BTG 99: What it really means to be Brave

Hello and welcome to the Break in the Guard podcast. On today's episode, I want to talk about bravery. And it came to mind because yesterday we went hiking, my wife and I, into Zion National Park. We were lucky enough to get one of the permits to go to Angel's Landing. If you're not familiar with it, Angel's Landing is one of the key attractions to Zion. You get to climb up 1500 ft on a mostly incline mountain with the sun bearing down on you. And towards the end, you have to uh scramble your way quite a bit. There's chains and you're pretty much on a knife's edge where you might have a path this wide. No exaggeration. and on both sides it's just a sheer drop off. So if you fall, you're you're done, right? However, that being said, it's not that difficult if you're not afraid of heights. You know, you just rock it like any other path. And for most of those sketchy parts, there is uh rails and they have chains that are going from uh each rail so you can kind of climb your way through. What I didn't realize, even though I've been with my wife now for almost over 11 years, I think, yeah, about to be 12, is she's afraid of heights. But I didn't know it. I only realized it when I was at one point she got in front of me and she was walking and I saw her hand trembling the whole time. And I was like, "Are you dehydrated?" And she said, "No, no, I'm just very nervous." I was like, "About what?" And she's like, "Oh, I'm I'm afraid of heights." And uh that surprised me. I didn't expect that, especially since on our third date, we went u we jumped on an airplane and did like a parachute, you know. So, I wouldn't think someone who's afraid of heights would do that. Or we both have flown stump planes before and done lots of high altitude things. We This is not the first mountain that we've climbed as we hiked. not really climb a hike. We've done repelling and all these other sort of things, but I never even noticed it. And it was only then that I realized like, oh, she's actually she actually has some anxiety over this uh and never said a word. Right? So, to me that was remarkable and it shows and this something I've known about my wife for a while that she's very brave and uh a lot of people expect bravery to come from different places, right? Like some people think, oh, the the guy who's very stoic and or like tough and manly is the brave guy. And that usually isn't the case, right? Like I can tell you most of the time I am not brave. I just don't have any fear, right? Like in order to be brave, you have to be fearful of something, right? Otherwise, you're just doing something like a we don't call like a bomb exterminating a robot brave. Even though it does very dangerous things, it has no emotions. It doesn't feel anything. So there's nothing to be brave about. It's just doing a job. And for most of my competition career, I didn't really have any fear. I enjoyed what I was doing. I knew the inherent risks of it and just jumped into it. I wasn't afraid of dying. Still not. So it's not brave of me to do any of these things, right? It's brave for somebody who is afraid of getting hurt or afraid of dying to put themselves in risky situations where they could potentially have ext, you know, bad outcomes. So, I say this not because uh I'm trying to put myself like, oh, I don't think it's a benefit really to be fearless. And in fact, it puts you in more dangerous positions and I think you also have less motivation. Uh because since you don't really have any fear, on one hand, you could be a lot more reckless and careless, which could have some advantages to it, but on the other hand, you're probably going to get into trouble more often than not because you're going to end up crossing that line that I mentioned many times between bravery and stupidity. But when you are someone who does have fear, and I'm not one. I I remember I used to make fun of people that had back in the day in the '9s, they had like these caps and there was like a whole clothing line of no fear, right? And I always thought it was the dumbest thing, you know. Um I didn't think it was an admirable thing. And I think most people that said that were quite fearful or had that uh logos, right? those shirts, their merchandise. But it's more relatable for most people to have fear. And I think some people think that because they have fear, they're not cut out for doing things that are considered tough. And I can tell you, I know many tough guys that are very scared. And so scared that it actually per pushes them to perform at a higher level. George St. Pierre is one that has openly said that he is very fearful of losing. It terrifies him and it's that fear that motivates him to prepare harder than anyone else because he's so afraid of losing that he wants to do everything in his power so that he will not lose. Right? I've also known people who before every fight would throw up in the locker room just before walking out just by from pure anxiety and they would still go out and perform well. And it wasn't like a one-off thing. Every fight they would throw up. So obviously it's somebody who is under high pressure but they're able to channel it in such a way that they can make it work for them. Now in that particular case I think that might be a bit extreme. I mean just from if you're having that type of physical reaction but even then they are still able to overcome that. Right? So just because you have fear about doing something does not mean that you're inadequate or that you're not really cut out for this. because a lot of the toughest guys I've known are fearful, right? Um I find myself more in the rarity of things where I wasn't really fearful of competition, right? Uh I've had moments where I did have anxiety. There was only really one that stood out a lot which was Salo Hiro. The first time I faced him, it was in the Arnold Classic. Might have been 2001, 2002, somewhere around that era. And first time competing in that tournament, it was in the winter in Columbus, Ohio. I'm a Miami boy. I've only seen snow maybe once before that. And it was cold as hell there. Very snowy. Uh we had to cut weight. All the I can layer lots of excuses there. But uh before the match, I was breaking a fever. So wasn't feeling great. And to top it all off, I had the first round draw of Salo Hiro, who I knew as a jiu-jitsu legend. And it this would have that to that date that was the highest level competitor I've ever faced uh on that particular day. And he's still pretty high up there overall. And I was so nervous because I'm like, man, this guy's, you know, done this, he's done that. So, I was definitely nervous. And uh I think that affected me a little bit, but the other thing that goofed me up in that match was bad coaching advice. And not the coach's fault. Uh one of our guys, Michael Cardosa, was cornering me in that one and just didn't have the intel report. because everybody knew Salo for having an incredible half guard and he kept telling me whatever you do don't let him pull guard. Don't let him pull card. You got to take him down first, right? And when the match started, I was trying to take him down, like not thinking I had to be clean with my technique and he was giving me like really hard sprawls, good under hooks. And I'm like, man, this guy's like wrestling pretty good for and I was told that they wouldn't wrestle at all. And sure enough, he blasted me with a shot that caught me off guard because I wasn't expecting to have to defend a shot, took me down, and I was the one that was defending my half guard the whole match, you know. Uh, but I survived the m I ended up losing actually in the last minute. I got desperate. I was able to escape off my back and then I was trying to score to try to even up the the match and I took a reckless shot and he was able to get every naked choke. But uh after that match, I realized, you know, he is human. He wasn't like out of my league. He was definitely technically sound and I came in with a bad plan. Like I just bad intelligence report. And uh that kind of goofed me. And this is always one of those things where you have to I tell people, you have to be able to adapt to the situations. Don't purely fixate on a game plan that you saw a few months ago because it could totally change, which clearly it did on this one, right? Turned out he's been training with Daryl Gooler and he was developing a really good wrestling game. So, but getting back to the the fear part of it after that match, there was one other match that I would say I had a lot of anxiety for. And I'm not sure again, same type of deal because all these things have happened to me in coinciding with heart rate cuts and like like health reactions, right? So, my 2009 run in 80C, I had a really hard weight cut. Took me four hours and I barely made it by the skin of my teeth. And uh it was a pretty, you know, miserable for me, but I made it. And first day I felt like a rock star. Felt great. But going into day two when I had to go to bed, my heart was racing. I was probably like 100 110 beats per minute lying in bed for eight hours. And despite whatever I tried, I could not get my heart to lower. Like I was just and it's exhausting, you know, and of course I I I part of the nerves I imagine is I'm I was going to go against Andre Gava, right? Andre Gaval, of course, you know, he wasn't legendary yet, but I knew he was very good and he was going to be a tough match for me. Uh, so definitely had a a lot of anxiety on that match. And like I said, I'm not sure because I mean, I always tell people when you're competing, clear your mind. Don't think about matches. you you did all the thinking you had to do months before, right? You don't need to do it the week of, especially the night of of another day of competition. All you need to do is just unwind. There's no real progress that you're going to make uh that day that's going to be worth the benefit of getting yourself stressed out. But in this case, for me, it was not really uh something in my control. the darnness that I tried, I could not get my mind to stop racising and couldn't get my heart to stop racing. But regardless, it's I remember I was just pretty much staring at the ceiling for the most part trying to get my mind to calm and then when the sun started coming out, I'm like, "Well, I guess this is it. Day two, here we come." Uh, and despite all that, had a good performance. Not my best performance, but it was a solid effort. And I lost that match by a would have been a takedown. But again, this is another one that this was a technical mistake that not playing the rules right. I had him in a heel hook that he defended well and wasn't going to finish. But I knew I couldn't uh stand up. I knew that if I let him come up or I thought I knew that he would score a sweep. So I tried to stand up even though he already had a single leg on the ground. And when I did stand up, he was able to score the taked down, got two, and then I ended up losing from that. What I didn't know because I was cutting weight for so long in that in the rules meeting, they had changed the rules where if you went for a submission and ended up on your back, it wouldn't count as a sweep since you initiated the position. So, I could have stayed on my back without giving up the points and then it would have been a whole different ballgame. But uh regardless, I did fine there, you know, and I was able to overcome that anxiety. And those really are the two matches that really I felt anxious for, right? The even in my MMA fights, not really that nervous, right? Uh, of course, you know, it's not to say you don't have any adrenaline build up or whatnot, but pretty easy. I wouldn't say I had to be brave to do it, right? It's just like, oh, yeah, this is going to be tough, right? But we can go and do this, right? Just like for me, like this hike yesterday, I knew it was going to be tough and uh but we're going to do it, right? It wasn't a a bravery thing. I wasn't overcoming any fear, right? which is different than for example in my wife's situation she was fearful but she does it anyways and she's done lots of things because like I said I'm pretty fearless uh for the most part because like I said I don't have a fear of of dying you know I don't want to die but I'm not afraid of it happening right and I'm not going to let that stop me from doing things I want to do but she follows me along and does every crazy thing that I want to do and just has faith in it you that it's going to work out, which is very impressive to me, right? And she doesn't like I tell her afterwards, you know, that was very brave that you did that and she doesn't think of it that way, right? And she doesn't think of herself as a brave person. But to me, if you make the habit of being brave by just doing what would be brave things on a repeated basis, guess what? You're brave, right? You don't let fear stop you from doing something. And if anything, from what I've seen from her, it makes her more careful and more respectful of the activity, which is appropriate response for being afraid of something, right? Like being fearful is not bad, right? Being fearful can put you in a place to respect an activity so that you don't suffer the consequences of it. For example, in my case, I could have probably used a little more fear on that hike because while we came in prepared, we had our hiking stakes. I brought six lers of water for the both of us. Uh, and knew the weather conditions beforehand. We got a little bit of a late start, which wasn't ideal because basically we hiked from noon until about 4. So, we're sun directly over top of us the entire time. But being from Vegas, I'm like, well, you know, this is a little bit less heat, but I hadn't hiked up that much elevation and that level of heat with no cover. And uh it was brutal. And when we got down the mountain, fortunately, we were done with the the dangerous part, but man, uh I was pretty close to heat stroke, right? uh despite drinking like I think we had five lers of the water of the six you know so we went through a lot of water it's almost like two gallons of water or I think more I'm not sure about the conversion but it's a lot of water right but still just the amount of heat that you're you're taking and you're building up a lot of heat and we actually made a good pace uh I think it was like a 24m minute mild pace going up steep mountains, scrambling and all that. So, we were moving pretty fast. Uh, and that's with taking about 40 minutes worth of breaks that we scored in 3 hours and 26 minutes. So, pretty fast for 5 and a half miles. So, I think that might have been a factor too that we just were moving at a good clip. And uh but towards the ending stretches, man, it's the fatigue generated from just the exercise. And I think also just from the heat is uh something that's to be respected more, right? Like if I was going to do that again, I'd be okay. We need to uh find areas. I mean, we did, but I guess not enough, right? Uh because there are, you know, occasionally you find a tree where you can get some shade and it take like a couple minutes just to drink some water, cool off and then keep going. I try to monitor it by my breath rate. If I saw that my breath rate was just getting out of control, I'm like, "Okay, let's take a little breather, let that breath rate relax a bit, and then keep going." Cuz normally when I'm doing hikes, I can nasally breathe throughout the entire time with no issue. But this one, I was like a dog panting, you know, in the heat. So, it's pretty rough, right? But u but beautiful hike. If you ever get the chance to do the Angel's Landing on Zion, it is a phen phenomenal view, right? You just get to see 360 views of the whole canyon. And uh at the top, it's quite nice. And we got to see a hawk flying overhead not too far from us. So, that was cool, too. But getting back to fear again, fear can be a very useful thing for you. The fear that most people I think associate with is a fear that I call irrational, right? Where there is a good reason to be afraid. For example, like, oh, I'm afraid of mice, right? And then the question is, why are you afraid of mice? Oh, they just look weird or they're they're scary to me. You know, like you don't have a good reason to be afraid of it. That's unproductive, right? It inhibits you. It'd be like a fainting goat, right? It's not a good evolutionary trait just to faint whenever you get scared or surprised. Like that's going to get you eaten, you know? Um but if you have a fear that is healthy, for example, you're afraid of a lion, yes, that makes a lot of sense. A lion will eat you and kill you. It gets a chance. So like that's a good fear to have because that's going to make you respect it, right? The the other thing is a fear that would freeze you. Like even if you have a healthy fear, for example, a fear of a lion, you wouldn't want to freeze up, right? Because more than likely that's going to get you killed also. You don't get to safety or you don't take some defensive action, you don't really have much of a chance, right? So that's where the bravery comes in, right? like you have to be able to overcome that response that would make you want to freeze up and have a response that promotes action whether that's running into safety or you know having to get up the dukes and defend yourself right so uh when we're talking about bravery right it's important that we put ourselves in these situations in safer formats that allows us to build up the experience to get courage Right? Because if you are scared of something and you're fearful, more than likely you have very little experience with it. Right? That's the reality of it. We you you might have seen or heard a story of a worst case scenario and as a result you've developed a fear of it, right? And that like I said, not necessarily a bad thing, but we want to be able to perform in the face of fear, which is bravery. At the same time, we want to live to tell a tale. So, if I'm going to have to go into the wilderness and spear a lion, I don't want it to be on my first go that actually do that, right? Like, I want to do some simulations, some practical exercises, some training because that's going to build up more courage in me, right? I want to get some more experience that has some pass through to the event that I'm trying to do. And then I'm going to feel a little more confident in myself, which will then translate into bravery, right? Cuz then I face the fear. I can go back to my experience and go, look, I've dealt with things like this before. I can deal with this, too. Right? in the training room. That's why it's important to do mock matches of whatnot, which you know we do at FFA quite a bit where uh rather than just doing an open mat session, right, where everybody's just rolling, there's nobody really watching you. That's very relaxed, right? You get tapped, not a big deal. You get swept or scored on or you lose around. No one's really paying attention. So, every so often we'll do like mock matches where only one match is going on. the rest of the craft is circled up on you and we have people doing the drum roll, you know, on the mats and we pick one side to root for one guy, one side to root to the other guy and let the match go. And even though we're in the same environment, same rule set and someone you faced many times before, when we put that type of environment, things change, right? Because now it's starting to become more of a simulation of something that's more serious and more real. And as a result, your mind takes it more serious. And now that can serve as a good preparation and help you overcome a fear of performing in a competition because I can tell you right now, most people who perform poorly in competition, it's fear. That's it. You're just too anxious. A lot of people work, I've said this many times before, people work on their conditioning. Oh, I get too tired in competition. You know, my conditioning is bad. It's like, no, you're just scared. you're just so scared that it's causing a lot of anxiety. And when you get nervous and stressed, you you tire faster. Your muscles are twitching and firing. Your mind's racing. It's going to make you fatigue much faster. So, if you can get more calm, more relaxed, more comfortable and more in control of the fear, you will be able to overcome it, right? And you'll always have a little bit of it perhaps, but not enough where it becomes hindering. Like I said, we want to get away from the type of fear that paralyzes you or just really drains you, right? We just have want to have a healthy amount. A healthy amount of fear is a good thing, right? Like I said, I think it's better to have a healthy amount of fear than to have just no fear at all. Right? as speaking as someone who is and again I I'm tentative to say that as well because I know how it might sound unrealistic to have zero fear right so perhaps I do have a small amount of fear um but even so like I said I don't necessarily see that as an asset right uh there is a level of anxiety that you should have when you're about to engage in something very serious right because it gives you respect for it. It wasn't too long ago, maybe a couple weeks ago, like I said, that I got choked unconscious, right? Just in a training session. Why? Because I'm fearless. I didn't care. I didn't think it was a big deal. I didn't respect the position. It cost me, right? Uh so, I'm saying that to illustrate that the the extreme of no fear doesn't always work out well, right? Whereas if you have lots of fear, obviously that's going to be hindering. So I would say somewhere on the lower end, not middle, but lower middle, that's probably a good spot. Some butterflies in the stomach. Yeah, that's normal. That's what's to be expected. Throwing up every time you compete, again, not ideal, right? Because you're going to be dehydrating yourself right before something physically exhausting. So if we can move a little bit down off there, that'll probably be better, right? where we just have some mild physical disturbances, right? Where like rumbling tummy or whatnot. Yeah, that's normal, right? That's not too unusual. Not too much of a big deal. Especially once you understand how your body functions under stress, you're like, "Okay, I can handle that a little bit." And you'll find strategies to mitigate that. So, it's not as big as a deal, right? Uh having your mind under control so it's not racing and it's just able to zone out also ideal, right? So, this is just some things to think about. Like I say, I just came that whole topic just because of the hike that we did yesterday. I was at Zion National Park for the the weekend. Really fun time. Uh I I've been here in Vegas now since 2017, so like almost seven year, no, seven years at this point. And never been to Utah. And I didn't realize it's just like 2-hour drive and you're already in St. George. And then it's like another 50 minutes and you're at Zion. and just beautiful place. We got to do the narrows on one day which was a lot of fun. Much easier in the sense that although the walk is kind of treacherous because basically if you don't know what it is, the narrow is just like a giant canyon about 1,200 ft tall and narrow I mean maybe 20 30 feet across and then at some points it narrows down to like 20 feet. Uh, so it's a staggering view and the whole thing is in water. So you're in a water bed and there's occasional areas of land that you can like like a beach if you will that you can get off the the water and then come back in and the hike goes for quite a while. I believe it's the Virgin River that runs through it that's making this canyon. Uh, we did about threeish miles going up it. didn't go all the way up to Big Spring. There was a another side canyon there called Orderville that we then walked that all the way through which is another mile or threequarters of a mile. Got to the end of that then finish it around and nice hike cuz you you're pretty cool because the canyon's sheltering you from the sun and then also you're wet but in a good way because you're getting evaporative cooling. So, uh that was an easy hike physically in my opinion. the other hike, Angel's Landing, uh very difficult uh hike, especially with the heat. I'm sure if the heat wasn't there, it'd be a lot more pleasant, although it's still a good amount of uphill in a short amount of time. But overall, two wonderful hikes and easy to get around. So, as a side thing, if you're in Vegas or you're near the area, that's a good place to visit. You get a good amount of exercise, easy to move around the park. They have a tram system. You don't have to park in the park. You just stay where your hotel is in this ride at a tram into the the national park. Very wellmaintained. I didn't real It was like the the first national park of Utah. Very well organized, clean, and night skies there are gorgeous. You can see stars and sometimes you can see the Milky Way up there. So, super cool. Anyhow, that's all I have for you guys. Uh, this week coming up, it's going to be ACC and CGI. So, expect to hear some more reports from me. I'm sure all these guys are going to be in town and they'll be training. So, maybe I'll get a chance to meet a couple of these guys while they're here. Any of you guys that do happen to show up here, you want to train with me or just want to say hello, what's not, make sure to hit me up. I'll be at both events. If you guys weren't aware, like I I've said before, ADCC or CGI is on Friday. It goes from 3 to uh 7, I believe. Then ADCC is on Saturday, 10 to 4:30. Then CGI is from 5 to 9 on Saturday. So, it's possible to watch both events because and then the final day of ADCC's on Sunday, you're just going to be in for a long day of grappling, which I'll be ready for. I'll be there the whole time. And I don't know if my wife is that brave to stick with me for the whole show. She's got to take it with me. But we'll see cuz it's a lot of grappling. Even for a super fan, it's going to be a lot. But I'm there for it, right? I've been to I think every ACC since I started competing them in 2005. I've only missed one which was in Brazil in 2015. I did 2005 7 9 11 13 17 19 22 and now it's going to be 24. So, um I got front row tickets there for ADCC. Also got front row for CGI. And so if you see me there, feel free to say what's up and hello to me. I'll be more than happy to chitchat with you. Other than that, I'll let you guys go.