Mark Bell's Power Project - Getting Better is a Skill

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Working harder isn’t always the answer. Sometimes the biggest breakthrough comes from improving your skill, technique, awareness, and ability to stay composed.Mark Bell and Nsima Inyang discuss learning how to sprint, improving running mechanics, staying relaxed under pressure, what competition teaches you about your weaknesses, and why losing can accelerate progress. They also react to Andrew Huberman’s thoughts on meditation and presence, and talk about the importance of testing ideas for yourself instead of blindly following advice.The conversation also gets into jiu-jitsu, learning new skills later in life, acting, athletic versatility, and why giving yourself enough time to improve may be one of the most valuable things you can do.Subscribe to Mark Bell’s Power Project for more conversations on strength, performance, health, and becoming more capable.Special perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK/TRT/PEPTIDES! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com and use code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off Self-Service Labs and Guided Optimization®.🧠 Methylene Blue: Better Focus, Sleep and Mood 🧠 Use Code POWER10 for 10% off!➢https://troscriptions.com?utm_source=affiliate&ut-m_medium=podcast&ut-m_campaign=MarkBel-I_podcastBest 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast➢ https://www.PowerProject.live

You learn a lot through competing even through, especially actually, especially through your losses. I've got to be humbled every time and be reminded of like, hey, you're still new. Yes, I've been working on it for a while, but in the grand scheme of things, like you're still newish to this. For most people, when they try to run the fastest, they run slower. Go towards the things that you're interested in and give yourself the time to get better at it. Meditation, especially in today's context of how we live, can actually be one of the most useful practices to control one's attention. All right. We have to address the poop story. Yeah, we have to address the poop story.

It's, first of all, something I said right when this story broke, my wife was reading this to me and telling me about this, because I didn't really know about it. And right off the bat, I just said, well, I don't think the athlete is really to blame. Something I was thinking in my head. And then I said, well, there's, there probably is currently a rule. against spitting because somebody probably spit and did like snot rockets all over the course before. Yeah. And somebody said, that's gross. Let's get rid of that. Yeah. And, and they did. And my wife actually looked it up as we were having this conversation. She's like, oh my God, you're right. They have a rule for that. I was like, and they don't have a rule for shit in your pants. And so this

girl was like, you know, screw it. I'm going to keep going through with this competition. I believe she won. She won. Right. Yo, that, that, I think Ryan was just saying like, That's impressive. If we think about it, like, you literally defecate all over yourself. You got it running all over. And you still managed to win. Now, you've shit yourself a couple times. I remember you're telling us on the podcast that you pooped your pants in the sauna in the sauna.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I left the sauna when that happened. Actually, I didn't leave immediately. But I left a little bit after. Biohazard. Everyone holds you down. They spray you down. Hey, but I mean, I did tell you like, you know, I think one of the weird things about this,

it's, I think it kind of also does show her mindset because, I mean, I was at Jiu-Jitsu the other day training. I had a little bit of the bubble guts in the morning. We were doing some specific training where they start on like where this is going. And my training partner was about to get me in an arm bar. I escaped by pushing a little bit and I little, you know, a little bit, right? Something came out. Still finished, tapped him, went to the bathroom right after. That happens. But there's also the, there's the idea of like, are you going to say, you know, stick around and keep fighting. You know what I mean?

Like that's, would you, and if you were in a situation and you know you could win, but you had shit running down, you're like, would you keep, would you go and would you stop? Would you leave? What would you do? Luckily, I have deep cheeks. So hopefully it wouldn't escape out the way that hers did.

But, you know, diarrhea is like a totally different situation. Yeah. I would, that's why this is interesting because this is like open to interpretation. Like, if you, if you were doing wall balls and you're, getting, I don't even know the order of competition, like what exercises are where, but I'm just

thinking like a wall ball's greatest opportunity for something to squirt out of there probably. Yeah. You're doing some wall balls and a little nugget shoots out. And if you have, you know, if your pants are like form fitting, it's like you figure between having some deep cheeks and having a little nugget shoot out and some tight pants that like it's not going, it's not going anywhere. You should be okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like I would, I'd probably keep, I'd probably keep. I'd probably keep going. But if I was like wrestling somebody, uh, I'd have to like, I'd have to tell them, hey, I think I shit myself. But if I was in a competition, wrestling somebody, there's money

on the line too. Yeah. High Rock stuff. Yeah. Was she had a competition where she could win some money? I think so, probably. Right. She's pretty high level from what I understand. She's, I think she's the one of the top in the world at the, uh, now here's, you know, we have to just keep and keep some things in mind sometimes. You have to be reasonable, right? And I think, that like once something's coming down like you're you can't compromise everybody else right yeah like if i if i was uh if i'm doing my my rose and my burpy broad jumps and i'm kicking everyone's ass and i just decide to light up a cigarette it's like that shit ain't cool because it's like that interferes with what other people are doing and if you shit and you shit everywhere it's like

the potential to like get people sick and all other kinds of things it's just too it's too much to deal with It's not like she went and attacked anybody, but she was getting the course all gross. And then I also know a bunch of other high rocks athletes. And they're like, yeah, I've had to use like a rower and had like spit and stuff all, you know. Blood, yeah. Yeah, gross shit all over it. You're like, I think that happened in CrossFit one year because the deadlift. I think somebody started bleeding.

The shin started bleeding. And you should be running to that in powerlifting meets, you know, they rub the blood off. if you're an MMA athlete or doing what you do, you're sharing a lot of bodily fluids, a lot of sweat, a lot of different things are happening. If you're in a cage and you're in the UFC, you got blood, sweat, tears, urine,

and God knows what else is going on in there. Yeah. Now, this, I think even though, because her comments were lit up, she turned off her comments for a lot of posts. But when you got to the comment where she just stopped turning off the comments, you could see so many people

were lighting her up for it, people were trying to go after her Puma sponsorship. So there's this comment that I was like, Puma pants. No, poopie pants. It was just like everyone was saying Puma, do you support this? And I'm happy, at least so far it seems that Puma hasn't dropped her. I think they may have. Maybe Ryan can look it up.

I hope not. Because like at the end of day, honestly, this is Hirox's fault. Yeah. If an athlete signs up. It's not in the rules. And they don't stop, right? They choose not to stop. It's not.

I mean, I would stop. If I had poop running down my, if I had the first sign of like there being poop in my butt while I'm doing something, I'd stop. I would say this is like, I would say this is a little bit of a moral thing. You know, it's like, it's almost like, you know, the store doesn't have any signs that say that you can't steal, but I, you know, and I took a couple things from there, you know, I don't know, there's a little bit of a moral barrier because you're infringing upon you're infringing upon what everybody else can do.

And that's not good, you know, she didn't, like, she didn't throw her shoe at anybody. She didn't punch anybody. Yeah. But the smell, I mean, diarrhea is rough. You know, like if someone had diarrhea in the bathroom here, you know, at our office here, that lingers in there for a long time, even after, even with flushing it and appropriately going to the bathroom and using the toilet. People, but I think this is the thing. It's like people that.

I think it's a moral mistake in my head. It is a moral mistake. But people who are champion. in this type of sense or this competitive because like not every person that's a champion at something is this competitive or even this but like many of them would right? I die

for this. You hear people say all the time. Yeah. I'd shit my pants over this. Many of them would and she just happened to be in the situation where she's obviously the best in the world at this and she shed herself and she was like you know fuck it I'm gonna win and she actually did I think it's very it's very impressive that she won

but it's it's like High Rock should have stopped it. I mean, I know we've been on this show before a couple times and I'm like, the air quality has changed a little bit in here. You've always been a gentleman about it too. You don't call me out immediately. It's always me. It's never the guest.

It's the worst when you think you can just like, I think I can like slip one out and yeah, talk through it and no one's going to notice. You know, luckily it hasn't been like one of those real, you know, crazy ones or anything. Yeah. I know this is a reach. It's a reach. But the flu game. I mentioned this to you, right?

The flu is generally, you know, you could get people sick with that. And I know it's not the same thing as having, you know, poop bunny pants. But it's one of those things where it's like, if you're on a situation where you can get other people sick, is it not kind of the same? I know shit is different. You see it. It can, it's nasty. And this is a competent. But he played.

He won. Yeah. And there might have been a play. player who had the flu who's like, fuck, you got me sick, but hey, right? Right. I don't know. I would also say that I would imagine, and I don't even really know, but I would imagine that, you know, high rocks, it's a pretty big company now.

They have a lot of money. And I'm sure that their lawyers are able to interpret stuff they have in the rulebooks that would be able to stop somebody from shitting themselves on the course, even before this ever happened. I would imagine there like there has to be because like if you there has to be some rules about infringing upon what somebody else is doing. Absolutely. And then I think, you know, I know that this is funny to like, you know, bring all this to court. But let's say you were to bring this to court.

I think it would be a reasonable assertion for the judge to say, yeah, I think you are infringing upon other people. You know what I mean? So I think that if if Hirox was, you know, concerned about, you know, decays. cueing this girl when it's not in the rule book, which I don't know if they were. But if they were and thought they would get sued for it or something like that, I'm thinking like, there's got to be something in the rules that wouldn't allow you to do that. I do wonder, and Ryan, maybe you can look this up because this brings up a lot of questions. Does the MLB, the NFL, the NHL, the, you know, do these other big organizations,

do they have any rules about shitting yourself? And if they do have rules against shitting yourself, I wonder if they have other rules about peeing yourself because peeing yourself happens a lot. You know, CrossFit, a lot of people would pee when they were doing double unders, powerlifting. A lot of women pee on the platform. Mikhail Ekvali, a Swedish runner who finished a 2008 half marathon covered an extrament rather than stomping and losing his pace. Paula Radcliffe, the world record hold marathoner famously stopped to pull. poop on the side of the road during a 2005 London Marathon and still won the race. Taylor Nib, the professional triathlete openly shared that she had an accident during the running

portion of the T-100 World Championship in Dubai, but she pushed through to win. It seems happens a lot with running because it's outdoor. So triathletes are experienced with this. Zach Bitter made a video. He's like, I've been shitting myself for years. He's like, and I never got any press for it. Right. I would assume that she's definitely a good runner. And she's definitely familiar that other people have done this and continued on to win. So honestly, in her mind, I wouldn't be surprised that she's like, I shat myself, but this is normal in these types of sports. And these champions go on to continue. You know what I mean?

I feel like she probably just has a very unique experience in that this isn't necessarily foreign to her perception of this sport. Ryan, are you seeing anything? Does it say anything about other professional sports having rules? Yeah. It says most of them do. NBA, MLB, NFL. Well, I guess the NFL doesn't have anything specifically, but it looks like the MLB and the NBA does.

So you remember the, you know, the steroid era of baseball. The reason why a lot of those guys got jacked up on steroids because they didn't have a rule against them. So they're like, hey, there's no rule against it. So F it. Now, you know, it is, it was a certain scheduled drug. it was illegal to take. But it wasn't against like the rules.

So I think that's like a lot of those guys were doing that. Something that's interesting is I did find that there was someone who pooped at an event and it was known. It's not like it was something that like people didn't know about at another high rocks event previously. So if they would have taken care of the situation beforehand or if they would have made rules, you know, in accordance to what happened already, then they wouldn't have had to deal with this.

You see that anywhere, Ryan? Can you look that up? I'm not sure if there's a... I saw like a video on it or something like that. Somebody was talking about a girl doing that in like 2020 or something or 20, 22 or something. What was it again? It was another athlete taking a shit. You know, usually guys get in trouble for being gross.

I'm glad it's the girls getting in trouble for being gross once in a while. You know what I mean? I mean, we are gross. Yeah, absolutely. we're gross but like you know oh hey hirox is now going to make a rule and people won't be doing that anymore but it at the end of the day i do think high rocks it's it's it's the fault of the competition like yes she morally yeah she she probably shouldn't have done it but there's still it's high rocks that's more at fault you know what i mean hmmma should make a a whole campaign

based off of this puma poopie shirt make yeah shoot give her like a brown shoe i don't know Do you see anything, Ryan? There's three athletes that Google Gemini is citing. One is from 2016 Johann Dines. He was a French racewalker who suffered severe gastrointestinal issues during the 2016 Rio Olympics. And then there's another incident in 2005 with Paula Radcliffe and one in 1982 with Julie Moss. Yeah, I was mainly talking about in high rocks. You know, if there's other incidents in high rocks.

I saw that Andrew Huberman recently was on Joe Rogan and he's got a book out if people want to check it out. It's called Protocols. I haven't seen it quite yet. I'm excited to check it out. I know he sent us some copies. So I'm excited to check it out and to have you read it to me. I wonder if he has an audio.

He probably will put out of audio. But I need to start reading anyway. So I need to just get into that habit. But I think, you know, know, Huberman, he's almost polarizing at this point. I think people are like, they're holding on to every word the guy says. I think a lot of times, you know, people are like waiting for him to like say something wrong. He does have a lot of fans. He's got a lot of passionate fans, people that are really excited about the information that he has. I think, which I think this is like unbelievable. I think he's

really drawn a lot of attention to the importance of science and the importance of, and how fun it can be to like learn a lot of these things. I also think that he does a good job of mixing science in with experience and mixing science in with a lot of things that he knows and the things that he's done. It's really nice to see that he is a people person and he's a good communicator, which I think is also awesome because sometimes you know, a lot of these really, really high level scientists, you're like, man, is this guy ever gotten outside? You know, they are so good at what they do. And they love it and they spent so much time in the books that they haven't really thought about combing their hair or any other concerns that other people might have.

They become just so enthralled with what they're doing. But Huberman's a good blend. He's somebody that has been lifting most of his life, former skateboarder. And he's got, you know, he's a little rough around the edges from the time he was a kid. It's all stuff that he talks about and says. And I think it's great that he's getting more people, fascinated and excited about this kind of stuff because, you know, just maybe two weeks ago or so, we had that young guy on the podcast who knew all that information about light. His name's

alluding me at the moment, but. Jurecki. Yeah, there we go. He's like 22 years old. Jonathan. Yep. And how amazing is it to have young people like that learning and we all get to benefit from it. So I think Andrew Huberman is a huge net positive for helping to drive a lot of these things forward. He references, he continually references studies that have been done, but he also references other scientists. And that's what I really enjoy about listening to him. When I listen to his podcast, he's got good tips and he's got good advice.

He's got a lot of his good, a lot of good ideas of his own. But what I mainly grab from him is, is when he mentions somebody else. then I'm like, oh, I want to go see what that person says. And then I get to hear it straight from a person that's high level in that particular field. So I think it's awesome. I think it's really cool that we're seeing him just explode everywhere. And I know some people are like annoyed by it. Some people hate on it.

But I think it's good. Yeah. My hope, as I was mentioning before, is like, I just hope that like, you know, he just stays out of the drama side of things. Yeah. You know, there have been certain things and certain people who have tried to drudge up things about him and that are kind of like a non-factor to the information he puts out. But it is also cool kind of like seeing him, as you were mentioning off air, like he's injecting more of his opinions into certain things, which is good because like it's good to understand what the science says and it's good that he's interjecting his opinions. But I think it's one of those things too where as somebody who's like taking in health information, because at this point when it comes to health information, There's all the things that you can learn from language models and AI.

There's all of the different people on YouTube that are putting out information. There's a bunch of information. And even with Huberman, I think that there are certain things you can hear, but it's good to still potentially put things to practice and come to your conclusions about things. Because I think this video right here is quite interesting because Chris Williamson had a Huberman on. And Chris is great at marketing. So while you don't need to meditate anymore automatically, will make the people who love to meditate

and have found meditation useful, angry. We've been meditating for thousands and thousands of years, you know? Right. So to just say, hey, we don't really need to do it anymore. It's interesting. So, like, let's actually, let's check this out because I think this is quite, this is going to be quite interesting. Learned from taking your mind from thinking and doing

and remembering about things of past and future, to just anchoring your perception to the present. It doesn't require meditating. Meditation is one. I don't think this started at the beginning of the audio. Whoopsie Daisy. You want to be present, something that we know from excellent data,

the way to practice that is to learn from taking your mind from thinking and doing and remembering about things of past and future to just anchoring your perception to the present. It doesn't require meditating. Meditation is one form of that. What are we doing when we meditate? We close our eyes.

We focus on our breathing. But that's actually interoception. It's focusing on our internal bodily state. which is not that great, frankly, if you look at the data for being present in a happy way. Most people who are overly focused on their internal state in the present are like, my heart rate is increasing, my heart rate's too low, I'm sweating, I'm uncomfortable.

That's not the way to get present and calm and aware. The way to get present, calm, and aware, and be able to move forward from that in the best way is to ask questions about your immediate physical environment. The second step is to use that heightened level of, awareness to ask yourself, what do I actually want to do next? What do I want to say next? What do I want to think about next? This is the way that you take control of your thoughts. So when you want to be who actually listens to? I think something that's interesting to observe about some of these statements

is to understand that Andrew Huberman is somebody that has done a lot of things at a high level. maybe not necessarily from like a sports perspective, but from a scientific perspective. He's got a lot of peers that he'll say, hey, a lot of these guys are way smarter than me. He's been around those people and he's had to do, you know, test after test and stuff to get the gain

and to get the knowledge that he has. So he's been in situations where I'm sure his mind is racing, his mind is all over the place. And I don't know if he knew these techniques back then when he was doing some of the stuff. recently on Joe Rogan he also talked about he boxed for a while and he would do some sparring and things like that and anyone who's ever done that even on a practice level knows how nerve-wracking that is especially when you first start to get into it and you're going against different people

and different people you know as we know at jiu-jitsu as well different people like to go at different paces and so it can it can it can really you know move your emotions around a bunch so he's someone who's had to you know practice these things in his life so i think it's important and that it's, you know, not just somebody just spewing out some information, it's somebody that has actually had to go through these steps. Absolutely. The thing that I hope, though, is that somebody who hears that doesn't then choose never to spend a little bit of time with meditation.

Because I do think that we, ideally, the goal is that we have a long life to learn quite a few things and have many different experiences. But sometimes when certain people of notes, hey, it's not really that useful. You just tend not to give your time to something because someone you put in high esteem is now deemed that to not be as useful as doing this other protocol.

Especially when it's something that you think, you already kind of think is maybe a little bit lame and it doesn't fit with what you want to do. Like if you and I say, hey man, don't do 30 minutes of cardio, it's worthless. Then people are like, yes. Like I knew it. And same thing with meditation, I think it's similar.

Because I think that, oddly enough, meditation, especially in today's context of how we live, can actually be one of the most useful practices to control one's attention. Because there are many things. I think he, Uberman actually likes to stare at a certain point for a period of time to bring a level of focus. Stare at people. But like that is a form of meditation, focusing on one point and not like not allowing your awareness to drift in other places, right? That can help. But like a lot of times we're now just drawn to pick this up throughout the day.

And one of the big aspects of meditation is a level of awareness, but awareness without reaction. So what he was mentioning how when you're focusing on your breathing, that can bring about an uncomfortable interoception, meaning you hear maybe, because it's not always that your heart rate's racing and you're sweating, but maybe at that point your heart rate is racing and you feel a little bit anxious. But you have a choice in how you can perceive that. You can either perceive that as being very negative and then it can drive you up more or you can learn to. to perceive it, become aware of it, and let it pass, right? And that is a skill. And that's a skill that, especially many people who have never really practiced meditation, aren't really used to just having their awareness be so pointed in that way, which is really

useful. So that's one of the things where it's like, you can see the comments here of people who have meditated and have, maybe they've had a meditation practice or they have a meditation in practice kind of disagreeing, and I think that disagreement is healthy. But it's one of those things where it's like, Hoopman, he has a lot of amazing things. And I'm very excited to go through his book too. But it's one of those things where you got to still, I think, try things for yourself. No matter who says things, you got to trash it for yourself. And when we're talking about trying stuff, I mean, you could just, you could literally set an alarm on your phone and say, you know,

send an alarm for two minutes from now, three minutes from now, and just try to meditate. Like whatever your version of meditation is, whether you're sitting or standing or whether your eyes are open or whether they're closed, try to just calm down and try to just drift off and see if you can kind of fall in between this state of like, am I breathing in or am I breathing out? You know, you get to this, like, you get so calm that you're not even sure. Am I awake or am I sleeping? You know, I don't know if you've ever. practice any of that, but when you're meditating like that, you're like right at the cusp, you know, if you can calm yourself down enough. Years ago when I actually first started like

messing meditation in my early 20s, I would always fall asleep. Yeah. That's great though. I mean, it's showing that you're able to, you're able to really calm your body down, calm your nervous system down. And maybe at that time, maybe you needed it, you know. Probably. The, and maybe you didn't have other good sleep habits, you know, at the time when you're, When you're younger, we go to bed later and wake up later and just the habits aren't as dialed. But I think, you know, when I think about interpretation of stuff, it's really easy to, if you just think about something that, you know, we can all relate to. Sometimes it just makes things easier. So we think about Arnold and what did Arnold say about a pump?

You know, if you think about what Arnold said about a pump. Now we know, like, you know, if you have a really crazy pump going. it's very uncomfortable. Oh, yeah. But Arnold found so much satisfaction in it. You know, he felt it was like orgasmic to get it, to get a pump. And that's his interpretation. And as you're mentioning, your heart rate goes up.

Maybe I'm on the assault bike. A heart rate goes up and I could have some negative interpretations of that. Like, oh, man, I think my heart rate's going way too high. Or I can figure out, I can say, oh, that's an adaptation to being on this bike. this is what happens when you're on here and I need to try to calm myself down and to relax if I'm sprinting and again sprinting is like one of the greatest examples of you really need to like relax when you sprinting. And people's interpretation of sprinting would be like you're going to run as fast as you can. And they've done study after study. They've studied so many athletes

over the years now where they'll routinely show that people that are trying to run fast. I don't know how this plays out amongst the top tier because it might be different when you're the best. But for most people, when they try to run the fastest, they run slower because everything's tensing up, everything's tightening up. So a lot of times the way that we perceive things can be a little bit of an illusion. I think a pump. I think the results that we're getting in the gym. I think we ultimately really like the results that we get. But there's a side of us that wants to be attached to like, you know, hating it or thinking that.

it's, you know, tough or cool when we get through it. But I think there's a whole other side of things where you can just look at it completely differently and say, this is good for me. This is right. I know for myself, like when I was powerlifting, sometimes the top set was like, whatever. It was like kind of annoying because it was so difficult or whatever. But the ones in between, when I warmed up for like 40 minutes or 45 minutes and got it like a good triple before maybe a really good single, I was like, oh my God, this is right where I want to be.

That felt so good. The technique felt sound. Everything felt crisp. Like that was an amazing input. I could almost feel myself getting stronger with that. So you can interpret, you know, a thousand pounds in your back being frightening or you can interpret it as like this is just the adaptation I'm looking for. Here's an example. I told you recently about how like now running is starting to just running doesn't cost me much anymore.

And what I mean by that is like one of the reasons. why I've always favored sprinting is, yes, I like the adaptation of sprinting. It is muscle saving, like low ground context. We had Cynthia Montalione on and she mentioned that like even long distance running is bad for your brain in a sense, right? And hearing all those things, I'm like, yeah, fuck long distance running. This is why I don't long distance run. But there was also something in my head that was just like, you should be able to just run a few miles still without it taking a lot of. Yeah, what's long distance. Yeah. Right. Right. So it's like that's a, I mean, that's something that I've worked on for periods of time. And I stop, you know, every now and then

I'd do it. And it just like, it would, even when I wasn't going very fast, you know what I mean? Just my legs would feel beat up. And I would tell myself, you know, maybe it's just like I'm heavy and it's my ground contacts. But at the end of the day, it was a technique thing. Because for some reason, it might have been because of something that I've been doing within my practice that when I started running again, it came into the way that I run. Now, I run two miles every other morning. And after that two miles, I don't feel it in my legs. I feel it in my hips.

And it's because now my mechanics and running are correct. Pick up your giant ass legs. Yeah, but that's the thing. It's pretty crazy because my legs would always be fried. You know, I'd give myself these excuses. But it was a technique thing. And now, like that capacity is there. It feels just, it just feels good.

It doesn't feel like a hard workout. It feels like just a breathing practice. And I could tell myself, well, those long ground contacts, that slow pace isn't good for me. But it's also like it has a lot of benefits that I'm happy that I've learned and I'm happy that I can now maintain because my body understands how to do it. Now, if I just didn't do it because I let all of this information I know about long distance or slow running inform my decision, I wouldn't be at. at a place where it's just a fun practice, right? But that's what I'm saying. If there's a practice you're interested in, you should allow yourself to figure out ways to chip away at it because you can probably find a way to make it feel easy in a sense. Yeah, what can you learn from it? You know, what are you going to become on the other side of it? I have a friend that's, he's going to do like 140 or 150 mile like race. And I'm like, oh my God. And he's a, he's a big guy. So I'm like, man, I'm kind of worried for you, really, you know, because it's huge. But I can't wait to see what you'll become by going on this journey.

You know, this is a guy that like, you know, three years ago, three miles was a big deal. He's six four. He's like six four or six five, like a good two thirty five, two forty. Yeah. So it's a big, a big guy lugging around a lot of weight. While I would love to discourage him from doing it, I'm going to just go with it because that's something he's interested and he wants to do it. But sometimes there is a reason to just explore something.

And he feels drawn to it. And when you feel drawn to something, whether it's Huberman or me or in Seema saying, hey, you know, I don't think this is a good idea, I still think you should gravitate towards the things that you like, towards the things that you enjoy. There's some sort of weird gut feeling that you have about it. And I think that probably is the right feeling, you know, within reason,

you know, within some sort of safety limits of some sort. but I think, you know, go for it. And what you're saying about running is, running is another great area to look at like interpretation. There's people that are like, oh, man, I ran five miles a day. And they're all excited and you're like, man, I just want to punch this guy. Like, why is he so happy about running five miles? Like that sounds like punishment.

That sounds like that sounds terrible. Someone like DJ Webb, we see him, you know, running all the time on his Instagram. For years. Yeah, he's been. This is pumping in miles. Yeah, he's just been, he's been blasting it, so to speak. Son of a bitch is getting jacked, getting strong, and just doing great with all of his running. I think he just did another marathon recently.

He's really been killing it. But yeah, the interpretation of running for some people, they're like, oh, man, I never want to run. And I think it's great that you explored running, you know, about two miles, three miles, when somebody starts to, what I would encourage basically everyone to do and everyone's, at different levels in their life, so you don't want to just go out and try this out of nowhere. But, you know, I've been promoting a 10-minute walk forever. I think a 20-minute run. If you can get on board with figuring out how to do whatever version of a 20-minute run that you can do,

even let's just start with 10 minutes. You know, if you're on the side of like, you know, you really hate it and you're new. Man, I just think there's, I think there's so much to learn from that. And it'll be meditative. At first, it'll be like, I want to stop, I want to stop, I want to stop, I want to stop, stop. and it just keeps going on and on and on in your head. Yeah. But it's the same noise that you get when you're meditating. Yeah.

You have all this noise going on. You got all this shit flying around. Oh, man, you know, I got that podcast coming up. Oh, man, I got this other thing going on. I got this new product that's going to hit. I got to advertise for this or whatever the stupid stuff is all swirling around. It's all very similar, whether you're running or whether you're actually meditating. So, you know, lean in on some of these things. Yeah.

And, you know, my note on what you were you're saying in terms of kind of, you know, starting running and it just beating you up. My goal when I was trying to build that capacity was to do it and have it not beat me up. But as I was doing longer distance work, I was just noticing that it would take away from my ability to go and do jiu-jitsu without feeling a high-level fatigue.

Other types of things that I put on a higher level of importance were hit because of how I was working with running, right? So that's why I'm very happy with where I am now because it's not like I could never, I couldn't run two miles or three miles or whatever, but it's that doing that would take away from my other things. And now I'm at a spot where I can just go run two miles and then I can go do everything else

because it's the mechanics of how I'm running, how my feet are hitting the ground, and I'm running in like the palouvas, right? So it's, but it doesn't hit me because my mechanics are there now, you know? And that's what I've been trying to look for, a way to be able to do this. So I can still do it effectively, so I can still get in a good input, but it wasn't something that took away from other things.

And I think that's one of the actually benefits of having, I guess, with your movement practice, having multiple things you could work at. Because if I was working at running so much that I just kept spamming running, I probably would have been able to potentially build more endurance. But I think it would have hurt me more than it helped me. You know what I mean? But I would do it. It wouldn't be right for a while. I'd go continue on with the other movement practices that I do. I'd come back.

Things are a little bit better. Boom. Now I come back. And maybe it's because of the kicking and some of the hip stuff that I've been doing. But now it's just good. It's easy. It doesn't take away. And that's the benefit of having.

It feels like flowy, effortless, bouncy, right? It feels effortless. It doesn't feel like I'm working, you know? And like, again, we always, we use nasal breathing to keep a governor on things. I'm going out of a solid pace. And I don't have to. breathe heavy. You know, I get back. My feet aren't sore. My legs aren't sore. It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

I think, I think probably something that happened for. I think there's a couple of things that happened probably like you, you, as you got older, um, and got further away from soccer, you ended up with an injury and so on. And then yeah, went further into lifting and, and, and, and then you, you put on a lot of weight probably since you were, like, when you were 16, 17, probably weighed like 30 pounds less. No, when I was 16, I was like 2. When I was 16, I was like 2.15, 220. When I played in college, I was around 210 because I was running around a lot.

I think we got, we ended up getting you up to 260 mark at some point. Yeah, we got up to 270 when we did record breakers. Yeah, yeah. So you ended up putting on, you know, good amounts of weight. And you weren't like super distant from athletics and from sports. And then you went into Jiu-Jitsu and stuff like that. And it's just been a while since you actually really been like, like running. You know, now you're running in this new frame, this new body. Not as, not as young either.

Even though you're still young, it's still an older, an older body, right? Yeah. And out of practice from all those drills, we forget, you know, just those little tiny soccer drills where somebody has, you know, one foot up on the ball and they switch feet and they, you know, just a little, smallest drills that your coach had you do or that you did at home on your own for hours on end because you've found it to be fun. or forget once you start to get absent of some of those things, all the little ground contacts start to hurt. But I'm imagining what happened was your transition from being able to kind of like just jog. Because I do think that jogging, I think jogging will beat most people up.

I think it will like get most people in the end. I think it's worse than running. Now if you're jogging and like trotting like really, really insanely slow and you're barely moving, that's one thing, you know, an older person just kind of shuffling along. that it probably is fairly safe to do that. But I think the goal and objective is to be able to actually turn your jog into like a run. Because I do think that jogging just has, it just has more impact. It's just longer, usually out there longer.

People are usually trying to run a little further when they're jogging. Yeah. And so it's kind of like just more reps. But I think especially for someone like you, as you gained access, not necessarily back to your speed because you've been fast, but now you have this speed that you can go. at for this distance that you can go out and it's more flowy it's more athletic you got it's got more rhythm to it rather than just kind of like putz in along being like oh i hate this my ass is too big you know and just trying to jog through the neighborhood it's like it's almost now that you have

the capacity to do it it just makes everything a lot easier oh yeah yeah and there's there's there's one thing though that that's also very different um you know from a lot of the lifting that i did before there was a lot of muscle that was packed on but there was a lot of like tension that was placed in the hips and the way that the feet were aligned when they would hit the ground like it did it didn't allow for me to transfer that force from the ground efficiently through my body right so when i'd be hitting the ground every impact would add up but now like even with the way the way that my feet hit the ground everything is like right under me everything is close you know what i mean whereas i wouldn't have been able to put my body in those positions years ago

So I wouldn't have been able to even run the way I do now. You know? So I think that's one of the reasons why it literally just doesn't impact my body. Just because the way I'm hitting the ground is also more efficient. I think there's something to be said too about capacities that are just sort of like they're just available to you without you doing as much work in that particular field. Like I know that you've been doing some sprinting and now you've been running sounds like more regularly. but I think when we did that sprint that one day where we were checking out the 10 meter sprints

you know I think I think people I think that people maybe don't realize or understand some of this I think you're better off being able to casually run 18, 19 miles an hour than you are with some peaked out you know 21 miles an hour flying but and it's incredible but sometimes the work that someone has to do

to get to that speed like let's just say that you dropped a bunch of stuff and you're like I just want to get fast and you work towards that. It would be awesome if you did that. But you'd probably lose a lot of other capacities. Maybe you'd have to lose a little weight in the process. And you'll find out it's just not worth it. So sometimes while these goals are great to be single-minded and say,

all I want to do is bench 500 pounds. That does make a lot of sense. It's something I did. And I loved every minute of it. It was great. There's also something nice about just being able to lay down on the bench and be able to move 275 around for some repetit. without training it at all.

Like there's some differences, right? Like if you're actually specifically training something and you're working towards it and you're trying to have it be this like piqued out awesome number that you think is awesome or everybody else thinks is awesome, whatever the case is. Or you got these more modest numbers of like, yeah, you know, I can I can any time throw 405 on the bar

and hit some reps on squats. And some people might be, oh, you know, stop that. That's not. Yeah, it's not crazy heavy. Yeah, I know. Yeah. And he was doing like sets of 10 or something. Yeah.

Yeah, Matt Strong. He's a monster. Yeah. So like this for you, you've been doing more sprinting now. Do you, because I think one of the interesting thing is you were doing a lot of longer distance running and you've been doing a lot of sprinting now. How's that been for you? Do you run at all anymore or are you mainly like, do you mainly use your runs as warmups for your sprints? Yeah, just running is warm up for the sprints.

Exactly. And, you know, to that note, you know, a 10 minute run or something like that, that somebody, might do a 10 minute jog that someone may do. If that runs interference on your sprinting, then you're just like, you're probably like way out of shape to be able to sprint. That would be, you actually might want to work on your endurance, which is not normally recommended for people that are working on their speed, but it might be an area of concern if you don't have like the GPP just to cruise around for eight, 10 minutes as a casual warmup.

There's some people who are totally against that. They think like, oh, it's all central nervous system driven and everything's got to be snappy and quick and fast. I disagree. I think that as long as we're not talking about like stuff that you do close to a race or something that you would do right before a race, I don't think it matters as much. But to kind of answer the question more directly, I don't do much longer running really at all. So it's just walking, lifting and basically sprinting. I did end up with a little bit of an injury.

I've had this injury for a long time and it was something that I it was something I was just kind of pushing to the side and then as it got as I started to feel it a little bit more recently I started kind of digging it around it's like so as oblique type thing okay and I've been just I've been hammering a bunch

I've been getting some treatments for it and stuff like that happened it wasn't an impact of something no it wasn't anything in particular really all it was is like just basically out of nowhere I started I started training for sprints five days a week. And I was previously, I was already sprinting.

I was on the treadmill a lot. At least three or four workouts were going on every day. But I wanted to take a step back from sprinting. And so what I ended up doing was I'm like, I want to take a few weeks just to basically do drills. So all I did was drills and hills. And the hills, you know, to keep things slow so I'm not going too fast to hurt myself, right?

but because of because of where I'm coming from I'm coming from like very I have to keep this in mind every time I got to be reminded of it I have got to be humbled every time and be reminded of like hey you're still new like you're still newish to this yes I've been working on it for a while but in the grand scheme of things it's pretty new to me and my body just super tight just doesn't want to sprint, right? So working, working through all those, those little things, I've run into some small, you know, small hiccups here and there. So yeah, the injury to the oblique has more to do with, like, acceleration work and power speed drills, which are basically just some of the drills we did with Brian Kula when he was here. Yeah. A lot of stuff like that and just really, you know,

driving that hip up and trying to be explosive. It wasn't any one thing. It wasn't like, Oh man, I think I pulled something. But it did flare up enough to tell me, you know, you need to chill to the point where like even doing like a push up or a plank, like those kind of things started to kind of hurt. And I'm like, I need to, I was trying to regress. I need to regress further. You know, and most people aren't willing to do that.

But that's, that's where I'm at. So right now I stuck myself back on the bike. So the bike training is good cross training. It doesn't interfere. I don't feel anything in that area for that. Yeah. But to transition into sprinting and doing the shorter stuff, I feel, I feel amazing. I feel explosive. I'm getting faster. There's still a lot of things I need to learn. And there's stuff that like, it really blows my mind and it's, it's not hard for me to understand, but I'm kind of asking myself

questions from a different angle. So, for example, when you do max acceleration work, You should be able to go, wham, you should be able to, like, slam into it. You should be able to get on a good angle, right? Yeah. But if you're really distant from sport or you're distant from sprints and you're not used to them or you're not good at them, you're going to stay pretty upright because this is pretty safe. Like, I'm going to, I'm going to trickle along like this, right? But you can't get, you can't really get hauling ass that way, right? So you have to lean forward pretty good.

So for now, you know, I only want to lean forward a little bit, but that's the usage of the sled. the sled or a hill, you know, much like we learned from Brian Kula as well with the, the incline of the treadmill. Yeah. Those are all things that will take your body from being kind of in this straight line to being tilted. It's tilted forward. It's not bent forward.

So you're not just like, you know, collapsing or hinging at the hips. It's just you literally like, like getting way forward. And if you listen to or research any stuff about older people falling, they have a really hard time. That's how they fall. because they can't get their leg to cycle back underneath them in order to catch them when they get, when they trip and they get in that forward. You do get in a crazy acceleration position, right? When you trip, you're like, man, I'm pretty quick.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just like, bam, you were kind of forced into that spot. So it's forcing me to learn a lot, which is awesome. I feel like I'm involved in like a university and like learning like sprint university and like learning how to sprint and all the mechanics of sprinting. which before I just didn't really quite understand them. I kind of was always like, ah, these drills are dumb. Like, I don't know about those drills.

Now I'm starting to understand it. And I'm understanding that, like, there's a lot of rhythm and timing to a drill. Like, Ryan, if you could look up, Noah Liles doing an A-skip, that's just an absolutely sick clip. The way these guys show you stuff, too, you're like, come on, asshole.

Like, you're so good at it. Like, you made it look so awesome. awesome, so easy. Yeah. And he's not even, he's just not even like, he's just not even trying, but, but he's no al-Lyles. So he's awesome at this shit. So that kind of stuff, it just looks so simple, right?

And yeah. Yeah, it is simple. But you might be surprised if you go out on a track and you try that or just try that in your living room, it might take you a little while to learn how to do that. It's taken me way longer than I would like. Like, I can skip. I can skip. I can do all kinds of stuff.

I can skip forward backwards. I've learned all kinds of things. But that A skip is still hard for me to hit because you're bringing that knee up. You get a little tiny hop in between there, but you also get another hop before your foot hits the ground. And so your feet are supposed to basically kind of go back and forth

and your foot's supposed to land right underneath you, which when I first was watching, I was like, why does that matter? It's like, okay, well, your foot lands right underneath you when you sprint. So a lot of these drills are important, and I have to keep working on them because I have to work on trying to get in a position. Like I can't race Noah Liles. There's no scenario where I can race or run against him.

But can I mimic or get close to some of the positions that he can do? Yeah. I don't see any reason why not. Right? Like why wouldn't I? Of course, again, his start position, like he's going to be stronger than me and better than me at that. Yeah. But could I reach some of his positions where how high he gets his knee during his race?

race, could I figure out my own version of where I get to coming out of the blocks and stuff like that. So that's all the shit I've been working on. It's been fun. It's good. But it's a lot. It is a lot. It is a lot. And like I get like I guess going to the rudimentary form of doing drills, I think is also it's not it's something that most people don't necessarily want to do, but it's necessary to be able to learn something as at least at a high level like sprinting. I just actually sent Ryan. I saw you like the video too, but Brian Johnson's trying to learn how to dunk. Oh, yeah.

I think that's a really interesting thing. And I'm very interested to see how he chooses to approach it because there is a post he put forward where like, you know, he's been developing his deadlift strength. That's kind of cool to see this guy deadlift some weight, right? So he's pushing some weight up. I think maybe he'll be able to make some pretty damn good improvements because because of his physique. You know, he's got a small waist. Actually dunk in a ball, I don't know. Like that is, it's great that he's got a goal that's pretty hard

because there's so many other things involved in dunking a basketball other than just jumping. Yeah. He's got a, there's a long way to go. Because like you see the rhythm aspect of what he's doing here, right? But I think that he's going to, at least he's going to be able to touch rim at some point. And then dunking is, it's also, he's doing a lot of takeoff velocity calculations and stuff like that too, but there's a lot more to it. So it's, it's very interesting.

It's going to be very interesting to see how this guy chooses to approach doing a dunk. And I just hope he doesn't get injured in the process. Because trying to do something like that fast, especially when you don't necessarily have the movement literacy and you haven't been doing stuff like that for a while can be shifty. Yeah, there's nothing more dangerous than jumping and sprinting. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing more violent. I mean, other than what you do because then because what you do you know jujitsu or fighting it it just involves another body there's an agreement right it doesn't training yeah it involves another it just involves another body and the shit that can happen is uh is pretty crazy you know sprint at least it's just you versus you

you could let up at any time right but when you're going against somebody else especially in competition you know where you don't you don't have the luxury of of being able to say hey can you relax a little So you just competed recently, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Master's Worlds. I ended up losing my second match, won my first match. But it was good. It was actually really good. The guy I lost to Alexander Sack.

He ended up winning. It's one of those weird things that if you lose, you at least hope that that's the guy who wins. You start rooting for him. You got to fucking win this guy. You have a banner for him. Yeah. But the thing that I mainly learned from it is this.

when I train, I train in a lot of different spots and go to a lot of different schools. I'm usually able to, there are certain habits with my jiu-jitsu that I'm able to kind of get away with on most people. So if I don't get the right grip or I let them get a grip, I can typically get myself back to a position even if I'm behind to get that place back. But these are the type of habits that if you're rolling against somebody who is at that level, you can't, you cannot, let these millimeters of these inches happen because it's going to be very hard to get those inches back against somebody that's good. Cassio's talked to me about this a lot. The main drawback I think I had within that match was two things. My aggression and my urgency. Because there are instances where I was competing Cassio was like, free your leg, for your leg.

And I heard him say that. I noticed where my leg was. And in my head, I was like, I can get it out a little bit later. I don't have to do this right now, right? Because I knew the situation I was in. but I needed the urgency to do that. So in my training, what I need to figure out, what I'm actually replicating is first figuring out places where I can develop a better level of urgency. And those places are the grip battle. Because right now I have a tendency of,

because I also want my training partner to get in certain positions, so I have to work on going from behind, I'll let people get certain grips that I should never let people get, especially when I compete. But those habits follow you. So the unfortunate thing is since I let people get certain types of grips in training because I'm confident enough to get out of those bad situations, if somebody gets that grip in competition, an alarm doesn't go on my mind that this is a bad place to be. So in training, I need to like, there are after, there are rounds that I'm just, I'm going to not let certain things happen. I'm going to be more aggressive and not letting

certain things happen. But it can only be in certain spots because I can't, I can't be aggressive in training with like doing certain types of kicks or pulls or pushes in my guard because that's that's too much for people in a sense in training. So in essence, there are things that I need to adjust so that when I go into competition, it's, I have a level of aggression and urgency in the right places because right now, like the cool thing is that I didn't, at the end of that match, I was almost kind of mad at myself because I wasn't tired. And that's a problem because that means that I should have been more urgent and I should have been more urgent in certain positions to get out or to do things.

You know, at least if you finish a match, you know you did everything. But I know I didn't. So that's what I need to adjust in my training and figure out those places where like you should be knowing this is a bad place to be. Right. So that's that's the big thing. So yeah, it was a good lesson. Some of that stuff is hard to commit to you know it's hard hard hard to like because being aggressive can also be a big mistake. Yeah, that's the thing. I'm not going to be just aggressive. That's not what can help me. It's

learning the spots, right? The places where I shouldn't allow myself to be. It was actually the same thing in my first year in Brown Belt worlds where I got third. My first. got in a position on my opponent's chest. I didn't even realize that there's a submission there. I didn't have the alarm bells go off that like, get your foot out. It fits your demeanor. You're a very calm person. Yeah.

So it makes sense. Yeah. And now you've got to rage on people a little bit. Yeah. That's the thing, though, because like one of the reasons why I roll the way I do in training is number one, I'm 240 pounds. I don't want my training partners to get injured. I don't want to hurt people.

I want everyone that I roll with to be able to leave the mat unscathed. And I do a very good job at that. That's why everyone wants to roll with me. But the thing is, is if I want to compete against guys like Alexander, because the guy's the third ranked ultra heavyweight in the ultra heavyweight division, not masters, just ultra heavyweights. He's very good. But there's also a level of aggression that he like, me and Cassio noted it because Cassio was like,

what do you think you did wrong in that match when I came back to class? And I told him, he was like, yep, you know, Alexander, he came out, he got his grips, he knew the game he was going for. The way that I do Jiu-Jitsu is like, I, I, I try. I don't like to call it organic, but I just, I kind of, you know, find my spots. I let things happen because I try to like, try to flow with it a little bit. But when you're in that type of situation, I need to go directly to my game as aggressive as he did. And I need to fill those holes in the way I train.

You know what I mean? So it's the answer isn't just like now being aggressive with all my training partners because that's not going to serve me and that's not going to serve them. But it's being intentional with that. I've seen some clips, you know, they show some different guys wrestling, basically some MMA clips and they show these guys like reversing out of this and reversing out of that. And I'm just like blown away because I mean, I don't know a ton about grappling, but I know it's got to be so hard to think that many steps of ahead and the way that these guys are like in real time reacting to just a small adjustment of like a guy, you know, put his hand underneath the other guy's hand and the guy, you know, put his hand on his back. and then what the guy's doing with his legs and the guy's trying to trip them or just all these different factors.

It's like, man, that is so crazy. So I think in what you're saying, you know, I'm imagining that somebody that is on par with you or somebody that is maybe even potentially better and or more experienced than you, if they do get slightly ahead, it's hard to then be back on par with them and then get back ahead of them.

Right? It's like a lot of extra effort. The one thing that actually, I think, was when I look back at that match, it was like, okay, actually, that was, that was surprising. And it's, again, it shows that it shows that I wasn't, I guess, tired in that match,

but his bread and butter, the thing that, like, he gets everybody with is this bread cutter choke. That's like his go-to. He has a, he has a web page on this website called BJJ Heroes. It's the bread cutter. He goes for his past breadcutter,

goes for his past breadcutter. He passed. He went for the breadcutter initially. He literally, he was deep on the choke. But because I had the dexterity and the mobility, I just kind of like went with the choke and I swiveled my lower body and turned my head out and I ended up being able to get out of it. You typically don't get out of a breadcutter choke that deep. That should have been a tap. But one of the things that I'm happy about is like I was able to stay calm enough to keep breathing even though his elbow was on the ground and he was choking me to be able to turn out and find an escape. Did he get me at that position again and tap me though? He did. Like we got back there and he ended up submitting me. But getting out of that deep position

is not that, that, that common. I was surprised. I was surprised when I thought back to that. So the thing that I do have continuing to go for me and the thing I'm continuing to develop is my composure and my breathing during jiu-jitsu. That serves me. But the opposite, the other side of that is now the aggression and the urgency side of things and the habits in terms of when places where I shouldn't allow myself to be because with the way that I train and the way that you train is going to be reflected in the way that you compete I allow myself to get into a lot of bad spots because I want to be able to kind of get out of those spots so I'll let people get deeper I'll let people get certain grips.

But that shows itself. That shows itself in the way that I, you know, that's a tough position to be in because you're also, you're training and you're kind of having fun. Yeah, yeah. So that's the thing, though, like that, I think one of the really cool things about competing in anything and developing skill in anything is like, I know I'm good at jiu-jitsu. Like, I know I'm very good at jiu-jitsu.

But there are a lot of people out there that are better. And it's a continuous thing where I'm not just now going to get worse. Right. Like my jiu-jitsu is going to just keep getting better as I continue to build the skill. I'm just excited where that's going to, that's going to continue to go. Is there a way for you, is there a way that you think you can make some of these other guys like tired and stuff like that? Or do you think like everyone's in pretty good shape and? No, he was more tired than me.

That's the other thing. I could tell he was more tired than me because the way he was breathing. But it's, it's the urgency side of thing. It's the aggression side of things. You know what I mean? So once you have that, it might even make him more fatigued. Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. And one thing I'm going to be doing more is like I go to a bunch of places in town. But I'm going to fly there. I know some people down in Austin at some different schools or I want to work with some bigger bodies more often and just like work with people who, because I do have certain people that I train with that really are trying to like they really try. Like I have a lot of people who are really trying to tap me. But it's not. There's a level that it's not at. Right. So I'm just going to try to just go get more looks. And it's one of those things with like with jiu jitsu. I love the practice and I'm just going to keep getting better at it. But it's not something that, I don't know, it's not something that, I guess this is again the problem. I don't have urgency with it. I love it. It's getting better. And I'm just going to kind of let it get better at the pace that it continues to get better. If I lose another competition, it's, I learned a lot from this.

I think it's the only way to, you know, I mean, there's other ways to do stuff, right? You can be more urgent, I guess, and you can train more or something. But I think it's a great way to be because you've got other stuff going on. You have other interests. You love Jiu Jitsu. It doesn't mean that you love Jiu Jitsu any less because you have other interests. I think taking your time with it. I also think that like, you know, Jake Cutler,

Jake Cutler doesn't become Jake Cutler without being second place four times. Oh, yeah. You know, I think, I don't think people like realize that. It's like, that's his story. That's the J. Cutler story. That's what made him who he is, you know, and it changed his life forever. Otherwise, I mean, maybe he was going to be a guy

that maybe potentially, you know, finished second once or twice, and then he just kind of like disappeared. But he wasn't. He was hungry to continue onward. And I think, you know, had you won a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt world championship already, it would be awesome,

but it wouldn't be as sweet. You know, when you get there with the journey that you're going through now, it's going to be awesome. Yeah. And I think it's going to happen, you know. You know, I think that you're just going to continue to get better. And so, like, unless everybody else is continuing to get better and it just kind of, you know, goes on. Everyone else will continue to be better. But I think you'll get the right opportunity and the right chance to do it because you put so much into it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think honestly, though, like competing for. for anybody who does compete, it's one of those things where you learn a lot through competing even through especially actually, especially through your losses. And hopefully, hopefully your losses aren't a reason why you never choose to compete again. Right. Because you will not always win and that's something to be okay with. And that's why I like a

module. Okay, there's no competing can be kind of dumb because you're not going to win any money. people, there are a lot of like people that just go in trying to break shit. So it's like it's not necessarily the smartest thing to do for your body. But if you can become, I guess, good at that intensity, it's a, it teaches you a lot of things, you know, a lot of things about the way you are, your composure, the way you roll, et cetera. Because again, I think one of the things that I take away from this is that like my composure is one of my strengths in these situations. Even though I lost like my breathing, the way I felt after, the way I felt dearing, there's a lot of positives there, but there's things to fix. And I wouldn't have learned that if I didn't go and compete. So I think it actually can help really speed up your progress as a martial artist or a grappler. Yeah. And you were traveling doing some rope flow stuff and stuff like that too, doing some classes or seminars or something like that?

Yeah, there was this Jim Quick had this event that he was doing down in New York. So I did some movement stuff there. Went on stage to talk about a little bit, which is pretty fun. Then I have this event, Eudaimonia coming up in like November. It's another one of those like health and fitness events. I think Hooperman, a bunch of other people are gonna be there. Yeah, so that's gonna be pretty fun.

What's your diet like when you travel like that? Are you able to still be pretty meticulous on your diet? Or you're more free? Oh yeah, no, I just stick to one meal a day. and I eat, I find a place that like has meat and maybe some carbs. I usually will get some like fruit door dash to me from a grocery store, waters. So like watermelon grapes, fruit.

And if I can find some like good solid burgers, I'll just have those. That's what I did on that trip. Even when I competed, that's, I didn't eat the morning of, but the night before I just, I had some, I mean, I had some like red meat and some other shit. It's pretty easy. But the nutrition for all that stuff is like never a problem, you know. So, yeah. And you've been working on some acting too, huh?

Yeah. That's pretty cool. You're doing some projects with my son Jake. Yeah. And how is like with something like acting, are you like learning a lot about yourself? Are you learning about like? Because I'd imagine, I mean, I have no idea how to acting class goes, but I would imagine that sometimes you're more comfortable acting a certain way versus like acting another way. Like they say, hey, do a British

accent. Maybe you're used to messing around with that sometimes. But if they say, hey, you know, pretend you're sad. Maybe that's harder or something. I don't know. Are you learning some, some areas are like harder for you to get into or are you really enjoying it? Like, what are you thinking? Really enjoying it. It's, it's super fun. I think one of the things that I find most enjoyable about it is in my day to day I am typically pretty even keel for the most part like I I you know so there are just certain things I don't express right and with acting with whatever type of scripts that we get in class it allows me to express things that I typically don't get a chance to express on a daily basis or almost ever which is really which is really cool because I think it helps me

kind of understand aspects of myself a little bit better. And it's one of those things that just like any type of skill, it's, it's something you, you practice. You know what I mean? I'm not expecting to progress super quickly or anything, but I can say that I feel quite comfortable in front of it. Luckily, like I've been doing stuff in front of a camera for a while. So cameras don't necessarily make me feel scared by any means. And it's one of those things like just like jujitsu or just like any type of sport, the amount you prepare is going to be reflected on the way you put things forward. You know what I mean? So there's also like a cool thing. There's a book that I'm pretty much done with, but I think it's been very helpful in helping me understand, especially for the project

that Jake and I have. It's called the actor and the target. And it's kind of, when I done stuff and class and the other small projects that I've done. There's been times where I was very focused on like, oh, am I doing the right thing? Am I focused on me? Whereas like it's helped me some of this book and then watching other actors and tell me understand that I just need to be focused on understanding

and just like knowing my lines from front to back and then just playing off of what they give me. My partner gives me. They're the target. They're the person that like me and you right now, the target of this conversation as I'm talking you know what I mean so that's been really helpful for me too so you know it's it's just like again I think me and you we've we've continue to learn a lot of things as time has gone by and this is just another one of those things that just like anything it's

something that I will learn and I'm going to continue to get better at and that's one of the things I'm excited for just because it's like the way I act now in terms of the practice of acting is going to be very different from five years, 10 years, 15, 20 down the road. And I'm excited for that progression. You know, it's, it's, it's going to be sick. Yeah, I think, you know, acting seems to be brutal for like a lot of different reasons, but, you know, memorizing your lines is one thing, but then being able to hit those lines very, in a very particular way. But then also maybe people don't realize how different it is to be on like on a set versus, because like maybe, maybe, maybe, Maybe I could give someone a couple lines to read, you know, and maybe they could get in front

of these cameras and maybe they could deliver something that has a pretty good punch to it. But, you know, sit around on a movie set for four or five hours, right? It's different. And then you're eating lunch with people and you're like there's the whole interaction, the whole thing is so much harder and so much more difficult or there's so many other things involved. Yeah. That you don't even really think about. Like just as an example, Jake was, Jake came in our house because he, we, you know,

you guys were filming some stuff outside outside our house for a movie that he's worked on recently. And he's like, hey, are there any more chairs? You know, people need somewhere to sit. And I'm thinking, like, this is amazing. You know, this is the producer of this movie. And, you know, he's got to, like, hustle to go find some chairs. And I said, oh, there's a bunch of chairs in the garage. And he's like, oh, they're all full of bird poop.

I'm like, I'm like, all right. You know, so there's a lot of weird, not that an actor, you know, especially an actor at, like, a high level. but there's all kinds of stuff you deal with when you're doing like indie films or when you're just starting out on some of these things. You don't really realize all the little nuances, all the little different details, all the little different things that might be happening in a particular shot. Like next time you go and just watch a movie or watch a series on Netflix or something, just think about like, fuck, they're in the desert. You know, like they've probably been in that desert like unless it's like fake background or something. probably been in that desert for like two days. Yeah.

You know, filming there and like there's, it's just, it's just interesting. You start to really break it down and start to really think about how difficult it can be because somebody now knocks, you know, the celebrity trailer, they knock on their door and say, all right, you're up. You know, now all of a sudden you got to go act and pour all this energy into something when you've been kind of sitting around for most of the day, not doing much. Yeah. I think one of the coolest things also is like, like, you know, rewatching certain movies that

of really dug. Because the, basically about what a lot of these actors do is when you're watching a movie, you don't necessarily see them. You know, you see the person they're playing and you believe in the person they're playing. And that's not just them. That's the production.

That's the setting. That's all of these things that go into making everything believable. But there's a real skill in like making that character believable. And there's a bunch of sick choices that that person made in the way that they're going to put this character forward that makes you believe and enjoy that movie. So again, it's just like, it's really, it's, what, what, what these people are able to do is pretty cool, you know? Like, it's not, it's not just going up and saying some lines. It's, it's a lot more than that. And it's, uh, uh, I find it enjoyable. And I,

I, I really like it, it's, um, for me, it's like, and that's a, it's a fun artistic outlet that that, that I ain't making any money from that right now. That's not my job. But like, um, it is, the reason why I do it is because I enjoy it. And ideally, I wanted to just be something I can do for the rest of my life, just like martial arts, just like learning about health and educating people about it. Like I want to do that for the rest of my life. And I have ideally, I have a lot of time to learn it. So that's why I'm not, you know, I think a lot of people that may be they get into something like that. There's a level of like, I'm starting too late and this and that and like people have been doing this since they were kids. There's,

There's a lot of that. But at the end of the day, it's like go towards the things that you're interested in and give yourself the time to get better at it. That's just the nature of it, you know? If you start something at 50 and you do it until you're 70, you know, did it for 20 years. You probably end up being pretty good at it. There's a bunch, yeah, there's quite a few people who've done that for sure.

I mean, if someone just starts to pick up playing tennis tomorrow and they play it for the next 10 years, hopefully you'll continue to get better at it. Maybe you won't master it, but you'll be better at it than you've, were years prior. And it's more fun when you get better at something. It becomes more fun. Absolutely. All right, everybody.

Strength is never a week. This week, this never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.