Is the Gemini Mind Interfering with Your Athletic Performance?

In the MMA, like any other action sport, one needs to be able to control thought patterns in order to have complete focus on the game. Obtaining elite athletic performance takes more than dedication to the sport, hours of training, and study of the craft of fighting. It takes the ability to clear one’s mind of negative thought patterns that would interfere with performance, the ability to react, and the ability to control the outcome of the emotional, physical, and mental aspects of the fight.

The Gemini Mind can interfere with your best intentions and your drive to succeed. If you've hit a roadblock with your training and athletic performance, it could be possible you have a Gemini Mind.

Every sport has an emotional and mental aspect to performance because we are all part of the human race. We think and feel every moment of the day, even during those key moments when the game is on. The key is to be able to make everything work in synergy in order to be able to rise to the moment when it counts the most. This is the mental game of all sports.

There are many people who claim they have the key to the mental game of any sport. Usually, their programs involve the repeating of positive statements. They claim that constantly repeating these statements to oneself will enable one to achieve their desired outcome.

This is ineffective because it is taking a one-dimensional solution and applying it to multidimensional issues. It is akin to painting only the front side of a house when the entire house needs a coat of paint.

We are all a collection of emotions, thoughts, and past experiences. Ideally, we all have mostly positive life experiences and parents or guardians who have the capability to teach us how to constructively and productively sort through life and cope with negative experience.

However, this isn’t usually the case. Athletes are no less vulnerable to the lessons life has to offer or the negative experiences one can live through. Moreover, these experiences can interfere with athletic performance and in many cases, prevent athletes from fully realizing their dream of achieving athletic greatness. It creates a mental state that can interfere with athletic performance called the Gemini Mind.

In my professional experience, the one thing that usually hampers athletic performance is the Gemini Mind. The Gemini Mind is my concept I have developed over the last 25 years of working with athletes from all different sports and watching their mental game break down at the wrong moment. This concept is my way of describing when the inner workings of a person’s thought patterns, the conscious and subconscious, work against each other and create anxiety, mental conflict, and a host of other problems, hampering an athlete’s individual performance, inner peace, and happiness in life in general.

Each person mentally has a conversation going on inside one’s head every day. The athletes who achieve greatness over and over, the ones who are most focused, the ones who are able to perform consistently with each fight are the ones who have both components of the mind, the conscious and subconscious, working together as a united team. I have spent the last 25 years successfully helping athletes resolve the mental chatter and anxiety occurring with mental conflict, negative thought patterns, negative emotions and attitudes, unhappiness and lack of fulfillment, and self-defeating behaviors, resultant of the negative affects of the Gemini Mind.

A fighter can train for months and be in peak physical shape, but not many fighters realize that they can still enter the ring and still be weak in one of the most important aspects of their fight, the mental game. All the training on moves and counter moves, speed, agility, boxing, and kicks can all unravel in a split second if the wrong mindset is in place.

The most important weapon fighters have in their arsenal is the mind, yet it is almost always neglected in training.

Thinking you are mentally tough is not the same as controlling your mental game. For example, I was working with one fighter who stated his coach told him he was ready and no one could get in on his defenses. First round he did very well. Second round he got rocked and his whole game plan fell apart. From that point on, his mind shut down, he lost all his training, and was in recovery mode until he tapped out. After the match I spoke with him. He said that one of his corner men said it was a lucky shot. Those two words, “lucky shot”, was all his mind needed to hear, and he automatically thought, “a lucky shot got through my defenses and eight weeks of training went out the window”. His mind no longer believed he could win and he gave up.

He was experiencing the Gemini Mind. He was so built up from eight weeks of training and hearing that he was invincible, his conscious mind believed it, but once he was hit his subconscious mind took over and shut down any game plan and gave up.

As it turns out, this particular fighter has a history of a parental physical abuse. It is a good example of how emotions and thoughts can work against a fighter, and fighters, more than any sport, can be pushed to the wall.

When that moment happens, fighters need to be able to clear their minds and react, not from a subconscious script that conflicts with the fighter’s desire to win, which is what the Gemini Mind does. Fighters need to increase their awareness of how their present issues are affecting them so they can work with united mind towards victory.

It doesn’t do a fighter any good to fight him or herself in the ring. Those issues need to be worked out before entering the ring. Rather than fighting against your own inner conflicts, you can instead fight the person you are with in the ring.

Whether someone is telling you how great you are, or if you are telling yourself how great you are and how you will crush your opponent, you might actually believe this, and it may even be true. It is important to believe this.

However, it is equally important to acknowledge the unseen world of the Gemini Mind and to work out those inner demons, anything that can be interfering with your dream to win a title. By not relieving any negative aspects of your past, they could come back at you in the middle of the ring, cause great distress in training camp, and completely ruin a comeback. Relieving the Gemini Mind is the most important training one can do to obtain championship title.

• The Gemini Mind, a term coined by Dr. John O'Connor, is a concept that describes the struggle between your conscious mind, which often wants very much to achieve dreams and succeed, and your subconscious mind's unproductive programming.
• This programming can sabotage your efforts to achieve your athletic dreams.
• The way to unify your mind is to gain the help of a professional who knows how to work with the subconscious.
• Dealing with your inner conflict and resolving it will help you achieve your dreams.