Boxing stresses me out beforehand.

Aren't there any guys at your own level you can train with? Sounds like the nervouseness comes from you're not being able to keep up with those with lots of more experience? You shouldn't care about not succeeding. Maybe you have set too high goals for yourself.

 

It's much easier said than done, but say to youself what your goals are and try not to have any big expectations. What helped for me was to meditate and talk alot to myself about not having too high hopes or anything. If I have a fight or training coming up I usually don't have any expectations (in daily life too for that matter), and when I get in there I just do my best, and more can't be done. If I perform bad, then of course it always feels bad, but it would've been much worse if I had sky high expectations.

 

This is from a mountain climbing site and it should give you a positive boost in the right direction. I have been thinking about it for a bit but seeing your thread has inspired me to start an inspirational type thread w videos and quotes. Thank you and best of wishes in your training.

Increasing Strength Through Mind Training!

Hanging on the rope with pumped forearms may be an all-too-familiar situation, especially if you are passionate about pushing your limits on the rock. And, given that your failure on the rock always seems to involve a lack of physical strength, it's easy to become obsessive about strength training. In the long-run, however, you will only be able to realize your true potential when you come to recognize and act on the many non-obvious factors that contribute to muscular fatigue and lackluster performance.



These vital performance-limiting factors include: poor economy of movement (bad technique and control), overgripping (emotional anxiety), missed holds and rests (due to inflexible thinking), and shaken confidence (due to “fearful thinking&#8221. All these mental issues produce premature fatigue and likely drain your energy reserves by 50 percent or more. Therefore, learning to think and act more effectively could very well double (or triple!) your apparent strength on the rock.



Let's examine four areas where mental training could help you unlock a higher level of performance.



1. Strive for Flexibility of Perspective
The first key strategy is flexibility of perspective. To breakthrough a sticking point on a climb, you must get outside your current mindset. Detach yourself from the situation and visualize it from a perspective outside yourself. View yourself attempting the climb from a dissociated “on-TV” perspective, and see yourself climbing bottom to top as well as downclimbing from the top to the ground. It's also a good idea to visualize how some great climber you know would attack the route—what tricks and tactics would he or she employ to send the route? Maybe dynoing past a long reach, searching a hidden hold, or inventing a clever rest position. Make a game out of trying to transcend the block. Be creative and have fun, and all of a sudden, the moves will begin to reveal themselves to you. You might not send the route that day, but you'll be making progress towards your goal.



2. Become a “Reverse Paranoid”
The second shift in thinking is to become what I call “reverse paranoid.” No matter what problems you encounter, believe that the route wants you to succeed (even if you are currently flailing miserably). In this way, view each failed attempt as a signpost directing you toward a better course of action instead of becoming obsessed with a single way the route must be done. Many climbers fail on routes they are physically capable of doing because they ignore the feedback the route is giving them. Don't fall into this trap—embrace the feedback of your setbacks as clues toward your inevitable success.



3. Leverage a "Mental Scrapbook" of Past Successes
This third strategy is extremely powerful and it's fundamental to achieving high levels of success in any field. Create a mental scrapbook of past successes that you can review on demand to fortify your confidence and persevere in the face of apparent failure. Relive in your mind's eye the process of some of your greatest accomplishments, both climbing and non-climbing. Make these mental movies vivid and get inside them as if they were happening again at the present moment. Feel the exhilaration and joy of the accomplishment, then take that emotion and apply it to the difficult situation with which you presently faced. Forge ahead wearing the "mental armor" of your past successes and a whole new level of performance will begin to be revealed.



4. Strive to Develop "Hanging-On Power"
The final strategy is what I call "hanging-on power." Hanging on power is an attribute that all great climbers and high achievers (in any field) possess, which enables them to persist beyond ordinary limits. Sometimes winning or succeeding isn't a matter of having more absolute strength or skill than others possess, it might just come down to being able to hang on and persevere longer.



Hanging on power is an ability you develop from progressively subjecting yourself to greater and greater challenges that require higher levels of stick-to-itiveness. Just as in strengthening the muscles of your body, you strengthen mental muscle by challenging it in an incremental, progressive way.



Bottomline: while some climbers give up at the first sign of adversity on a route (or after just a single day of failed attempts), the best climbers keep coming back and hanging on--mentally and physically--until they succeed. Foster this mental skill and you'll outperform the masses in anything you do!

 

Don't do what I do and quit. It's a stress-free life, being a quitter, the only expectations I set myself are to give up when the going gets tough, and I'm yet to let myself down. If you want to be good at anything, find out my approach to it, and do the opposite.

Puma's post was very good.

 

you should enjoy boxing

maybe your pushing yourself to hard

 

I always stress myself out before training, maybe because I know I'll be pushing myself to the point of exhaustion, but strangely feel like shite if I don't push myself to new limits and make the most out of each session.

Maybe you're just overplaying in your head the horrors of conditioning training. The more you think about it the worse it seems, the worse it seems the more you dread conditioning training. And so on.

 

Heh... this was an unexpected post... way to be honest though man. Gotta give ya credit there.

 

I think most of us who box have felt this stress/anticipatory anxiety at some point. I still get anticipatory anxiety some days before training and I don't even know why. Some people get it worse than others. It is certainly not uncommon to have these feelings before going to a boxing gym.

But what works for me, is mentally I fast forward in my head to when I am LEAVING the gym. I think about feeling good and satisfied. If I am training on Thursday, i think about Friday when its already history and over with and I'm just relaxing. I imagine feeling good about going through with it and when I did its already in the past. This helps me get through a lot of days.

Also you have to sort of hypnotize yourself in boxing. You have to convince yourself that training isn't that bad, that sparring isn't that bad. Its all about repetition. Don't say "I'm gonna love boxing right now!" because thats too much, too soon for your brain to handle. Work your way up slowly...Write down some neutral thoughts like "Boxing may not be my favorite thing to do but maybe it isn't as bad as I once thought." Turn the table on those negative thoughts. Say things like that and get it in your head daily.

I don't want to make light of this because thinking this way will probably benefit you in the long run. But if boxing causes you much stress, anxiety and dread than removing yourself from those feelings is not "quitting". It just proved to be an unpleasant activity that caused you negative feelings. Life should be fun, if this isn't for you then maybe you can try your hand at something else.

I made the mistake of when I started boxing that I told a lot of people about it. From there on they always ask you about it, associate it with you, introduce you as a boxer etc. It got really annoying. Nowadays I don't tell anybody I meet that I box unless it happens to come up in a convo.

 

i would try to find somebody at ur gym who is in the same predicament as u and u can keep each other motivated all the time. also, it's just one of those things u just need to keep pushing and forcing urself to do