By Dean Parr

ABAE boxing coach and official Davey Newth will be holding a somewhat unique event at his gym on 27th of February. He caught up with BoxingScene.com to tell all about this.

"On the 27th February, the Game for Life Boxing Academy (in Newcastle-upon-Tyne) will be staging an all-day seminar/workshop for boxers and coaches entitled 'The Mental Edge'," Davey revealed. "The seminar is to be delivered by Michael Darbyshire, a.k.a 'The Sports Mind Coach'.

"This will be a ground breaking seminar as it will introduce a wide audience to the NLP, hypnosis and sports psychology techniques employed by Michael to prepare a boxer's (or martial artist's) mind for combat. Michael specialises in, and has built a reputation in smoking cessation, weight management, stress management and increasingly sports performance."

He continued, "During this seminar, he will be covering such topics as goal setting, how to enter the zone at will, confidence techniques, how the mind works in combative situation, how to remove past defeats completely from your mind, how our internal language affects our performance and visualisation for sport. This is amazing stuff and to my knowledge has never been made available to athletes and coaches of all levels for about the price of a decent pair of hand wraps, and a buffet is included!"

Some readers may be wondering at this point the relevance of this mind coaching to boxing. Newth explained, "My experience is mainly with amateur boxers as both a coach and an official. Spending so much time in the gym and at shows talking to boxers and coaches, it never ceases to amaze me how much effort the boxers and coaches will go to ensure the boxer is at their physical peak, yet neglect and even ignore mental preparation.

"The mental aspects are often mentioned but usually in negative terms. For example, 'the lad cocked,' 'he has no bottle,' 'he leaves his mind in the gym' and so on are common phrases, but there is little or no attempt to discover the causes or to address them.

"If a youngster turns up in the gym overweight, the coach understands the problem and is usually confident in putting together a program that results in weight loss. Similarly if there is an issue with technique the coach and boxer wil spend hours sorting out the problem. If however the problem is psychological, the coach and the boxer are often outside their comfort zone and the result is a shrug of the shoulders and a 'that's life' comment. It doesn't have to be like that. Other sports and champions have embraced mind coaches like Michael, now it's boxing’s time."

Still convinced it's 'mumbo-jumbo'? Davey carried on, "I guess some people will think that and I will respect their right to hold that view. I know one thing though; all my senior boxers will be attending the seminar. The way I look at it is, if there is a chance that just one thing that is said or done on the 27th will help me reach my potential as a coach or helps one of my boxers tap into an as yet undiscovered reserve, or even just makes them better able to follow their path in life, it would be almost criminal to dismiss it without investigation.

"I have had the privilege of working with some great coaches in the Tyne Tees and Wear association and have picked up some great training ideas from them, and you know what, some of them seemed crazy at first glance. Yet after trialling and investigating them they have become real gems. Rather than doing things simply because that's the way things have always been done, it's infinitely more exciting and potentially more rewarding to open up the mind and investigate new ideas."

Davey also pointed out how a weak mind can/has been exposed in the sport. "There are countless examples of boxers, both amateur and pro quitting the game directly or indirectly through mental indiscipline. Additionally, there are those boxers that cause regular debate and head scratching when the failure of them to reach their potential is discussed. What is more common and more disturbing is the number of boxers whose lives seem to spiral out of control when they hang up their gloves (sometimes after two or three bouts too many)! I won't name names, I don't think that is right and I really don't think it is really necessary; I also think that list would fill a large volume on its own.

"In terms of boxers who have benefited from mind coaching, my own experience is in its infancy within my own gym, however I am aware that many professionals in Europe and in the US employ the services of mind coaches (of one form or other).

"The one high profile use of a hypnotist by a boxer was when Steve Collins beat Chris Eubank for the WBO Super Middleweight title in 1996. Some of Collins' success in this bout was attributed to the hypnosis administered by Dr Tony Quinn. This is just one example, the true extent in boxing cannot be reliably calculated as practitioners like Michael have a strong ethic of confidentiality with regard to their one-on-one work with clients."

Michael Darbyshire, the Sports Mind Coach taking this seminar, was also available for comment. He attempted to explain the more scientific aspect of his work. "NLP is short for 'Neuro Linguistic Programming,'" he opened. "It was derived from hypnosis and other language systems that were found to change people for the better and create states that a person's life.

"Put simply, NLP is a user manual for the brain," he expanded. "If you think of your brain as a blank computer, the data or stimuli is created through our five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. These senses create our reality, so now we know how we create our reality, we can now create better realities or states.

"The way I help fighters is to remove past losses and failures from their computer or mind, and this helps them create a clean hard drive. Then I take them back to successes they have experienced and wash those feelings over the old feelings by using simple mind techniques. This, mixed with breathing techniques, visualisation for focus, goal setting, sports hypnosis that builds positive language in your subconscious mind and psyching out techniques using body language and internal states massively help the fighter.

"Sports Hypnosis has been used with boxers including Steve Foster, Nigel Benn, Ken Norton and Ali. NLP is not really known yet for boxers (although I'm working on it) but it is being used with MMA fighters in the States."

So if you're a boxer or trainer local to Newcastle, or just a curious fan, why not check this seminar out. Davey finished up by giving all the details on how to attend. "If anyone one wants to attend the seminar/workshop, they can contact me in any of these three ways: daveynewth@btinternet.com , tel: 07535063450 or by joining the 'Game for Life Boxing Academy' group on Facebook. The cost of the seminar is a mere £5, including a lunch buffet."