Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #108 Logan Gelbrich

Episode Date: September 14, 2019

Born in Santa Monica, Logan feels right at home coaching at DEUCE Gym. With a background in collegiate (University of San Diego) and professional (San Diego Padres) baseball, Logan is used to high performance, heavy workloads, and accountability. Forever a “student of the game,” Logan is always looking to strengthen and question his understanding of human movement and nutrition. In addition, he currently travels the world coaching the CrossFit Strongman Seminar. In this episode we discuss how we met, sports and entrepreneurship.    Connect with Logan Gelbrich: Website |http://www.deucegym.com/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/functionalcoach/?hl=en Twitter | https://twitter.com/FunctionalCoach   Show Notes Tribe by Sebastian Junger | https://amzn.to/2egbSOL   Show Sponsors: MindBullet https://mindbullet.com/kingsbu (Use code word KINGSBU at Checkout for 20% Off)    Waayb CBD www.waayb.com (Get 10% off using code word Kyle at checkout)   Onnit Foods & Supplements Get 10% off all foods and supplements at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/kyle/   Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Twitter | https://bit.ly/2DrhtKn Instagram | https://bit.ly/2DxeDrk Get 10% off at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/podcast/ Subscribe to Kyle Kingsbury Podcast iTunes | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY  

Today's guest is an awesome dude named Logan Gelbrich. I've worked out at Logan's gym, Deuce's gym out in Venice Beach, California, quite a few times. Logan is an awesome guest. I actually met him. Well, I don't want to spoil the story. We talk about how he met on the show and it's a little embarrassing on my end, but he's a fantastic guy, has extrapolated a lot of life lessons out of his career in baseball. And he's got a book called Going Right. And it's one of the best books I've read on mindset. Incredibly dialed in. Logan is a very successful young man who's in great shape.

He walks the walk. He looks the part. And he was a great guest. There's a number of ways you can support this podcast. First and foremost, please hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. As you know, we have gone to releasing two episodes a week. So don't miss out on any of the good ones. I have no rhyme or reason to how I put the guests.

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That's W-A-A-Y-B.com forward slash Kyle, and you'll get 10% off everything in the store. And of course, as always, never forget 10% off all supplements and food products at on it.com. We just had my man Peter Atiyah on the show not long ago, and he loves the fat butters. They are one of my favorite snacks. We got snickerdoodle. We got the not tella. Well, we didn't name it that. We would have gotten in trouble if we named it not tella, but just think it's not Nutella, but it's damn close and it is good for you. So check out those fat butters. You'll get 10% off of them. And also any of your dope supplements that you want to get on total and Oh, alpha brain. Some of my all time favorites, check them out at on it.com slash Kyle for 10% off. Thanks for tuning in guys and i hope you enjoy this one it's official logan how do we say your last name gel brick gel brick all right just as i thought

you know what i'm gonna go grab i'm gonna grab a copy since you brought one oh yeah cool just finished this one uh not too long ago right yeah? Yeah, man. This thing just came out. It kicked my butt. It took about three and a half years. For people listening real quick. Yeah. The title is Going Right. It's a new book authored by yourself.

It's excellent. So three and a half years. Three and a half years. I mean, to be fair, if we're going to let myself off the hook, I was doing quite a few other things. You know what I mean? So multitasking for three and a half years, you know, but yeah, it kicked my, it kicked my butt, you know, writing a book, to be fair, I wrote it in part because I knew it would extract everything I got. And it's sort of over delivered in that category, you know? Um, but you know, I think this is a conversation that is universally important. I'm not really sure what, what's more important than,

uh, you know, deciding how you spend your time here, you know, like what else do we got laundry, you know, like we, we need to sort this out. um yeah it's uh like most things i do these days it's like begins with a little bit of like spark of uh dissatisfaction you know i got out of sports and was like what's everybody doing you know it feels like everybody was uh quitting whatever that means to them they're quitting quitting the life they wanted. They're quitting any sort of pursuit of their best self. And they had a lot of reasons to do this. And I'm like, wow, that's interesting, man. So you're going to shut it down right now. And you're going to tell me that it's the smartest thing you could ever do.

And so I just sort of observed that after my like little brief athletic career. And I just couldn't unknow how like properly positioned I felt coming after a long pursuit of mastery and something to transfer these skills elsewhere you know i just felt like ready for whatever the next thing was and um i knew like something was there you know what is that about if people spend their their much of their life justifying avoiding any sort of fear uncertainty then they're chasing this like uh let's call it like a myth of safety you know and and now what you have is people guaranteeing that they're gonna be unremarkable forever you know i mean and and that's that makes me want to cry you know's a tragic thing. And it was almost rare to find people who were resisting this pull towards some sort of comfort the book, I was able to accomplish what I was trying to accomplish, which was, hey, let's put emotion aside real quick. And if I could put together an argument, like utilitarian argument, basically mathematical sort of justification that you're just a more

viable, valuable person to yourself and your community, if you're pursuing these things, then you can't look me in the face anymore and tell me, man, I'm, you know, I'd like to be X, but I'm just going to be smart about this, you know? And so that was important to me and writing the book sort of turned me into, it leveled me up. Yeah, no no doubt well i mean i i haven't finished it but i've yeah no got my ways quite a quite a quite a few pages in and i definitely always on this podcast i like to get some backstory you're a baseball player yeah and i'd love to talk about your athletic career and that pursuit of greatness and uh if you wouldn't

mind telling a couple of stories maybe from the book yeah pertaining to that baseball career that are fucking fascinating i mean i'm hooked yeah yeah no doubt about it i appreciate leading into where you're at now and obviously there's a lot that you're into so yeah i mean uh here's the thing is i'm not so biased or arrogant to to believe that everybody needs to you know play a sport or want what i want or be interested in what i'm interested in but you know i think my story helps bring maybe some color to what i'm saying is like a very principled truth and um as long as I can remember, since I was, I don't know, six years old, I decided almost like arbitrarily out of just passion and curiosity, I wanted to play baseball. That was it. And that was a long journey. I spent like 20 years doing that. And, you know,

that took me into, you know, sort of the highest levels of high school baseball, then college baseball and into professional baseball. And, you know, when you sort of chalk up the dream, no one dreams of like some like JV version of the thing you want to like ball out, you know? And so I assumed in my version of the story that I'd be 44 years old when I played my last game, you know, and I was like 24 years old, you know? And so I couldn't unknow what the, the sort of rigorous environment of performance just so happened to be baseball could be anything,

what it did for my development, you know. And there are a lot of players, I think, or athletes of any kind, and you get out of your jam. And it can be a sad story. You know, you can tell this like glory days thing, and there's no, you know, the future could never be as bright as the past. And I sort of felt the opposite. You know, I got out of this thing and the moment my career was over, you could make a great case that that's the most uncertain I've ever been, right? I mean, I only envisioned I was a plan A guy. Talk about that in the book, right? It doesn't really play, you know, or pay big dividends to have like this plan B you're kind of just working on on the side.

If the things that you want are going to demand your best, at some point, you got to go all in because that's what you're competing against. And so when my plan A ran its course, I think I had a unique perspective in that I just felt so calm and so prepared to do the next thing, you know, and I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but the details didn't really matter, you know, and part of the reason why the details didn't matter is I get out of this, this thing and I'm observing around me and no one likes when I say this, but I got out of the thing. I was like, life is easy. Like this is what y'all are doing. This is insane. This is way easier than trying to like, you know, hit a slider with two strikes or whatever the hell I was trying to do,

you know? And, um, and just based on, again, my observation that this was an important thing. And it's sad that people get to be 20, 30, 40, 50 years old, and they've never put themselves in an environment that would pull the best out of them. You know, I mean, imagine who you would be sitting here if you never did the things that you did. Yeah. Yeah. I brought this up on, I think, a couple of different podcasts, but this idea of elders versus olders. And when I brought it up with Paul check on one of the many podcasts we've done, he explained the why. So the difference between, and I'll make this brief for those that have heard it before elders would be the revered being, you look across cultures and tribal settings in Europe and different places, even in Asia, of course, where there's multi

generational families, you not only respect your elders, you appreciate them. You value them. They're the wise people you turn to when you need help. Olders are what we have oftentimes in America, in different modern cultures, where you have the bitter, grumpy old men. So why do we have elders? And Paul plainly said it. He said, it's when you reach an age where you can no longer change you realize you've reached a point in your life where even if you were to start doing the things you love now maybe it's too late maybe it's not but you've wasted your entire fucking life doing something that somebody else told you what to do you know work this job bust your ass when you can retire you'll be happy at the end of that right totally and it doesn't work out that way it doesn't because you get there and you realize man this horizon things

you know this thing keeps moving and now here i am unfit you know there's a there's a case people make you know the so the book called going right the reason for that is just like directionality you know it's just to help the reader understand a very simple choice. Going right then is this sort of decision-making that I'm proposing that has unmatched value. Going left is sort of like choosing, you know, door number two, like the safe route, conceding your best self and often justifying it. And, you know, one of the things that folks who choose this route, one of the things that they say is, you know, well, it's risky. You know, I mean, think about the choice presented. If our model of decision-making, which I'm proposing is broken for most people, is behind door number one is like the ideal. This is what I want out of my

life, my relationships, my lifestyle, et cetera. And it feels scary and uncertain. Door number one. Door number two then feels like this well-traveled, safe, reasonable route. And it feels like a trade-off. And if you're standing in front of these two doors, what you chalk up in your head is that, oh, door number one is just for crazy people and really talented people. And since I'm not that, obviously, hey, my hands are tied here. I got to choose door number two. And what I'm proposing amongst other things is that there is uncertainty in both decisions. That's pretend. If you show up marking time unremarkably to your job, your relationships, your whatever it is that you're doing, you're going to get yourself in a spot like you're talking about these olders, where you're

10, 20, 30, 40, 70 years down the road, and the rug gets pulled out from under you. You know, that hot industry that you're working in, because it was a hot industry, is gone. And now you realize, oh, I got to move laterally. Guess who I don't want to hire, hang out with, date, fuck with on any level, is an unremarkable motherfucker who has avoided uncertainty at every turn. Congratulations, your certainty is not real, right? And so, you know, the argument that one, there is some safety somewhere is false. And number two, that failure is not really a reason to not do something. You know, like I for sure didn't accomplish my goal, but what I have to show for it is X, Y, and and z which i is serving me this thing

is serving me every single day yeah right and um it's hard because we're afraid you know humans don't like uncertainty i think because we don't understand it, we illogically rationalize insane behavior. Yeah. Yeah. And oftentimes when we make that choice, we're plagued. The monkey mind is plaguing us. It's the constant chatter going on. You know, and that's where we see a boom in mindfulness and a return to to wellness through cold tubs and things like that that actually just quite you can't think about shit like you're forced to be in the moment right flow states you know books are being written about it what can you do for that well ecstatic dance uh sport crossfit you name the thing when you're in the

moment that's what matters totally we don't associate that with our work, though. We think about that as a separate thing. Like, yeah, I'm going to grind through this nine to five. And then when I get home, I'll do the thing that I really enjoy for a little bit. Or maybe I'll unplug with some TV and chat with my wife and kids and then crash. Yeah. It's a penance, right? I got to do this.

It's a trade, man. Got to do my time. Then we get over here. You know, you talk about the monkey mind. You know, we're doing this internal thing all the time at a rate that we can't even mimic in speech or you can't even type within a fraction of the speed that we're talking to ourselves. And I sort of observe that we, whatever decision we make, you know, if we're going to simplify it, like, like I'm oversimplifying this is like door number one, door number two, going right,

going left. We have to find some sort of connection and community on the other end of that. And you can notice, and anyone who's listening should sort of like scan their head for this type of behavior, which is you'll notice how people act on either side of these decisions. Unfortunately, because the path of least resistance is this like concession of our best self, you know, like letting fear guide us towards this like going left thing, is there's a massive community there. And these are people that need to feel better about this decision that they've made. They need to justify it. So we get together and we complain to each other.

It's a culture of complainers, victims, right? And they're like, hey man, can't blame us, right? It's hard out here. And that is the conversation because we have to commiserate in this thing, right? And I'm going to put you on blast right now because I've met you one other time in another type of community

where I observed the opposite happening. And, you know, when I was little, I used to think like celebrities hang out with celebrities because that's just like what like famous people do. And what I'm observing as I like put myself in these positions where I'm like, how did I get here?

I can't believe how many times I've said that in the last five years. How am I at this table? Right? I'm saying that right now. When I met you, it was at one of the most special places in the world, which is Gabby's backyard.

Fuck yeah. I'm going there tomorrow morning. Beautiful, yeah. So I'm in the sauna with a cast of characters that it's not worth naming, but everyone's in the Hall of Fame of whatever it is that they do. Whether it's music, acting, directing, sports. It's ridiculous.

Okay. And, you know, gate opens and then down walks like a new face. You know, I've been going there for several years. I was like, oh, it's them. Like new face. Like, what's up? And you roll in a great hoodie, sweats on, fanny pack. I'm like, this dude is rocking it right now and immediately

the the the jumpsuit comes off and dude you were freshly bicked up in a in a speedo with like american flag on it and i was like who ripped out of your mind i was like who is this motherfucker and then we chatted in there like a cool hour and it was a great conversation. And the reason why I bring that up is because, you know, I've gone to Gabby before, who I adore. It was like one of my favorite people. I've been like, I just want to thank you because I'm sure there's some Tuesday and Thursday mornings where they're like, I just want to have breakfast. Like, why is there 15 people in my backyard? And she looked at me like I was crazy. She was like, oh, no, you don't understand this. This is for us. And what she's talking about is reinforcing what I'm saying, which is that it is so vulnerable and uncertain to pursue your best self that you need community there as well. You need to be around people. I don't know anything about fighting, but I need to be around people like you because

this thing is hard that we're trying to do. Right. And that's just one example of what's available on the other side of like this vulnerable,y pursuit you know um but unfortunately the population is much bigger in the other camp yeah yeah that's it's funny you mentioned that because i right right when i when i met you here in air quotes yeah um you said nice to see you and then immediately it clicked like fuck i knew i'd met him before it was like but i couldn't i couldn't put your face where it was no no no this is good though because it's a little i have a little inside story here uh of my own personal life that i think is hilarious so my wife had dated uriah faber back in the day okay very cute california kid and um i i was in the ufc while he was in the ufc i was in King of the Cage when he was in the King of the Cage. I followed him his whole career.

I met him probably 10 or 11 times before he finally got it, who I was, and said, Kyle, nice to see you again. And it was only after I started dating Natasha. Which is great. I was like, you know me now. You know me now, brother. They're still friends. And he's become a buddy of mine. I had him on the pod. He was one of my first episodes on the podcast, but. That's amazing.

I find that hilarious. And then I'm always trying to be cognizant of that because I have been hit in the head and I meet a lot of people. Probably you do the same. But yeah, man, there, I don't even want to say, I don't want to name drop. So I'll leave him off the table. But his initials are JC and he's not Jesus Christ, but he might be the Jesus Christ of comedy acting. He was there. And so that, I mean, I literally went fucking blank when I walked by him. He introduced himself and I kind of was like, uh, uh. And I don't often get starstruck.

You know, there's a few people who are whatever, but I'd been, been in that backyard before i've met some people that kind of thing you know and met other people as you have ron i was like fuck and then gabby paired me with him to work out for the day yeah i was just like are you fucking kidding me right now well yeah yeah that was a good day crazy place that was a damn good day. Yeah, crazy place. Yeah, you talk about community and it's like people, I mean, a lot of this is coming up. You read the book Tribe by Sebastian Junger. I haven't. It's so good.

It's a short book. I think it's only five hours inaudible. Highly recommend it to people. But that's the thing. You look at any across cultures, different times times and especially in modern cultures he talks on rogan's podcast about and it's in the book as well about when nazi germany was bombing england that brought london together you know and those people you know there was it wasn't mine it was ours right you're all hiding in one room of your apartment building yeah sharing food sharing water looking out for one another it brought them together right there was a sense of community You're all hiding in one room of your apartment building, sharing food, sharing water, looking

out for one another. It brought them together, right? There was a sense of community immediately and it lasted after that, right? It shouldn't take bombs coming overhead to bring us together like that. And if you look into different things that have really taken off, like a lot of people look at CrossFit and they're like, I don't get it. And you're like, well, that's because you haven't done it. Like there is something, there is something bigger than the workout itself.

Yeah. Even among paleo circles and things like that. Yeah. There's a sense of community there. Totally. Well, it's the thing that brings us back and it's, it's hard to picture that in other, other gym formats, workout formats. I think we see small box gyms like yourself taking off because of that, because that's something it's delivering to people you know yeah that's that's uh that's context you know a good friend of mine uh carl powell he's like former gymnast yeah yeah yeah that's right y'all are y'all in norcal together yeah so like you know um he has this thing where you know he was a spanish national champion, you know, he has this thing where, you know, he was a Spanish national champion and, you know, unbelievable athlete, had goals to go to the Olympics. You know, that was his dream.

And podium and like wear this gold medal. And, you know, anytime you have a goal like that, you see it in your head over and over and over again. And he did this mental experiment, and he talks about this often, but he did this mental experiment where he's like, well, if I go to the Olympic games and I perform to the best of my ability and receive this gold medal, and he puts himself on the podium and he's bowing down and they're putting this medal over his neck. And then he looks up to an empty stadium and it's like, his parents aren't allowed in, his friends aren't allowed in, and there's just no one there. He sort of did the thought experiment of like, well, what does this feel like? And he's like, if I can't share this,

if it's just me in a vacuum, it has no real meaning, right? And we're meaning-making beings, you know? And this also gets into the book. This is a storyteller, you know? And so how that goes bad is when we sort of create a story when it's not there, you know? We use it to explain things that we can't explain. And a lot of people right now are, you know, they have a lot of reasons why they are sort of running away from what it is that they want, you know? Even the explanation that victims have that keeps them locked into that space. Like, that happened a while ago. What are you doing now? You know, like, that's not holding

you in that space, but up here in your own mind, it is.'s a thing too like i think when if i'm ever misunderstood it's that i don't care about emotion it's only this like performance-based thing and you know i use that to to have like rigorous arguments but emotion is important. And there's science there surrounding this victim mentality. If you sort of break down what it is to be a victim, is to sort of choose a deterministic stance, meaning this is not inside of my control. You relinquish control to someone or some other thing that happened upon you. And it's like biologically impossible to be happy,

to experience the positive emotion of happiness and be a victim at the same time. Because we can't unknow that we have no say. You're not holding the pen of your life your life is decided for you whether it's like acutely with like a you know a captor or something like that or chronically with like i just can't get out of this rut man you know and and um you know it just doesn't pay to take that stance, no matter how true it is. And not to like get gnarly on the podcast, but I think fringe experiences are a great place to look for truth because it's like the most rigorous, you know. So you see like prisoners of war or all these crazy examples, even in like the Holocaust, where it's the best time to claim like, all right, I'm kind of a victim, spare me one, right? The people that endure those scenarios and survive

and then later thrive are people that do so by holding on to even the tiniest bit of control, right? Like you're in a POW camp and you decide, I'm not going to eat your rice. And that's just a choice. It's like not even a great one when you're in a POW camp and you decide, I'm not going to eat your rice. And that's just a choice. It's like not even a great one when you're starving, but it's a choice. And that is actually more powerful than like the nutrition. Yeah. Right. You know, um, that, that, that half 1% of I have a say is like the wiggle room. That's the margin that allows us to have some control

and create meaning in our life. And if it's already decided, then what's the point? There is no meaning. And that's when you become a miserable motherfucker. You know? No doubt. And you look at, I think you look at people on the opposite side of that spectrum.

I mean, shit happens to everyone. There's no doubt. Some of it could be, if you were going to grade it, certainly there are things that have happened worse to than other people, but how they respond to that, if they are able to come back to a state of thriving, oftentimes they look at that in hindsight as a blessing as the means or the

catalyst that got them to the place they're at right now. Right. And so I'm going to use a couple examples that Aubrey Marcus has given me, at right now. Right. And so I'm gonna use a couple examples that Aubrey Marcus has given me, my dear friend. One, when you do that, you learn to use hindsight as foresight. So I went through this challenge and I'm going to use that going forward because I'm in a better place now. And then when life throws shit at you again, which it inevitably does, you know, to not panic. Yeah, I can do it again. Yeah, I can do it. I'm going to get through this. It's going to turn out to be a blessing in disguise. And that's a completely different shift in how you look at that. And one other example that he gives me that I absolutely love, whether you're spiritual or not, it still applies because it's a choice you make and the

way you view the world is instead of saying, I can't believe this is happening to me. You say, maybe this is happening for me. Right. And whatever that challenge is, that's the way you look through that lens at the world. And it's a totally different world. Totally. And you know what jams people up in these kinds of scenarios is, and I've been talking about this a lot lately is I think people don't really understand success and failure. They don't understand risk. And part of it has to do with this storytelling that you're talking about,

which is that, and this is sort of proven and reproven all the time in the literature, which is that we downplay other people's failures and we outplay our failures, right? We play up other people's successes. We play down our successes. And it's because of how we experience time, right? So consider my experience of you.

The first day I meet you, I don't know who you are. So I get to meet you at the end of your story, like present moment, right? And so that comes with the good news. You've accomplished this, you're standing here in front of me, you have all these things to show for your life, etc. But that's not how you experienced your life. You experienced your life in order. And so, what is more readily available in your brain is all the failures, the mundane days, the whole real story in order. I don't get that experience. And we do this when we see people who are successful. It's impossible to understand the reality of that. And so what most low performance people do is they think, well, I am normal and other feels like shit. It doesn't go the way I saw it. But that's not how they experience it. It's not how Kanye experiences making music. That's not how LeBron experiences playing basketball because LeBron knows the rest of his story. He's very close to his failures and

his dissatisfaction. We only see the result. I make reference to this all the time. We can't wait to tell the story of Jordan getting cut from his basketball team. We love to tell that story to little kids who experienced some adversity. Hey, man, Michael Jordan got cut from his team. He's good, right? But you can't, like men in black, erase your memory of what you know happens to the rest of that story. The only way that that lesson lands hard and truthful is you get cut from your basketball team and you go home crying, not knowing what the future is. That's how Michael Jordan experienced it. And so because we don't really understand this, when we see success, it's like biased. It's not a full understanding. And now we're comparing our experience, which is like chronological to this thing that is not real.

Right. You're looking at all these like finish lines, you know, and so that reinforces like a low performance attitude, which is like, oh, I'm normal. The things that I really want are not for people like me. And I have all this evidence to show for it. And so I'm just not going to do any of that stuff. And I think anybody who's accomplished anything remarkable in any lane, art, sport, business, whatever. At some point, they've changed their relationship with dissatisfaction. You know, like what we know about development, like skill acquisition, is that performers imagine what it is that they're trying to perform.

Like a painter has a vision of the painting in their head, then they try to paint it. And all the while they're making adjustments from these like weird ass strokes they're making on the canvas to like what they see in their head. You know, again, I'm so ignorant to fighting, but I imagine that in a drill or in a sparring session, you're trying to mimic an ideal outcome, how it should feel to throw a punch or whatever. And then you throw one, and what you're noticing are all the deviations from what it is that you tried to accomplish. I took one million swings off a batting tee

over the course of my life. And every time I put the ball on the tee and I imagined what it is that I wanted to do. And then I made an attempt and I noticed all of the sensations, all the results, the trajectory of the ball that was different. And then I made an adjustment and I went back to it. High performance people are dealing with this dissatisfaction all of the time. No one is at their peak expression, even the best. You know, Michael Jordan throws up 55 points. He's in the press conference after the game.

Dumbass fan watching television like me is like, that's the greatest of all time, being the greatest of all time. His experience is, fuck, man, third quarter, turnover, missed that one pass to my boy Pippen, right? Brick times 11, however many shots he missed right yeah and and i don't think people understand that i really don't i think that they think excellent people experience excellence and that they are a normal person and they experience dissatisfaction so i'm not gonna play the game and'm going to go over here and you can't blame me for it fuck

it's horrible you know and I don't think we have a choice I don't think any of us can afford not to to walk a line that is going to show us our best self

yeah you think of the things that really I mean I just did an interview with Max Lugavere on his podcast, The Genius Life. And he was asking me what my favorite biohacks are, which is a funny word, but he took a deeper dive into that. Most of which, you know, have to do with sleep and regular shit, getting sunlight, those kind of things. But really it's about leaning into the things that make you uncomfortable.

Tim Ferriss talked about that, how he'd order a coffee and lay down in Starbucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fucking weird, right? To inoculate himself. Yeah, just so he could feel that awkwardness. And the Japanese samurai wore a pink tunic, so he could really learn what embarrassment actually was. And we shy away from that.

We want 72 degrees everywhere we go. You know, we shy away from discomfort. When Wim Hof's talked about this a lot, like you, when you have an ability to withstand the cold and knowingly say yes to it, same thing we're doing at Gabby and Laird's. And we're rotating from 33 degree cold to 220 degrees hot in that sauna back and forth for three rounds before or after the workout starts you know you know when you can say yes to that and sit in there and deal with that that has the ability to fucking transfer into everything you do in life yeah and that's the the paradox

right it's like well we think we want this result that feels good and what is like characteristically needed in development is this like stretch beyond self right because you know uh what is it about earning the skill of say like a michael jordan and playing against uh an eight-year-old. There's no joy in that. It's boring, right? And this is sort of like, have you ever seen the concept of flow in terms of arousal before? It's sort of like a graph. And there's on one axis is like your level of preparation. And on the other axis is the level of challenge, right? So with peak preparation, you're Michael Jordan of whatever it is that you do. And minimal challenge playing as an eight-year-old, it's boring. The level of arousal is too low, right? Flip the script.

You're me, fucking dog shit at basketball, right? Zero preparation, level of challenge playing one-on-one against Michael Jordan. I mean, despite like the Instagram life of like, yeah, I'll play it against him or whatever goes on. That is too overwhelming. It's completely overwhelming.

I can experience no flow, no happiness, no joy in this experience, but there's a sweet spot. And ironically, it's where we perform our best, which is if you just max out your preparation and continually put yourself in a challenge that stretches that capacity, this is the optimal level of arousal for our peak performances or flow, right? And so, you know know in our brain it feels

like one day this will be easy that's like no no this is supposed to be at our edge hell yeah right i love that yeah exactly it and it's not my preference like it's not your preference it's not me high chick send me high's preference you know it's just what's true right it is it is not only what drives our development it's what brings out our best performances and thank god it is the most joyful blissful place in the world it's it's nirvana like on earth yeah it's timeless there is it doesn't matter what's going on in your life you know because that's just gone you're just in the moment completely involved in whatever it is you're doing you know i i uh i didn't know tate

at the time our mutual friend tate fletcher um but i connected it what he said to me i'll tell you in a second uh to the story that opens the book, which he was telling me a story one time in his career fighting where he had an opponent where inside of a fight that is extremely fast and violent with consequences. And he's quote unquote competing, is the only emotion he could remember in that moment as he's like avoiding strikes and playing his game was how grateful he was to have an opponent that is drawing this performance out of him in that moment, which is insane. And as like an ignorant observer like myself, I'm like, you were what? In a fight?

What? It doesn't make any sense. You know, go back to, I throw in this like stereotypical story of peak flow in my life that I'm very grateful for. And there's a big game at the end of my college career. You know, we're ranked fourth in the country on our way to win a national championship in NCAAs. And this is the regional final. We're win a national championship in NCAAs. And this is the

regional final. We're in San Diego, sold out crowd. People's faces are painted freaking blue. It's on ESPN, crazy stuff, unknown stuff, unfamiliar stuff to our program. And it's the ninth inning. There's two guys on and I'm up and we're down three. It's like the thing that you play in your backyard a thousand times. And I remember walking to the plate being extremely grateful. And this comes up again in a more intense way like Tate expressed.

But I'm walking to the plate and I'm thinking, man, it took me whatever, 18 years to get here of like training in the backyard. And this environment is only possible, like you only get my job in this game if you do all of the work. Like there's no other way that you can't like pay a certain thing. You know, you can't like sign up on Groupon for this. That's how you get in the party. And the party's full of other people who have done that. And I was like, man, this is going to be over in 90 seconds. It can go a million different ways. What a cool thing. And I had this big smile on my face. I was

like a real punk to play against, you know, arrogant guy. But I'm doing my overly ridiculous pre-bat routine. And I'm getting in the box with a smile on my face. And things are getting very specific. Baseball is maybe like a boring sport, but there's very specific things happening behind the scenes. And in this scenario in the game, you have to do some things as a hitter. In my scenario, I'm hunting not only one type of pitch, but one location as well. And mathematically, people that are throwing in the mid-90s, that's like less than a third of a second to make a decision. You have to train yourself to have that reaction time.

It's not technically possible. And so using my vision that's been trained to do this thing, to decide yes on the pitch, yes on the location, you check those two boxes, then I have to put a swing on this thing. It's been 18 years in the making, right? So you're up there just playing this game moment to moment. High performers like yourself shrink things down. So baseball is played at the highest level one pitch at a time. So you set yourself up for the

best chance for success. Step into the box for this one pitch only. Boom. I see the pitcher. I see his arm. I see the ball. Slider. No. Ball one. Step out. Do the whole thing again. And this happens for several more pitches. And finally, I get like this pitch that I'm talking about that I'm hunting. And I swear to you that seeing this in like the window, which is like where his hand is near his ear, he's about to let go of this ball. I saw the ball leave his hand and I knew, and this is in less than one third of a second. I knew what pitch, where, and as the ball is on the way, so it's left his hand. And I'm like, I got like tears in my eyes almost at this point telling the story, I thought how grateful I was for what was about to happen. I don't know how that's possible.

And less than a third of a second later, I put a swing on this ball and time slowed down, obviously enough for me to be like, wow, would you look at that? Here's a 95 mile an hour fastball exactly where I want it. And I think that in a moment, I'm probably going to swing, and I'm going to save my boys' season right now. That fast. All of those emotions.

Put a swing on it. Hit a ball a mile out to right field, home run. It was gone before I touched first base and I round second base. And my brothers are empty in the dugout and we're doing this thing. And it was the same thing that Tate talked about. And you only get that experience, not that it's about the home run or the fight or whatever. You only get that sort of gratitude, joy, peak expression, experience if you put yourself in the environment and you build that level of preparation that it takes to

sync up this level of arousal for magic, you know? And holy fuck, what a gift. Fuck yeah, brother. You know? Yeah, it really is. And I think an observer could be like, well, what does that have to do with today? And, you know, there's nothing about,

I could talk to you for two hours about how to increase your pop time, throwing a runner out at second base or you know how to hold a bat or a bunch of shit that doesn't matter but i'll tell you what uh i believe that it's through specific indoctrination into these these long arduous pursuits that lead us to general capacities. Much better than understanding generally these things and trying to apply them specifically. And if that sounds like heady, think about it this way. What do you think is a more valuable

understanding of, let's say, discipline? If I read all of the literature on discipline, interviewed a bunch of people, say, hey, man, give me 20 minutes of your time. Thoughts on discipline. Do you think it's better or worse than not discipline? And I'm like, writing this down, cool, awesome story. Yeah, cool. Read this book on discipline. Read this biography. Meet this person, et cetera. And now i go out in my life i'm like discipline sounds like a good thing to have you gotta doubt i'm gonna just roll this shit out into my next venture or do you learn discipline in a highly specific application one's rigorous one that holds you to the fire one that has consequences i think you can learn discipline and war or art or sport or whatever. And now you can

go on to anything else. I'm like, you want to talk about discipline? Let me talk about discipline. You know, and there's something about that specific pursuit where you have like real skin in the game rather than doing this thing, you know, making reference to door number two, where it's like, well, I'm not going to be vulnerable in any way. I'm not going to put myself in a position to fail in any way, but I'm going to life hack or fucking Tim Ferriss podcast my way to the thing. Ultimately, you need to take that and do something. And that's where we like life isn't hypothetical. You know, at some point, you know, deep down that you're a more compelling partner, business person, podcast host, what any of the lanes of your life, you are more fit for that task, because you have held yourself to a very specific lofty pursuit. And I don't know

anything about your career. I don't need to know anything about the details of your career to also know that there's probably a lot of dissatisfaction in there. No doubt. You're like, there's no way I was the best I could have been. Michael Jordan's on a golf course right now saying the exact same thing. He like yo all those weird years at the wizards like what was that you know yeah he's doing the same thing but what i'm saying is what you have to show for it is irreplaceable you can't get it any other way agreed 100 brother fuck yeah man it's been great having you on.

We'll link to this book going right. Yeah, man. The show notes. Where can people find you online? Oh man, I'm on the internet. My handle's like at functional coach, Instagram, Twitter, my gym, Deuce Gym. There's three in LA, deucegym.com.

It's a blog every day. It's like a-minute read that has nothing to do with push-ups that'll change your life you know and uh yeah i have a lot of uh seminars i teach around the world and an education online for developing the craft of coaching and leadership and entrepreneurship that's all at holdthestandard.com. Awesome, brother. We'll link all that in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, man. I appreciate it.

This was fun. Awesome, brother. Thanks. Oh, that was great.