Anna Freud & you Ideal Martial Artist (pt. II)
This blog post is the continuation of another post exploring anxiety and martial arts performance through the lens of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competitions (found here). It will review the framework set by the previous post and then explore i) whether competitions really are the best measure and ii) ideas on how to reduce competition anxiety.
A Review: The Dynamics of Ego Defense in Self Defense
Previously, we explored the idea that a BJJ practitioner faces anxiety, especially before a competition. We described anxiety as “a persistant fear of one or more social or performance situations in which the person is exposed to unfamiliar people or to possible scrutiny by others” (DSM-IV).
We can intuitively understand how anxiety hinders our performance: everyone has struggled to give a speech, that flowed easily in the comfort of our room, to a crowd of people. However, in a speech, no one is trying to choke or submit you in front of a crowd as they are in a grappling competition.
Competitions are supposed to be a measure and test of an individual’s BJJ acumen. However, the competition anxiety will have a negative effect on performance — an anxious competitor will probably do worse than the non-anxious one.
Why? Anna Freud considered anxiety to be a state of internal conflict people move away from. We looked at two possible path’s an anxious competitor may choose to alleviate the anxiety inducing ego threat via extrapolated ego defense mechanisms : the ‘75%’ and ‘110%’ method. Both of these save the anxious ego with a ‘what if’ — what if I wasn’t competing at 75% of my best or not going overboard with 110%?
A martial artist has a view of herself as her ideal martial artist. A situation that threatens this ego ideal will cause anxiety and this anxiety is avoided through ego defense mechanisms. These ego defense mechanisms hinder competition performance thus calling into question the validity of the grappling competition as a measure of self defense prowess.
Before continuing, readers asked for some literature relating to last weeks blog post. Here are some fun ones I can recommend →
- Rhodewalt, Tragakis & Finnerty (2006) Narcissism and Self-Handicapping: Linking Self-Aggrandizement to Behaviour
- Steele & Baumeister (1999) The psychology of self-affirmation: sustaining the integrity of the self
- Nash, McGregor & Prentice (2011) Threat and Defense as Goal Regulation: From implicit goal conflict to anxious uncertainty, reactive approach motivation and ideological extremism
- And of course, Anna Freud’s Ego Defense Mechanisms
To Compete or Not to Compete
So now we are left with either having anxiety and performing poorly because of it or engaging in ego defense and also performing poorly because of it. Can competitions really measure what they claim to measure in light of competition anxiety? If everyone suffers competition anxiety, does anyone have a competitive advantage?
There is a sense that you do not truly know your level of grappling and self defense until you engage in a competition. This might be because a competition setting allows you to spar harder than you would with friends and teammates in a gym, or that with the adrenaline pounding while toe to toe with a stranger you are most closely simulating a real self-defense situation.
Either way, a competition, as shown last post, uncovers ego threat and this anxiety undermines a competitor’s performance. As this anxiety throws off the performance measure and the anxiety is inherently a part of competition, then competitions inherently disrupt their own validity.
(A) Anxiety inducing situations =(B) disrupt performance
(C)Competitions = are inherently (A) Anxiety inducing
Therefore, (C) Competitions =(B) disrupt performance
In psychological testing, validity is a big concern. There are different facets to validity. The content validity is called into question because we can’t measure something that distorts its measurements by virtue of testing it. Although ego threat is more of a risk factor than a given, it poses great difficulty to assess a construct when measurement of the construct is influenced, and possibly distorted, by the very nature of testing the construct.
Construct validity is another interesting facet: what exactly do grappling tournaments aim to measure? It is near impossible to test for something if you do not have a nice and clear operationalization of what you are testing! You can’t find it if you don’t know what you are looking for. Initially, one could say a grappling tournament measures who is the best grappler.
What the best, in ‘the best grappler’, is, is still unclear. Being the best is an equally fuzzy construct. Is it one’s ability to defend themselves? Or someone’s ability to defend themselves on the street? How many techniques one knows? How graceful I look while sparring? How in shape I am? How good of a teacher you are? Is the best grappler the one who wins the most tournaments (now there is a viscious circle) or even simply showing up to compete. Perhaps an amalgamation of all of the above?
These are most certainly different markers of acumen: number of known techniques =/= self defense efficiency=/= cardio =/= teaching. For each of these, there are different tournament outcomes which may satisfy or unsatisfy each of these goals. For the grappler who is interested in cardio, being able to wrestle 5 times in an afternoon is a major accomplishment and she has passed her personal test with flying colours. For another competitor, who values how smooth her grappling is, she may be dissapointed, although she won, because she won on a wild, uncontrolled scramble.
In this scenario, could the value of a tournaments testing be mediated by personal goals?
Perhaps the answer to this question should not be, “what do grappling tournaments test?”, because the answer will be different for every practitioner and therefore can be posed instead as, “why do you compete?” or even “why do you train?”
In talking to, and reading about, more experienced grapplers, if the motivations can be divided it is into two major camps: the self defense side and the art/sport side of the self defense art.
In the beginning, Jiu Jitsu was developed as a practical self defense art for use in real life, dangerous situations. As such, maybe an ego threatening anxiety inducing pounding heart tournament match is the best simulation for a real world autonomic SNS fight or flight situation.
Other Jiu Jiteros are proponents of the art side of self defense art. They “train like an old man to train as an old man” and enjoy the experience of deep satisfaction that comes from BJJ. Many have been voracious and/or succesful competitors who have stopped competing because the anxiety is too much.
So, the question remains: can we do anything to help soothe competition anxiety?
Submit your Ego — Mind, Mushin & Flow
Wolff’s Law — “the bone in a healthy person or animal will adapt to the loads under which it is placed”
To draw a fun and loose parallel between the mind and the body, Wolff’s law posits that stress will increase the density of a bone so that the bone will grow stronger to better bear future stressors. If a stress is too extreme the bone will break. Similarly, and simply put, an extreme stressor can incapacitate the mind. However, adequate amounts of stress can perhaps strengthen the mind over time as the mind adapts to meet these situations.
When someone starts grappling, they are more often than not overwhelmed. They have no clue what is going on and people are hanging off and twisting arms, shoulders, knees and necks and they are tapping left right and center.
When I started, I — a 6"2 210lb male — was being beat by people half my size and weight, which is certainly a humbling experience. Humility is an important component to continuing in the art. Every training session is a further lesson in humility and some say learning grace in defeat ‘quiets the ego’.
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu descending from Japanese Jiu Jitsu, a culture with an extremely rich and fascinating Martial history. In Japanese Martial Arts there is a concept called “Mushin”, or as a rough translation, the state of no mind. It is a state of mind which elite martial artists ascend to during combat and is a zen-like state where there is no anger, fear or ego present. In this state, the warrior is totally present and totally ready to react and act. This state of mind is achieved through practice and the ‘flawless execution of movement’. The Zen Master, Soho, said, “the mind must always be in the state of ‘flowing’, for when it stops…it means death’.
The Hungarian Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi theorized, researched and wrote a great deal about the state of Flow. Flow, to paraphrase, is absolute focus and absorption in one’s activity where we perform and learn which results in profound satisfaction. Flow is also considered to be a “deep focus on nothing but the activity — not even oneself or one’s emotions”. Flow is best achieved in a highly challenging activity in which we are highly skilled, that is, our skill level matches the activities difficulty enough to challenge us, yet allows us to grow and is not overwhelming (anxiety inducing) or not challenging and underwhelming (apathy inducing).
Flow sounds a little bit like the Mushin Mind.
Both Flow and Mushin require practice to achieve, and once you are there, one experiences deep satisfaction and a ‘oneness’ with the art where time slows down and you enter ‘the zone’. This may sound similar to the Ego Defense Mechanism of sublimation, where we use anxious energy for constructive, rather than destructive projects. Flow, and I would assume Mushin, are also said to improve overall quality of life.
As indicated at the beginning, to end the blog posts with two actionable steps that you can take to mitigate competition anxiety in a constructive (as opposed to destructive ego defense) manner, there are two approaches which can be derived from Flow and Mushin.
The first is to practice, practice and practice: spend more time on the mats drilling techniques. As per the Mushin tradition, practice will allow the grappler to perform the movement in a state of no mind (muscle memory and/or automaticity, perhaps?). The more you practice, the less you will think, and the less you think the smoother and more efficient your movements will be.
Or, as Saulo Ribeiro says, “If you think, you are late. If you are late, you use strength. If you use strength, you tire. If you tire, you die”.
The second, is to compete more. Regardless of competition anxiety, grappling tournaments give you access to a larger sample size than is present at your own gym. This means more technique, style and size exposure which will function to improve your own skill level to match the higher skill level of competitions. As per Flow, a high skill level in high challenge situations results in a state of Flow.
Practicing for the state of no mind will, according to Dr. Csikszentmihalyi and various zen masters, bring the competitor to an anxiety-free zone. Competing more will i) indicate the required level of skill to compete at the tournament’s level of challenge to achieve flow and ii) gradual exposure to the highly stimulating competition setting will hopefully lower anxiety sensitivity or HPA axis regulation will adjust accordingly.
This post had three goals — i) to summarize last weeks post, ii) to question whether grappling competitions are the best measure of whatever it is they measure and iii) to provide suggestions to improve.
i) the summary can be found at the beginning.
ii) Grappling tournaments as a measure of grappling pose i) an issue for content validity because the nature of the test influences the test’s measure as it induces competition anxiety and ii) construct validity because there is no definite answer to what it is that grappling competition tests. This is possible because there are individual differences in grappler’s motivations and goals. I would suggest that the question be reframed to “why do you enjoy training?” and that the measures of competitions can be restructured to individually accomodate each practitioner’s answer.
iii) As per the ideas mindfully accepted by the state of no mind (thanks Flow and Mushin), competition axniety can be mitigated, somewhat obviously, by preparation and exposure. That is, more practice and more competing.
