Choking against higher belts/ people with more experience.*

I haven't*trained in a while, but for some reason this topic has come to mind recently.*

I've noticed throughout my martial arts career that I will give too much respect to people of a higher belt or someone with more experience, by that I mean I will tense up, play very defensively and I guess just not perform to the best of my ability.

For example a couple of years ago I was training exclusively in boxing and kick boxing. *I sparred with this one guy a couple of times, it was usually back and forth and although he always got the best of me I still got a few shots in, and overall did the best I could. Then as I got to know him more I found out that he had been training for more years than i had and had experience in other striking arts etc. So next sparring session comes around and it's like subconsciously I was thinking "this guy has much more experience than me, I better be careful." which resulted in me tensing up, rarely being offensive and pretty much just getting tuned up.*

As I look back over my martial arts career this seems like reoccurring trend. I wonder if any of you have dealt with this and if so what have you done to overcome it?

This has happend to me alot, i've rolled against someone thinking they had about as much time or less than me in jitsu, and had basically an even match with them edging out position over and over, then foundout they were a purple belt and the next rolls wit h them got subbed 800 times and sempt like I coudlnt dictate position at all...

The same applies for just how you feel, theres been days where ive said in my head "i feel like I can beat anyone' and days where going against someone lighter with less skill than me said to myself 'i feel like this match will go unwell' and the results tend to be similar to the line of thought.

When going up against people a similar rank but having more time training than me, I found myself losing this mental battle, then I realized alot of those people had been going longer to me, but im going to 3x as many classes a week they are, so overall i've actually got more mat time then they, and suddenly I started performing against those people like crazy.

I think a big aspect is against a perceived more skilled opponent, you are much more conservative about taking risks, potentially to a fault. Also, its easier for a skilled opponent to break your will early on and discourage you the rest of the match...

Good to see I'm no the only one!

I definitely agree that I'm much more conservative and even afraid to take chances with higher bets.

I think at some point or another what you described above happens to everyone. Have the attitude that the guy is good but you have the tools necessary to defeat him, even if you don't. Then have an idea of how to tap him or where you want to take him to tap him, focus on that. Then when rolling make sure that your breathing and think attack, attack, attack. Also don't be afraid of loosing or getting tapped out because it's part of the game.