BTG 102 - How to deal with being underprepared

Hello and welcome to the Break in the Guard podcast. On this week, I've just come back to Las Vegas, my home. I was in my first home in Miami, Florida. All of last week, I got to teach at my gym at the Freestyle Fighting Academy. And uh that was great. The the classes there were super packed. There was somewhere around 45 50 people per class. So the mats were tight, good energy. And I was showing a lot of stuff that I've talked about in the podcast before, how I kind of figured out what uh Jake Shield's game was and how he actually does the things he does only recently. So, I was sharing that with my team in Miami as well as going over some Smount stuff, some guillotines, and uh some other little tricks I picked up along the way. But, uh, one of the things that, uh, caught my attention cuz I was normally not teaching, you know, group classes like that, especially in my home gym, was how much the sport has grown and the martial arts has grown as far as audience share. Back in the day when I started training in the late 90s and early 2000s to have children training mixed martial arts was not a thing. And uh just before my class that I was teaching in Miami started, we had a small army of teens training and probably this about 30 40 teens on the mat and then the kids class another 30 40 kids on the mats. Um, so that's pretty remarkable, you know, because obviously that's going to be fueling the next generation uh of this discipline, but also in both the adults and the the kids classes, lots of women training, which to me is awesome because I feel they're the ones that are going to get the most advantage from this considering, you know, they they lack the size and the brute strength that the the average man would have over the average woman. But when you have technique and you understand particularly jiu-jitsu and you get leverage, that's going to give you an upper hand. So, uh I think it's very encouraging to see lots of women training in the martial arts as well and doing really well, mind you. Uh so, I thought that was wonderful. It's always good to be back in the hometown, especially for me because my my family's there. So, I got to see my parents, uh my my nephews, and of course my brother and his wife. Uh and yeah, it's good to be able to connect with everybody. Uh, one of the things I love to do is eat and got to do a lot of that, you know, and I've still been staying on the the carnivorean animal diet now since March, so it's like five, six months now. Uh, still maintaining weight 192, 193. Uh even on these days like I'm dealing with a few setbacks now like uh I have somehow popped a rib while I was sleeping which that's a first for me. I woke up and I you know I felt it again minor but enough where it's a problem. So that wasn't pleasant. And I had a pop rib on the other side. And um shoulders still not quite there yet, you know, better, but uh so I'm nursing a few injuries and uh I've been kind of sitting on the sidelines, not doing a lot of physical activity, trying to let those things recover because I do have a hunt coming up next weekend. And uh seems like all my hobbies are just somewhat destructive. All right. Because uh when I was I'm doing the rifle uh long range rifle shooting and of course it's my right shoulder that bothers me and what's the rifle buted on? It's my right shoulder. So that's not helping. If I'm doing archery, same type of thing. I'm pulling across here. So and then of course the jiu-jitsu doesn't really help there. So, um, and I'm weightlifting, you know, but I kind of held back all of most of the physical stuff, especially the past couple weeks. I haven't done any of these things, which leads me to, uh, the topic of that day. It's like, what do you do if you feel like you're underprepared, right? I haven't done as much preparation for for this hunt as I would have wanted just because of uh physical setbacks, you know. Um, and while you might not be hunting in anything that you do in life, particularly maybe in a competition prep, and you realize you're underprepared or you just didn't have the capability to prepare to your fullest, what do you do? I'll tell you, it's the same thing you do if you're fully prepared, your best, right? Because that's all you got, right? And whether you were lazy and you slacked and you just didn't do enough preparation or you just couldn't because life got in the way and whether it's just you had lots of obligations that tied you to doing other things or like my case I'm I got physically impaired and I was limited in what I could do. Uh either way, you you can only deal with the hand that you have. You can't think back, regret, uh you know, armchair quarterback, and try to figure out how you could do something that you can't change, which is the past. The only thing you can do is work with what you have and do the absolute best that you can with it. So, that's what I'm going to be going in on. I'm going to be leaning on the fact that uh I have had one successful archery hunt. Uh one one out of one that was great. The second hunt, uh I never got the chance to draw, so I didn't really get to shoot. Uh, but I got a lot of hiking involved and I've done quite a bit of hiking recently, so I'm not worried about that part. I know I'll be able to and we're going to a similar area, so I'm not worried about the terrain or whatnot. I'll be able to navigate them up and down, left, right. That's not going to be a problem. Uh, I think with the archery, I should be all right as long as, uh, I'm within 40 yards. That's where I feel comfortable shooting at. That's what I've been training more at because my home uh lot here, I have a good 40 yard range that I can shoot at and I can hit reliably well there. So, I'm not too worried about that. Uh I wanted to build up to 60 yards and be very proficient there, but just haven't had the opportunity. So, like I said, I just deal with what I work with. They shoot at 40. And if I don't get the chance, I don't get the chance. Right. Uh, with the rifle, I've gotten a lot better with my grouping and, uh, I guess you would say with the precision. Um, I would like to be a lot more accurate. And if you don't know the difference, precision means that if I shot a group, let's say on my body here and I just shot here when I was intending to shoot in the middle, this is a precise grouping, but to be accurate, I would need to shift it here, right? Whereas uh if uh you were just accurate but not precise, you might have one shot in the middle and then one shot out here and like you're So ideally you were both right that you're precise and you're accurate. But I feel in my case, I'm still uh mastering dialing in my instruments as far as uh getting my scope zeroed uh for elevation and windage. I'm getting small variances every time I go out there. And I of course I'm trying to account for the wind as well. Uh but it's getting better each time. I just wanted to be I I should be pretty good. I think within 200 yards I'm pretty safe bet that I I'll get a good shot in. Uh beyond that, I haven't put as much practice. So once again, it's one of the area that uh I'm more concerned with, but I'm going to just work within my parameters, right? Uh, I'm gonna go I'm actually dressed right now because I'm going to go to the range now and have a few more days where I can get some practice and maybe I can dispel some of those uh concerns I have. But otherwise, um, I'm probably not going to shoot beyond that just to be safe and, uh, not to take any reckless shots. But if you're in competition scenario, it's going to be pretty much the same type of deal. You just got to work with what you got, right? I can't uh worry myself or concern myself or try to second guess myself. I I just have to work with what I got, right? Um and a recent example that I recall was Philip Pipana. Apparently, he came into the competition with his back all jacked up and he just did what he could with it. And um he ended up winning a gold medal. you know, he didn't do the absolute, but he got a gold in his division and he didn't have an easy finals match. He went against Luke Griffith and Luke had his back early, had him in some compromising positions, but he was able to escape, come back and be able to win it, you know, and uh it's rare in competition, especially as you're getting older and you're training very hard to feel 100%. You're going to have some nagging injuries here and there, and you just got to work around it, right? Uh, in his case, it seemed like he had a little more of a I wouldn't say severe, but at least from the sounds of it, a little bit more serious injury, but he was able to work around it. Um, even uh Luke uh Lucas Barbrosa apparently had a shoulder dislocation weeks before that CJI uh competition and he still went out there and competed and he was able to get into the semis, you know, and he got a notable win which I did a breakdown of of that knee compression or knee slicer on a very tough opponent. and uh he just worked around it, you know, like that's not ideal situation having a shoulder dislocation. Uh I I've never had one personally. I've had shoulder injuries and I know shoulder injuries suck. So I would imagine the shoulder dislocation is a pretty terrible injury. I've seen I've had fighters had dislocations in a fight and somehow pull out the win, but if they shoulder got touched, they were just completely down. Um, so it's a tough thing to come back from, but he still was able to put on a good performance. And I'm not sure it wasn't apparently, it wasn't obvious that something was wrong with his shoulder, although certain positions that he engaged with are a little bit more easy to understand and explained by how he handled them. All right, but he was able to work around it. In his case, he didn't win the the big prize, but he still put on a good show and showed a lot of grit, right? And hopefully didn't hurt himself along the way. Um, so I mean, those are some examples of just a couple weeks ago, people handling bad spots and being able to come through it, you know. Uh, I guess Gordon Ryan's obviously always an example because he's always dealing with his stomach issues and and still is able to go out there and perform. You know, we kind of talked about it already how he didn't really look that great compared to his previous performance, but at the end of the day, he still got the job done, right? And I would imagine he did the best that he could, and that's all any of us could do. So, you just have to put some faith in yourself and say, you know what, I might not have the position that I wanted right now. I maybe I wish I was a little bit taller. I wish I was a baller, right? And all that other good stuff, but this is where I am. This is what I got. Let's make the most of it and do everything I can. And that's what I'm hoping to do. Like I said, I actually have uh two tags to fill. Doing mu deer buck with archery and then analopee on a rifle. Um so I have three days for one, two days on the other. Let's see if I can I can pull it out. If I can just get one of one of those, I'll be pretty happy because that'll be a good amount of meat. But getting two would be the goal, right? And hopefully uh I'm able to pull that one off. and you know trying to just make some content here for you guys that I think is is valuable. So like whenever you guys give me feedback it really helps because it gives me some direction. Otherwise you might get me rambling a bit more and I'm fine with that either way. But uh uh that's all I got for you guys. We'll keep it short on this weekend and uh I'm going to film another one because I'll be out hunting. So, it's not going to be it's it'll be pre-taped, but um if you guys chime in in the next few days on a particular topic that you want me to cover, I will go ahead and cover that. Otherwise, we'll keep to this, which is if you feel like you're underprepared or you have doubts about your preparation, just double down on on your belief in yourself, make what you got. in in this sense is what I feel it helps to be kind of uh robotic and not emotional, right? You're emotional. You tie yourself into, oh, I wish I would have done more sprints and I could have done this and I could have lifted more weights or I could have done more sparring. All this what if doesn't do any good. What does do good is doing the best with what you got. You do the best with what you got, you're going to get the best performance out of yourself, which is all that you could ask for, right? That's all you could hope for is the best performance that you're able to muster.