Carlos Ulberg has won his last two fights by first-round knockout. He returns to the UFC octagon this weekend. Photo / Getty Images
Carlos Ulberg has won his last two fights by first-round knockout. He returns to the UFC octagon this weekend. Photo / Getty Images
Carlos Ulberg knows the mind is a powerful tool.
About four weeks out from a fight, the Kiwi UFC light heavyweight contender undergoes a mental shift, with his moniker of ‘the Black Jag’ becoming more than a nickname. Gone is his usual jovial, conversational presence and in its place is a more reserved persona with tunnel vision looking towards the task at hand.
“That’s where the Black Jag comes in,” Ulberg explains.
“I feel like you need to have an alter ego so that you’re not taking over your personal life. I’m a fighter, but when I go home I’m a father to my sons and I’m a family man. So, to try to break that up you have to have some sort of alter ego where you separate that.
“A time I’ve found for myself lately to bring that in is three or four weeks out from my fight so that I don’t put too much into my alter ego and so I don’t become my alter ego.”
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Being able to tap into that mindset is an important part of the fight for Ulberg. For a mixed martial artist, their job isn’t simply the 15 or 25 minutes in which they are scheduled to fight for, but the months of training and weight management that goes into a fight camp as well.
For some, at a certain point — four weeks out from fight night for Ulberg — a switch flicks and the alter ego takes over. From that moment on, he explains, there is only one thing on his mind. Right now, that target is his bout against Ihor Potieria on Sunday morning in North Carolina.
“You have to switch off from the natural world that you are living in; you’re not so inviting to conversations because in your mind you’re just thinking about the kill,” Ulberg says.
“You’re thinking about getting the win; you’re tapping into that warrior instinct in you and you’re trying to go back into your ancestry and all that sort of thing — if you want to go deep.
“It’s not always easy to go into that alter ego, because you have to be the mean you; you have to be the not-so-nice person.”
It’s a concept that many fighters have been able to tap into over the years. Ulberg’s City Kickboxing teammate Israel Adesanya has spoken able becoming ‘the Last Stylebender’ as he gets closer to a fight; a transformation that his dietitian Jordan Sullivan says happens at the same point in every fight camp.
In a breakdown of his recent knockout win over Alex Pereira on his Youtube channel ‘Free Stylebender’, Adesanya alluded to that when watching himself during his pre-fight introduction, saying: “There he is. I know this guy. Every time I see him I’m just like ‘yes’ because I don’t see him often ... from my first UFC fight I remember looking at my eyes like ‘oh, I know that guy’.”
UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya taps into his Stylebender alter ego ahead of his bouts. Photo / Getty Images
It’s a shift in mindset that an individual gets better at making over time. Ulberg says it can take a trial-and-error process to find when the right time is to flick that switch during fight camp and it will be different depending on the fighter.
The idea of athletes being able to unlock their alter ego isn’t one that is limited to combat sports, however the application requirements for athletes depend on the demands of their sport.
Leading mental performance coach David Niethe has worked with many of the country’s top athletes including Adesanya and former world No 1 golfer Lydia Ko, as well as athletes abroad. He says it is something that can be unlocked as attention and intention align, but, while some athletes can find how and when to flick that switch very quickly, others may never fully find a way to tap into it.
It’s something Niethe himself is very familiar with, tapping into his own alter ego during his days as a strongman competitor.
“When you become an alter ego, the probability of doubt is diminished because you become more than all your parts,” Niethe says.
“When you have that sense of confidence, to a certain point we fake it ‘til we make it. You could take Carlos, who’s a very confident guy, or you could take Carlos plus the Jaguar.”
It’s a mindset that takes an understanding of the athlete’s sport to be able to develop, as well.
For a combat sports athlete, they need to be switched on as soon as they step into the ring or cage as the person standing across from them is going to try to hurt them from the outset.
The demands of those athletes are different to those of a marathon runner, for example, who may not need to tap into that mindset from the start of their race, but will reach a point during the 42km where their body hits a wall and they have to override that.
“To a certain point, it’s a learned behaviour. You learn to adapt over a period of time, you get more conditioned to it and you have that frame of reference where you’re aware of what you need to be doing,” Niethe says.
“If you’re getting ready for something significant that you’ve put a lot of time and effort into, by requirement you need to focus. It’s almost part of our biology. Human beings are very much foveal with our focus ... we like to focus and have goal orientation, so by requirement as you become more focused, as we shut down and focus on a particular goal.
“You need to be more selfish and say no to other shit because fundamentally we can only focus on one thing at a time and it needs our attention. Intention and attention align, we focus on a goal, how do I then look at what I want from that goal? What are the things that in a sensory sense help me put forward the best version of me?
“We go back to Israel. Israel goes through the transformation into the Stylebender. Which of the two would you choose to fight — Israel or Stylebender?”
