Achieving competition goals is commonly hindered by stereotypes and poor support. The media provides a standard view of the ‘proper’ athlete and promotes a very specific build and personality type. Anyone who diverges even the slightest from that image—slightly shorter, slightly slimmer, slightly less extroverted, etc.—is left without adequate support in their athletic endeavour. Even those born with the stereotypical attributes are also often left without support, being told they just need to ‘push it’ as they ‘have it’.
It’s very rare, however, that one’s physical attributes and mental design meet in a lucky constellation, bringing together an athlete without the need for backing.
In reality, support makes a champion from various body and personality types. Without adequate support, the noise and the crowd a fighter must navigate through toward the championship is crippling.
When it comes to physical preparation, training advice abounds, with different levels of maturity and depth. However, conversely, the field of mental preparation is in a state of complete cluelessness, lacking training protocols and making most practitioners rely on mid-century advice and short pep talks from the media, with no strategy in hand to build their cardinal mental skills.
Why is it like this?
I believe there are two underlying reasons for the current state of things:
- A well-known, unresolved gap exists between the research materials that could feed the general knowledge and the need for simplicity in real-life applications. Mainly because, by necessity, scholarly papers use official terms that can’t account for the cultural associations, often causing misinterpretation and lack of adoption.
- The deep self-improvement motivation behind training in martial arts hasn’t been recognised as an attempt at self-care; instead, it is commonly judged superficially as a desire to fight. However, most fighters train to get stronger in their character and healthier in their physical being. The lack of realisation that training is a self-development journey—a form of unofficial therapeutic means—comes with great negligence for setting standards and offering reliable guidance.
It can be improved
There is a great need for reliable support for mental preparation. To achieve that, we aim to dig out and translate relevant academic knowledge and turn it into actionable protocols. Where we can’t find relevant literature, we create the study opportunity and build the theoretical model as a base for pragmatic and adaptable guidance.
I also found it essential to promote the self-development aspect of martial arts, as individuals with high assertiveness very commonly choose this path over official therapeutic methods. For them, finding support in traditional mental health setups is significantly more challenging.
This is partially because vulnerability is incorrectly associated with weakness, stigmatising those seeking support, and partially because the natural response to an assertive character, even from a healthcare worker, is that they should not ask for support as they seem to be strong enough to cope. This leaves highly assertive people no other choice than to look for non-official support channels, like martial arts clubs.
Professional and evidence-based
The articles on our website are written by seasoned experts who possess a fine blend of life experience and education in their respective areas. They are compensated for sharing their expertise with our readers, as we never ask a professional to work for free.
We don’t publish clickbait articles, marketing pieces, business-political arguments, or parrot articles repeating the same cliches found in search engines. We only publish when we have something to say and have the experts available who will say it right.
Strictly actionable
To make the materials useful, we avoid going down the rabbit hole of discussing the theoretical background of each piece. Efficient practices require clean, noise-free guidance specifically focused on the area to improve. For that reason, the modules and chapters are concise and practical, and clear language is used.
Who is working on ‘What Is Truth?’
The founding board began with me, Ydus, counsellor and author, active in life sciences for 15 years, progressing from molecular studies toward the psychology of well-being. My martial arts journey started about 20 years ago, and is still ongoing in an in-and-out manner.
I’ve been competing since I was seven. However, visiting a grappling competition as a spectator for the first time showed me something new. I saw the rare transition from mental battles to physical battles without all the sugar-coating of everyday life. I saw brains fighting and bodies following.
My first studies of this phenomenon grew into the seven-chapter mental preparation series and led to my research for a tournament preparation model. Today with the regular authors and contributors of the site, we’re continuously working toward providing the missing support for sustainable and successful training to help fighters reach their competition goals.
How to get involved
We’re constantly looking for high-quality materials to adopt, and we are eager to invite established professionals to share knowledge and collaborate with us. As a part of the vision, we warmly welcome club owners and lead coaches who resonate with our mission and have the capacity to team up for the development of highly effective class structures. Please kickstart the conversation at press@whatistruth.life.
We’re also open to discussing investment options with those who see great value in our objectives.
To be notified of future posts and updates, please join the conversations on Quora. If you’re interested in covering our story, there is a selection of assets available in our press room.
