that this type of education doesn’t work for everyone. Einstein said that if a fish were
judged by its ability to climb a tree then it would think that it was stupid for its entire life.
Everyone on this earth has their own route to chase and what they what they want to
do. It's isn’t right to allow others to define what route you want to take in life. Perhaps
you do want to go to school for finance because you are interested in getting your mba
and becoming a business consultant. However, there are a lot of other routes that can
be taken. Champions define their own norm, it can be a difficult road to travel, however,
they enjoy what they do and love the life that they live.

28 - Champions are Excellent Communicators

In the Ring:
Champions are fantastic communicators. They understand the value of effective
communication to their team mates, sparring partners, and even business related tasks.
In the gym, it may be up to the other team mates to identify areas of weaknesses in the
individual's game. The other teammates especially their coach can see holes that the
individual will not be able to experience. It is also important to understand how to handle
constructive criticism, and that sometimes people may get emotional since an individual
may have worked extremely hard yet feels that someone else is attacking them.
However this is where effective communication skills come in.

If someone is not able to take criticism then he/she may find that they are not identifying
their true weaknesses and may find out on the day of the fight, when it is too late.

In Life:
Communication is one of the most critical skills that one can acquire. You may be the
most educated person and possess all the education however, if you can’t put what you
know in simple terms and communicate it effectively to others then what you know is
useless.

In addition, proper communication can express how you feel, while improper
communication may give people the wrong impression of what you are trying to say.

29 - Champions Expect Brutally Honest Criticism and Hate “Sugar

Coating”
In the Ring:
Champions hate having advice/criticism sugar coated. They understand that their
number one objective is to succeed and win their fights; therefore, they must follow the
proven steps to success which involves constant improvement and accepting change.

When people sugar coat information, what they are really doing is setting the individual
up for failure and telling them I don't think you can handle the truth. This is far worse
than hearing the truth straight; since the truth is obviously there and if it’s there is an
issue in the individual's skills, they need to address it before stepping into the ring.
In Life:
If you want to become successful, you must surround yourself with people that will tell
you the truth about you. If they really cared about you, then they would tell you exactly
what you need to know to grow and improve. If you surround yourself with people who
avoid difficult conversations you may avoid temporary pain, to be soon replaced with a
life of problems.

30 - Champions are not defined by their circumstances but define

themselves.
In the Ring:
Many champions have experienced severe adversity in their life. From poor families,
suicidal family members, drugs, abusive family members etc. The common
characteristics was that championship level fighters use these things as fuel to drive
themselves as they train and fight. Other people who experience similar events may use
these events as a reason why they are not successful. However, a champion
understands that they are not defined by their circumstances or by what happens to
them.

Champions define their own life.

In Life:
Almost everyone has experienced difficulties. Some people have experienced problems
worse than others, however the one common trait of successful people is that they
always move past their issues. Often the more difficult obstacles the stronger the
individual became.

“Smooth Seas do not make a good sailor”.

31 - Champions understand the concept of Kaizen.

In the Ring:
Kaizen is the Japanese term for continued growth and development. It focuses on
always re-inventing your processes and looking to streamline your production. Now, as
a fighter, you aren't producing a product…. but you are! Your product is your punches,
kicks and knees. You improve your product by training and experimenting with different
training methods. One common characteristic of champion fighters is that they are
always looking to improve. They are never satisfied. Champions understand that there
is either growth, or loss. There is no such thing as staying still.

My friend Simon Marcus is the best example of this, when he won his recent kickboxing
world title, in his post fight interview the first thing he said is that he wasn’t so happy
with his performance that he could have done more to end the fight faster. This concept
of Kaizen keeps you hungry, and being hungry is the only way you can be on the
champion level. You don’t get to be a champion by be lazy, or by training 3 times a
week. You become a champion by thinking about improving every waking moment,
training 3 hours a day 6 days a week.

In Life:
Kaizen is a concept that Japanese automobile manufacturers began to use to improve
their production. This concept allowed their factories to produce cars that were far
superior to American factories. If you keep kaizen in the back of your mind and you
keep on focusing on improving yourself, you will quickly see how much you can improve
your life.

32 - Champions Fear Regret.

In the Ring:
You can lie to your friends, your coaches or your trainer partners. However, you can’t lie
to yourself. Come fight day, you will know if you worked hard or not. Only you know if on
those early mornings, did you do your road work with all your heart, or did you skip out
on running. Only you know if you did those extra sets which will give you a small
advantage over your opponent. After you come out of your fight, the most rewarding
moment is training your hardest, having a war, and coming out on top because of all
your hard work. Sometimes, even if you lose, if you gave it your all, and worked your
hardest, you won't feel bad.

On the other hand, if you didn’t train hard, and you lose your one shot at becoming a
champion, you’re going to remember it for the rest of your life. You will beat yourself
repeatedly saying why didn’t I work a bit harder. You will regret it for the rest of yourself,
do not let this be you.

In Life:
In life, we can always take the safe road, the safe job to get a decent pay, with decent
benefits however often what limits us from being great, is good. It’s that small decision
to take a risk and put down the safe and secure route and dare to go for the great.
Sometimes this can be the decision to put in extra work, and go for additional education
and become great. This can mean working extra hard, so that you become an expert.
Whatever it is, never have regret. One of the worst things I have ever seen is from my
grandpa when he tells me that he regrets not taking more risk in life. That he hates that
he went through life being “safe” and taking the “comfortable” route.

33 - Champions Understand the Game of Numbers.

In the Ring:
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks but who has practiced 1 kick 10,000
times” - Bruce Lee.
The fight game is a game of repetition. To refine your technique to the point where you
may beat your opponents weapon you must simply practice that move more. If you want
to develop the skills required to elude and counter your opponent's attacks, you simply
need to reach a certain amount of repetition.

This is the most difficult part in fight training, doing the same task repeatedly. It is very
boring, most of the time you are by yourself with the heavy bag, or at most a pad holder.
However, this is the essence of victory and often what separates the winner from the
loser is who has practiced more.

In life:
If you want to be the best at what you do, there is nothing around hard work. If you want
to be better and more skilled, you need to practice.