I think trying to 'beat' another human being will keep us out of the zone. I think doing our thing and being the best fighter we can be aloows us to slip into a zone more easily. Letting go of the out come. Letting go of the fact he isn't that good or is way better. Just being what you train to be with interuption and disruption of thoughts of future or past (winning is in the future and the fear of loosing is from your past). With the right mind set there is no loosing anyway. That is only perception.

Mental prep and training to fight. Not training to try harder and getting more and more physical and less and less creative and intuative. Balance and flow. Blending of the hard and soft...letting the body perform instead of trying to force a performance. Allowing intuition and instinct to guide training into the place you wish to be instead of being totally left brained, stressed out and angry (to cover fear) and worrying about something in the future because of your past programming.

Too out there? LOL

being humble will help too IMO

mentally prepare and train for, how you want to fight.

Do you want to close down everything except forcing your muscles on and on and on? Do you want to flow and perform? Do you want to force it out with all your might or do you want to allow it all to come togather with balanced beauty, blending the physical with the mental and emotional and essentially spiritual (depending on your interpretation). In other words allowing all of you to blend by letting go. Holding tight keeps us very left brained and physical and with out balace you can't move fluidly and you tire out fast!