Shadowing Practice: How To Break Fear - Jon Jones - Learn English Speaking with Video

Choose a practice mode

Each mode opens a full-screen practice room.

108 sentences

If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.

But I just feel it in my whole being that I'm the best fighter on the planet.

Now my job is just to prove it.

Jon Jones is the baddest man on the planet, and the current heavyweight champion of the world.

You would think someone like that doesn't fear anything, but as it turns out, even Jon experiences fear.

In this video, he will explain to you how to break free from the reign of this fear, and use it in an empowering way.

You've been saying something that I find to be very interesting, that the butterflies in your stomach are in formation.

I've never heard that before.

I think it makes a lot of sense.

What do you mean by that?

Elaborate.

What do I mean by that?

Okay, so the butterfly is in formation.

Basically, it means when you have butterflies and you're feeling anxious and you have anxiety or nervous, that's when you're most powerful, I believe.

And either you can.. yeah, you're most powerful.

So a lot of people, instead of homing this power and using it, they allow it to just consume them.

You know, there's another quote that says, a big challenge or big pressure is like a fire.

It's like a raging fire.

Either you can allow this fire to consume you and just take you over completely, or you can gain control of this fire and harness it

and you blow it right at your opponent like Dragon Ball Z style.

So with Rampage Jackson, I kept having these nightmares that I would get knocked out.

And no matter how the fight played out, I would always get knocked out.

And it was always within the first 30 seconds of the fight.

And I couldn't avoid this inevitable knockout that I was going to experience in the first round.

And, you know, I'm a big fan of sports psychology, so I call those red zone thoughts.

And I actually got that from Rashad Evans.

When you have a negative thought, immediately cancel it with a positive thought.

Instead of thinking of somebody beating your ass, you think of yourself exhausted.

You're winning.

Fight's almost over.

Just think something positive.

On fight night, I felt like I was going to get knocked out and I felt like this was coming for me.

I felt like energetically, like I was getting these signals from a higher power that like, John, this is going to happen to you tonight.

And I couldn't avoid it.

So I just had this super deep prayer where I got down on my knees

and I touched my body from my head to my toe

for the first time and I prayed this prayer asking God to just give me this supernatural like reaction abilities,

speed, flexibility, awareness and as I was praying this prayer

and touching myself and rubbing myself

and meaning every ounce of this thinking my life is on the line I noticed looking at myself

that I was covered in feathers.

I was covered in white feathers.

Like a hallucination?

It wasn't a hallucination man.

It was, it was, it was, it was...

Real as fuck to you.

It was very real to me.

I could see myself covered in like, there was like small feathers in between my fingers.

And I was covered in feathers and they came up like to my neck and my face was still like normal, not in feathers, but my hands and feet were covered.

And I felt like I was like this fighting thing that wasn't earthly, almost.

And I like felt this surge of energy,

power, flexibility, mental acuity and awareness and sharpness that I had never experienced before.

And I like jumped off my knees and like landed on both feet immediately.

And I was just like, whoa, whoa.

And I was just, Wendy's like .

My coaches was looking at me like, like they could feel like, okay, he is pumped up.

And Coach Ringo John's like, let's hit, let's hit.

And immediately I kicked the pad and it was like, boom.

And it like, it like, it was like, whoa.

And like my kicks were lightning fast and I didn't need to stretch anymore.

I didn't need to warm up my lungs anymore.

My kicks were going up high.

I was jumping higher.

I was kicking faster and higher.

It was an unbelievable experience.

And I actually was able to hang on to this feeling

and this illusion of myself being in this alter ego all the way through the cage,

all the way through my walk to the cage and I felt like in that Rampage Jackson fight,

I walked into that fight as this feather man for the first time.

And my idea to crawl towards him was the only thing that hadn't happened in all my nightmares.

Because in every fight I started at my feet.

So, suddenly just said, get on your knees and crawl up to him.

And then automatically the dream voids itself of him knocking you out immediately, right?

So I did that and I got to kind of, I don't know, fight in an alter ego kind of state.

And it was super powerful.

Now to this day, I say that same kind of prayer over myself.

And I believe that I transform into something.

I honestly believe that I was born to fight.

I really believe it in my whole heart.

You know, some people think that's silly.

But I think a lot of great athletes, people are really good at what they do.

It's more than just what they could do in the gym.

It's something that starts way before they're known in the arenas.

It's something that's like an internal belief.

And I honestly have convinced myself that I'm not designed to lose.

I believe that if I study my opponent, I give these guys the utmost respect and attention they deserve.

I don't think that I was designed to lose to any person.

And when you have that level of self-belief, it's hard for you to...

You know, you just feel like you feel like you're being disrespectful to your past,

to your destiny by allowing your human emotions to take over and showing fear and all that type of stuff.

Like, don't get me wrong.

I have the worst anxiety.

I get very nervous, but I owe it to myself to not be afraid.

And I owe it to my beliefs to just fucking get out there and do something rare and special.

Yeah, there's a lot of mental that goes into it that I don't think people realize.

But the goal is to just conquer that.

Conquer that.

By the time you get to the arena and you're backstage, you realize that this is where you were meant to be.

This is what you're good at.

100

And you owe it to all the people out there who are unsure.

101

You owe it to them to be as excellent as you can be when you finally keep following what you're good at.

102

And the way I look at anxiety, it just means that you care.

103

You care about the outcome and how you perform and how you perceive and everything.

104

I feel like when you get to a place where you don't feel anything, it's probably when it's time to hang it up and try something different.

105

At this point, I still get really nervous, man.

106

I have nightmares about my opponents.

107

I'm sorry.

108

Thank you.

Download App

Everything you need to speak fluently

AI PronunciationScore every sentence

IPA PracticeMaster every sound

VocabularyBuild your word bank

Vocab GameLearn while playing

Scan QR

Download on theApp Store Get it onGoogle Play

FOR YOU

Recommend Video

236 sentences

Arman Tsarukyan on backing up Topuria-Oliveira, haters, hard work & support from Khabib

Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults

204 sentences

Build a Mind So Strong It Scares People

Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How To Break Fear - Jon Jones”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: fight, feather, felt, covered. This video has 108 sentences and 1271 words to shadow. The speech runs for 7:53. The speaker talks at a natural 161 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
feather noun	/ˈfɛðə/	A branching, hair-like structure that grows on the bodies of birds, used for flight, swimming, protection and display.
whoa	/woʊ/	Stop (especially when commanding a horse or imitative thereof); calm down; slow down.
butterfly noun	/ˈbʌ.tə(ɹ).flaɪ/	A flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, distinguished from moths by their diurnal activity and generally brighter colouring.
nightmare noun	/ˈnaɪt.mɛɚ/	A very unpleasant or frightening dream.
opponent noun	/əˈpəʊ.nənt/	One who opposes another; one who works or takes a position against someone or something; one who attempts to stop the progress of someone or something.
hallucination noun	/həˌluːsɪˈneɪʃən/	A sensory perception of something that does not exist, often arising from disorder of the nervous system, as in delirium tremens.
crawl verb	/kɹɔːl/	To move by dragging one's body along or close to a surface, like a worm or insect, or on one's hands and knees, like a human baby.
conquer verb	/ˈkɑŋkɚ/	To defeat in combat; to subjugate.
altar noun	/ˈɔl.tɚ/	A table or similar flat-topped structure used for religious rites.
consume verb	/kənˈsum/	To use up.
flexibility noun	/ˌflɛksɪˈbɪlɪti/	The quality of being flexible, whether physically or metaphorically.
cage noun	/keɪd͡ʒ/	An enclosure made of spaced bars, normally to hold animals while providing some ventilation.
acuity noun	/əˈkjuːɪti/	Sharpness or acuteness, as of a needle, wit, etc.
earthly adjective	/ˈəːθli/	Relating to the earth or this world, as opposed to heaven or the heavens.
energetically adverb		In an energetic manner; with great energy.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
knock out verb	To strike or bump (someone or something) out.
come up verb	To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly.
get down on verb	To come to be down (hostile to) regarding something.
get out verb	To leave or escape.
go up verb	To move upwards.
jump off verb	To move from an elevated place by one jump.
play out verb	To play (a game etc.) to its conclusion.
take over verb	To assume control of something, such as a business or enterprise, and sometimes by force.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

I've never heard that before.
What do you mean by that?
What do I mean by that?
I didn't need to warm up my lungs anymore.
You know, some people think that's silly.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	was covered · is pumped · was born
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've never heard · have convinced

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 28 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: feather /ˈfɛðə/, earthly /ˈəːθli/, athlete /ˈæθ.liːt/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: hallucination /həˌluːsɪˈneɪʃən/, illusion /ɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/, anxious /ˈæŋkʃəs/, emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: hallucination /həˌluːsɪˈneɪʃən/, flexibility /ˌflɛksɪˈbɪlɪti/, acuity /əˈkjuːɪti/, disrespectful /dɪs.ɹɪˈspɛkt.fəl/, supernatural /ˌsu.pəɹˈnæ.tʃə.ɹəl/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like feather, whoa, butterfly.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: How To Break Fear - Jon Jones - Learn English Speaking with Video

Choose a practice mode

Download App

11 Minutes of Pure Dopamine Increase

Justin Gaethje on Beating Ilia Topuria to Become Champ at the White House UFC

How to Alter Your Consciousness

The Secret to Stopping Fear and Anxiety (That Actually Works) | Mel Robbins

Whole life in fear - Walter White speech (Breaking Bad)

Joe Rogan on Avoiding the Loser Mentality

Ivan Joseph | 5 Keys to self confidence (Key Points Talk)

The Power Of Vulnerability | Lewis Howes

SHAOLIN MASTER - FEAR IS AN ILLUSION | Shi Heng Yi 2021

4 Things That Are Keeping You From Being a High Performer