BTG 76 - Shit Happens

Hey guys, what's going on? Welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. On today's episode, we're going to talk about something that's probably happened to you quite a bit, and that is [ __ ] happens, right? Uh, you know, you could do all the best preparation possible, have your mind completely focused, plan all sorts of different contingencies, and then still something goes completely wrong that catches you out of left field. And now, now what? Right? I'll give you a minor example. The other day I went to train. I had warmed up with my little yoga routine for 30 minutes. Did some calisthenics. Then got into the first round of situational drills. Did fine. Second round I was doing fine. And then towards the end of the round I separated from my opponent. I was on both my knees like pretty much on my force. I stepped up on my left leg and something popped. I remember thinking like, "What the hell?" And my partner looked at me, he's like, "You're right." I'm like, "I don't think so." And turns out it wasn't as bad as I initially thought. It looks like I might have like stretched my IT band on my left knee, but it definitely felt weird. So, I finished out the round and then I just sat out of the practice and uh went home and started trying to work on rehabbing it. But when I look back, I always try to figure out what went wrong, right? Like what did I do to make this happen? And this is one of those situations where it's pretty tricky, right? This is kind of a [ __ ] happen situation, right? Where like you can't account for everything. You can't prepare accordingly. The first thing I think of for that it's like, well, what was the movement? And it was a very basic movement. I just stepped up on my leg. I had no resistance on me. There was nobody putting pressure on me. It was a break of the action. So, just me literally stepping up on my left foot is what triggered it. So, it seems like, well, okay, if the movement wasn't extreme, then what's going on with you that would put you at such risk, right, to get injured for something so trivial? I'm like, well, I've been doing a lot of heavy lifting. I've been training a lot more than usual. But before this training session, I actually skipped a whole day. So, I didn't do anything Thursday because it was a Friday training session. So, I didn't do anything Thursday. On Wednesday, when I normally train twice, I only train once. So, I was already feeling a lot of fatigue building up and soreness. So, I started to slow down um the this week. So, I felt like while I was doing the things that I should be doing, right, which is I started to wean off my train to allow my body to recover more. Um, but I guess I was still just too much accumulated soreness and fatigue that I could get hurt with this little thing. I don't know. I I'm I'm trying to make sense of it because I hate having things where I can't account for it. But ultimately, at the end of the day, we have to think about [ __ ] happens, right? things can go wrong even when you do everything right or you believe you're doing everything right. And how do you move forward from that? Well, I think one thing is have a little humility, right? And realize like, you know what, despite my best efforts, I do not have full control of everything, right? I can do my best to try to control the situation, but at some point, you're going to fumble, right? And you're going to either not see something coming or not be capable of seeing something coming coming and it's going to get you. And you have to avoid, you know, feeling sorry for yourself, throwing yourself a pity party or, you know, getting angry or frustrated. All these things serve no utility. They don't improve your performance or improve your mindset or make you happier, right? they just you just bullying yourself basically for no reason. Uh so I feel like when [ __ ] does happen to you, the best thing to do is think of okay, how do I best resolve this now, right? Like obviously our game plans did not account for this situation. Now we have to figure out what's the best way around this. Forget about everything that we were thinking about before because now this has changed that and we have to be able to adapt to this new situation, right? If we're thinking in the fight world, right, maybe I went into a fight thinking I was going to going up against a guy who's primarily uh a grappler and I'm just going to stand and bang with this guy and thinking I'm going to put him in the situation where he's most uncomfortable with. But when we actually get into the fight, he's actually very confident on his feet, maybe even better than me on his feet. And now I realize where my best plans uh that we had figured were totally wrong. We had bad intelligence, right? So we had to make do what we have now. Like well maybe now the option is to take him down or at the very least fight him like a dirty boxing style fight in the middle uh to try to nullify u his his striking. Right? So this is what I mean kind of like you have to have some humility. You have to be able to let go of certain things. Right? So in this case, we have to let go of all these game plans that were that are obviously not working anymore and we have to go into developing a new one which is going to be somewhat improvised because you're especially if it's in a situation that's very dynamic. We have to go on the fly here. This is why coaches are useful. Um but in your own life you have to be able to figure out okay like how do we go around this and and make this better. You know, in my case, I went home. I have my wife's a doctor, asked her to do some checks, and it turns out nothing wrong with my knee. It's just something with the IT band. And we did some physical therapy together, which helped a little bit. But I think uh more than anything, I just need to kind of give it some rest and not agitate it. I went on a four mile hike the other day. No issues. So, it seems like it's something specific for me for being on my knees for whatever reason. That's the only time I can replicate it. So, uh, in any case, like I said, you got to figure out whatever it is, forget about all the good plans you had before. I feel that's where when [ __ ] happens, people get hung up on because you had all these uh ideas of what was going to happen and how you would respond to it, but then something came out of, you know, left field and you're still thinking about this path, this potential future, but you're over here now, right? So this distance that you are from it is like your the pain Right? It's a separation. Like I wanted to be here. I planned everything here, but I'm actually over here now. Right? And no matter how much I want to be over here, I'm not. All right? Uh obviously, this is a very uh broad category. I can't tell you how to handle whatever [ __ ] is going down your way. like only give you like from a a metaphysical sense of like you have to accept where you are, all right, and not where you want to be or where you could have been would be a better way of saying it, right? Because maybe we can steer ourselves back over here somehow. But the starting point is going to be here. We can't change the past, right? So I find with most people when you when [ __ ] happens they get stuck on not being where they thought they were going to be. And this is the pain that particularly for the fight world when you underestimate somebody where you make bad plans you are expecting to be in a different place right like I said like if I thought I was fighting a striker or fighting a grappler and now I'm actually fighting a a world class striker the starting situation is very different and that's jarring because you did so much preparation being here that now like we're not ready for here. So, but if you're flexible, you're adaptable, you can let go of that starting condition and start forming new plans right away and start executing from another position. I try to think of this from being pragmatic. There's no utility in being frustrated or being angry or being depressed. like these things don't at least as far as I can see wouldn't enhance your ability to achieve your goals right so what is the best way for me to achieve my goals if my initial plans were completely derailed start making new plans so instead of worrying about how come you know I'm not here when I'm but I'm here just think about how to make new plans from right here. Forget about everything that you thought you had and start over and get moving. The the quicker you are able to let go, the faster you're going to be able to move on, right? It's kind of like if you're climbing a mountain and you have a pack of supplies with you of food and it turns out that they're all rotten and you can't eat it. Am I going to continue to carry that pack as I climb this mountain even though it's adding like 20 30 pounds of weight thinking like oh you know maybe I can somehow salvage it or whatnot or if I realize it's gone there's there's nothing I can be do I just got to cut it off by being able to cut it off I let go of it I'm now able to move faster and I'm able to I have to now start focusing on new plans of how I'm going to get food you know but if I keep holding on to this hope of being in a position where I can't be because that starting condition is no longer there. I'm only going to suffer more and I'm going to feel sorry for myself whereas I have to be able to move forward. So [ __ ] happens. It's going to happen a lot in your life unfortunately, right? So uh my take on this is let go. Forget about all the the plans that you had especially being the plans that are no longer valid because your starting condition has completely changed. Form new plans. start working. Are they going to be perfect? No. Right? Because especially if, like I said, you're in a dynamic situation, like in a live fight, your plans are going to be far from perfect. But they're going to be the best that you can come up with, and that's better than what you had before, which wasn't working. All right? Uh, and I would say try to stay pragmatic. Think about what's going to best serve your goals versus how you're feeling, right? Yes. It sucks that you spent maybe 6, 8, 12 weeks in a training camp trying to do one thing and then it turns out that you prepared for the wrong thing, right? So you might think all these, you know, all that time wasted. Instead, think about, okay, I'm here now. What can I do right now to make myself better? Right? So whether you get in a car accident or you know you forgot to pay a bill or or whatever the the the [ __ ] happens to be just think about how you can solve that now for let go of everything else that you thought was going to be the case and deal with the problem present. So that's my take on what to do when [ __ ] happens. Hopefully that's useful for you guys and it helps you to get [ __ ]