The difference between MMA fighters and MMA athletes

SPARTAN from 300 The differences between an athlete and a fighter are rather obvious and yet, how these differences influence the outcome in the octagon may not be clear. Why, do we (and by “we” I mean all the coaches at MMA Mind Power) think that athletes are more advantaged? Why, in our opinion, athletes are more likely to succeed and remain at the top for longer? The most obvious way to look at this and understand why this is true is to look at who is at the top right now; if you look at the top 3 in each division you will be able to see that, although counterintuitive, athletes are more successful in their MMA career than fighters tend to be. Not all athletes are always successful but in general terms, they tend to have longer and happier careers.

People like George St Pierre and Frank Mir are athletes whereas people like the Diaz brothers, Vitor Belfort, and even Wanderlei Silva are among the last few fighters left in the game. Only a few years ago several people like BJ Penn, Shamrock, Phil Baroni, Matt Serra, and others of the kind would be categorized as fighters. Clearly, these were amazing MMA Artists but times changed and they had to make way for the new-school entries. This is what has always happened in any combat sport since the beginning of time. Fighters can either change into athletes, when possible, at all, or they are destined to be overpowered by athletes. Here are the 3 main reasons:

1. Athletes compete with no or less emotional interference

One could argue that emotional drives can push an athlete to perform better and that is true when the emotions are 1. controlled and 2. related to their goals instead of being emotional reactions or states toward their opponent. 

Being free from emotions allows athletes to be free from anger, stress, animosity, and frustration which all cause tension. Tension is responsible for underperformance especially because the body is less responsive and less loose when tense and the ability to make good, strategic decisions decreases when tense. Being emotionally too engaged also limits the ability to hear and act upon the instructions of the corner.

2. Athletes generally have fewer personal issues

I don’t want to generalize but if you look into the historical data, you will find that, apart from the issues like DUI or PED, athletes bring fewer personal issues into their camps. By no means does this mean that athletes do not have personal issues or even that they have less than “fighters” do; in their private lives they may have as many issues or more. What I mean by this is that athletes tend to have fewer issues within their camp, they create fewer issues within their team and the main reason is the same as the point above: they have less emotional involvement and thus are less likely to snap, think irrationally and engage in the type of dangerous and confronting behavior that more emotionally involved people tent to engage in.

3. Athletes have winning drives – Fighters have beating drives

Whereas athletes do all they can to win fights, fighters tend to lose sight of the W during a match as they focus more on inflicting punishment on their opponent. Condit vs Diaz is the perfect example of that. Another great example is Machida vs Ortiz. Again, this does not represent the truth 100% of the time as Shogan Rua, who I think falls into the category of fighters, imposed his way on Machida on 2 occasions. However, I do feel that this does represent the vast majority.

The birth of a new breed

So, there was the fighter, then there came the athlete and now what’s next? It is obvious to think that being an athlete is not enough! There are traits of fighters that are worth keeping and included in the “new breed”; tenacity, passion, and other personality aspects are often sharper in the fighter’s type. So, the next step up is an MMA Artist who can light the internal fire that fighters are fueled by and control it with the same proficiency that athletes have used to claim the advantage in the last few months. So how can MMA Artists make that transformation?

The bad news is that if you were born a fighter, you will remain a fighter and if you were born without that fire inside, it’s going to be hard to manufacture it. The good news is that the new breed is neither a fighter nor an athlete. The new breed is an MMA Artist who has learned to develop the resilience, aggressiveness, and “wildness” of fighters; he is a fighter who has learned to control and channel emotions and use them to his advantage. The new breed looks a lot like Benson Henderson, JDS, Frankie Edgar, Daniel Cornier, and many others.

Whilst MMA Sports Psychology and Mind Coaching can help you make that transition, there are simple ways of initiating that leap. The most obvious and simple one is to understand which of the two, fighter or athlete, you are and then write down all the good aspects of the opposite style. Once you have these written down put that paper where you can see it often.