Don’t Blink!

They’ll Never See It Coming

Many years ago, one of my favorite trainers told me one of his secrets to speed.  He was lightning fast and as accurate as anyone I had ever worked with in my many years in the fight game.  What he explained to me on this very day, would stay with me for the rest of my life.

After we had a sparring session one day, I found myself standing in the middle of the kickboxing center baffled at how one of my training partners found the strange angles and the punching lanes that he did.  He could hit you from across the ring in what felt like a split second.  I had already spent many, many years working on speed and accuracy due to the fact it was my only advantage…I was only weighing in at around 175 pounds, so it wasn’t like I was going to man handle anyone in the near future.  So, seeing as he was damn near super human and I was not a giant, I asked him his secret.

He proceeded to tell me something so simple that it shocked me.  “I simply wait for my opponents to blink!”  I said…”Pardon me, you actually wait for people to blink?  You have to be joking.  That’s impossible!”  He said, “It’s not impossible and it is my secret.”  I thought about this for a while and as literal as he thought he was being, I still called him crazy and went about my training session.  But knowing how frigging good this guy was, I tried to implement this strategy with my other sparring sessions outside of my time with him.  Ummmm…I am embarrassed to say that it actually worked.  Now…I am not stupid enough to have only thrown kicks and punches when someone was blinking, but I did seem to dial in and focus a lot more.  There was something to that strategy, mentally, that worked.  My game was transformed and I took my skills to another level from that point forward.

What I did learn from that moment stayed with me and as I started plugging the strategy into my business life, I started noticing “little victories”.  When it comes right down to it, you have to be agile and fast in the modern-day business world.  This is no secret.  But, to compete solely based on being the fastest will leave you exhausted.  So, slow it down sometimes and focus.  Focus on a different angle, a different approach or a surprise opportunity.  Waiting for them to blink…now that’s the secret.

They will never see it coming.