BTG 115 - Habits maketh the Man

[Music] hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the guard on today's episode I just wanted to Target uh one small part of a athletes journey and I think just in anybody's Journey really that I don't think gets the right Focus for a lot of Reon reasons being that word itself focusing on your goal and doing everything conducive to achieving that goal and what I mean by that I look now at what I'm doing as far as lifestyle and I realize I'm doing a much better job of being congruent with my long-term goals physically for example I want to be healthy and fit till the day I die right ideally I could train Jiu-Jitsu you know hours before I pass and have a good time and still be able to move around and still have good mental acuity where I I'm sharp and you know I can still learn things or at least teach things seeing how I treat my health my physical fitness my recovery my diet is all in line with that there's nothing I'm doing now that you would look at and say hey isn't that kind of hurting your goals isn't that kind of contradictory to things that you would have told somebody else to do to achieve those things when I was younger and actually competing I had lots of these cont addtions I would you know have cheat days or days that you know that I would feel I would need to or I would want to indulge myself in you know different foods and overeat and stuff that I know going into it is not great for me but I just wanted to indulge myself uh in doing that and similarly you know just goofing off and not training or you know I me and I'm actually I think I'm probably better than this and most people because I I don't drink I don't smoke I don't do any drugs I don't party so uh I'm pretty tame in that regard but even still there's other ways that you know uh I I feel like I wasted time or I didn't invest enough time into my preparation that I could have so for people who are starting their journey in sports or just at anything you're doing really I would look at all the things you do and figure out which things are working against you here that you can switch out for something that works for you for example instead of uh going out partying you could have done a yoga session or you could have done a SAA session or you could have done some type of recovery protocol that not only enhances your physical recovery but also your mental right I feel there's this idea that in order to be able to relax you have to do something that might kind of hurt you in some other way right like some people or a lot of people they see parting and they know well it's not good for me is I'm going to be drinking lots of alcohol I might be doing drugs that get me intoxicated but it allows me to mentally unwind and they feel like that's like the only way that works it's like you could mentally unwind in a lot of ways that doesn't involve physically damaging your body right uh like I said SAA ice plunge stretching just going out for a hike or a simple walk these are always way that are very relaxing like yesterday I went with my with my parents parents and my wife uh to Cathedral Gorge State Park a few hours here from here in Vegas and spent a couple hours just walking it's just absolutely beautiful air is clean it's very quiet there's there was like barely anybody there and uh very nice and you don't come back the next day feeling hung over right you feel great like you can do more stuff now so uh if you have these type of like coping mechanisms in your your life that you know every so often you feel like you have to do things that are somewhat toxic to you but they help you relax then you might want to reassess like why am I relying on that type of coping mechanism that is doing some damage to me instead of another way of coping through stress that will have positive benefits right cuz sometimes these coping mechanisms that you choose can do more damage and become a bigger problem than the problem you're trying to get away from right like it's like people who are stress eaters and they they eat as a way of unwinding and relaxing from stress if they do this too much now the Obesity is going to be a bigger problem than whatever problem they were dealing with because that problem could actually end their life now right you might have heart issues you might develop diabetes right so like uh I feel it's important to be honest with yourself and look at the different things that you do in your life and realize which things am I doing are not useful not productive and if anything they're counterproductive or they're toxic to my ambitions to my goals and find ways to replace them with other things that's an important thing also that you you can't just remove something and leave a void in this place if you're going to remove something it need it it has to be replaced with something else right we don't do good with an empty Gap where something used to be right so if you're going to say I don't want to drink anymore on the weekends great now you have to replace it with something else maybe it's a fun run or you know just a hike or you know reading a book or whatever the case is like you you have to find a positive substitute uh you can't just take out the negative and expect that that void is going to fill itself up on its own you're going to wander around a bit because there's going to be an empty Gap in your schedule and the bad things will look very alluring at that point so you have to make sure that you fill up with good things for me I feel feel like the habits I've picked up as of late were been very good in my life overall I I journal every day I I read whether it's on a written page or a screen or audio through different audio books or podcasts I have minimized to the point that I don't think I I watch just straight Entertainment Television anymore I haven't followed any series or movies or anything I haven't gone to a movie theater in years mainly because my wife doesn't care but now I don't care to anymore as far as food you know I've cleaned up the diet so much now and it's one of the areas I look back and like man like if I would have done this when I was younger it would have been very easy to me maintain weight could have probably fought at better weight classes I fought my whole life at 185 and I'm walking around now 192 so I probably could have fought at 170 if I really wanted to which would have been probably a lot better for me been fighting guys closer to my size and I would havea had a good strength advantage and just easier uh to maintain weight and because that was one of the things also like I would you know gain a lot of weight in the off season then have have to cut weight doing the the fight camp for the first few weeks and then maintain it's a silly way of playing the game when if you're just staying sharp the entire time it's not that big of a deal and I think also just Fitness wise I never really lifted weight seriously throughout my whole competitive career and what a waste that was right uh CU I'm much stronger now than I've ever been before [Music] and the extra strength would have gone a long way because I I definitely grappled a few people that I man they were a lot stronger than me obviously Paul Harris was one of them although he was also 20 pounds heavier me when he competed but Andre gaval was another guy that was really strong that I'm like you know it would have been nice to be able to lock horns and not feel overpowered there uh and I wasn't a weak diey by any means but I definitely didn't tap into all the potential that I could have had and weight training for me is an enjoyable thing to do and it's just a just a a opportunity that I missed that I could have exploited just by replacing good habit bad habits with good habits you know so I would say if you haven't done this type of assessment to yourself you know get on your computer get a journal piece of paper and write down all the things you do as activities within a day and ideally within a week that somewhat repeats itself even if maybe it's non monthly cycle but find out all the different things you do which things are productive which things are uh not productive which things are destructive what things you're doing are coping mechanisms um and which of those coping mechanisms can be replaced for a better replacement of course this is uh you might say well that's kind of subjective I don't think it is because it's going to only be subjective to the user as far as what your long-term goals are right um if you have the goal of being a world-class athlete getting trashed on the weekends is objectively not good for you right it's not going to help you get there faster even if you can say well so and so did it and they got to the top and my response to you would be imagine how much more they could have done if they didn't do that right uh there's a lot of people who are naturally gifted and they can get away with breaking some of the rules and maybe you can too but you don't have to right and I feel like there's a lot more potential to be unlocked if you stay true to your goals anyhow that's all I have to you today little uh straight talk here about being very detail oriented with all the things that you do making sure that everything that you do is congruent with your goals and it's good to have this kind of audit every so often because you know things happen and you might move you might train in a different place and you you might shake up your routine a little bit and forget what was the long-term purpose how do all the things I do now fit into what I'm doing right ideally everything fits in 100% And I understand that maybe not everything you'll do will be 100% in line but at least you should be the majority in there right if like 50% of your team is like goofing off and then 50% is like working towards it you're BAS basically going nowhere right so in my opinion at the very least 90% of what you should do should be towards helpful towards your goals so if you're taking 10 steps back 90 steps forward well at least we're moving in the right direction right um yeah so we'll keep it short for today after Thanksgiving so uh I'll cut this down a little bit hope you guys had a great week and I'll see you next week