Sajam Reads Domination 101 pt. 3 | "Mental Toughness" 

Sajam, could curse less in your youtube videos? I'm 14 and my mom keeps beating me in dragon ball fighterz because she hears all the advice tips.

instead of saying "i didn't deserve that win" say "we take those" and dab on em

The "10+ stress-filled hours" bit is no joke. Pro-level chess players pack on weight before tournaments because they expect to lose 10-15 pounds over the course of a weekend. Your heart rate is elevated for an extremely long time, and you will literally and physically burn out if you go full-tilt the whole time and don't have the endurance or don't manage it in some other way..

Me trying not to have a second piece of cake after dinner: “I am a battle-hardened TOURNAMENT competitor.”

My first ever tourney match in SFV (my first fighting game) was SnakeEyes. Got dunked hard. Went 1-2. Next tourney, got lucky on my bracket and went 4-2 before getting bopped by K-Money. The moral: just enjoy the bracket you get and don’t stress out too much

The one dislike lost a match to a Brazilian ken

This is kind of wild, because while I love fighting games, I’ve never really been to a tournament, but everything he’s talking about mirrors my experience when it comes to tournaments in martial arts. A lot of the mental game and mental toughness is very much the same. It’s kind of wild the crossover you can get from two things, most are willing to decry as totally different.

The "tournaments are tailor made to fatigue you" is so real though. My last tournament experience was just brutal. I went there with a vengeance, there was a Feng player who beat me during the last tourney and I was determined to destroy him like the scrub he was and there was the player who was considered the best in our country who I was determined to play against in tournament if only to gauge my own growth on a giant like him. It was the 3rd event I had attended to I had already experienced a lot of the common tournament-noob pitfalls so I was reasonably prepared, both physically and mentally, but nothing could have prepared me for the hell I was walking into. So strap in, it's story time. There was a technical issue with the event so the line got delayed for a grueling 2 hours. 2 hours we had to just stand there, inching forward as they allowed a few people at a time in a line that had almost 200 people in it. Then after getting in, salvation was nowhere to be seen, organizers fucked up didn't reserve enough chairs for the event so almost all of us had to stand around in between matches or sit on the cold hard floor like animals. There were no snacks either, only food source was a pricey food bar where I couldn't even eat in since I'm a vegetarian and they only sold meat. So I was effectively forced to stand and subsist on bottled water and some Ferrero Rochers a friend happened to have of him for about 9~10 hours in a massively crowded venue where you had to squeeze past people to move around. But the fire in me refused to waver. I crushed fools under my boot like an ettin trampling over a village. But pile up enough ants and you make an anthill. By the time I got to winners semi finals I started to crack. All the standing around, the lack of food, the chasing around my tournament newbie friends to get their matches on camera (a luxury I didn't enjoy my first 2 times), and having to face 3 Leo players back to back (a match up I struggled a lot in). I could feel it in me... I was running out of steam and running out fast. But still I was determined. Yet once again, disaster struck. A get a text from an ex pro-player friend. He warns me about my next opponent, tells me he's a Draggunov main and that he's no slouch. But I thought to myself "Dragunov? Easy clap, I know this match up I'm an ex-Dragunov main." We sit down for the match and this dude locks in Kazumi. Welp, GG I guess. If I struggled against Leo, Kazumi was a match up I'd almost never manage to win if the opponent was even remotely good. And here I was going up against a player good enough that my senior feels compelled to contact me just to warn me about him AND my execution and decision making has gone down the shitter? This won't be pretty. And pretty it wasn't. Total domination. "I'm still in this, just got knocked down to losers hopefully I can find somewhere to sit and relax, maybe I can go the food bar and find som...", "BroccoMan set-up #3" says the organizer. Couldn't even recover from the brutal ass-whooping I experienced and I already gotta fight my next opponent, just my luck. We sit down and this guy is THE SCRUBBIEST Claudio player I'd ever seen, it was a miracle this jebroni even got this far. But alas I couldn't muster the strength to strike him down. Worst part was, it was a close double Luigi match. "There I was playing like total garbage and somehow he barely managed to beat me? Christ if I wasn't running on fumes I would've squashed him like a bug." I thought to myself. Furious, tired, hungry, but most of all, disappointed I leave the venue not having met any of the goals I had set out for myself. The bad taste in my mouth that was left after losing to a Kazumi player that though tough was ultimately a beatable opponent and a pathetic Claudio player, all for reasons totally out of my control, was unspeakable. Never has 11:00 pm taco bell tasted so sour.

For years I struggled with this, in any fighting game. the endurance in the fighting game tournament is crazy. not sure how to work out on how to progress in a mentally in a fighting game. how to stay mentally fit for a long term, whether I win or lose.

2:30 this is me when i fail to whiff punish and get keepout-ed by the opponent for recklessly trying to show him i can do electrics lmao

"it's being able to grit your teeth and come back from what seems like and insurmountable lead" as soon as I heard this I could hear Justin Wong being screamed while his cyclops comeback played in my head

You see this a lot in LoL, players who have decent mechanics yet can't go beyond Gold cuz they have no clue what to do after the laning phase ends, or they dunno what to do if the other laner itemizes a certain way, etc. Mechanics can only take you so far if they aint coupled with game knowledge.

Diego Umehuarez really got me, I know it shouldn't have but it did!

just got done reading scrub quotes. Dear god these people are.....just so ignorant. Also the thing that made me the most upset was the guy saying "ur born in 94 and ur STILL playing video games?" As though there is an age at which it becomes unseemly to play video games. Also 94'??? The guy thinks 26 is the cut off? Shit I'm 32 and still going strong.

That last one liner at the end caught me off guard I almost fell from the chair Good stuff Sajam

I'll never forget fighting a scrub in rivals of aether. I had him in a situation and he rolled in, not the worst idea but not good either. So I punished him for it, and he rolled in again. I punished him the same way and he rolled in again. I'll never forget that feeling of "wow you do not care that I have you read so easily, or you have no idea." It's nice to hear more about how others have interacted with them. Thanks for this series Sajam.

Mishimas literally cannot resist doing rando electrics from full screen after a d2 comes out. They HAVE to show you they can do it, no matter how many times they've done it earlier.

That was a surprisingly kind Domination 101 article

This is where we employ the classic asian trick, sneaking food into the venue using your girlfriend’s purse

Important factor in tournament: Luck is a skill. It sounds contradictory, but people who are lucky keep getting lucky because they're able to play to their outs. As long as you keep going, you give your opponent a chance to drop their combo or mash out a bad DP.

The problem is that spectators and viewers LOVE barratives but players have to actively fight against creating narratives in their head. Any prospective opponent is just another player who will implement some strategy. All that matters is what happens in the match you play.

I play a bit of fighting games but a LOT of League and his bit on not getting caught up in mistakes hits me too hard. It's a bit more justified in league, where losing a fight early makes farming and fighting much harder down the line, but I always fall prey to getting tilted when I die because I missed a skill or misclick. I always feel like an idiot which just makes things worse. What REALLY sucks is that I've already established that I do this, so even if I fix it my friends are pretty unlikely to invite me to a game, which is what I really care about over actually climbing.

I used to eat anything I wanted when I woke up right before a tourney. That stopped after getting diarrhea from eating Chili and Beans haha before a GP magic Tourney. I was playing a control deck with a combo finish that day and every round went to time. So after ever round I had to rush to the bathroom and shit and run back to play the next round. One of the worst experience of my life. So now I eat something healthy or small like some fruit or nuts and drink a lot of water instead.

I psyched myself out at CEO this past year. I had to play against Speedkicks. I did well but still lost. Despite the loss I know I could've played better regardless if I hadn't been thinking so much about who my opponent was despite them being a Gawd! There just a person at the end of the day and a really good one at that :) you have to consider it an honor that you get to have the experience and keep moving forward to avoid getting hung up. But of course, with nerves, thats easier said than done.

This article is timeless. All the advice is as true now as it ever was! Thanks for sharing it with your commentary Sajam.

in regards to running into strong players in your pool bracket- if it's your first tournament you're almost guaranteed to be matched against top players because of how seeding works. it's like an early game boss fight you're meant to lose only to come back later and measure your growth lol

1:50 - Another reason why people should practice Intermittent fasting, fast for 16+ hours and you will reach peak alertness.

"You're gonna get called a scrub" I mean, it fits I guess. In the sense that outside of DoA I'm absolutely horrendous at fighting games. EDIT: Also, the "hard part of games isn't the combos"? Goddamn, if that is the easy part that I can't even do then what will the hard part be like?!

8:40 I will always love the age old tradition of butchering Dagio's name.

This is overall good dad advice taken out of the context of fighting games. Just handling the challenges of life. Tough love, don't be a scrub

Just getting into fighting games, have picked up Granblue due to its fairly simple system with minimal execution for specials. Saying that new players learn it wrong is interesting to me, because those two issues feel like they build ontop of each other and just make each other worse. For example, it is hard to figure out when and how to punish when your new, you don't know whats not safe on block, and without any sort of 'combo' to do afterwards even if you guess right you end up doing a single jab. I dont know what you'd recomend to learn the techincal side with bad execution and would like to hear peoples thoughts. I do however understand that execution is purely practice, which is why I assume people look at that first.

I'm going to be honest: it's easy to mock scrubs for being cocky at home and scared in a tournament... but that's not the point of the article: that's ALL of us. The difference is whether you see that as an excuse for losing or something to take on and try and deal with in various ways. I legitimately got better at Blazblue by working on my BREATHING in some matchups, because vs. a really good unga player (yes, you can be unga and really fucking good at the same time) I legitimately have so much adrenaline and excitement rushing through me that I become predictable and can't land combos I could mere moments before. Focusing on the physical stuff is such a simple concept but actually so important, more so the faster the game is. Add on a competitive environment with many high intensity matches back to back against better players EVERY TIME and fortitude becomes a 'stat' you really do have to start speccing into. I'll freely admit that almost all my tournament matches I've lost were 'due' to failures in mental/physical toughness, but that's not an excuse: it simply means the other player had better mental/physcial toughness than me at that point. Over the years I've worked hard tot try and stay calm and consistently perform, and I've been seeing gradual improvement. If you never try and improve these, you're basically me from 4 years ago: doomed to fail at the start line.

Maaan I wish i played fighting games as a teenager instead of guitar hero. Mental toughness is a skill I know I have, as I used to play *better* at guitar hero tournaments on average than practicing at home. Regularly set personal bests for myself, hit sections that i could barely ever hit at home. High stakes situations put me in the *zone.* I beat lots of players that were objectively better than me on the scorehero forums. But, guitar hero wasn't like fighting games. Not a lot in the way of decision making, not a lot of ways to assert your dominance or express yourself through gameplay. You werent playing a 1v1, you were both trying to play better solitaire. I feel like I'd just be so much more happy with my teenage gaming "career" if I had been a FGC member instead. Fighting games are just so much more interesting. Maybe I'd have gotten crushed, maybe I wouldn't have been a top 50 player like I was at guitar hero. But it woulda been rewarding af

At wrestling tournaments waiting for your match when you knew it was coming soon was the worst feeling. I would honestly be jealous of my friends that lost and were already out just watching and joking around.

the point, that if autopilot works you shouldn't change it, how come one wouldn't get too used to it and just try that stuff against good players too? since obviously everyone gets tired and autopilot is the most reachable thing and a tired player most likely won't be able calculate and stuff, so might as well play strongest even against weak players to exercise one's consistency?

Thank you Sajam

It'd kinda be an honour to get bodied by Daigo, and if he won the tournament, I could say that I helped by not causing mental fatigue for him.

i can confirm it takes a lot more than just strategy and execution to get muted in Sajams chat. it takes wit, irreverence and a tiny bit of salt

I have done the "prove myself" bad option so many times that I've lost count

Diego Umejuarez is going to be my new tournament handle

I'm so guilty of some of this, yet I agree with all of it. It's hard to practice what I preach and I'm not sure why. This is my favourite reading yet, probably because it pertains to me more than the other 2

Best advice @11:38 play the character you know how to play. At the end of the day, if you know the counter pick but haven’t touched that character in months; REALLY consider your muscle memory, your combo strings, your ranges, YOUR HABITS! I can’t stand seeing people comment about picking the counter, then only to see execution errors abound. Play the character you enjoy, play who you know how to play. Period.

Why is he scared to eat on a tournament? Is food worsen reaction?

Not going to lie... from 6:03 and forward.. im guilty.. I have played over 20yrs of different fighting games.. BUT never ever did I stay longer then 1yr on different game (most was Anime games).. I never took time to learn footsy or other good stuff to learn.. it around 2yrs ago when I joined my local and THEN I saw the true spirit of Fighting games (This case SF5 and T7)... So had to "re-learn" myself and now Im more then proud to say im still a scrub but A scrub with knowledge about some stuff :D

this shit seems like good advice for life

This is so fucking informative

lol Diego Umejuarez

I absolutely love reading these old articles. They are so good

"Unless your opponent shows signs they can think, don't assume they can think." (repeats that three times) I really need to get that ingrained, 'cause I definitely play a bit too fluidly and start assuming my opponent's adapting or going to see through. Trying to play chess when my opponent's playing checkers...

the thing about having mental strength tournies is really true, like the first thing you instinctively want to do is to find a comfort zone and being attentive, because the last thing you want is getting your heart pounding really hard and then essentially being blind to what felt like the "obvious", and it's not a set you can just keep playing, its two or three matches to win, or you get out and pack your bags. That's straight up so much pressure.

It’s not like I’m defending my reputation, I just try to quickly input again hoping the second one will hit and remedy my mistake instantly.

This to an extent applies to online matches as well. If a player sees some one ranked higher than himself or if the player uses a lower tier character, it's not unusual to already think about the loss and he just wants to get it over with. You ain't gonna win matches with that mentality nor rank up or get better.

God this one hits so close to home it's not even funny Great series of articles

I like to think I'm pretty dang good at bbtag but man, when I get blown up cause a guy is using lag to his advantage or he is just straight up better then me, it frustrates me to no end and it does take awhile for me to calm down, but I always throw the gg at them

Sometimes I wonder why I watch the whole thing when the gold is always in the last 15-20 seconds.

I am a scrub getting better though. Much more to learn.

How does it feel to have 66.9 k subs? Let's get this guy to 69.6

Even as a spectator, tournaments are quite tiresome to me. I admire those players that can stay there playing all day long.

Do not give your opponent any more respect than he has shown you they deserve

I deal with the stress of tournaments and pro play by not being good enough to do either

I'm a huge fan of Diego Umejuarez

thank god sajam and I agree on swearing

Sajam, Run the Set in Fantasy Strike.

I've been loving these videos

Mike Ross

Love this series and that ending 😂

0:49 *Dragon silently crying in the corner*

Loving this series. I'm still scrubbish, but it's interesting sitting here like "oh yeah, I do that"

You're talking about game sense lol