Hey, this is just something I've found made a remarkable improvement to my training over the past while and I figure it may be helpful to post about it, others may be able to benefit from it etc.
It began a couple years ago whilst I was on the way to the gym and was losing the will to live even thinking about the training cause I was so fatigued.
However, I was still keen to train cause I felt I had energy somewhere.
At that point, I was unable to step into the gym without pushing myself as hard as I could during training, that was just my mentality at the time.
What this meant was that, I would try and throw everything as hard as possible (during pad work, cardio etc), go as hard as possible.
During that very session, I was considering how I might improve my feeling and attitude toward what I was doing.
At that very point, we were doing sprint/interval training on the bad/pads.
Whilst I was hitting the pads and feeling the fatigue, I was thinking about my intensity.
The intensity that I was training with.
I was thinking, it was obviously too high and, that was obviously contributing to my fatigue.
I just thought to myself, "control it, control it", and the words "control intensity" just started repeating themselves in my mind.
This is no exaggeration.
Immediately my speed basically doubled.
I had eased off on the power ever so slightly, but my heart rate was normal, not excessive, and my speed, like I said, had basically doubled.
It was kind of funny actually but, I remember my coach at the time just starring at me like he couldn't believe this improvement that had come about, basically instantaneously.
Translated into sparring etc, I found I would rarely get tired, and if fatigue was approaching, I would basically gear myself in such a way as to not get burned out or lose breath.
"Control Your Intensity", simply consciously being aware of that made tremendous gains to my training and performance.
And most importantly and perhaps most remarkably, I lost my nerves.
I used to get, what I would say could be called "chronic" nerves before a fight.
For the most part, they went away with this awareness.
I believe the reason for this was because, my fear of becoming excessively tired also went away, given that I was now consciously aware of using my energy efficiently, done though "controlling my intensity".
This might sound a bit hocus-pocus nonsense kind of thing, but, for me personally, it lent itself to tremendous gains, not to mention a new found motivation and love for what I was doing, because it also allowed me to mitigate a lot of the negativity such as fatigue, burn out and excessive nerves.
Later on, I also began to focus more consciously on my Movement, which began to translate as much improved technique, form, and execution of strikes etc.
And after that, another conscious focus on Speed, as, whilst I wasn't aware of it myself, coaches would often say they felt if I could become faster, it would improve my effectiveness substantially.
Again, this mind sound bizarre, but for some time now, before training, I'll often write the initials for them words on my forearm, to make sure I'm consciously focused on them at all times.
1) Movement 2) Control Intensity 3) Speed
This awareness has really, as I said, helped me take what I'm doing to the next level, in terms of performance, progression, and enjoyment and love for what I'm doing.
I haven't seen him post here in a while but, there was a poster here before - Mark L - that was definitely an advocate of greater degrees of consciousness and awareness, and in relation to training, this has definitely paid huge dividends for me.