By ‘prepare’ I obviously don’t mean to deliberately train your fighter to lose. I only mean that at some stage during fight camp you should briefly take your fighter aside and convey something along the lines of “Everything will be okay even if you lose, and if you do lose, we’re going to… (X, Y, Z)”
1. Your fighter probably will lose. Shocking, I know, but your fighter is mathematically, probably (50%+) about to lose. If you take every fighter in the world, combine their win/loss records, remove draws and no-contests and then divide the total number of fights by the total number of fighters, the rate of losing is exactly 50%. But it’s probably worse than that for your fighter. The small percentage of fighters out there with more than ten fights and substantially winning records (.8 – 1.0), are either competing at the highest level or are eligible to be. They have built their records off of the majority of fighters who either have .5 or losing records, or else who stopped fighting once they reached a higher level of competition and couldn’t win anymore. For every Top-10 fighter with a .8 record, there are a thousand regional-level fighters who will end with a 2-3 career, or worse. Your fighter is more likely to be one of the thousand.
It's typically better to prepare for a bad thing than to face it blindly.
2. Your fighter is probably lonely. It’s taboo to mention to a fighter the possibility that they might lose. However, unless they are one of the rare, helpfully-delusional fighters, your fighter has almost certainly considered the possibility that they might lose. Throughout fight camp, roughly 5 times a day, your fighter has a teammate, family member, friend, or fanboy tell them with great confidence that they are going to win their fight. Your fighter has to brave-face every single one of these conversations, concealing any doubts they might actually be having. The worst type of loneliness is the one we have when we’re surrounded by people. It can be a miserable 1–3 months. By acknowledging the risk, you share the risk, as opposed to your fighter feeling solely responsible for an outcome which everyone else is assuring them is impossible.
3. You (and the other coaches) also need a plan. Most gym dramas and gym splits happen after losses. Sometimes it's because a fighter was secretly feeling entirely isolated and unsupported throughout the fight camp (see point 2). More commonly, however, it’s because in the immediate, intensely emotional aftermath of a loss—people say stupid things that can’t be unsaid (“You should have listened to me” / “You shouldn’t have listened to them” / “We need a better striking/wrestling/grappling coach”). You and the coaching staff having a plan will prevent much of this. A useful idea is a 3-to-4-day cooldown period before coaches are allowed to voice any type of analysis.
4. You don’t actually have a good reason not to. My guess would be that almost no coaching teams do anything to proactively prepare the fight team for inevitable losses. I also guess that this is due to two reasons, neither of which are good ones:
· a. You have a superstitious notion that by admitting the chance of loss, you will jinx your fighter into losing; I can’t prove that this isn’t the case. But perhaps you can offset the magic via another superstition, such as burning sage or bathing in goat’s blood.
· b. By talking to your fighter about a plan in case they lose, you’ll undermine their confidence or their hunger for victory; while this is possible, I doubt it. If your fighter is secretly looking for a way out 2 months ahead of their fight, this fact will probably emerge anyway. In fact, this conversation will probably help their mental state for the same reason that clarity typically breeds confidence, while denial breeds panic.
There’s also a certain subset of fighters with whom having this conversation wouldn’t be necessary or useful; you’ll probably be able to tell who they are. For everyone else, I wouldn’t try to suggest a catch-all approach, but in general the following ideas seem sensible:
If we lose:
1. Shake our opponent's and their team’s hands; stay for the winner announcement.
2. Don’t make any excuses. If there were obvious referee/judging errors, let other people point them out. If we were injured, it does nothing useful to mention that.
3. Backstage, only X and X will stay with you.
4. If you are busy, X will call your spouse/parent/child for you to tell them you are okay.
5. A prepared generic statement.
6. Once the event is over, we’ll go to X, eat X, drink X.
7. Coaching staff are not allowed to make any type of analysis until X days after the fight (does not apply to fighter, who gets to say whatever they want).
8. Fighter is not allowed to make a detailed post on Instagram until X days have passed.
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Ned Dickeson Clinical Psychology offers psychology and performance support to athletes and coaches training in combat sports, including Judo, BJJ, boxing, Muay Thai, and MMA.
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