Mental Game

I recently finished reading Sam Sheridan's excellent book The Fighter's Mind. Sam does a tremendous job explaining the psyche of a professional fighter, and what makes some of the leading athletes tick.

I've long been a proponent of mental game and mental toughness, and having been a competitive sportsman most of my life, as well as a competitive fighter, this book struck some real chords. However, I've believed for many years that there is a strong link between sports and performance psychology, and standout achievement in other fields, including business.

SMB Capital Partner Mike Bellafiore writes in his outstanding book, One Good Trade, that as traders we should aspire and work constantly towards becoming elite performers. Trader psychology is critical pillar of any successful trader's development, and many outstanding resources abound for traders, notably Dr Brett Steenbarger's many excellent books.

There is much overlap between the lessons that a good trader should learn, and between those anyone else aspiring for elite performance in their field should learn. Mike Bellafiore often refers to such resources on his blog.

I found The Fighter's Mind to contain a lot lessons that while targeted at fighters, seem almost tailor-made for traders. After all, trading is a zero-sum game, where the money we take out of the markets must be taken from the pcoket of someone else...

Many of the lessons resonated with me, with chapter after chapter making me nod and smile grimly. The book covers gems such as:

• The value of hard work, grind and commitment, and an almost overbearing intensity and will to dominate that was personified and taught by Dan Gable, one of the all-time greats - being a consistently profitable trader takes tons of work, grind and commitment...
• Freddie Roach's stress on dedication, the ability to learn and listen, and to grind it out for years. In addition, the criticality of adapting a fighter's game to to his character, just as a trader should choose a style that fits them. Finally, the huge importance of psychology and mental preparation
• The importance of doing the basics, understanding the essential tools, the groundwork...having put the work in at the gym, so that when you're competing, you don't need to be thinking about the basics, you're reacting and firing...as you should be in the markets, with your work done beforehand
• A wonderful piece on Mark DellaGrotte on coaching and personal attention, and creating a community and family of proud fighters in the gym. The value of removing pressure, feeling as if you have nothing to lose to fight without emotion, and take pride and respect in your art. This will push you to perform, in trading, as in fighting
• Ricardo Liborio, arguably one of the top Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighters, speaking of the importance of understanding that you can and will lose, and being open minded and flexible enough to deal with that and adapt and learn from the losses. Being honest and humble enough to learn from others. Without this mindset as a trader, you're dead in the water..
• Eddie Bravo and Frank Shamrock speak on controlling ego - taking your ego into the trading room with you and attaching it to positions is begging to decimate your trading account
• One of the sections I really loved was on Marcelo Garcia and his absolute love for the game (BJJ) - what makes him better than most competitors is his passion for and dedication to the sport, and his constant learning and evolution - others adjust to what he *was* doing, when he's onto all new techniques already. Bella covered this in One Good Trade, where he wrote about thinking about trading, speaking about trading, reading and learning about trading to be a good trader...you are what you do..
• There are so many lessons to be taken from Marcelo...another that was pertinent was when he speaks of competitors who try to beat him at his own game...every trader has a unique style that they work and trade, and often they become great at it. Trying to beat someone at their own style, if it's not your natural style will get you killed on the mat, in the cage, and in the market
• Getting the snot kicked out of you was a necessary integration into the legendary Pat Miletich's camp. It breeds toughness, and roots out those that really *want* to be there, because they keep coming back after getting knocked down. The market will knock you down and kick you in the teeth a few times when you least expect it, and you need to be tough enough to take the lessons and come back fighting..
• We also learn the value of flexibility and agility from the lessons learned by fighter Rory Markham in needing to work his ground game, even though he was a hardened stand up striker. Bella again speaks of the need for agility and multiple approaches, because there are market periods when momentum strategies might kill it, but then stop working and we need to adjust our game
• Virgil Hunter and his Olympic gold medalist fighter Andre Ward also have a multitude to teach, but I enjoyed the approach Virgil took to training Andre to not get hit, for months before he taught him to start hitting back. We need to focus on cutting our losses as traders, and managing and protecting our capital before we start to think about big wins and profitability.
• Again, legendary fighter Randy Couture speaks of being the underdog, and how this removes the pressure from fighting, and allows him to focus on his game. We need to be as level-headed as possible when trading...trading with emotion is almost always detrimental. The same is true of bad calls from refs - get through it and get over it, it happens. It's easy to blame the market for being "unfair", blame the algos, blame HFT...accept it, and work around it.
• Randy also highlights an important aspect of the value of positive talk as opposed to negative talk - instead of saying things like "don't get taken down" use positive talk like "stay in his face" - the mind is a finicky thing, and small mental cues like this to refocus ourselves can make a world of difference
• Sam Sheridan also covers other elite athletes beyond pure fighters. The chapter on ultra-marathon runner David Horton is fascinating, and covers the mentality of athletes such as this who push themselves beyond what is believed feasible...sometimes even pushing through physical injury and running on, until the injury heals itself. We can learn valuable lessons in resilience as traders and pushing through dips and losing streaks with the right groundwork, mental attitude and coaching. Also, Horton stresses the value of hard work again, believing that overtraining is a myth. This is backed up in the trading world by Bella's teaching about constant learning, working, reviewing tape of your trades, putting in the time to be a winner
• From Kenny Florian we glean the value of coming back from two hard hitting, grinding losses, learning from these losses, and consistent and dedicated improvement. Another recurring theme, sometimes the rips will come when we trade, and sometimes we need pain and adversity to learn and correct our mistakes. The road to consistent profitability is not a short journey
• We also learn the value of intensity, and an intense approach to your craft from Kenny. When you step into the ring, it's life or death, kill or be killed. In the markets, you're often trading against smarter, better capitalized, better resourced competitors, trying to take your money, as Bella points out. You need to have the focus and intensity to compete on this level to win, but devoid of anger or other emotion
• Another incredibly illuminating chapter was Sam's discussion with chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin of Searching for Bobby Fischer fame. Josh is the author of the absolutely excellent The Art of Learning, and several over great resources. Josh is also a top competitor in Tai Chi, and now, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. If that's not an example of cross-discipline excellence, then I don't know what is. What I loved from this section of the book was Josh pointing out that great chess players, as well as great Jiu-Jistu fighters and Tai Chi practitioners, do not think ten moves ahead as we might suspect. Instead, they *know where to look* and they recognize patterns faster, thus giving the appearance of knowing what's coming next. This is critically important for traders - we recognize patters over and over, we do not predict markets. Knowing where to look, and recognizing patters faster positions us better for success
• Trainer Greg Jackson points out the value of learning to function under pain, stress and duress. Once you've been through it a few times, it becomes easier to think, react and adjust under such conditions if things are familiar and we've been there before. This is why trading time is key, because unsuspected surprises will come as us, and once we've learned to function under this pressure, our trading will improve
• Renzo Gracie talks about not quitting, about fighting through, in his case, even a dislocated shoulder, because he refused to tap. Once more, competitiveness, resilience and mental toughness are key, in fighting, as in trading

The book has so much more value than I can cover in these few points and this blog post, without making it an unruly posting. This book is essential reading for the professional development of *anybody* striving for elite performance in their field - most definitely applicable to fighters and athletes, but also very much so to business and trading. 

Read it, learn it, and up your game - I just did :)