The Daily Stoic - Powerlifter Stefi Cohen on Self-Mastery and Visualizing Negative Outcomes

Episode Date: October 30, 2021

On today’s episode of the podcast, Ryan talks to powerlifter and boxer Stefi Cohen about how she got involved in weightlifting after immigrating to the U.S. from Venezuela, the incremental difference between just being great and being world class, her decision to transition from powerlifting to boxing, and more.Stefi Cohen is a 25x world-record-holding powerlifter and the first woman in the history of the sport to deadlift 4.4x her body weight. She is a doctor of physical therapy, author, co-host of the Hybrid Unlimited podcast, and business owner passionately educating people with her NO BS, evidence-based view on all things training and nutrition. Stefi is also the co-author (with Ian Kaplan) of Back in Motion which is all about understanding pain, reducing the fear that often comes with it, empowering you to take control. Centered is a Mac and Windows app that helps you get into Flow and work faster...and healthier. Join thousands of users who have discovered their Flow States by running Centered in the background while they work. Download Centered today at centered.app/stoic and use the Promo Code “STOIC” by October 31st to get a free month of Premium, and also be entered to win a variety of prizes!LMNT is the maker of electrolyte drink mixes that help you stay active at home, work, the gym, or anywhere else. Electrolytes are a key part of a happy, healthy body. As a listener of this show, you can receive a free LMNT Sample Pack for only $5 for shipping. To claim this exclusive deal you must go to drinkLMNT.com/dailystoic. If you don’t love it, they will refund your $5 no questions asked.DECKED truck bed tool boxes and cargo van storage systems revolutionize organization with a heavy-duty in-vehicle storage system featuring slide out toolboxes. DECKED makes organizing, accessing, protecting, and securing everything you need so much easier. Get your DECKED Drawer System at Decked.com/STOIC and get free shipping.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Stefi Cohen: Homepage, Twitter, Instagram, YouTubeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics. Something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week

ahead may bring. Hi I'm David Brown, the host of Wunder's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke podcast, I got an email or a text a year ago maybe, maybe more from Tim Ferris and he said, hey, I just had the strongest woman in the world on my podcast and I answered what her favorite book is and she said, the obstacle is the way.

He's like, you gotta listen to this interview and you gotta meet this person. So I was like, sure, that sounds interesting. And I got connected to Steffi Cohen, who is legit one of the strongest women to ever live. She is a 25 time world record holding powerlifter. The first woman in the history of the sport to lift 4.4 times her body weight. 4.5 times her body weight. That's insane. She's also a doctor of physical therapy and author and a co-host of the hybrid unlimited podcast, which I was on to promote courage is calling. You can listen to that. She's a business owner

passionately educating people with a no BS evidence-based view on all things training and nutrition. And in addition to being the co-owner of the hybrid performance method, strength training and nutrition program, she also more recently got into boxing. She had her first professional fight and then as she talks about the interview, she's got a bunch coming up. Just during the pandemic,

she was getting tired of powerlifting, said she wanted a new challenge and decided to get punched in the face a lot of times. So I was so excited to talk to Stephanie. She is fascinating. I'm fascinated with the mental performance of any world class performer, and she really gets into that in this episode. But you might be thinking, what does this have to do with stoicism? I would say of all the sports, weightlifting and then boxing, are the most intimately connected to stoicism. Epicetus uses all sorts of weightlifting,

metaphors, senica, and marks release, both use boxing metaphors. You get the sense that they either train in these sports or follow them quite closely. The stoics lived in Rome and in Greece, and the gymnasia athletics Olympic sports were a part of life. We obviously associate this time with the gladiators, and that was a sport, although most of the fancier folks looked down on that sport, but being active, being athletic, challenging yourself in the arena, so to speak, was a part of the philosophical journey. It wasn't just an exploration of the mind, but also sort of a two-way street, a strong body and a strong mind,

as it goes, a strong mind leads to a strong body. And that's why I wanted to talk to Steffi. I think there's a bunch we can learn. And the way she thinks about challenges, the way she challenges herself, the way she pushes her body to the limits is very interesting to me and I think you will enjoy this interview. You can follow her at Steffi Cohen on all platforms please do and listen to this wonderful interview. Let's start at the beginning. What gets you into lifting really heavy things? How does this happen?

So I've been an athlete my whole life. I started playing soccer when I was about eight years old. And I moved to the States with a soccer scholarship and hope, so I've become a professional soccer player when I was 18 years old. From where? From Venezuela, from correct. Okay. Yeah, so that socio-economic goal, status of the country wasn't really the best.

There was not a lot of opportunity there. And I pretty much came to the States forced by my mom. She packed my bags. She sent me on an airplane and I cried and I complained and I thought she was the most evil monster in the whole world and I came to the States by myself. You know, it was hard just adjusting to the language, adjusting to the culture, trying to figure out my place in society

and just understanding everything and how things work. And I was having a really hard time balancing both being in a D1 school because I was playing at San Diego State University, California, that with academics, just the language barrier, really. Sure. And I quit playing soccer. In hindsight, it's one of the decisions that I regret most in my life was quitting soccer at that point, because I feel like I quit ahead of time. I feel like I could have still pushed a little bit more. Oh, you quit early,

you mean? Like, you still had potential left that you didn't. Yeah, I feel like I could have still pushed a little bit more. Are you put early in me? You still had potential left that you didn't. Yeah, I feel like I quit when things got difficult instead of quitting when I felt like I really ran out of options. I didn't feel like I left all stones unturned. And I wasn't really ready to go that part of my identity as an athlete. And so that began kind of my discovery phase or like my quest for what the next

sport that I could be good at was. And I tried a bunch of different sports from running marathons, triathlons, skateboarding competitively, eventually landing into CrossFit and CrossFit was kind of the gateway into Olympic weightlifting, which I did for about five years and ended up being ranked top three in the country, and then switching to powerlifting when I started grad school. So obviously though, I guess CrossFit's kind of a team sport, at least you do it individually.

That must be a been a big transition though, to be like sort of one of a sort of a group identity to at least the way I see running and then also weightlifting is that it's much more a battle against yourself and your own limitations. Absolutely. It's a completely completely different dynamic. Nobody's relying on you for anything.

Nobody's holding you accountable for showing to practice or not. You don't have to answer to really anybody and you have to have a lot of self discipline and just inner will to keep showing up and keep pushing forward. Although, I guess you're not really supposed to start lifting weights too early. So you probably kind of came to it at the right age, or were you a little late, like compared to the people that you would later compete against? Had people been doing it their whole lives, or was it mostly just about being in good shape and then getting serious about it? No, oh my god, people, people, kids start lifting weights when they're eight years old in Russian countries, in China. The countries that have the most developed weightlifting teams are countries that groom their kids

to be able to learn the technique from a really young age. So definitely I started late. Really, was that intimidating or how did you feel entering a thing sort of so outside your comfort zone? No, it's interesting is that I, I don't know if it was because I was I was young and naive and I still kind of had that little girl dream in my head that anything's possible. The limit does not exist. Kind of thing. That was my my motto for for well, it still is, but it was my mode at the beginning of my weightlifting career.

I just never felt like there was any goal that was too big. I felt like there was, I felt like I could do anything. So on one end, I was bummed out that I was entering the sport late, or then most people, and I did feel like I had a lot of ground to make up for. But at the same time, I never doubted my capabilities, I guess. But it must have been weird you're going from a sort of a soccer program, not just a team, but like a sort of a whole program set up to help you succeed as an athlete to starting over in a new sport where there wasn't, not only was there not teammates, but there wasn't structure, there wasn't a system,

there wasn't a sort of a set amount of gain. Like you're not just competing against your own physical limits, but you're also competing against, I guess, I don't even know what the word would be, but you're essentially like in uncharted, unregulated territory, like you're just, how does it become something that you end up ultimately doing professionally from just like, I'm sure you're interested in weightlifting?

Yeah. I don't know. I've never done anything in my life just for the sake of doing it. Everything that I've gotten myself into has always been with the intention really of becoming not necessarily the best in the world, although obviously that is my interpersonal goal, but becoming the best I can be. You know, I don't. But being great at it, you don't just do it for fun. Exactly, exactly. And you know what, I feel like athlete maturity is something something that comes with age and obviously

setbacks and difficulties. So having quit soccer and being mature enough to reflect back on that and realize that it was a mistake. And then kind of, I felt like I was given another shot by the sport of Olympic weightlifting. And that was my motivation. I felt like I took a lot of things for granted when I was playing soccer. And then just having that other, that next chance, next opportunity to make it big in another sport was motivation enough for me to keep going. Same similar to boxing now that I'm transitioning into it. Well, I want to talk about that for sure. But, you know, I had a somewhat similar, although lower stakes experience.

Like, I've always been a runner and I loved running. But as I went, I started very young. I ran in middle school. I ran in high school. But there was a part of me, I think, that resented it and didn't take it seriously and didn't want to be... I never put my all into it. I think because I was afraid one thing that at the time I didn't appreciate and I didn't fulfill, and like you, it remains a regret.

I look back at it and I see that I wish there had been someone who could have helped me, but I also wish that I had helped myself. You know what I mean? Yeah, and I think at a point like that, it's your coaches role to us or an extent to encourage you and motivate you when you're doubting yourself. That's the value of a good coach, a support system, and even a team.

And like I said, sometimes it's that immaturity that you don't see how good you have in that time of your life. And you know, you just, you don't believe in yourself enough and you don't have anybody around you to tell you to keep going. But also maybe it's that there's like the difference between being good at something and loving it and then being good at something and not loving it is that's what gets you the very different results.

So like you liked soccer and you were good at it, but then you dial yourself a couple degrees in a different direction, that all those same skills and drive that made you good at soccer, but when applied to weightlifting, which you actually loved, that the result, like you were a good soccer player,

but you weren't playing at the best school in the world, right? So it's also maybe part of that is good. Like if you hadn't quit soccer, you wouldn't have found weightlifting, right? And for me, all the things that I like about running are good for me as a hobby, but I don't think it was something I could have gone all the way in. I think maybe part of it is like,

you have to be pointed at the right thing and the difference between being pointed at almost the right thing and the right thing is immense. Yeah, and I mean, what is the right thing really? I think it's such a, to a certain extent, is a little bit subjective. It could be a little bit of both. So I see whenever I'm considering my options, say, for example, professionally or even

athletically, I kind of think of three bars on a graph, right? I think of skills, talents, and passions as the three things that I'm trying to balance out to make a more objective decision. So your talent is something that you're innately born with. For example, if you're seven feet tall, you're probably going to be talented at basketball. You already have one of the physical attributes or characteristics of a basketball player.

Your skills are things that you can improve at, that you have the capability, whether it's IQ intellectually and also physically to get better at. And then your passion is something that you're genuinely drawn to. It doesn't mean that you have to absolutely love it, be, be, you know, so obsessed with it. No, it just needs to be something that you more or less enjoy.

Because what I've found is that when you get good at something, you can learn to love it because there's other things that make you like it. Like, for example, the external praise and admiration that you might get from your peers and others, winning, you know, some people really get off of winning in both the external and internal validation that comes from that, from setting goals and achieving. So I never let kind of my just that passion, love, dictate what decision I'm going to make. I think it's important to put everything into perspective and look at it a little bit more objectively. Yeah, I guess I'm just saying it's like sometimes we force something because it's financially

rewarding or as you said, people are cheering you on and you might be really good at it, just saying it's like sometimes we force something because it's financially rewarding. Or as you said, people are cheering you on. And you might be really good at it, but it's not the perfect thing for you. And so we do have to have a certain amount of courage to quit something that we're pretty good at, but not happy with, or that we're experiencing results on because what our real dream is is to do X, Y, or Z.

You have, if you never leave anything, if you're afraid of change, if you only stick with the things that you're good at, you'll never find the thing that you're truly meant to do. Of course, I think that is such an important point that you bring up. I, for many years, and look at how many different sports I tried, and even how many different times

I switched majors in college like five or six times. And I think it's almost frowned upon to start something and not finish it. You're called a quitter, right? If you do that. And for a long time, I was called a quitter by my ex-boyfriends, by my parents, by my sister, friends, because I'm that type of person. I want to try something. I want to see objectively if I'm well fit for it. And if not, then I have no problem quitting and moving on to whatever the next thing might be.

So I think that misconception that quitting makes you a failure or that quitting is bad, is something that prevents a lot of people from finding what that true calling for them is. Yeah, it can also be, I had Kate Fagan on the podcast who wrote this amazing book called What Makes Maddie Run about this collegiate runner who ended up committing suicide. But the tragedy, the book I felt when I was reading it was like, this girl is super talented. She's, I think, running Division I cross-country. And she hates it.

Like, she hates the program. She hates her life. She hates what it's doing to her body. She's clearly depressed. But there's a point. It's almost like the part of her that was such a good athlete made it impossible for her to be like, I hate this.

I don't have to keep doing this. I can take a break from it and go do something else. So I think that's one of the other things. It's like maybe quitting is a problem for 90% of the population, but for like elite performers or still ex, if you will, quitting is really hard because part of what makes you great is that you're not a quitter. But again, if you're doing the wrong thing or the thing is unhealthy for you in that moment,

it almost takes more willpower to transition from one thing to the other or to take a break from something where I'm sure you experience this. If you wake up and you're not feeling it like Like maybe you're you're still recovering from an energy an injury and you're not all the way there If you force that that's how you get really hurt So you know you need the ability to decide when to push when to walk away that it's like the hardest thing

Yeah, I mean have you read the book the dip? Yeah, I have, have you read the book, the dip by I have it somewhere. Oh, it's right here. I have it right here. So good. I actually, I love that book. Me too. He talks about, I can't remember what name exactly he gives it, but I think it's reactive quitting versus intelligent quitting or whatever. And I think that's the difference, you know, it's. It's important to make the distinction between, okay, am I quitting or am I not doing this because I have my big toenail is bugging me a little bit,

like can I actually suck it up? Or is it something more serious that I really need to listen to my at least into my body about or whatever the decision might be. And there is a difference and that's when the objectivity comes in. You know, it's up to quitting when things begin to get difficult or did you really try everything that there was to try to improve your situation or to get out of that dip and you just objectively can't, can't do it. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another Objectively, can't. Can't do it. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Codopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground

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You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery. Yeah, I had Scott Oprah going to the podcast. He's a picture for the Rockies and he was saying, you know, he's like, as an athlete, there's a difference between pain and hurt, right? Like, or, you know, that you, every athlete has to push through pain, but if you push through being hurt, that's when you get injured. And I thought that was an interesting distinction. Like, of course, especially in weightlifting, like if it doesn't hurt, you're not pushing yourself, right? Like the whole point is that your muscles grow from the resistance of lifting heavy things.

If it was fun and easy, you're not pushing yourself. But if you can also push through and pull a muscle, If you push through the wrong sensation, you could end your entire career in one pull. Yeah, for sure. I mean, every sport that you do at the highest level, at the extreme is going to have a very high level of discomfort and pain. You're bound to experience that if you're trying to be the best at whatever, it is that requires physical, anything physical, really. But going back to your story about Kate, you were saying that she hated it, she hated training, she was depressed. I honestly, I wrote it down the name of the book because I'm interested in reading it because I relate a lot to that

statement about that sentiment, especially in my powerlifting career towards the end. It was five or six years. My entire business that I've built hybrid was surrounding my powerlifting career. Every my followers, the workout programs that I have, my apparel business, everything kind of surrounds and follows that journey into powerlifting and what

that means to me and the empowerment and the inspiration for younger woman. And I felt sort of that responsibility to keep going, even though after I don't know two or three years, I hated it. I hated it. With everything in my heart, I didn't like going to the gym. It felt like a chore. It felt like like a job that I didn't want to do. And it was extremely painful and it was hard. And I did feel like I couldn't quit, but mainly because of their responsibility that I had for people that I employ that are depending on me to show up to competitions and footage and pictures and videos and whatever. And also for myself, right, I felt like I had already that sunken cost fallacy. I've already been doing it for so long. I should keep doing it. And it's tough. It really is tough to make that decision to stop. For me, I think I quit at the

I quit late. You know, I got it got to a point for me where I was having so much physical pain and discomfort that I couldn't put my pants on by myself. I couldn't tie my shoes. I couldn't put my socks on. And those are the, you know, that's the non-glamour as part about sports that I don't think a lot of people talk about. All the mental struggles that athletes at the highest level go through with the expectations that are placed on them, the fear of letting people down, the time that you've already invested, that you're afraid of, you know, you're afraid that it's going to be for nothing, it's going to be in vain. The responsibility you have to your team, everything, it's hard.

Yeah, what do you think of, because some people have asked me about it, what do you think of the Simone Biles thing during the Olympics? I thought that was very brave and very self-aware that someone could sense the difference between when they're able to compete at the highest level and when they're just on the wrong side of being able to compete on it. And I thought maybe what went understated there was that she was a member of a team. And so, unlike, say, weightlifting, where the only person who might suffer from that or benefit from you not doing it is yourself. The decision to step aside and let someone from your team take that slot also struck me as a pretty like very self-control. I was impressed by it, but I would be curious what you thought. Yeah, no, I agree with you. It's incredibly much of her to do that.

It's hard to sit back on the stance and just watch somebody else take your spot for something that you've been training so hard for, but it is the right thing to do. It's the just thing to do Because you owe that to your team, you owe that to everybody that invested time and energy into your development as an athlete. When you also owe it to yourself, right, the ability to say, like, I'm not going to put myself in harm's way, like, sometimes weirdly,

that takes more courage, right? Because if you're a competitive person, if you're a driven person, you would rather sacrifice yourself and your well-being than take the ego hit of having to watch someone else take your spot. And so, and just the inertia, like, you know, it's like, when something is in motion and plain tickets have been bought

and a scheduler said, you know, when you're like, no, I'm gonna cancel, I'm not gonna do that. It's so much easier just to keep going along with it and just let yourself get carried along with it. At the same time, I mean, I could argue the opposite point as well about if you've been performing at this level and then you know that physically you're not going to be able to match that or surpass that.

Also, you don't want your ego to get hit with that, right? You don't want to grow up and not be able to in underperform and kind of damage that record that you've been, that reputation and that record that you've been working on for so long. No, you see that with authors, right? They have trouble following up a successful book because they're paralyzed by the past performance. And you do have to

walk into everything fresh and go, can I, can I do my best here? And is that enough? So, I would be curious too. I've got to imagine, as you were thinking about walking away from powerlifting, for example, like, when I interviewed Neeta Strauss, she's the guitarist for Alice Cooper. And she was saying that, you know, any successful female musician, what you find is that, she said, people have very strong opinions about you, right? Meaning that people talk a lot of crap, basically. I imagine part of your success was about proving people wrong, right? Especially the people that doubted you or the people that had preconceived notions of what female weightlifters were capable of. So talking to me about that, and then I'd also be interested, though, in as you decided

to walk away to go do something else, was there a part of you that was struggling with not wanting to feel like those people had won? Like you could keep wanting to shove it in their face or by admitting weakness or admitting that you moved on, there could also be part of you that's maybe like, well, I don't want them to be right. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I think a lot of what makes me me in that sense of wanting to prove people wrong and wanting to do things that haven't been done before has a lot to do with my upbringing. I grew up in a very traditional conservative, Hispanic, Jewish family. And I always wanted to do what was against the grain. My mom wanted me to be a lawyer or to be a physician. And I wanted to be my, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to be, but I knew I didn't want to have a desk job. I knew I didn't want to have strict times. I knew I didn't want to have to be tied to a formal job or have to respond to higher

ups or anything like that. And my mom always told me that the the idea that I had for an ideal job was impossible for me to have unless I created my own job. And I said, very cool, challenge accepted. And I just felt like my whole life, I've been trying to prove myself to my to my family and to people close to me because the things that I've wanted to do have always been super unconventional and against the grain, like I said. So when it came to sports, I remember when I was doing CrossFit, I was in parallel, I was trying to get stronger and Olympic weightlifting because I wanted to compete at the national level, hopefully go to the Olympics, I was taking it really seriously. And I had a coach back then, a CrossFit coach, and I sat down with him and I asked him what he thought I should do if I should continue focusing on CrossFit and maybe try to make it to the

games or if I should switch to weightlifting completely and try to make it to the Olympics. And he looked at me then in the eye and said, hey, Steph, honestly, like, I don't think that you should worry about that decision at all because you're not going to be good at either of those. You're not going to be great at either of those. And I loved that. I honestly, I laughed and I said, all right, noted, that's, I'm sorry that you think that and I'm really excited to prove you wrong.

And that was kind of the beginning of what lit the fire under my ass, pardon my French, to really commit myself to Olympic weightlifting and try to prove a point that independently of what age you get started, independently of what your background is, you can definitely, you know, if you put your, if you put your mind into something, you can definitely achieve. And man, I spent so many hours in the gym thinking and practicing weightlifting. I wasn't grad, I wasn't undergrad. And I took all my stuff out of my living room and I put up a plywood in the middle of my living room and I bought myself a bar bill and I would practice and just watch Olympic

weightlifting all day long. You know, it takes a lot of hours and I was able to prove myself, I guess. Do you think that coach was right? Like in this, like looking at who you were in that moment, did you have what it took or was it that because of the feedback you got that you went out and acquired the skills or the assets needed to then be successful? Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. No, I mean? Yeah. No, I mean, I think it's probably a combination. I do think that I had what it took to be good at that sport otherwise. I wouldn't have pursued it. I'm a realist and I'm objective. Some people might consider me even a pessimist because there's times where I can be like, nah, like I'm not even gonna try to do that

because I'm not gonna win or I'm not gonna be able to do XYZ. So I had done my fair share of evaluating my own capabilities and at that point I had already know that I could, I could do either of those things. And so what do you think he was seeing? Do you think he was just closed-minded? Do you think he was sexist?

And what do you think was, I guess you didn't say it was a man, but what do you think was, what Do you think he was just closed-minded? Do you think he was sexist? And what do you think was, I guess you didn't say it was a man, but what do you think was, what do you think, what do you, what do you think he was saying when he was discouraging you? I mean, think about what are the chances of winning a gold medal in the Olympics? I don't know what the probability is of thug my head, but it's very, very slim. Imagine what are the chances of getting into grad school? I think acceptance rate is 6% or 5% something crazy like that. Right.

So I understand why he said that. It's the odds are not in my favor. The odds are never in anybody's favor to do what hasn't been done before, or to do something great. So that didn't surprise me at all. I wasn't, and I didn't take it to hard because I understood where he was coming from. I feel like if I would have been in his

situation, I don't think I would have ever been as discouraging as he was. But in my mind, I think I would have still thought that way. Right. So you know what's funny is that of the two sports that the Stoics talk about the most, and I do love that the Stoics talk about sports. The two are weightlifting and boxing. Yeah, they talk about weightlifting. Obviously, these are the sort of ancient Olympic sports, right? So, I think that's part of it. They do talk about running a little bit as well, but it's just fascinating to me that you then become, these are the two sports that you're dedicated to. How do you approach the sort of mental side of these sports? I imagine,

again, weightlifting obviously takes the immense physical component, but it's also such a simple sport component, but it's also such a simple sport that I can imagine you can get. It's not like football where you're like doing all this stuff and you're worried about getting tackled or even soccer, right? The movement of soccer is so fast that you can probably get into a flow state much easier than knowing that you have to walk up to this bar and pick up like three or four times your own body weight. That must be as far as a mental game, just like totally overwhelming. So I first want to want to tackle the second part of your question about weightlifting being a simple sport. Yeah. I think the simplistic nature of weightlifting is what makes it overly complex. Right. The less, I think the less variables that you have to play with, the more difficult it becomes

because the less margin of error you have. So even though to the naked eye, we're just practicing the snatch and the clean and jerk and weightlifting or in powerlifting, we're just squat bench and deadlifting. Technique-wise, skill-wise, yeah, it's, you're right, it doesn't require that much athleticism to do, but in order to continuously make progress in just three movements where there's really, really not a lot of things that you can do. You really have to use your intellect and then you have to be good at understanding your body and then understanding the science of lifting to be able to once they injury free

for a long enough period of time where you can make the necessary adaptations to continue getting stronger. Sure. And then have the mental fortitude to be able to keep going even when things don't go your way. You know, when in in strength sports, I find them, I find them the most difficult of all the sports that have done because progress is so slow and it slows down exponentially

the longer that you're in it. As you get higher up, right, like to go from not being in shape to being in shape is easy, but to go from being in good shape to world class shape, those microscopic gains that that must be extremely hard and extremely slow. Extremely, it's it's honestly nearly impossible to make progress after you've been lifting for over over over four or five years. Oh my god, there's people that don't improve their marks for three or four years. They're just lifting the same amount, the same amount. You're just banging your head against the wall and I don't know what keeps us going. It's I always joke, I always joke about waylifters and

powerlifters and say that we are the definition of insanity. Because we just come in and we try something, sometimes we try the same things seven times because we are, we are, we just are in complete denial that we don't know what the hell we're doing. And, and that's it. We just stay doing the same thing and, and not make any sort of measurable progress. It's, it's a crazy sport. It really is.

Well, that's a hard part about writing too, although I'm just making an analogy to the mental side, which is that you're waking up every day and you're doing your thing, whether it's reading or researching or exploring or thinking or even writing. But because the project is, you know, 50 to 150,000 words long, even a full day's work or a full week's work would make no measurable progress on the goal. You think about some of these people like a Robert Carrot

or even Robert Green who would work for years and years, like five or six years on a single book. You know, imagine, so few were done something for five years, you know, you're measuring progress by months at the smallest thing, or it could be that you had a bad year, right? Like that year three, you made no progress,

but you still had to show up for work every day. I imagine the discouraging part of weightlifting is like, you're keeping the diet, you're going through your teens, you're doing your rehab, you're visiting all this stuff, and yeah, the plates are not getting any bigger, right? Like you're not posting better results. That would be so immensely discouraging and yet you have to keep going. Yeah, and the amount of sacrifice that you have to make in order to stay in shape and keep going as well. But you know what, that's the difference between the people that are good and the good and the great.

It's that mental resilience and just ability to keep going even when you don't experience any sort of significant changes. That is a difference, really. And I think weight lifting a lot because I consider myself now after almost 10 years of lifting weights at the highest level, a master of the mundane. I feel like I can get better at anything because for 10 years I've been banging my head against

the wall, trying to do what hasn't been done before, breaking records, lifting weights that people thought that were ones impossible to do, you know, doing four, four point eight times my body weight in a deadlift. So, yeah, I mean, I get why the Stoics talk about lifting weights. And what's so incredible, I think about weight lifting too, is as you get up higher and higher, the actual burst of the activity is less and less, right? So, sports take a long time. Like a soccer game, I don't know how long a soccer game is, but you're talking about an hour issue of activity, right? I imagine as you creep towards that deadlift thing,

how many times did you do that? What is it once, right? You're not doing a 10 rep set of that even. Like the whole thing might take five seconds. You know, it's like being an Olympic sprinter or something where like the actual activity that you did all these years and years and years of training and sacrifice for is over like that.

Yeah, you have three attempts in powerlifting and weightlifting too. You have three attempts at each lift and that's it. You see, have you ever watched Olympic trials for the Olympic weightlifters? Yeah, yeah. It's, I've been to many or not so many to a couple, I guess, live and it's painful to watch when somebody who's been training for an entire quad, they're trying to do their qualifiers. And they just, man, training has been going amazing.

They've been hitting the numbers that they need to hit. And for some reason, it just doesn't come together in the platform. And you just see them collapse just physically and emotionally. And like on the next day or the day before, they might have been able to do the exact thing that they're not doing in that moment So it's not if it's not simply a fizz it's not like hey The three of us lined up and you were faster than me. It's like we're all capable of running the time That we're trying to do and then just on that day. It's not there. Is that a mental thing or what is it?

Dude, I don't know if I knew if knew, I'd be at the Olympics right now, but it's a phenomenon that I really don't know how to explain. It's like, you do, there's weights that you can do for three or five reps, and sometimes you're on the platform, you've done everything you need to do. You've decreased the intensity of your lifts, the weak leading onto your competition. You ate a little bit more calories,

so you could feel full, you're well rested, you've done your meditation, you're journaling, and you come on the blood firm, and that bar feels like an elephant, a weight that you can lift for five reps or six reps, and it just is not budging, it's not moving, it's not going anywhere. I don't know if it's stage fright,

I don't know if it's something to do with your nervous system, maybe the intensity at which you train for the competition, I don't know what it is something to do with your nervous system, maybe the intensity at which you train for For the competition. I don't know what it is, but it's super common and that's and again that adds the complexity of the sport Right, it's just the only variable being tested on the platform is strength and if it's not there It's just not there and so knowing that that can happen like it's almost like you know I think part of what makes public speaking scary is you know that you could get up on stage and the thing you practiced, you just forget it all.

The idea that you could forget it all is always there. That's the danger. danger, right? How do you not think about that as you walk up to the, but I imagine part of the mental game, just like it is in baseball or kicking a field goal in football, is the ability to turn the mind off, right? Because like, you're almost having to turn the mind off and let the body do what you've trained it to do in your case for like five seconds. Yeah, and that's called flow state. If you can really get yourself in flow state,

then obviously it increases the probability of having a positive outcome at the competition. But sometimes, like I said, it might not happen. So some of the strategies that you use with a mental coach are mental imagery. So mental imagery for both positive and negative situations. I think that's the part that people miss.

It's easy to sit down and fantasize about winning a gold medal or fantasize about making all of your three lives. I mean, anybody could do that, right? I also, I want to only imagine positive outcomes, but it's uncomfortable to even have the thought of a failed attempt or whatever going wrong in the warm up room or you feeling tired or you feeling weak that day.

It's really uncomfortable to think. And most people avoided out of fear of putting negative thoughts in their mind, but it's an absolutely necessary part of the process of training your brain to be prepared for those situations. Because preparation is the key to be more confident, more comfortable, and it's what's going to allow you to react to certain situations in a better way. So besides doing that positive mental imagery, you also go through the negatives, and then you think to yourself,

okay, if that happens, how am I gonna react? And that's happened to me. I've gone on to take my first attempt, and I miss it, because either I, I don't know, my technique was on a point, or something felt weird, or my reps were wrapped the wrong way, or I ran out of time on the clock, whatever. And I've missed competitions completely because I wasn't prepared for that outcome. Then through doing that, I remember going to the next competition after I was disqualified

for not making any lifts. I came back and I missed my first attempt. And I laughed. I went back to the Worma room and I was just laughing joking with Hayden with my partner. I'm like, it's all good, I got this. Like I've been there before in my mind. In my mind, this already happened and I'm totally okay with it. I know what I need to do going back into a platform.

I know the changes I need to make. I'm gonna remain calm and still and I'm gonna go back to a platform and try it again. That's it. This is, I mean, the Stokes talk about this, they call it premeditashaumalorum, a premeditation, a premeditation of evils. You have to think about what could happen, not because you're going to dread it, but, but so you don't dread it, right? Because you know what you'll do. And as Senaqa says, the unforeseen, blow lands heaviest. I guess this also works for it, right? Because you know what you'll do. And as Sena says, the unforeseen blow lands heaviest.

I guess this also works for boxing, right? If you know how you're gonna respond, if you know that it's a possibility, then when it happens, you're not like, what the fuck is this? Like, you know, like, you're not like, oh my God, I just, I screwed it up. I know it's over.

You have to be able to, even with writing, I just, I screwed it up. I know it's over. You have to be able to, like, even with writing, I think about this, like if you're unprepared for there to be crappy days, your one crappy day is gonna turn into two crappy days, which is gonna turn into a whole downward spiral. You have to be able to, no, this is, this is how it goes sometimes and this is what you do when that happens.

This is the training where the practices or the mental exercises that you revert to to reset and start again. So that's again, the lack of talk about negative outcomes, you know, the just how much society glamorizes being positive and happy and things working out and positive self-talk and all of this and and then people just not wanting to talk about when you're a fear writer or an athlete or whatever you have a block or something a setback something didn't work your way. Nobody talks about that, you know, and and again society glamorizes being okay, whatever that means being happy and things working out so that when real people, which is all of us, experience a normal human experience, which is a set of failure, desperation, being upset, whatever, then you don't know what to do with it.

Well, this is why the law of attraction or whatever is such horseshit, right? Like when you think positively, you're not making things more, you're not bringing positive things into existence, just as when you think negatively, you're not bringing negative things into existence, you're rehearsing in your mind what you will do if that happens, right?

So to me, it's about the, I think, positive or negative, what's really actually important is visualization. What's the plan? What am I supposed to do here? What is my training say, as opposed to like, yeah, like, oh, just imagine yourself on the, on the, on the, on the metal stand, getting, getting the gold medal. It's like no, think about how the lift is going to go walk yourself through the list or through the lift. Good and bad so you can be prepared for any direction that it goes. I just thought about if people in the emergency emergency room never prepared for a for a native outcome. How chaotic that would be. Of course. Oh my God.

Well, look, Napoleon, I said this in the courage, but Napoleon said, like three times a day in general should say, what will I do if the enemy appears on my left? If the enemy appears on my right, if the enemy appears in the rear, um, the idea wasn't to be anxious or depressed. The idea was to have a plan if that happens, right? Because the only worse thing than that happening is it happening and you not being ready for it.

You not knowing what to do in response to it. Like there's gonna be moments, yeah, where the wraps don't fit or the warm up doesn't go right or that you walk into the boxing room, the boxing ring, and the person hits you with something you weren't anticipating. The only thing worse than that is falling to pieces because you weren't expecting it. Mm-hmm. A hundred percent.

Okay, so walk me through the decision to start boxing because that does seem, it's not the opposite of weightlifting, but if weightlifting is a battle against the self, boxing is quite literally a battle against another person. But also, I would say to me, the big difference is that you're going from, you're going into what I might describe as a cardio sport, right? Like it's about the raised heart rate over a prolonged period of time. Although I guess with your background in soccer, you're sort of went all around,

actually, in that sense, but, but, but why boxing and how did that challenge you and force you to grow? I, I hate periods of my life when I'm too comfortable. And I felt that way last year, after my last powerlifting competition, I just felt like it was, I hate to say that it was too easy, but I had already done what I needed to do in this sport. I had already proven myself to myself, to people around me, to the industry. Obviously, I could have kept going and kept breaking records and I still

might, but I just felt like there was, I didn't feel challenged by the sport anymore. Combine that with the fact that I was suffering physically, just my body wasn't so much pain and just it didn't make sense for me to keep punishing myself, my body like that. So the pandemic hit and we were in lockdown and I was bored and I was just trying again another discovery period. I feel like with discovery periods happened to me every seven years, every seven to ten years. The seven-year itch. Yeah, yeah. And you know, I took I took an epigenetic scores from Harvard. I thought I was going to go back to school to become a PhD in epigenetics. I then took a fashion course. I bought myself a drum set. I thought I was going to go back to school, become a PhD in epigenetics. I then took a fashion course. I bought myself a drum set.

I thought I wanted to start a band. And then I bought myself a heavy bag. And I just hung it in my garage and bought myself a pair of gloves and started hitting it. And I found myself a coach, somebody that travels house to house because all gyms were closed. And I had a couple times a week of boxing sessions. And I felt the same way I felt when I started doing weight lifting that I had a talent for it. I felt like I was picking up on it very quickly. I

felt like I had good reaction, good coordination, good footwork. And I was making progress a lot faster than what the norm would be. And those, to me, were good indicators that I had a good potential for the sport. So that's kind of how I started taking it more, more seriously and getting myself more and more into it. I gotta imagine the first time you get punched in the face, you're like, this is a very different sport. first time you get punched in the face, you're like, this is a very different sport. Listen, the first time you get punched in the face, inspiring or, you know, by your spine partner or by your coach is absolutely nothing compared to the first time you get punched in the face by someone who's trying to knock you out in a ring in one of people. That was a

shocking experience. Let me tell you. I was a month ago. I had my first reel. I have two professional fights, but the last fight I had, I picked an opponent that was, I don't want to say out of my league because they fight ended up in a draw and I think I held my, you know, I held my ground pretty well. But this is a girl that has 10 years of combat sports experience. She has five years of boxing experience She has a my tie background. She's from Columbia super bad ass chick and It was all fun in games Until I stepped in that ring and I looked into her eyes and I saw that she was there to absolutely murder me

And that was the moment that I was like, Oh, shit. Yeah. Okay. This is what people mean when they say that boxing is not a game. It really isn't. This is a, this is the most life or dead situation that I've ever been in in my life. How do you, and although obviously, I think for weightlifting, you would have to get good at regulating your breathing and calming down and keeping the adrenaline in check. But yeah, going back until your soccer days, it had been a while since you were in one on one competition with another person. And then you've get this sense that they want to literally punch your lights out.

How do you calm yourself down? How do you not get really... how do you, how do you, how do you, how do you keep yourself in check? Because I imagine that's really, again, the mental side of things, but also the physical side of things like, I don't know how many rounds the fight went, but you would, you'd add to, you had to pace yourself in a way that isn't a three-second lift. Yeah, yeah. It's, uh, it's what we call unboxing an adrenal dump. Yeah. So as you're in the ring and the lights go on and the bell rings, you've lost 50% of your cardio.

Like your, your heart has already beaten more times than the entire camp, you know, and I spoke to my sports psychologist about that. And basically the strategy there was to not try to fight it. You can't, you shouldn't think about it. Shouldn't try to calm your heart rate. You shouldn't try to fight it. You shouldn't think about it, shouldn't try to calm your heart rate, you shouldn't try to fight it, you just accept the fact that that's a normal physiological reaction to a stressful event. And that's all that is, you know. And, you know, the first 30 seconds, I think, are the most nerve-wracking of the entire fight because you're trying to feel the other person out, you're trying to get used to it. You're letting your heart rate kind of go back to a little bit more normal,

rhythm. But yeah, I mean, you just can't fight that. Although I imagine the only way to really combat it is to fight a lot of fights, right? Like every match that adrenal dump is maybe a lower percentage of your cardio. You go from 50% to 48% and then eventually, the real seasoned pro, although this is the tension, the seasoned pro is more in control, hormonally and mentally, as your body is on the decline. Of course. What's interesting is I've heard Mike Tyson's my favorite fighter and I've heard a lot of his interviews. And he says that he's always terrified before a fight. Sure.

He is afraid of his opponent. He's terrified of what the outcome might be. He's scared of getting in the ring. And it's interesting, right? Because how many fights did that guy have all of them? I don't know what his amateur record was, but I think he had almost 50 fights, 50 professional fights. And that's a lot. And he's still, he still went through that every single fight. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And knowing what, the after your first fight, you now know how you feel after the fight, which is also gotta be hard, right? You know how, even if you win, even if it goes well, you know that you're gonna feel terrible the next day. Listen, it's so uncomfortable during and after, it's the most painful and uncomfortable thing that I've ever gone through and

Even at the during the last round of my of my fight I had us maybe three or four seconds where I thought to myself what the fuck am I doing here? Why am I doing this to myself? And then when the fight ended and I was busted, my head heard, my nose was almost broken. I had to really dig deep to answer that question for myself. Why am I doing this? You know, financially, I'm not a hungry lifter, like a fighter, like a lot of a lot of them on. I don't need to do that. You've already, you've already won that battle.

Yes. I'm doing this out of just love for the sport and for a challenge. That's it. That's the reason why I'm doing it because I thrive off of being uncomfortable because I want to put myself in uncomfortable situations, willingly in uncomfortable situations so that when uncomfortable situations arise that are completely out of my control, I'm better equipped to deal with them. And to me, I guess that's the reason why I box. But do you feel like that first plane ride that your mom put you on to send you to a foreign country where you didn't speak the language?

You... So, in that sense that you already have been that scared person facing an insane set of unknowns. Like you probably have a certain confidence both on the on the mat and in the ring that that you can fall back on because you've you've been through stuff like this before. For sure I know exactly what I need to do when I'm faced by an obstacle or when I'm faced by fear and that's why your bug the obstacle is the way was one honestly I and I I know exactly what I need to do when I'm faced by an obstacle or when I'm faced by fear. And that's why your book, The Upsicle, is the way it was. Honestly, I keep telling you, but it was one of the most influential books that I've ever read because of that very reason.

It just explained and confirmed a lot of the things that I've been through, why I've done certain things and why that is actually the only way to go is through. A lot of people get so paralyzed by fear and stop doing things out of fear of rejection. and why that is actually the only way to go is through. A lot of people get so paralyzed by fear and stop doing things out of fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of pain, fear of discomfort, whatever it is. And that's just such a massive limiting factor

to reaching your full potential in life as a human. You do seem like you also blend the, there's that Latin expression, a strong mind and a strong body. But you seem like you are, you talked about sports psychologists. I know you have a doctorate in physical therapy. Obviously you read a lot. You seem like you have really also explored the mental side

of things like you've really studied philosophy and psychology and peak performance, it seems like that's a big part of how you approach these things too. Yeah, absolutely. I've suffered from anxiety and panic disorders since I was 15 years old and that's a big reason why this, everything related to the mind interests me so much. And one of the reasons why I got into stoicism as well, it's hard, you know, and imagine, if being afraid is a deterrent for people not to do certain things,

imagine being irrationally afraid. All the time of things that you shouldn't, about things that haven't even happened Your mind plays tricks on you all the time when you're when you have generalized anxiety disorder when you have panic disorder You have any sort of like mental health issue like that your mind is constantly telling you that you can't constantly putting in the forefront of your mind the worst possible outcomes worst possible situations for everything in your life. So I had to, you know, I finally more recently accepted that that's the way my brain is wired,

that's the chemistry of my brain, and I can't fight that, but what I can do is I can train my brain to be able to deal with that in a much healthier and better way. And that's, and part of that is being deal with that in a much healthier and better way. And that's, and part of that is being okay with that fear. Understanding where it comes from, it's coming from your amygdala. It's completely irrational. It's literally your pre-historic monkey brain giving you a signal of threat that's not there.

It's a perceived danger, perceived threat that's not actually there. So, I, it's just so important, never to, never to allow it to make you a victim and, and always just try to push through that and put yourself in as many uncomfortable situations as you can so that you have that courage and that, that mental training, mental fortitude to, to overcome any sort of our situation. Because what I found is that, you know, the older I get, there's different things that trigger these anxiety. There's different things that trigger this fear.

The first anxious panic attack I had was a fear of the dark. You know, I'm, and I was, I was 13 years old when I experienced my first panic attack that was triggered by being in the dark. And so I imagine, now I'm perfectly comfortable being in the dark. And so I imagine now I'm perfectly comfortable being in the dark, but now there's other things that trigger my anxiety, like for example, I don't know, losing my mom, losing my parents,

being old and sick, being alone. There's other things that as I get older, they just keep coming up in that, that's never going to change. I'm always, there's always gonna be something that I'm afraid of, change. I'm always there's always going to be something that I'm afraid of something that I'm anxious about and it's only through learning how to cope with that and how to deal with that that I'm going to be able to take you forward. Well, it's sort of realizing like the world, it's this tricky thing where like the world is scary

and the world, there are things to be anxious about. And then it's like, oh, your mind is adding on top of that, right? I think that was one of the things I realized during the pandemic, which was like, I'd always, I'm someone who gets anxious about things, but I thought it was the, even though the Stokes obviously said this for thousands of years, I knew this. I thought it's like, hey, I'm anxious

because the flight takes off in 20 minutes. And if it's late, then I'll miss the connection. And then if I miss the connection, then I'm going to be late for this thing that I'm going to write like I was anxious about that. But of course, then you stop flying. You stop doing something because you're in the middle of a pandemic. And you're still anxious. You realize, oh, I'm the problem. Like, I'm bringing this to the situations. And that's one of my favorite quotes from Marcus Rialis. He says, today I escaped from anxiety. And then it says, no, actually I disregarded it

because it was within me. Like realizing like, you're the problem, you're the source of the anxiety or the worry. It's hard to accept, but it's not the outside things that are causing it. They don't care at all. It's you. You're the problem. And ultimately, your perception, right, of the world around you, I remember I was so scared of flying. I would force myself to fly all the time because I was terrified, specifically about turbulence. It's irrational, right? Like turbulence turbulence. I started looking at turbulence as

bumps in the road. Yeah. If you're in a bumpy road that like an unpaid road in your car starts making noise, that's the equivalent of turbulence in the air. In once I switched my perspective of what turbulence was, I stopped being afraid of it. So that's it's interesting. If you change your, the way you think about something, it could also eliminate fear. Yeah, yeah, of course. And also a reminder that like in something like a boxing match, it's already, the margin for errors is already incredibly low. The idea that you can be wasting time or resources, being worried or anxious or thinking about this or that. Like, you can't. You have to focus on the thing in front of you

and any resources spent elsewhere is actually making you more vulnerable. So what's next for you? Are you gonna keep fighting or are you gonna go back to weightlifting or what do you think your next your next challenges? No, I have I actually have a fight November 21st in the Dominican Republic. Wow. Another fight December 26 in Switzerland, another fight February 11 in Miami. So the plan is just to continue building my pro record and hopefully fight for

a world title at some point. You know, my goal is not necessarily to be the best in the world, but to be, I guess, qualified to fight the best in the world. That's the goal. To be technically profession enough and have my skills be on point so that I get compete with them. It sounds like whatever it is that you do, you don't fuck around. You know, never. And what's the thing you post every once in a while

that I always love you say, or waking up and choosing violence? Let's end there. Tell me, tell me what that means. Yeah, wake up, choose violence. It's just a motto that I have to attack every day with intention. I think a lot of people wake up and are doing things mindlessly and without any sort of purpose or intent behind and we end up just living in like robots, like in auto-part,

putting ourselves in automatic or auto-pilot. So waking up choosing violence is just a promise to be intentional with everything that you do from a moment you wake up, you brush your teeth to your first decision of whatever it is that you want to tackle that day. And I also, I do like, I think there's a Latin expression from Sennaka, it's basically like to live is to fight. I do love the metaphor, the way of thinking about the world, but it's a battle, right? And you gotta be ready for it. And as you said, you gotta be intentional, because if you're not on the offensive, it means that you're on the defensive. Mm-hmm, exactly. You're the best. I'm so glad we got to do this, and thank you for the very nice words about the book, and good luck on your next fight. Of course, pleasure. I'm so glad we got to do this and thank you for the very nice words about the book and

Good luck on your next fight Of course pleasure. Thank you so much for having me Hey, it's Ryan, you know the Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoa the Stoa Poquillet the painted porch in ancient Athens Obviously we can't all get together in one place First off because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people, and we couldn't fit in one space. But we have made a special digital version of the stove. We're calling it Daily Stoic Life.

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