Barbell Shrugged - Feed Me Fuel Me — Know Fear w/ Tony Blauer  — 84

Episode Date: April 26, 2018

Tony Blauer is one of the only combatives experts who has successfully affected training across all the combat related communities: self-defense, combat sports and the military & law enforcement sector. His research on physiology, mind-set as it relates to confrontation management has influenced over two decades of reality-based martial artists.   Tony is founder of Blauer Tactical Systems and creator of the Spontaneous Protection Enabling Accelerated Response self-defense system. SPEAR is the world’s only behaviorally based self-protection method based on physiology, kinesiology, physics and psychology. Tony teaches SPEAR to students worldwide, including Law Enforcement Agencies, Military Units and First-Responders.   In this episode, Tony shares his perspectives on coaching and how using tactics such as “Surprise Fran” in the CrossFit gym and coaching the fearful mindset that comes along with it, can actually help athletes improve their score. Mindset is everything. More often than not, the physiological constraints we put on performance actually limit our abilities. Listen to Tony, who sheds some light on how to use these thoughts as fuel.   Enjoy! - Jeff and Mycal ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/fmfm_blauer ------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Please support our partners! Thrive Market is a proud supporter of us here at Barbell Shrugged.  We very much appreciate all they do with us and we’d love for you to support them in return!  Thrive Market has a special offer for you. You get $60 of FREE Organic Groceries + Free Shipping and a 30 day trial, click the link below: https://thrivemarket.com/feedmefuelme How it works:  Users will get $20 off their first 3 orders of $49 or more + free shipping.  No code is necessary because the discount will be applied at checkout. Many of you will be going to the store this week anyway, so why not give Thrive Market a try! ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedp... TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

This is episode number 84 of the Feed Me, Fuel Me podcast with our special guest, owner of Blower Tactical Systems, Tony Blower. Welcome to the Feed Me, Fuel Me podcast. My name is Jeff Thornton, alongside my co-host, Michael Anders. Each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message related to our three pillars of success, manifestation, business, fitness, and nutrition. Our intent is to enrich, educate, and empower our audience to take action, control, and accountability for their decisions. Thank you for allowing us to join you on your journey. Now let's get started. Hey, what's good, fam? Welcome to episode 84 of the Feed Me, Fuel Me podcast.

There's Jeff back on the mic, and we are honored to have Tony Blauer, the founder of Blauer Tactical Systems, on deck with us today from Encinitas, California. Really humbled to have you on the show today. Really looking forward to this interview for a lot of reasons. In looking at your bio online and the telling of your story, and we'll let you get into that in a second, the things that were super intriguing to us were the concept of fear management. You kind of have a quote-unquote tagline, no fear, not N-O, but K-N-O-W,

fear. And, you know, in our short dialogue prior to getting on the show, we talked about how your management of fear and your ability to do so is a huge dictator of, a predictor of whether or not you'll be successful in multiple elements of your life. But for those people who don't know who you are as the coach of fear management, give us the cliff notes of your life and where your interest in fear management originally came from. Sure. Well, thanks for having me on guys. Kind of excited to be here. Um, yeah. So if I did the cliff notes version of my life, I'm 57. So if I just spent like a minute talking about each year that I was afraid it'd be like a 50 minute show.

And then we'd be like, okay, time's up. Um, um so i'm gonna have to even do a shorter version of the cliff notes uh and you know and i want to kind of throw this out there right in the beginning is the thing about fear managing fear is that you never get to a point where you have no fear and that's what actually inspired this change of uh you guys remember the no fear t-shirt company right yeah you know and they're still around right the adrenaline sports and motocross and stuff like that uh well i grew up thinking man i've got way more fear than any other person in the world but i grew up in the 60s and we still don't talk to this day. We don't know how to talk about fear. A lot of athletes you'll go up to, like I'll work with like pro fighters or, you know, competitive CrossFitters.

And people still are very uncomfortable, especially guys, especially the, you know, the type A athlete is like, how are you feeling? I'm good. You know, don't like, you know, you come in a room. you feel i'm good you know don't like you know you come in a room hey what's wrong nothing right uh if you peel the onion and this is just my theory if you peel the onion on every decision in life the speed with which you make the decision has a relationship to how you manage fear because what your brain is always doing is wrestling like should i do this should i not do this and if we peel that onion you go why would you even think about that like if i said to you were you guys afraid to brush your teeth this morning you'd go no of course not but if you got

into a fight last you know uh tonight and got punched in the face and had some teeth knocked out and and had some exposed you know nerves or whatever uh right and now like you know your jaw was broken and you're getting some dental work you'd be afraid to brush your teeth right and so i mean that's a stupid you know graphic example just to show you that that what happens with a skill set is as we develop competency when a skill set uh our fear of doing that shifts from our holy shit zone, I'm afraid to do this, to our discomfort zone, to eventually our comfort zone. You know, I was just talking to Andy Stump the other day, and I've been friends with Andy for years, for people who don't know him. You know, Andy is a former Navy SEAL, a retired SEAL, he's one of those crazy base jumping guys now.

And, and, you know, when you watch him on his GoPro, like on this side of a, you know, a thousand foot cliff getting ready to dive off into this, you know, you know, ravine, like he's going through like a, like, like a fear management ritual. And he's one of the few guys that if you say are you afraid there he'd go fuck yeah i don't want to die like right where other guys are like no man i fucking love this right um and but these are just i i i refer to these as as really just semantics at that point that that uh you know people don't realize like mike tyson used to throw up before he before his fights yeah right but you didn't notice that when you'd like see him walking

down shirtless you know from the changing room to the ring you know black shorts no socks black shoes you you weren't thinking this guy just threw up from fear sure like holy shit he's gonna kill somebody um and so i just wanted to preface before i get into like like the evolution what really you know uh created a laboratory an environment to study this it's this idea that whoever's listening to this i want you to turn on or turn off and just be a sponge and realize that that there's no fear to no fear transition it's a 20 year old term like you know 20 years ago teaching we were talking no fear to no fear transition, it's a 20-year-old term, like 20 years ago teaching, we were talking about fear and no fear,

and I said, this thing is no fear, because every arena of stress produces a new problem. So like if you guys are in the CrossFit community, everyone here theoretically can snatch beautifully with a PVC pipe. So let's say you understand the technique, and you understand the coordination and the timing of the poles uh and you've got pvc everyone looks amazing on pvc and then we add an olympic bar and everyone looked pretty good and then we start adding weight and it's not a weight that is actually uh um creating a problem with your range of motion

let's say it's a lightweight, but as people, as we introduce this unsolicited fear of what if this weight falls on my head? What if I, what if I don't do this? What if I hit my chin on the way up? What if I pitch? What if I, and that focus there, that's the way to fear. And that's what we talk about is understanding that you don't get to a place of no fear is K and W.w if you how do i look at fear how do i manage fear how do i develop or cultivate a different relationship because the people that actually self-actualize who like you know is you know what research now is like getting that that

zone the state of flow and all of that um they've developed a instinctive slash intuitive relationship with fear where they use it as a fuel, as a cathartic source of inspiration, where the rest of us are like, you know, we're hiding under our sheets or a thumb in our mouth, like, you know, you know, Jim Carrey and Dumb and Dumber in the bathroom. Oh, no, I just looked at the wad today. And it's right. You know, here's an interesting thing. And I know i haven't answered any of your questions but i've clearly hijacked the show um in you know we we created a program a few programs for the crossfit community because uh you know i'm a huge fan of you know i've been involved in the community since 2006 and in um in uh one of the courses i did over at uh some little equipment company called rogue years ago so i'm over i'm over there in ohio and i've got in the class uh you know katie's there

mika's there graham holmberg you know and and 25 other athletes and we're doing a version of our crossfit defense crossfit sphere be your own bodyguard blend. And, and I'm watching everyone absorb the information and I'm watching, you know, these athletes, uh, move and, and, uh, Jeremy Kinnick, uh, was there. Who's been to the games five times and I'm mentoring him to help me teach these, these courses. And he comes to me and he says, hey, can I talk to the group about something I did as an experiment the other week? I'm like, sure, what is it? He said, I did a surprise Fran in the morning. But what I did immediately is I did your no fear talk and talked about fear.

Identifying it as opposed to just sweeping it under the carpet. Or what other people do is they posture, right? Hey, you scared about this? No, let's go, man. Right. And you get that sort of thing. So what's interesting is Jeremy gets up and this is what he explains. This could fascinating comes in the morning 6 a.m class and if you know jeremy call him and ask him about this because it's it's it's better when he tells it but but i'm gonna do the best job i can nothing on the whiteboard so the class is like looking at the whiteboard going the fuck we're doing coach he waits for everyone to come he says you guys ready yep okay we're doing surprise fran and he describes how every person, you know how body language is 60% of communication, right?

So every person has a different physiological impulse shoot through their system. So one guy looks down and looks up. Another guy like rolls his eyes and turn. Picture this. One guy's leg starts pounding, you know, like, you you know when your leg starts vibrating because you're nervous right and and everyone and you know someone goes no friend like like like and he looks at each one and this so this is the message when people participate in either a trainer development or a course it's if you look at fear as an onion and rather than just like cover it i'm okay or put it somewhere else like avoid it i'll do this later

or you know you just peel one cover off like one layer off and you go okay let's go instead of unravel the whole thing so the concept here is if you say to me you're afraid and I say it's okay to be afraid. Like Customato who trained Tyson, he had a great quote. He said the difference between the hero and the coward isn't fear. It's what they do with their fear. And so it's – and that's deep. But guess what? That's one layer.

Right. Because if I say to you guys, just go lift you know afraid do the open afraid just do it you'll adapt that's true right coach glassman greatest adaptation occurs between the years right but i'm going to write an article one day i've been talking about this for years in the community cheering isn't quoting as sorry cheering isn't coaching cheering is not coaching and so when someone goes I'm afraid and you go it's okay do it I believe in you like that's not really coaching that's cheering for me to understand and create an adaptation at a brain base level where I'm actually educating the neurons

and the myelin and the like like at the research at the like the brain matter level and so what's the difference between you know uh like a rich froning and the rest of us it and it's it's really how they manage their fear and how they neuromuscular communicate and so you don't ever see some of the anxiety or or or uh stress in his body that you see in a lot of other athletes and then you start to see that more and more at you know people that you know that level where whether it's a bridges or or a bailey or or you know uh you know matt or you know all those guys that are they get up there and they're stress inoculated and what's happening with the stress inoculation is they understand you know when i was working with jeremy, I think the last year that he qualified at the games, he realized after failing in a snatch ladder that he, I said to him, hey, what happened there?

Because he failed at a lift, at a weight that he could normally, you know, pull. And he went, he said, he looks at me and goes, hey, coach, man, I just realized walking out there that I'm afraid of the tennis stadium. I had never, right? And so that's something that you can, as a coach, you can talk about, right? Because if you go out there and you go, I'm going to kill this, and you look up and all of a sudden 10,000 people looking at you makes you go gulp, right? That changes everything. So back to Rogue. I'm going to tell 19 stories you guys got there'll be a test

at the end tracking all the tangents but um so here's jeremy at rogue he's telling case surprise fran but he looked at he looked at one guy and he said you look afraid and the guy goes man i hate fran i go every he goes everyone hates fran so but what are you afraid of he goes the 15s the 15s kill me I can get the 21 but the 15s kill me right and so so Jeremy so one of the things like we do when we talk about like when we do it like a course on dealing with multiple assailants I'll say hey uh would you fight one guy to protect yourself for your family and people are like yeah I go what about two it's like well and i go what about three right and you can see like when we add numbers motivation changes but your motivation

should never fucking change why would you protect yourself for your family against one but not against two and what we've done is we've read it redirected and diluted your confidence by giving you this false expectation of failure because if i said to you you're going to fight three guys but guess what they're midgets from the wizard of oz so they're 97 and they walk with like canes 10 of those guys right in other words if we think we're going to lose that inspires fear if we're sure we're going to win it doesn't matter so when i ask people because what we're going to lose, that inspires fear. If we're sure we're going to win, it doesn't matter. So when I ask people, because what we're trying to do is create a more holistic relationship with fear and the decisions you make in your life. In other words, the decision to protect

yourself or your family should just be that decision. And then the, the, the, the numbers you encounter just become the formula, like the math, I got to figure out the algorithm to fight three. So we tell people like, uh, Dan Millman has this amazing quote and he's, I don't know if you remember the, the name Dan Millman was a gymnast, but, uh, he wrote the book, the way of the peaceful warrior. Right. And it's amazing book. But he said this. He said, when you face just one opponent and you doubt yourself, you're outnumbered. I was like, whoa, that's so good. Right. And so it's not cool.

And so and so the concept here, really simple, is I tell people never let the math beat you. So I hate running a mile. So what I do is I run four four hundreds in a row. Right. So I play that game with myself. I'm like, I'm not going to running a mile so what I do is I run four 400s in a row right so I play that game with myself I'm like I'm not gonna run a mile I'm gonna run four 400s you know yeah I hate thrusters but what is a thruster a thruster is a squat and a push press I like squats and I like push press if I do them together that's a thruster right so if So if I change my relationship to it, I change my physiology and my psychology in relationship to it as well. So it's kind of cool.

So what we tell people is don't let the math beat you and you break down stuff. And so what happened with Jeremy, he went through each person in the class and he gave them something different to think about. And this is the whole point. Is it mostly CrossFitters that listen to your show? Everybody listens to our show, yeah. something that is different to think about and this is the whole point you have is there are is it mostly crossfitters that listen to your show everybody listens to our show yeah crossfitters

crossfitters are going to dig this and but anybody who's got any type of stuff is like this is is don't let the math beat you is the message here and find a different way to look at this peel the onion and and get very specific about what your fear is, because then you can, you can like meditate on that introspect about that. And it, and it changes some of its, its, uh, imagine hold on your performance or how you're thinking. So Jeremy looks at, I'll give you, just give a couple of examples. Hey, what do you, what's your, what, you know, why do you hate Fran? I hate the fifteens. He says, don't do 15, do three sets of five. And the guy's like, what? Now this is like, you gotta remember this is back like 2012. Like,

like this is now, you know, if I ask you, if you get tired during box jumps, do you rest at the, on the box or on the ground? Everyone knows to rest on the box now, but because jumping down is fricking easier than jumping up in terms of output. But there was a time when somebody actually posted that online and everyone went, duh, right? So this is going back, like this is 2012, 2013. So several years ago, this event with Jeremy. And so get this, guys. He goes through each one.

One guy goes, you know, I can never, you know, finish 21. Like I just always got to stop. So that was like, Hey, do, you know, do three sets of seven, right? It was just like doing like these little mathematical configurations, because when you go into a wad or a business deal or a proposal or whatever conversation, and you've overwhelmed yourself with the either the odds or what you've got to do uh it just for some people that can't handle that other people it doesn't you know it doesn't matter but everyone's got their their fear loop and um so he did it through each one and the guy like one guy who had like a nine minute friend

went to a six minute friend just from a one minute conversation everybody in the class pr'd every single person pr'd he was stunned by that so at the he was teaching the 6 a.m and 6 p.m he did the same thing again they came in whiteboard clean surprise friend everyone like oh shit and he went through each person like the guy the guy who said man i just hate thrusters and jeremy said okay can you do a squat yeah can you do a push press you're not going to do any thrusters this workout you're just going to do squat and a push press just just sync them up like just changing that right like when you visualize that if i say i i'm not going to run a mile but can i do four four hundreds you're like idiot that's the same thing like right right it's like right but if it makes it easier

for me then i'm going to run faster right right and so the psychology behind it so everyone focuses on the on the physical my big focus has always been on the emotional psychological relationship to how we move um so there's there's when we talk about speed as an athlete we're talking about like our our the gpp and the complex motor skill you know like if you don't know how to run properly you're less efficient you're not going to be as fast so a lot of times we're focusing on technique and then the then the like like an intense workout we lose technique because we're sacrificing it for you know speed and power output. But what's going on all the time in the back of our mind is if you're looking at the clock, if you're worried about the clock, if you're worried about losing, if you're worried about winning, all of that is, when I call this, we've got a special part of the the lecture called what is the weight of fear and so uh kevin ogard uh brought me out to denver to do a seminar a few years ago at his place

and after we did our 90 minute block we have like this dedicated uh 90 minute block on fear management in every one of our courses the next day he pr'd his bench press by 20 pounds now kevin's now kevin's best lift is you know post accident is is a bench press and at his level with he's such a positive mentally tough athlete that should have been like fractionals right it shouldn't have been 20 pounds and um you know we had a uh another guy todd thompson uh a master's competitor he's a firefighter from georgia owns a box down there You know, we had another guy, Todd Thompson, a Masters competitor. He's a firefighter from Georgia, owns a box down there. Several years ago, he injured both hands and wrists trying to save a clean, like a 295-pound clean too far out in front of him. And he tries to save it and wrenches his hands back.

He has an injury. And now it's 18 months later he's out my course i don't know him i don't know his injury he's out my course and he's never been able to hit 295 again so what happens guys every time he loads 295 on the bar and tries to clean it he talks what do you think he talks himself out of it. Well, he's got PTSD, right, from that event. Last time I lifted this, I wrecked my hands, almost ruined my career. You know, I had to have rehab or, you know,

whatever he had to do to get his arms back functioning. And it was painful and scary. So, you know, if we go somewhere to eat and you get food poisoning at that restaurant, it's going to be a long time before you go back there. So you can believe in PTSD or not, but you can go, I'm not fucking eating there. I got food poisoning last time. No, no, no. Let's go tomorrow.

Nope. Like, and so in his mind, consciously or unconsciously, he he's going this is the weight that almost ended my career this is the weight i got so i don't know any of this he's in my class this is down in atlanta and uh the the fear management block happens just before lunch and then we break you know half the class goes and eats and half the class goes and works out todd goes to work out i don't know we haven't talked yet all of a sudden i hear you know you know when someone gets their first muscle up right you know some fucking you know like some scream i look over he comes running over to me and he says i just cleaned 305 shit my man right and I'm going with,

okay, good. And he tells me the story 18 months ago, he had this injury and he realized listening to this block on fear that he was lifting in the fear loop. And so the fear loop and the metaphor guys is this is what he thinks faster doing Murph with a white vest or without a white vest without a white vest. Yeah.

Right. Right. 22 pounds. Right. Or if you're weight vest without, uh, right, right. 22 pounds, right. Or if you're using military weights, but 22 pounds, right. The, the, the RX and for, uh, uh, people who aren't in the CrossFit community, MRF is a classic, uh, very famous, uh, uh, uh, workout. And, and it, you to do it as, as RX, you're, you're going to wear a vest on it and so i tell people i ask them uh you know is it same question you know what's easier to do your your you know uh mile run and uh what is it 300 200 100 uh uh uh squats push-ups uh pull-ups. Correct. And then another mile run with a weight vest on. So, and here's an interesting thing is,

in a class of 20, depending on where you are, but for the most part, most people don't do it with a vest. You know, so we are first, all first responders will. And then of course, you've got, you know, people who are hard chargers who do it. But there's always some people in the class who've done it with both. And most of the people have done it without. And I tell them that fear is like a vest. And if you've never been in a military or law enforcement,

you don't know how to put on your vest and put it on and you do your pre Murph picture, right? Where you, you, you put it on and you pose and you put your you know sign up and yeah we're gonna do murph and then you do your post-murf well here's what happens with somebody who doesn't know uh how to put on a vest the first time they put it on too fucking tight right because like it's cool you're doing like a picture right you put on too tight now what starts to happen when you're when you're early into your mile run with a vest that's too tight you can't breathe if you can't breathe it impacts you at a physiological level so you've got the competitiveness of winning you're trying to go fast you're trying to pace but you're finding yourself restricted your breathing is

labored so what do you do in that moment is you rip open that velcro and you put it back but now you put it on too loose because the reaction and you're fucking laughing right it's like the audience can't see this because you've seen this a hundred times with people right yeah now so you went from being suffocated like doing jiu-jitsu with somebody who knows how to relax on top of you and you're like how much do you weigh right right and now you loosen it too far so now what's happening is the vest is swinging up and fucking hitting you in your neck so you're grabbing it by the collar right and pulling it down you're still running inefficiently people are getting further ahead of you so you're in this win-lose panic of fuck. And now you eventually, you stop and you figure out where it's got to be. The metaphor here is this, guys, is the vest represents fear in your life.

That there are events, like if you're doing Murph to honor Michael Murphy, to, if you're doing it properly, you're going to wear a vest and there are things in life where you need the vest as a metaphor there's going to be fear but if you don't know how to look at fear you may be holding on to it too tight and it suffocates you or you're too cavalier about it and it ends up choking you it's smacking you in the throat it's still a distraction right and so we're not being cavalier about it but this is what we mean by k and or w fear is i gotta look at something and go okay is this something that i should investigate is this an important like growth you know for me uh experience for me

so anyways that was uh that was a 40 minute answer answer to the – what did you even ask me? The cliff notes. So you said something in your bio that is a great segue here in that people that experience a traumatic – a potentially traumatic event and fight back in the aftermath have considerably less PTSD or symptoms of it than those who concede and cooperate with that traumatic event. And I think the example you gave was just the simple example of getting in a fight. You know, somebody challenges you and you fight back, whether you win or lose, you walk out of it in a much better headspace than if you just put your hands down and allow them to kick your ass. And I feel like that's a very profound discovery for a lot of people, especially in the context of, you know, whether you fight back or concede, losing. Losing that fight and, you know, fighting back or protesting that contest

versus, you know, just putting your guard down and taking it, you know, you still lost, but the perception of that loss in the aftermath is considerably different. Can you elaborate on that phenomenon? Yeah. And, you know, and there's a lot of research on that. And they look at it, you know, victims of violence, rape, like, you know, and I want to, I just want to qualify something.

And I just started doing it about a year ago. And I realized the word fight can mean different things to different people. So I'm really big on words as icons. And I like to argue about semantics when it's appropriate, right? Meaning someone will sometimes say, well, that's just semantics. What they're really doing is just being lazy about discussing intelligently, scientifically, intellectually a point. Because the better the word, the more accurate accurate the word the more impact it's going to have you on you as an athlete of life sure right like not it doesn't have to be crossfit

you're if we think of ourselves as athletes of life how do we you know what are we eating how are we sleeping how are we moving whether it's to get to work or whatever but getting back to what what you're um what you're asking there's a ton of research around that. And a lot of it is, has to do with self-esteem and dignity and, and just how you feel emotionally. Uh, nobody, you know, so the, the emotional word trigger out there is, is like, you know, helplessness, who wants to feel helpless, right? And that's the worst feeling. So when, when you're trying to solve the problem, you know, you're trying to be MacGyver in your life and you're trying to like, you know, because you don't have any training. So you're going to improvise your way out.

Even if the calorie comes in and helps you, you are part of the solution. You aren't like hiding under a desk. You aren't, you know, with your thumb in your mouth like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, right? Going waiting for somebody to save you. So there's a ton of research around that. And you just made me remember a really fun conversation I had with, with coach Greg Glassman, right? And, and so Greg is, is, you know, obviously his founder CrossFit, the guy's like wicked smart. If you've ever heard him talk, he's one of the most eloquent and elegant speakers that he's captivating mesmerizing uh he's one of the few people i get nervous around

when when you know i'm a public speaker been talking for 30 years we'll be in a conversation and you know he'll look at me and go he'll go hey t what do you think about this and i'm like because he's so fucking smart i'm like i don't know what to say but um so we're at lunch uh a while back and he says to me he goes he goes uh he goes hey t why do you think some people there's probably some active shooter event or something happened he goes why do you think some people don't fight and i went you know my because i i teach like most of our courses are to law enforcement military and these are like four and five day intensive 40 hour intensive custom courses all and we go through everything from startle flinch conversion to counter ambush shit but it's all built around

understanding brain-based training and understanding how your brain uh and your physiology physics and psychology work together to become the human weapon system and so they're pretty deep and so because of the research i've done on this and talking i'm used to talking for 40 hours as you guys are discovering you breathe for 30 minutes right just so what happens is when greg asked me this he like downloads my brain starts to download this like 10 minute answer well greg you know there's so many influencing factors that and he interrupts me and says isn't it simply because they're afraid to lose and i stopped in my track and i went fuck me and he smiles i go i go you just did that again he goes did what i go you like you take like this big idea

and turn it into like one. You can't edit that. Like you can't like, right. So, you know, I went, it's just because they're afraid to lose. I was about to talk for five minutes and it's because, because if you weren't afraid to lose, why wouldn't you fight? Right. If you weren't afraid to invest, why wouldn't you invest? If you weren't afraid to ask this person to marry you, why wouldn't you, if you weren't afraid to ask this person to marry you why wouldn't you if you weren't afraid to quit your job and open up a crossfit box or go back to school or why wouldn't you if you knew it was going to succeed so he looks at me and he goes he goes if the fight's going to happen anyhow and you choose to fight all you risk is losing the fight because you're all in he pauses and says and if the fight is going to happen anyhow you can't influence whether the fight is coming it's happening anyhow and you choose to do nothing what you risk losing is everything and he's not just talking

about your life there he's talking about the most important thing is if you live through something is your dignity, your pride, your self-confidence, your self-awareness, your right. And so you see, and that's the biggest thing, my biggest focus. I, you know, I've been now coaching and teaching self-defense for almost 40 years, but last year I started a kind of a project slash movement all on just fear. And the title of it is, you know, no fear, K-N-R-W, fear. Because I realized that I grew up in the 60s afraid of everything. I was a competitive skier.

I was in wrestling. I was in gymnastics, all this shit. But I never, as good as I got, I was never able to excel in competition because I sabotaged my, my, my success worrying about, well, everyone says I'm really good. So why am I so scared? And that was my big takeaway is like, if I'm so good, why am I so fucking scared? Not realizing that nobody had ever explained that your body, the physiological impact of excitement or adrenaline or fear, you know, that it creates these butterflies or changes your breathing pattern or makes you sweat. But if I had been taught that as a kid or as a teenager, my output and my engagement in the different sports i tried or different events that i tried would

have been completely different i believe that and so i'm on kind of this mission now in this this chapter of my life is like like this idea that if we taught kids how to look at fear how would that change what they end up doing you look at this generation of the the snowflake generation and safe space that That's all fucking fear. You know, you know, oh, Trump's going to get it. You know, nobody's looking at how amazing things are, you know, in terms of like unemployment rates and violence down or the, you know, the stock market or whatever. It's like it's all it's all fear. And, you know, one of one of our maxims from our from our our the message and the course is that fear throttles everything we do.

From who we talk to, therefore who we marry. From where we work to how much money we make to where we live. And for our fitness buffs listening to this, fear will influence how much weight you can lift. The weight of fear could be that 20-pound PR. It could be the difference between qualifying from the open open to the regionals regionals to the games right it's how you manage your fear but fear also most importantly determines whether or not you protect yourself for your family and how you manage that and and uh i like to tell people like hey that the ability to protect yourself or your family is an arguably the single most important skill you could possess it's the only thing about this guys

it's the only event in your life where you need to handle things yourself in the moment of a sudden ambush you do not even have time to dial 9 on a 911 call. And, you know, calling a first responder is a, and it's just a play on words, is, you know, well, that's great and the cops want to get there. They're going to be minutes away. And this is happening in nanoseconds. And the reality is you're the first responder in your fight. And the cops are actually the second is you're the first responder in your fight and the cops are actually the second responder maybe the third responder uh if you're talking about just the chronology

of like who shows up right you're you're there and so you know if you got a toothache you can call a dentist your roof's leaking you call the roof guy your car got a problem you call the car mechanic but if you got a problem with sudden, only you can take care of it. Only you can, you know. And so, you know, and this is like, again, don't get me started because we'll run out of hard drive space and talk about it. Do the whole course here. But it's an area where it frustrates me because I'm so passionate about it. And I want people to understand that I'm not cavalier about violence.

I abhor violence. I hate violence. Which is why I've continued to research and develop the program that I do. But no matter what I show somebody, whether it's this palm strike or a knee or an elbow or a finger in the eye or an improvised weapon or whatever, I can give you the most amazing arsenal, but if you're afraid to get in a gunfight, if you're afraid to take another life, if you're afraid about that scenario unfolding, it doesn't matter what equipment you had. Right.

You're not going to be able to wield it. Right. If you look at any question, right, that at some level, at a conscious level and even at an unconscious level, there's a relationship between the reptilian brain and the cognitive brain, between the limbic system and the amygdala and your cognitive thinking process of, is this dangerous to me? Is this something that i want to do and a lot of that happens like like like way deep in your brain so you don't even think about it like brushing your teeth or going to work you know uh i don't know if you remember maury smith uh he was a k1 champ thai boxer pro fighter won won the ufc heavyweight so i like interviewing people who do crazy things like like fight right right I've interviewed you know warriors from every service I've interviewed rape and I'm looking for connections between

victim and victor and mindset and how they think and so you know I asked Maurice I go hey you know what's your pre-fight ritual and he's like he chills and he's like listening to headphones on listening to you know kind of like you know mellow r&b type things you know and you're i've been in a lot of fight rooms before the fight and like this guy's got death metal on right this guy's punching himself in the face everyone's got their this guy's like you know moving around dancing like crazy like every guy so there's a bunch of fighters in the room everyone's got their pre-fight ritual and so picture maurice there lying on a massage table hands behind his head you know headphones on grooving so i ask him like hey that's like kind of a counterintuitive pre-fight ritual right like most people are like

let's go get like getting you know getting pumped up smack in their face punching lockers right you know i'm about to get in a fight i gotta get fucking fired up so i asked him that's an interesting pre-fight ritual um you don't can we talk about fear your relationship to fear like are you afraid and he said he looks at me goes let me ask you a question he says do you have a job and i go yeah of course i do he said are you afraid to go to work i said no he goes me either right like his relationship was wow wow now now how cool is that like that's that's a fucking line in a movie but if i said to a bunch of fighters who hadn't stressed it to maurice's level right and gotten up there and i said no more heavy metal no more smack and no more bouncing

around i want you to lie down and listen to you know shaw day and and uh you know uh classical music or whatever before the fight like all of those people might lose right because i've changed and this is the thing that i tell people because everyone wants to know what like with like all the books on performance and in peak performance and all that they talk about the systems you know and emulating this and i i have a different opinion i think you got to find your own way i think you got to experiment but you've got to go through the ritual serves you until it doesn't right and and but and and so the key to that is self-awareness is going man i feel off balance or that didn't feel right.

And my performance indicated that. What do I need to think about? That's super interesting. Yeah, that's super interesting. I'm just trying to think because as you're going through that story about the guy getting hype in the locker room, that's what I always had to do kickoff on football when I played ball. It's because I had to have that first initial contact to sort of get that – the butterflies out of the system. Right. But as I got older, it became – like when I got to college, it was more of like you said, that smooth process of just like, okay, let's sort of meditate through this process and think about what's going to happen, not so much be so erratic about things.

And it worked out in my favor in that respect what are some triggers like that you think that people can sort of rely on if you do if they don't know that they're in a fear sequel or a fear loop or fear sequence right what are some triggers that you that you could sort of give somebody to say like okay take a step back breathe for a second and recognize that this is what's happening now you can approach it in a systematic way like like breaking it down step by step, how you mentioned mathematically or whatever. Yeah. And so, yeah, you just intuited what it is. It's having that self-awareness to go, okay, I don't feel ready to go.

Like a baseball batter stepping out of the box, right? Like puts his hand up and said that's self-awareness i'm not ready for this pitch i gotta clear my head you know i was just thinking about uh uh you know you know uh i gotta pick up some eggs for breakfast right and whatever he's like he's give you a stupid example he just steps out there because he's not in the zone right there fortunately you can do that you know when you're a batter and a pitcher but you can't do that in a self-defense situation and you may not be able to you can't that, you know, when you're a batter and a pitcher, but you can't do that in a self-defense situation. And you may not be able to, you can't do that. Like if you're, you know, if you're, uh, in a team wad, you know, you can't go, Hey guys, let's stop a second. I'm

afraid for, you know, you, you know, you can't do that in a car race. You can't do that. There's a lot of, you can't do that skydiving, right? You there's a there's a lot of so you almost need to have this understanding of fear and fear management before the event in an ideal world and so we created something called the cycle of behavior it's a neural circuitry of fear it's a it's a flow chart that starts off with the top block is the scenario and then there it's a visual map and i tell people pretend it's a hologram that you're standing on and so i'm in everything is a scenario right uh and i'll give you an example like the number one fear in the world is public speaking i have been speaking now for decades and i've gone to some places where um i uh like they changed my time.

Hey, you got a 30 minutes to talk. Now it's 10 minutes and now you're coming on next. And you're like, fuck. Or I walk out and someone says, Hey, can you come talk at this event? And I go out, there's 500 people, there's live TV. And, and I'm like, holy shit. And I can remember a bunch of times calling my wife and going, okay, I'm freaking out. Like, this is way bigger than I thought.

It's live TV fox and cnn are here there's 500 people uh i i'm i completely i'm going blank i'm like my heart's pounding and she's like calm down you're like mr fear management and and that's the thing is that people and i tell this in a self-deprecating honest way that like i developed a lot of stuff like i've lectured at hospitals to psychology departments where they're taking notes on the research right and they're like where did you come up with this and i go and i always make fun of them going well while you were studying you know young and freud i was actually talking to real people who were fucking managing fear while they were navigating life right right and what i was looking for were those intersections going oh look at this you know this uh special forces guy did and look what this soccer mom did and look at

this this you know woman who was almost raped did that was all the same mindset there you know that was all and so um you know it's an interesting thing so So in the 80s, I was listening to an interview with this guy named Howard Gardner who wrote this book called Frames of Mind. He's a social scientist. And he did this study and he concluded that the study was this. He said that 80% of our motivation is derived from our expectations. 80% of our motivation was derived from expectations. So I got back to my office, it was 1985 or six, and there's no whiteboards back then, there's no smartphones. And I wrote

down on the blotter on my on my desk on this blank piece of paper, I wrote down 8020 motivation expectation. And then I continue to to to fill it out out and going and say, I said, what happens after expectation? Like I was trying to create like a little flow chart. And so I wrote, uh, um, you know, okay. After expectations is what do we do? We got motivation, expectation. And, and then I was thinking of, uh, uh, you know, different words and I'm pulling this up here just to show you. It was so cool. I created this flowchart called the cycle behavior. And the visual of it is this concept of now it's morphed into this like be a thing of it is like a hologram that you step on so no matter where you are in life if you get a fear spike you look down you go okay i'm in this scenario so number one is scenario then it goes to motivation to expectation to visualization to belief systems then i break down my belief systems there on what are my my my neural associations in other words how am i linking

up the symbols or the the evidence that i see And then all of that coming together is creating this fear state. And somewhere in there should be some, you had mentioned taking a step out or a step back and breathing. I mean, understanding box breathing, combat breathing, studying Brian McKenzie's art of breath research, Wim Hof, all this stuff to understand breathing. The problem with some of this stuff, it's not a problem. The problem with, with, uh, a breathing ritual is during a high stress moment. If the shit's happening, you got to figure out how to do it on the fly. Right. Cause it's all, it's all anaerobic. Sure. So, you know, but but that's why that's why i said earlier is that a lot of this homework should be done before right so to to piggyback on that you know a lot of this homework should be done prior to do you kind of do you uh put this this philosophy into practice uh kind of under the umbrella of if you want peace, prepare for war,

or, you know, practice should be harder than playing the game. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, it depends on what level, what level, you know, you want to you want to do that, or what level you want to take that at. And is this is the visual here and I'll I'll send you guys a link to that okay your show notes it's up online for people to look at sure but you know so it depends like like this is used I've had friends of this use this in business to prepare for big business deals and I've had operators use this in their AR after a training mission. Why do you hesitate there? What happened here?

Yeah, I was in the fear loop. I didn't know, you know, I didn't realize that corner was cleared. So I paused there and, you know, and people. So having a map, it's like the difference between lost and late, right? Right. Like if you're lost, you're sitting there going, okay, man. So when you're, if you're really lost, you know, if, and depending on where you are, you might get really scared. I'm lost on the side of a mountain or a lost in a jungle. You know, you know, if I'm, I'm lost in

a mall, I'm probably not scared. I go, there's a security guard, there's an exit sign. Right. But what I mean by lost or late is I can be temporarily lost, but I kind of know how to navigate. So I realized my timelines off because I took a wrong turn. So having kind of a mental map, as it relates to fear, just means like, okay, I'm going to be a little bit slower as I process this, but I've got to be able to self-inspire and create a strategy to extract myself from this situation. So the visual here is that I got to get out of the fear loop and I've got to understand. So inside the fear loop, we use two acronyms, false evidence appearing real and false expectations appearing real. False evidence could be, I bump into you at a bar, I turn around I'm about to say hey watch it asshole

Cuz I think it was your fault. I look at you. You're wearing a tap out shirt and you got a cauliflower ear Right So I turn around and as soon as I saw your shirt and your cauliflower ears I visualized and what would happen right there? Why do you guys laugh because you you go man i could see that right right and and you know how many people you know uh i mean you guys shoot right so like how many people are really bad shots at the range almost all of them almost all of them and so if you're a bad shot at a range of static target how bad a shot are you in a gunfight right yeah horrible and

and statistically people are bad shots in a gunfight like even like trained law enforcement right because what happens in the gunfight and i'm not being cavalier about this to the listeners out there i'm not judging anybody it would have like there are stories of like like good guy bad guy getting a gunfight in an elevator and nobody gets shot, they run out of bullets. But this is true. Like, how does that happen? That's because the sudden impact of fear on your body creates a physiological response called the startle flinch response. And, you know, you can go stand three feet from a paper target, point your gun at there, and as you're shooting the trigger trigger if i come around bitch slap you you're that bullet's probably not going to be on the paper and if it is you know it was fluke it wasn't and so what i'm trying to introduce to all

communities is that if we don't understand the emotional impact and i wrote an article in 1993 called the theory of presumed compliance and it And I wrote a version for law enforcement. I wrote a version for military. And basically it says that how I feel affects how I think and how I think affects how I feel. Both of them influence how I move. Most of the time, most of the time we practice just the movement. So you practice the shooting and the clearing and the reloading. You practice, you know uh mount dismount

side position you practice kicks punch blocks and so what we're practicing is the athleticism i call it i call it quickness like or the neuromuscular relationship between moving my fist my body my knee running lifting whatever it is but what we're not doing is we're not also educating the emotional psychological system. And so the emotional psychological system is what happens during sudden violence. That gets hit first. We know from neuroscience that your reptilian brain can hijack your cognitive brain. So limbic system, amygdala, right? And you have trained people fucking hesitating freezing uh you know screwing

up shit and and then everyone's confused it's really simple we're not stressed stress inoculating properly because we're not replicating violence in advance of violence so all of my training the most important training we do is where conventional training works on uh finessing the complex motor skills. I work on, so that's where I talk about, like I call that the quickness development. Conventional training develops quickness. You know, coach is in front of you at focus pads.

He puts his hand up, boom, you fire right. You've developed this Pavlovian relationship. But that's on balance, stimulus response training. I do our drills off balance, emotionally, psychologically, and physically. We slow things down. We do things where we narrate. We do things in slow motion. We do them as fast as we can.

We do them as hard as we can. And so you're developing relationships with your brain emotionally, psychologically, and physically. And what it's doing is it's changing it's what we call this brain-based learning but it's changing uh uh stimulus response uh neurons myelin development all this stuff because we can we can like i can tell you this guy trained with me for a week and and look what he's doing we did there was a police agency in Pinellas County comes up to me after adopting our spear system training. And their lead trainer says, comes up to me at a trade show. He goes, hey, Mr. Blauer. He goes, yeah.

And he's standing with like six of his trainers are all wearing their red polo shirts. He goes, hey, on behalf of Pinellas County, we just wanted to say fuck you. And I was like, whoa. And I'm index County, we just wanted to say, fuck you. And I was like, whoa. And I'm indexing my knife, getting ready to get in a fight. I'm thinking, whoa, what's going on? He goes, yeah, since adopting the spear system, all the recruits, once they learn Fingers Blade Outside 90 and they understand the difference between a powerful effort and effortless power and using your body properly, right? he says like they're fucking us up right and like it was the biggest

compliment but like they played it well man i was like i was at this booth at the swat swat roundup standing behind my table and these guys like walk up they've done this on purpose like you know walk up with like these you know spartan looking faces like but they just said man like you know as because they were all the role players who are now attacking them during during their their academy but just changing the relationship between understanding fear physiology and startle flinch and how to convert that changed what they could do to these and there was a study an independent study done in the uk uh now by two police departments dorset pd and manchester pd that showed a 50 reduction in head trauma just from integration of the system right so what happens when you flinch is your hands come up to protect your head and then they

push away danger so i reversed engineered a whole close quarter combative system around weaponizing the start of flinch you know um it's it's i don't know how we got onto that shit but but but it's it's kind of uh it just relates it relates to like just the whole fear thing and yeah but uh yeah so you know it's my my big brother is an infantry marine and he's getting ready to uh be an instructor at the um uh infantry officers course out in quantico uh have you presented presented there yet i've been i have not i've i've been over here at at pendleton i'm on the west coast but but I mean I've been down to Quantico I've done some stuff with the FBI there okay and anytime I go there I visit I

mean that old village in the history there yeah man I just I just love going there I've been there many times just to awesome what now now that we have an in there I'd love to see if we could set something up so you go present at the the infantry officers course that'd be so awesome I'd love to see if we could set something up so you can go present at the infantry officers course. That'd be so awesome. I'd be honored. I'd be honored. But a segue there is, you know, one of the things that we pride ourselves on as Marines, and I don't know if this is fact or fiction, but we spend a lot of time doing live fire scenarios. And as I understand it, we're, you know, one of the, if not the only service that still participates in live fire scenarios. And, uh, as I understand it, we're, you know, one of the, if the, if not the only service that still participates in live fire exercises, um, obvious for obvious reasons. Uh,

um, and, uh, I think it goes back to, uh, you need to know what an actual round sounds like down range so that you can act accordingly. And I think that goes back to the stimulus and the fear inoculation, as you call it. You know, when you get over there, quote unquote, and shit hits the fan, it's not new or it's less new, I guess is the more accurate way to put it. Is that doctrine for you yeah i mean you want to like i i make a distinction in our courses between uh simulation and replication that that you know if i show you a simulation maybe there's some improv there but a replication sounds a little bit more accurate you know accurate like if i say hey this is a replica of a gun you expect it to be the exact weight and have the you know but if i you know so you go buy a gun for your kid at toys r us and it's a simulated weapon

but you can buy replicas it was just that distinction like when when when we do our scenario training we're actually looking at body cam helmet can cctv uh you know smartphone coverage so because i don't want to if i do a scenario with you guys i'm not interested in in sparring with you i'm trying to cultivate uh a a so between stimulus responses this this this uh space called refractory uh time and your your job there is to decrease that gap in training and the only way to do that is is to educate your brain to develop better pre-contact cue awareness and self-awareness and then make sure that your training is is is uh not just the activity but you're you're actually training your brain like how to threat discriminate and make and make you know decisions quickly we're using like big

technical tactical terms here but this is the same thing if you're a crossfit athlete it's the same thing if you're a businessman you know when when when somebody hesitates in business and loses his company or or or or sells at the right time and and makes a shitload of money or you go oh wow she just looked at me and and and i picked up this vibe of her but i'm gonna go ask her to dance now like it's all everything is timing right right um and people ask me how important is speed in a confrontation and what they're what i know they're talking about is like fast twitch muscle fibers and like that type of speed and i go speed is everything speed in recognizing the opportunity or the danger speed in managing your your, that fear spike that you get. You know, do you use it as a fuel or do you use it or does it stymie and redirect you?

And now you grab doubt and hesitation, right? So speed is everything. I haven't even talked about moving yet. All of them. Nobody does, right? You don't do shit. You don't do shit, guys, if your brain doesn't tell you to. The mind navigates the body, you know?

And so going back to your question about gunfire and all of that, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with the name Chesty Puller. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, I mean, he was the first guy who, like, freaked out the Marine Corps, like, back in the day where he said, hey, I want these guys downrange. We're going to fire rounds over their head. And everyone's like, Whoa, don't do that. That's dangerous. He goes, you know, I don't want the first time they hear around whipping by them to be in a real fight. And he, so he was intuitively way ahead of the game. So our job,

you know, like with, with, you know, our job is a, is a scenario-based training company and regardless of what we do and it could be and i've worked with mma guys i've worked with crossfitters i work with and but my main thing is law enforcement military and then we've got we train the general public in our be your own bodyguard program and so we're teaching people uh how to think about violence understanding if you understand the architecture and you have a mental blueprint for it what you've done is you've changed your perception speed if you change your perception speed you decrease your reaction time so that's what our objective is there is like pick up danger early and fucking move and stuff right and and and the direction you move is going to be based on the proximity to the threat, right? It's not always towards

the danger. And sometimes, sometimes it's, it's, it's a way. So, yeah. Yeah. So how do you, I want to, let's, I want to talk about how you put this philosophy to work in your own life. And I'm going to ask you two questions and you can answer them on any, any fashion fashion whether it's mental physical or spiritual or all three for that matter um what do you do each and every day to feed yourself and put everything that you preach into practice and then the follow-on to that is what do you do each and every day to fuel yourself so that it becomes um uh what's the word I'm looking for? Reflexive? Yeah, instinctive.

Yeah. Wow, those are cool questions. So feed and fuel. I'm a voracious reader. I've now switched over to audiobooks because I don't have time to like, I'll go on walks. This morning I was working out, reviewing Daniel Coyle's book on, uh, um, the talent code, listening to it on audio book.

Uh, you know, the other day I was, uh, you know, listening to, uh, Victor Frankel's, uh, um, uh, man search for meaning. And I've got all these different, like, and, and, and I've always been able to, you know, back in the day before, uh, we were we had shit on iPads and shit like that I used to travel and I would have three or four books in my in my uh I'm traveling a lot in my briefcase and uh um I don't know where or why but I I could like read a book like for like 45 minutes or an hour and then go like go from like a fiction to a non-fiction to uh and i just do that so i was always like you know i mean that was my feeding uh and and i would hear stuff and uh it would just give me ideas

for things and and i would just start so i'm always always, you know, I write every day. And that feeds and fuels. I post stuff. You know, I posted something the other day. It was interesting. My write-on guy, Adrian, here, he said, hey, boss, check this out. We should do this here. Where you look at these old videos that you did in the 80s and 90s and comment on them and we just share that so you pop something up on the tv and in the office and there's these clips of me from 30 fucking years

ago like a generation ago throwing kicks and punches and doing these drills and and i like i got nauseous like i got i was like almost didn't recognize myself i didn't recognize the movement i don't remember my body being that lean like you know my my metabolism has changed a little bit you know and it was really it was is for 24 hours i was wrestling this like like like not depression but i was like oh my god i'm fucking old you know people go no you're not you know you're only 57 but i was like no that's like look at this and and and i ended up writing a big article about that about the aging athlete and and um so i write something every day that feeds and fuels me but it also feeds and fuels anybody who's paying

attention i put it out on on social media for people uh and and it uh it's a singular focus and it's a passion and and there's there's no agenda almost like we said and like when we you know before we started recording is i'm not trying to sell anything i don't care if you come to my course or not we're fucking busy you know and and we're doing some stuff it's on you and if you don't come to the course it's because you don't understand fear right because what will happen is fear will go oh i don't need that right you know i live in a bubble i'm safe or or you know your unconscious bias says i don't need that like i'm already getting that here uh the more you can understand about this and so that's really how i feed and

fuel myself is i continue to educate i continue to uh nourish and nurture uh by exposing and i'm not afraid to like i was in a meeting the other day where somebody who's like a subject matter expert was telling me how they were implying very gently how i was getting this wrong and they were very compelling and very convincing and i just said you know i'm gonna weigh in and and consider that and digest that that doesn't resonate with me right now i'm not afraid to just disagree i'm not going to just adopt something and and so uh um you know i probably about 20 years ago i read uh something about this this notion of of being able to reinvent yourself every day and somehow that that really resonated with me so that's what i do uh you know i've got uh so much scar tissue and injuries neck shoulder Uh, you know, I've got, uh, so much scar tissue and injuries, neck, shoulder, elbows,

uh, you know, from all the training and fighting and stuff like that. And there's days when I'm in like insane pain and it's, so it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a battle sometimes just going, I'm going to go work out today. And then, and then it's like, no, I'm not going to work out today. Right. Okay. And so, um, that is navigating the fear loop i use my system to live right i've used you know uh and that's the cool thing is like you know we'll you know we'll have with my company and i've got affiliates around the world and stuff like that and you know we'll have this meeting where everyone's like freaking out about something i go hey guys everyone's in the fucking fear loop maybe you've heard of this guy tony blauer he developed this

thing called the cycle behavior maybe we should like fucking ongoing guy you're all fired right like i'm joking like um but what i'm reminding people what i'm reminding people in a tongue and cheek uh you know fashion here is that you don't you don't just stop learning you don't just stop growing you don't go okay i'm a black belt in life and I don't, you know. It's, you know, and anybody who really understands martial arts will tell you that when you get your black belt, that's when you really start to learn. Like that's the metaphor, right? So, yeah, the feed and fuel thing is voracious reading. The, you know, new rituals as I started a couple of and uh i realized doing them that i'm a fucking horrible listener right

why is because like i've been the guy like with the mic in my hand for 30 years like i understand one year i did one year I was on the road 262 days. That's more than your deployments. Right. You know, like, like when I was cutting my teeth back in, in the eighties and nineties, and then in the nineties, when I started doing seminars and I closed my school, it was just me. And I was like, you know, I once like was like seven weeks, seven cities, like, and

these are all five day, 40 hour courses. People go, man, I want to do what you do. And I go, you have no idea what I do. Right. You know, I can tell you the inside of hotel rooms. I'm not visiting cities. And, you know, and, you know, now we've grown a bit. I've got like an amazing MTT or mobile training team.

So I've got guys helping me. And and and, you know know we've grown over the last three decades but uh it's it's been a journey it's amazing uh but so so the the feed and fuel it it it's like i want to tell people like the most important thing that that if if you if there's one thing that you take away from this talk guys it's understanding uh and we didn't talk about a lot but self-awareness everyone needs to cultivate so because it's only through self-awareness that you understand fear sure and so so you know if you can meditate on that uh everyone should cultivate male female whatever age you can self-awareness and it changes

you know my son he's 26 he's been cross-fitting for 10 years teaching for seven years just moved back to california and i'm telling him things that i've learned you know in the last couple years about life about business about people and i'm going you know like my dad never had these talks with me and i'm telling him right up front nobody ever mentored me like this i didn't know this i had to figure this shit out you know you're 26 now and i'm giving you all this stuff and he's like looking at me and i smiled and i went you know if somebody tried to tell me this when i was 26 i'd be probably thinking what's this old fucker talking about you know i'd like like so but but understand

this guys this is my kid and i love him right no wonder he's successful but the conversation i had in my head is i can't expect or demand or legislate that he applies what i'm teaching him he may still need to like i did wait 30 years to get it i'm hoping it'll accelerate because i'm planting good seeds right but that's that whole thing is I need to have the self-awareness to understand that he may not have the self-awareness. Sure. That's awesome. That's fantastic. And before we let you go, where can everybody follow and support you either personally, your company, everything that you have going, your classes and seminars as well? Yeah, cool. So our website, Blowerspear spear.com we are launching uh i'm trying to figure out a way to reach people in a more profound way because a lot of the stuff a lot of the stuff can really be just uh uh kind of self-actualized through listening like our most important lecture is our no fear

lecture right when you when you come to that and you do no fear you're just sitting in a chair listening to me talk so we just actually recorded the no fear presentation and put it up online for people and so we're developing what we call spirit spirit university you know and so there'll be a place where uh you know you're a law enforcement military here's here's some content for you in advance of your course. You're just a good Samaritan, a citizen who wants to understand shit. So we're going to be launching this month, Spear University and, and all of those resources. If people go to Blauer, my last name, B-L-A-U-E-R, Spear. if you want to see me rant about,

uh, uh, snowflakes and, and liberals, uh, go to my Instagram, Tony Blower. If you want more about just our self-defense and our training,

uh, just go to the spear dot system, but we're on Instagram. We're on Facebook. We're all over. Use Google. Oh, a thank you so much for uh imparting that your your knowledge uh with us today um i think that our our listeners our community our family will get a ton out of it and you know if nothing else they'll take a look deep inside and start analyzing their fear and their interpretation of it.

And hopefully in the aftermath of this conversation, they start to use fear as fuel rather than hesitation. Yeah, just remember, guys, listening to this, that, you know, it's either cathartic. Ultimately, it's cathartic if you just go towards it. Just don't be cavalier about it, right? You know, a lot of people confuse like the like, like, like the expression, do one thing that scares you every day. No, no. Think about like, like be intelligent about, about that stuff.

It should be stuff that resonates with your personal growth, where you're at. And, and, and, and, and the caveat to that is don't do things that are dangerous and reckless. Sure. Right. You can't recover from negligence. So don't do things that are dangerous and reckless. Sure. Right? You can't recover from negligence, so don't be an idiot. Right? So just, you know, so.

But, yeah, this was fun, guys. You guys are great. I did not tell you how I started, and I did not tell you the background. And we'll, you know, we can talk offline about that one day. But this was a lot of fun. You guys are great. You got a good vibe and a good energy, so I'm excited to have connected. Hey, absolutely.

We'll do this again down the road. We'll get to the bottom of those other questions. Yeah, hit me up whenever. If your audience has some specific questions or scenarios, I'd love to jump back on and dig into those. Yeah, for sure. Reach out to Tony on all of his social media platforms and, you know, he can answer any of those individual questions as well.

We really appreciate you being open to our community for that. And we'll definitely do this again down the road, man. And as you get your podcast launched, you know, we'd love to jump on there and collaborate with you on your side too. Oh yeah, let's do that.

We started actually the No Fear podcast. So, uh, um, let's, let's get you guys on there and, uh, and talk about some stuff. No doubt. Thanks a lot, brother. Okay. Be safe. Bye guys. Later. Take care. And that'll do it for this episode with our special guest, Tony Blower. If you want to check out everything that Tony has going, please go to the full show notes on FeedMeFuelMe.com. Also, be sure to connect with us on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at FeedMeFuelMe. We would love to hear from each and every one of you. If you found this episode inspiring in any way, please leave a rating and a comment in iTunes so we can continue on this journey together. Also, be sure to share it with your friends and family on social media, including Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, or any other social platforms that you use.

We really appreciate you spending your time with us today and allowing us to join you on your journey. We would love to hear your feedback on this episode, as well as guests and topics for future episodes. To end this episode, we would love to leave you with a quote by Bear Gryllis. Being brave isn't the absence of fear. Being brave is having that fear, but finding a way through it. Thank you again for joining us, and we'll catch you on the real thing. I know you're there.