Misfit Podcast
Misfit Athletics provides information and programming to competitive Crossfit athletes of all levels.
Misfit Podcast
Cultivating Confidence: A Five Step, Never-Ending Process - E.369
Ever wonder why some athletes crumble under pressure while others seem to thrive? The difference often isn't talent or even preparation—it's confidence. But not the shallow, Instagram-quote variety. We're talking about the deep, unshakeable confidence that comes from understanding exactly who you are and what you're capable of.
In this revealing conversation, we break down the five essential steps to cultivating genuine confidence that holds up when stakes are highest. Starting with the counterintuitive "resistance is a gift" mindset, we explore how embracing challenges rather than avoiding them creates the foundation for mental resilience. This isn't just about positive thinking—it's about creating tangible proof of your capabilities through intentional tracking and documentation.
The most fascinating insights emerge when we discuss vulnerability as the bridge between confidence in comfortable environments and confidence everywhere. Through real-world examples from competitive athletes, we demonstrate how acknowledging reality—even when it's uncomfortable—while maintaining belief in your ability to improve represents the pinnacle of confidence development. Flow state, that magical zone where challenge and interest intersect, becomes accessible when you know exactly what you're capable of and are willing to push just beyond it.
Whether you're struggling with competition anxiety, skill plateaus, or simply want to build a more resilient mindset, this episode offers practical strategies you can implement immediately. The journey to confidence isn't about reaching some mythical destination—it's about embracing the ongoing cycle of challenge, growth, and renewed challenge at higher levels. Ready to transform how you approach difficult situations? This conversation might just be the turning point.
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All right. Real life scenarios being hit by a small motorcycle going 20 miles an hour Taking the full this is a better one Taking the full brunt of a refrigerator tipped over from a second story. We're all misfits, All right, you big, big bunch of misfits. You're a scrappy little misfit, just like me Biggest bunch of misfits I ever seen either.
Speaker 2:Good morning misfits. You are tuning into another episode of the Misfit Podcast. On today's episode, we are taking a dive back into the realm of mindset conversations. Every once in a while I go back, I check the episode list what we've been talking about, what sort of gaps we've got in there, what you guys are interested in and we always get really good feedback on this style of episode and specifically today we are going to be talking about cultivating confidence. What is confidence? How do we get it? How do we maybe help other people get it? That's kind of the perspective that Hunter and I might be thinking about it from, and a lot of times these episodes come from observing something very specific and I am going to bury the lead on that. It's towards the end of the episode, but just something that happened that sparked my interest in this specific topic that we will end up getting to Before we dig into that conversation.
Speaker 2:As always, a little bit of housekeeping, a little bit of live chat. If you are looking to join any of our individual programs, you can head to the link in bio on our Instagram and get signed up on Fitter or Strivee. If you're looking for our affiliate programming, you can head to teammisfitcom. Click on the sign up now button button and you will get a two-week free trial at stream fit, sugar, wad or push press. Yeah, there's not really much else there. If you want to support the athletes, there's a few few straggler shirts left at sharpen the axe cocom. I still have some gear there working on some some new stuff that I referenced last week life chat, hunter, what's up? Not a whole lot. You shooting in the fucking 70s all the time. What's that about?
Speaker 1:yeah, we're getting there yet to. I'm in a weird place right now where I've getting way more consistent in those kind of scoring ranges but I've yet to have kind of a breakthrough where you know I dropped like a 75 or better.
Speaker 1:So my, my, best ever is a 76 at various courses, uh like around the area, a couple different courses, which is kind of nice to confirm that you're not just getting good at playing the same course over and over, which is a right, always a an issue. But yeah, had a few opportunities to do it and just haven't been able to close it out, put it all together yet, but the floor hasn't gotten, or I guess it's opposite in golf, right, the floor is better.
Speaker 1:But the low. I haven't achieved a personal best low in a while, but I've also. The bad rounds are getting less bad, which is usually, in golf, a pretty good indicator that you're doing something right. So it's kind of like liking it to a crossfitter who goes through phase after phase on test day. They don't necessarily pr, but they know they're getting better at something.
Speaker 1:They're just kind of waiting for that day where the stars align and and it all works out and then all of a sudden you drop a 10 or 15 pound pr and they're like I could do that again. Sure, handicap is down 7.1.
Speaker 2:We are rapidly approaching the uh, the milestone of 6.9, which you know get down to that boy and I'll just get down to 4.2 yeah yeah, now in golf, or you specifically, are you thinking about like I need to, like I would personally, layman's terms would split golf up into like I'm off the tee. I I got my longer irons my shorter ones and putting Um.
Speaker 2:There's obviously more nuance to that, Are you like? Do you, when you're siloing those and trying to get better at them, is it all of them at once? Or is it like if I want to shoot a 72, I just need to be able to hit the ball further, or I gotta be a better putter? Like, how often do you like lock in on like a part of it?
Speaker 1:or is that not even the right for me personally, like it's. It's weird because it's like you hear the the super common stereotypical phrases like drive for show, putt for dough, right like the you know regard, it doesn't matter how far you can get off the tee, like if you can't putt it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:But the the converse argument is like if you are constantly putting a ball out of bounds, out of play, into the woods, worse off the tee, it doesn't matter how well you can putt if the first putt that you make is for a nine right.
Speaker 2:So it doesn't matter, sure, in that regard, for me you have to be good enough for that statement to be true exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a. There's a barrier to entry for all of those statements to come into play. You know, kyle right now is a great example, someone who like working on his swing. He's like which is honestly he's doing great.
Speaker 1:For how long he's been playing and like seriously he'll hit some really good, really good shots and you know if he hits a putt it's great, but you know whether it's. If it's a 5050, whether you survive off the tee or get yourself into a reasonable position like it does very much matters off the tee for right, right now. For me it's. It's much more of a short game thing. I'm I'm proficient enough to get off, like if I duff something off the tee. As of now that's become much more of a one-off and you're like fuck, like, okay, like it happens.
Speaker 1:It's probably not going to happen again, at least not maybe in this round. And even if it, you know you push it off into the woods. My short game short, you know, shorter game has gotten better to the point where I can actually like I don't, I don't if I miss the green, for it's not like a frustration of like shit. Now I have to chip and I suck at chipping and then I have to putt and I suck at putting. It's like I've actually developed those parts of the game enough to be like, well, I'd rather be putting for birdie, but I'm confident enough with my short game that like getting that up and down to save a par is perfectly reasonable and then hopefully, with like a bogey being kind of the worst score in that situation. The game yeah, the game is definitely and you know there are days where getting off the tee is really fucking hard. But I think I'm also at a point where I was talking to Alex Cardamoni about this that I've also learned to like kind of work with what I've got on the day. I've also learned to like kind of work with what I've got on the day. So whether if I get to the driving range before a round to hit 10 or 15 balls.
Speaker 1:I can kind of see what the tendency is for the day and instead of trying to force correct something or start thinking about the technicalities of the swing, it's like, okay, I'm going to make the smallest static adjustment possible.
Speaker 1:It's like, okay, ball's hooking off to the left for whatever reason, I'm going to weaken my grip just a hair so that hopefully that ball flight straightens out. It's a static fix, it's super small. I'm not thinking about correcting a swing in the one and a half seconds it takes to actually swing a golf club. So I've gotten much better at just kind of adapting on the fly. It's like, nope, the ball is not doing what I would like to see it doing. You can either try to force it to do what you want and usually that makes it worse or you can say like, okay, this is the tendency for the day. What is the minimum necessary fix that I need to do to make this work for the day? And then you know, know, go to the driving range at some point later and and try to work out the kinks and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So all of those things I think combined together have really helped kind of like limit the really bad scores, the bad holes, and, given me a chance to, you know, put some better numbers out there more consistently so yeah, but it's a, it's a good, it's honestly a really good. Like there's so many parallels to, to that and to what we're talking about today, is that, the confidence, the mindset, and I think that has also improved a lot this season. So I'm sure I'll be making some references between golf and and confidence in the podcast, but that's where Well, it's the the.
Speaker 2:There's a very clear distinction between, I don't know, effort sports and sports that require a bit of like reaction in the moment, and like we're actually are going to talk about flow states, and maybe that's where we can make the connection, even though it's it's definitely different, yep, but like, like there are some of the best golfers in the world. Credit a coach being like you're not allowed to think today.
Speaker 2:Like ever once, like, if you catch yourself thinking you better fucking stop Like, and that's so counterintuitive to, I'm going to, you know, figure out how to do this. I think golf is fascinating in that way. And's like, how do you turn yourself into the person who maybe gets because like dude watching, watching middle-aged men golf in their fucking like two hours set up in the bullshit that they do?
Speaker 2:in front of a golf ball is like that is not it. I know it works for like like every once in a while it works for a golfer, and like that is not it. I know it works for like like every once in a while it works for a golfer, and like everyone hates them on the tour, which is hilarious, yeah, but like how could you be ready to just go hit a? Go hit the golf ball?
Speaker 2:Because if you can figure out how to do that, then you're probably going to do better, because you're just sort of being in your body, like that sort of thing so I find that side of it to be fascinating, because you do all this like in baseball, you do all of this practice and the like five furthest, hardest balls I ever hit were probably this culmination of all the practice I did. And then me being actually like irate in the moment and being like fucking watch this and just like doing that. So I guess that's another piece of like the confidence thing for sure, but like crossfit is just not that. And maybe it is if we're talking about I gotta get over the handstand ramp or I gotta do a vested muscle up, but like very different worlds for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, definitely a difference between kind of like what you said, effort and effort, sport versus like you can. You know, effort in a lot of ways in golf can actually be counterproductive versus like oh yeah, you know, relaxing and stuff like that. But there are, but there are a whole shitload of parallels as far as it comes to when it comes to confidence and stuff like that. So, but I'll stay on theme with my life chat.
Speaker 2:I'll use this opportunity to talk shit about Patriots fans. Someday we might get all the way back around to me taking the high road, but when I was a kid the Patriots sucked, and there were years that I'm a Steelers fan Even I remember that. Yeah, they were bad and I was allowed to be a fan of both. It was okay to like the Patriots. I'm from New England. The quarterback's name was Drew. I played quarterback. I just you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:They're terrible, they're harmless.
Speaker 2:Exactly Right. And then at some point you were not allowed to do that anymore because they were good and like the rivalry started to develop a little bit, like there was a really good chance either Brady or Roethlisberger was going to be in the Super Bowl and they were going to have to play each other at some point. You know during that whole thing and the amount of fair weather fans that came out of the woodwork and like they had so much ammunition because they too, if you wanted to talk football with them, they would just yell Tom Brady at you and like he literally was the best player ever. So it was. You probably weren't going to win that argument, but there was just so many. Like my joke was always the only thing that they know is Bud Light and Tom Brady, like they don't know, they didn't know anything about football. So I just it, just the whole fan base, pissed me off.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I know that there are, like actual football fans that were Patriots fans, but those are the people that didn't care.
Speaker 1:Is that the case with any like market that has just team like a team. That's terrible and then, like I know that there are different brands of it.
Speaker 2:You know what the rural New England human is like? Yeah, and we're probably not going to be talking X's and O's.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we're probably not going to be talking X's and O's yeah, Now they probably have a great tailgate. You know, Sure you probably would want to go have burgers and beers with them, that kind of thing. But anyways, I'm still mad about that and I find it hilarious that they've sucked for basically since Tom left and they turned the ball over five times against the steelers this weekend. They have four fumbles and an interception and just is it there.
Speaker 1:Is there running back the one who's terrible?
Speaker 2:he had two fumbles and they spoke with the guy.
Speaker 2:So one of the fumbles was on the goal line and one of the interception. The interception was on the goal line. So like 14 point swing, that's like, that's tough, like that beautiful, loved it. But the guy who punched the ball out, I actually think he might have had two forced fumbles. But the guy that punched the ball out on the goal line was like this is not like opportunistic relative to this game. We knew that they turned the ball over all the time and we knew every time remandre had the ball in his hands yeah, so like he's not diving across to try and stop him from getting into the end zone.
Speaker 2:He's diving across to punch the ball out. Yep, and I mean credit to, yeah, yeah, credit to to. You know, cam hayward is one of those, like a unicorn, like Like his dad was Ironhead Hayward, who was like the old school, like gigantic jacked running back, who basically just ran people over with his head when you were allowed to do that back in the day now you'd get fined if you're trying to do that. But genetics, just just terrifying genetics, right?
Speaker 2:Like the kind of person who could probably throw you like 30 feet right, like the kind of person who could probably throw you like 30 feet. So him punching a football as hard as he possibly can while you're trying to get it across the goal line is whatever. Um, the steelers won, but like they're still just mediocre, they barely won and they had five turnovers, or they turned the ball over five times, or got the Patriots.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. To still win on that. That's funny. Did you guys ever have in either football or baseball a? So uh, in high school hockey, one of my coach, he had this basically like this checklist I think it was 10 things and it was like something that he had experienced in in the NHL. But it was basically like if we do 70 of these things, we win the game every single time. And it was like no goals within the last two minutes of a period, like first or last two first or last two minutes of period, no goals allowed. You know, penalty minutes under x, like turnovers under this number. It was basically like a handful of metrics and as long as you checked 70 of those boxes, it was like you like you will win the game and and it worked pretty much every time like if we did not achieve that, we lost, if we did achieve it, we won. Do you guys ever have anything like that?
Speaker 2:I never had a coach who had shit like that that backed it up with like good coaching. Yeah, I always had the experience of like very old school, like if you don't follow through, with, like you know, you pretending to run a bootleg after handing the ball off every single rep in practice, I'm going to like bench. You like like obsessed with the details. And then the people who were like analytical and had all this other stuff weren't really good at teaching the fundamentals. So, like I had this weird spectrum. I never had the guy that could do both. You know what?
Speaker 1:I mean Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like that kind of thing. So, yeah, what was the other one that I had? Jesus, they how big is this guy? I got to look this shit up. A gentleman by the name of Jordan Davis on the Philadelphia Eagles. Okay, come on, where's the height? Oh, I got to rotate.
Speaker 1:Not the American country music singer and songwriter.
Speaker 2:Yes, All right, here we go. Six foot six 340 pounds. Jordan Davis blocks a field goal, returns it for a touchdown. Runs 18.6 miles an hour, while returning this for a touchdown. I asked ChatGPT, who said that's around a 4.6 to 4.840.
Speaker 1:The 2022 NFL Combine recorded a 4.7840.
Speaker 2:And he's lost a little bit of weight, so I think he's faster Now. The all-state the best sprinter in the state of Maine when I was in high school had a 4.640, and that person weighed 175 pounds. This man weighs 340 pounds and is as fast as a track star from your high school. Whoever's listening. Can you imagine going to a track meet and someone's 6'6 340 is like coming in third in the 100?
Speaker 1:meter dash if I get hit by an nfl defensive tackle, that is 6'6 340 pounds running at 18 miles an hour. What is this compared to in a real life scenario?
Speaker 2:Let's do a chat GPC.
Speaker 1:Work this out step by step. Oh, I got to convert, a lot of converting. Oh, kinetic energy, love. That Equivalent to dropping a 50 pound dumbbell from 15 feet. You imagine just laying on the ground, just like laying flat on the ground and a 50 pound dumbbell held over you, 15 feet above your head, and just dropping it straight onto your chest, basically the top of a rope climb.
Speaker 2:You go up to the top of a rope climb with a dumbbell and you drop it on your friend's chest.
Speaker 1:Wait, here it is Three all right real life scenarios being hit by a small motorcycle going 20 miles an hour.
Speaker 2:Taking the full.
Speaker 1:this is a better one Taking the full br. This is a better one Taking the full brunt of a refrigerator tipped over from a second story. Oh my God, yeah Getting hit by a sledgehammer swung by a strong person applied to your entire body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's how I always explain to people that were disappointed that I didn't play Division I football.
Speaker 1:I would say like hey, you know this guy.
Speaker 2:What would happen if he hit me Like I envision, like angels, like flying over my corpse, like you see me float into the sky, like what are we talking about right now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's it Especially. Gluten Drew, my God that was a small man. God, that's insane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could not fucking believe that.
Speaker 1:Unbelievable.
Speaker 2:And then the quest for no dad bod is going pretty well. One thing that I'll put out there is when you are dealing with nagging injuries, you start to confuse quitting a workout for safety reasons with either quitting a workout or maybe changing what the workout is in real time for safety purposes. That kind of thing really it's like a mind virus. It creeps its way in. I had multiple monostructural pieces where I like stopped going in around, like it just it just takes over. So one of the things that I've been doing is any negotiating that takes place mentally has to happen before the workout.
Speaker 2:We did a burpee farmer's carry workout in class last week here and my knee and my back were pretty bothered by it. I just went a little bit slower. I was like I'm not stopping this fucking workout.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And I told Kyle like I don't think my knee is going to like the 12 inch target. And like to be honest, I don't need a 12 inch target.
Speaker 2:Me having to fucking lay down on the ground and get back up is enough. So I started kind of hopping and then trying to land on my left foot and took the extra time needed to like set my hips before picking up the 70 pound kettlebells and shit like that. And you know, I know that the best thing for me when I'm overthinking my training is again just to walk out there during a class or at the very least change a workout. That's written right there to just kind of get it done. And it's going pretty well. It's going pretty well. My back was cooked from 10 hours in a car and the first few times I went to get my foothold on the rope yesterday, that kind of scrunched up position was pretty tight but I was just I got to warm up for a little bit longer.
Speaker 2:I can't say that I can't do rope climbs because of my back, like I'm not buying that. You know what I mean. I don't think it's definitely not going to make it worse, that's for sure, and if I got to, slow down. I got to slow down, yeah.
Speaker 1:That sort of thing.
Speaker 2:So we're getting there. We're getting there. I've done probably 10 CrossFit workouts in the last like three weeks, which is 10 more than the three weeks before that so we're getting there. We're getting there, that's that's. One thing that's always been very clear to me is, if I'm in like a exercise funk, I just got to get back to your roots. You got to get back out there and just do the thing.
Speaker 2:Because, if you're overanalyzing what you know, what perfect bike program you're doing and you're not doing it is. How could that possibly be better than?
Speaker 1:just getting your ass out on the floor and doing couplets and triplets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's a good like nugget too for coaches. Like that mindset is like if that happens to someone like you with your experience and knowledge, like that obviously is the case for your average affiliate level athlete and you see it every day and like that's honestly that example, right. There is one reason that I really like I'll push back a lot of times on athletes who are like, hey, I don't do, I'm not going to do this movement because you know, I can't run because it hurts my back. I'm like interesting, like, but we can deadlift, right, so you can deadlift and C2 bike, but you can't deadlift and run. And you start to like poke and prod a little bit at the athlete and it's like, well, it's actually you know, it's like, well, let's think about this, like, do we just need to move a little bit better? Do we need to take some weight off?
Speaker 1:Is this act, is the movement itself actually the problem, or is it, you know, maybe your perception of what you should be able to do in this very specific instance, and instead it's, you know, and there are plenty of instances where it's like, if that becomes the norm for somebody, you're doing a disservice to that person and they're also just not. You know, it becomes like you're saying kind of it gives that person an excuse that may or may not be legitimate. It's only legitimate because it's been, it's been like, encouraged for as long as it has. So it's like someone comes up to me for modifications, like I'm happy to do it. You're just going to justify it. You're not going to tell me that my pinky toe hurts so I can't run today.
Speaker 2:And you don't arrive there in a day. That's the problem. It's the degrees of separation from the previous choice that you made. So you made one choice that got you. You know if I'm taking a step in the wrong direction. I end up 10 steps in the wrong direction, but it was one at a time.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't feel that way.
Speaker 2:You don't necessarily notice it, and then you end up in that kind of position. All right, so Hold on, sorry.
Speaker 1:Before we get in, one quick shout out All right, tony, enough giving you plenty of fucking time at the beginning of these podcasts in the recent weeks. Stop being fit. Don't stop that. Second place water palooza, socal in the master's division, dude had to. You want to talk about confidence? Having to drop a first place finna? He got no help from the field. Dude, who won, handled it pretty effectively.
Speaker 1:It looked like it was really a battle for second and third on the podium, just because, again, he was not getting any help from other athletes getting in between first and second. But it was. Hey, I mean going into I'm in third place, going into the final. I've pretty much got this locked up, barring a complete meltdown, which wasn't going to happen, but I need to win. I effectively just need, if it's in my own hands, like I have, to win the final event, and it was a. It was a spicy boy between it's a rope climb 155, clean and jerk 155, thruster and some like heavy double unders, short chipper, just once through, and he had to. He had to drop a banger for first place and, and sure as shit did, jumped himself into second place on the podium. So, um, I don't need to rehash the myriad of PRs he had over the last like two weeks. We talked about that on a podcast, but definitely need to give him a shout out, for I mean, that's the segue, right there.
Speaker 2:I mean, so many of the things that we are going to talk about in this episode were his path to getting to that point For sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, big shout out for Tony. That's fucking awesome. All right, I want to open just with a general discussion of what we think confidence is. Where does it come from? What is the depth that is created from different pieces of it?
Speaker 2:And I will start by saying your personal circumstances are often the way that you would get your foot in the door and have this be a naturally occurring thing or the thing that really sets you back. And this is the beginning of a remote coaching situation where I'm trying to find out, like why this person is the way they are, what makes them tick, and I personally had a mom who thought that I was the fucking coolest and got my foot in the door in terms of confidence, to then for me to explore it. And I know that the depth of that isn't necessarily like it doesn't run very deep, but it all almost auto resets all of these situations. For me, every time I go into a new situation, the idea that I could accomplish something is usually like I think I can probably do this, I think I can probably figure it out, and growing up it was embarrassing, honestly, in a lot of moments. You know what I mean my mom yelling from the stands or telling a waitress my football accolades or whatever at a random restaurant, like that kind of thing, but what that does for a person is kind of incredible.
Speaker 2:Now, on the flip side, I've worked with a lot of athletes that were treated in a very opposite manner and what we have to do in that moment is get their foot in the door, and not necessarily we're not going to be able to, I don't think cultivate that depth for them, but changing the relationship that they have with that type of figure, because oftentimes it might not even be apparent. It might be they, you know, were good at, you know, gymnastics or hockey or whatever it was. And there was another you know, there was a coach that made them, you know, feel like shit all the time, like that kind of thing. So that is just something that I want to bring up to start this conversation, because I think that it matters in terms of how you think about getting your foot in the door, whether you already have that or whether you're trying to help somebody else do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I think I don't know. I don't know if you can constitute this as a definition of confidence, but I think it's. Certainly there's a certain degree to which somebody is either whatever you call born confident is maybe like overly confident to the point of being arrogant. There's obviously that side of the coin which isn't necessarily. It could be helpful, but not all the time.
Speaker 1:I think confidence just largely comes from, it comes as the result of work, to the point where it's like the task in question whether if you're going into an event to do a workout, your confidence level is a direct result of the work that you put in to get you to where you're at and what you know that you're capable of in that moment Again, all of that comes as a result of the work that you've put in before. It's the same. I mean it's standing in front of an audience and speaking about something that you don't know anything about. Right, the odds that you have a high confidence level in talking to somebody that you don't have any idea about is pretty low. I don't have an issue standing in front of my classes talking about what a functional movement is in CrossFit, because I've cultivated the knowledge and you know, to a certain extent like regurgitated, similar, literally, words and phrases to the point where, like I, not only know what the words and phrases mean but I have an understanding of what they are. So it's not as much confidence as it is just like. I've spent time studying and practicing this and, you know, previously fumbling my way through it or previously not understanding it, but getting to a point where I do now, and it's less that it's confidence and more that it is just like. No, I've just spent enough time exposing myself to this workout stimulus, to this information, to this way of thinking that you know and similar to.
Speaker 1:I'd say I'm similar to you in the sense that, like you know, if something, if I have something, if there's something wrong, if my interior driver's side door handle doesn't open, I think my first thought is not like fuck, I'm going to.
Speaker 1:You know, maybe my first thought is, fuck, this is going to cost a lot of money to repair, but it's like in my head. Maybe it's a little overconfident or arrogant, but I'm like man, I have to imagine that if there's a YouTube video on this somewhere, like I can also do this. I can use the, it can use the combination of my life experience, the education that I have, I can put all of these things together and wiggle my way through repairing this thing on my own. So I don't think it's something that is innate to anybody. I think it just comes. Confidence just comes as a result of demonstrating proficiency and competence in what you're referring to, and at that point it's hardly even confidence, it's just a solid understanding and ability to articulate what you know or what you're able to execute in the instance of training or competing.
Speaker 2:And the end point that we're chasing here is increasing the stakes over and over. And do you maintain that idea? So, to me, as we level up in confidence, it's like, okay, you can't get out of your car and you're on the side of the road, and it's the you know what I mean. Like, like what instance, what barrier to entry is created, where you're like questioning yourself, like what the fuck? And of course, there will be one of those things, right, uh, you, you fall out of your car and you're blinded. You're not going to be able to fix your fucking door, right, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So one of the things we have, essentially what we have here is I don't know if it's a process makes it easier for people to wrap their mind around. It is kind of in order. We've got a five-step thing here to talk you guys through this, but before we do that, there is a qualifying statement and a life lesson that could be its own episode might get out of the realm of you thinking about yourself as a competitor, I suppose, but the idea that you cannot change people, period, people can change. Those are two very, very, very different things and it's such an important life lesson, like when you think about it and it makes sense too. Like in personal relationships, there's like shit that bothers people. In every personal relationship, there are things that bother people about the other person, and the idea that you could say, I don't like that, I want you to be this, and that person could snap their fingers and have a totally different life experience and perspective up to that point and just morph into something different actually makes no sense, and accepting that at a coaching level is also incredibly important. Right, like I can't just make you better at this movement or more confident because I want you to be right. Like that's just like we can provide information. We can say, hey, I think you've got this blind spot, I would like you to work on it, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:But like the idea that we can just snap our fingers and change everything is not possible. It really just doesn't make any sense. Right, your lived experience is your lived experience, and we could be talking about exercising and we could be talking about something completely different there. So, with that in mind, what do you actually do with the information from a podcast like this? I just tell people now I skip to that part and I say I can't put you through the series of experiences that will get you on the other side.
Speaker 2:You're going to have to go through those, you're going to have to experience it, but you might have to go through less experiences. If you're open-minded about the lesson that I'm trying to impart, so bury it in the back of your head, wrap your mind around it that kind of makes sense and then, instead of falling flat on your face five times and then finally understanding it it might be three or it might be two, or it might be one, that sort of thing Broaden this is kind of similar here, but broaden your perspectives so, as you're making your way through your coaching, your training, your experiences, competing, identifying those blind spots and trying to open up your field of view. So it's sort of like the open-mindedness thing, but it's understanding or interpreting what's happening in the moment potentially in a different way, because the people that I know that really get in their own way interpret things incorrectly over and over and over and over in such a repetitive way and it's upsetting how obvious it is.
Speaker 2:But again, you can't change them. You can help them change themselves, that kind of thing, you can give them the ideas, all of that, but you really just see again in people that cannot bring their confidence from this like cushy confines of their home to out into the real world, you see them, you know, often self-sabotaging or just not understanding this roadblock that they keep running into over and over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I see the what you said about like broadening, broadening your perspective as to what maybe the issue is is somebody, somebody pretty regularly identifies the wrong problem to focus on. And I'll give you like an example that I had. I was coaching a class last night with rope climbs in it and I have an athlete who's one of the fittest or I would say one of the strongest women in the gym, is buying like very fit, really struggles to climb rope. There's a small fear of heights that's associated with it and I actually learned that because one thing that I regularly see her do we do the footlock drill before we start climbing rope and she kind of does it like quickly. I know that she knows how to do it, but she does it really quickly, somewhat haphazardly sometimes, and then when she tries to ascend the rope, lo and behold, her foot lock slips. She's already a little bit afraid of height. So there's no confidence there and I'm saying like hey, name, you're like you are more than physically capable of doing this. I want you just to slow down a little bit. Like I can see that you're panicking, you're it's. You know what is it. And that's the point at which I learned.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm a little bit afraid of heights too, and it's like, okay, well, that's helpful to know. Like, slow down, you're, you're, you're two and a half feet off the ground, so nothing bad's going to happen to you from a height perspective. I need you to take a half, an extra second, secure your foot lock and then stand up on the rope and that is going to give you a little bit more confidence, that, one, you're not going to fall off the rope because you've actually secured it correctly. And two, like, actually give you the confidence that you can get up and come down the rope safely and correctly. And lo and behold, she improved it. She was able to get up and down to like the 12 foot line a bunch. But it's this, this idea that, like I can't well, you know, I'm trying to think of a good example Like I can't squat, I can't squat this much because, like you know, my, because my legs aren't strong enough it's like no, I actually-.
Speaker 1:You can't squat that much because you say that you can't. Yeah, you say you can't squat that much because you say you can't squat that much, but it's actually just has to do with, like, hey, let's, let me look at what you're doing. I see why you can't squat that much. It's because your heels are coming off the ground and your back's rounding, like of course you can't squat that much. I need you to take the weight off, feel what it's like to squat correctly and then build it back up. And all of a sudden, we have the confidence that not only was my initial assessment incorrect, but it's not. You know, maybe it's not that big of a fix in order to get get you where you wanted to, where you wanted to go, or it's the. It's not the fix that you thought it was, and maybe you were over-exaggerating the problem and it's just some. It's something a little bit simpler than that.
Speaker 2:Last but not least, avoid mental masturbation. I listen to 46 podcasts a week. I read 92 self-help books. I believe that if I consume X style of content, I will become that we just have to put things into practice. That's kind of plain and simple. So, when you are listening to a podcast like this, some kind of it sounds cheesy, but some kind of action plan Like what does this information mean to me and what could I actually do with it? That's not related to like I'm going to sound smart in class or at like a party. You know what I mean. Yeah, that kind of thing, All right.
Speaker 2:Step number one in cultivating confidence the resistance, is a gift mindset. This one, one way to identify whether you're open-minded or not is to figure out whether you're willing to admit where you cannot do this. What is a challenge in your life personal, professional, in the gym that just always feels like the fucking worst, Like the thing that's kicking your ass, like I hate this. This isn't fair. I don't understand this.
Speaker 2:That is the place where we're not wrapping our mind around the idea that resistance is a gift. Now, what's beautiful about this is there are obvious examples that help get us started, and there's the scientific versus the woo-woo, so it kind of depends on how you're trying to wrap your mind around things. Stressing your body with resistance creates a hormetic response in your body. Essentially, if you don't overdo it, it bounces back stronger and more resilient to the specific stress that you gave it, and that's both physical, psychological. I remember convincing Pettit in two seconds to start doing an ice bath, which I grew up with him and there is a younger version of him that would have told me to fuck off it's still, and he was basically just like, why do you do that?
Speaker 2:like what do you? Why are you getting in that? And I was like, well, for me personally, I am intentionally putting myself in an incredibly stressful situation so that I can breathe my way through it and realize that, like I can, I can be in control, like I can be the one that's deciding whether I need to like be freaking out and hyperventilating, like if you be in control, like I can be the one that's deciding whether I need to like be freaking out and hyperventilating. Like if you got in an ice bath and you didn't try to control your breath, that crazy breathing would take place for like 90 seconds instead of 10 seconds.
Speaker 1:That sort of deal.
Speaker 2:So in the real world a stressor shows up, can we take a deep breath, that kind of thing. And he was like well damn, I need that, yeah, that kind of thing. So where do we understand this already? Easiest, most obvious place is weight training. Like you never, you're never like pressing the weight up in a bench press and being like I hate this.
Speaker 2:This is the worst. Why is the weight trying to fall on me? Like you're not going to have that mindset because you know, even though it's challenging, it's kind of fun sometimes and it makes your muscles bigger and stronger. Right, pretty cool, very straightforward. We start to slide in that spectrum when we think about conditioning. I don't think we would do it if we thought that it was as bad as it feels like the outcome would be like like every day I'm like a little closer to death because I like gave part of my soul to the, to the rower, to you know, fran, or whatever, but we don't always feel that way.
Speaker 2:Right, like, like there's. There are many moments in a conditioning piece where, depending on the physical or mental resources you have in that moment, you can get pretty sad about it and really hate it. Even though you chose to go to the CrossFit class hell, you didn't choose to go to the CrossFit class, you paid $190 to go to the CrossFit class, or you keep showing up at the gym over and over that sort of thing. So that could be one of the places where you could start to work on the idea of, in the moment like this is so hard, I chose to do this and I know why I'm doing it that kind of thing Because I think that's the kind of mindset that could buy you five beats per minute.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like just being like this is why I'm here. I'm choosing to do this, and you're not always going to be able to do it, but you can start to bridge the gap from okay, my dumbbell bench press easy. One right Resistance is a gift. Hell, yeah, like not a problem to like something that's really challenging in your personal life. We can bridge the gap in those moments with having better self-talk related to conditioning pieces.
Speaker 1:I think, yeah, go ahead. No, I was just gonna say like this is still coming down for me. Like you know, the obvious form is weight training. It's like if I have a 200 pound bench press, it's unrealistic to think that I'm going to bench 250 pounds and therefore my confidence should not be in such a place that well, my expectation is a 250-pound bench, even though I've never benched more than 200 pounds. And the conditioning realm understandably gets a little bit trickier because odds that you've done the training piece or the workout that you're about to do before is very small.
Speaker 1:But you hopefully have a bank of information, of memories or of whatever that gives you some sort of context for what you're about to do and that you've done something similar enough to know where.
Speaker 1:Again, if your best 2K row ever is seven minutes, a 145 per 500 meter meter pace, it's unrealistic to think that you should try to hold a minute 30 pace for a 1k, for example, or for, you know, for 1k repeats would be a better, maybe a better example.
Speaker 1:So having like the knowledge, the past kind of the history at your disposal, or whatever it is, should be able to inform you, to get to a place where it's like, hey, it's actually not realistic for me today to post the top score on the whiteboard, to post the top score on the blog, the leaderboard, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Instead, it's like I need to stay a bit more in my lane of what I'm actually capable of and have confidence in that specific, in the execution of something that is actually executable by me, as opposed to you know, I have this, I have this arbitrary goal that is, for whatever, for whatever, you don't do it. I think that's more detrimental to an athlete than like, okay, what am I capable of? What's a realistic, maybe reach in order to get you know, to get a little bit better? And then, how can I actually execute this? And having all of those answers to the best of your ability, I think alleviates a whole ton of stress and shifts that from kind of the unknown into you know, the known, from the chaos into kind of the order, so to speak.
Speaker 2:What's cool is what. Where my mind went is there's almost this one to one correlation between what is easier to understand, where resistance is a gift, and what's harder is almost one to one with. It's really hard to be delusional, to like the ability to be delusional or the opportunity to be delusional. Because I'm thinking again, who's gonna try to bench 50 more pounds than their bench, right? Sure it'd be fucking insane, right? Who's going to try and add 10, 20, 30, 30, 40, 50% to their output in a conditioning piece? Plenty of fucking people. Someone's going to try.
Speaker 2:And who is going to think that they can acquire a skill immediately? Even more people, right, yeah, so like that ability to bring unrealistic expectation comes in here, and this probably has a lot to do with why it's harder to wrap your mind around the fact that the resistance is the thing. It's what's making you improve. Where I find things get really dicey is skill acquisition. The idea of people getting so pissed off about not being able to do something almost immediately again doesn't track as we go back to the left on this spectrum. You're not going to add 10 pounds to your max every single time that you pick up a barbell. You are not going to shave a minute off of your 2K time all these different things. It's more obvious the further we go in that direction and it's less obvious, for whatever reason, that, like I, want to learn. A backflip might take you a month, might take you six months, might take your whole fucking life like that kind of thing, and there the resistance is a gift.
Speaker 2:Here there is also scientific research to give us the that side of things where, when you fail at something and you give it a little bit of time and you come back to it, there are connections being made neurologically that are helping you get better at that thing. So if you're having a very frustrating session, beating your head against the wall is actually one of the worst things that you can do, because you can map inaccurate patterns. Your mind is going to do work on those connections when you aren't even thinking about it, like it's kind of doing its own thing, which is really cool. Just another one of those like the human body is fucking wild. And the other side of it is a quote that I've read before and one that I will read again. That was said to me by Logan from Deuce Gym.
Speaker 2:Practice is not doing the thing, it's coming back to the thing. Meditation is not the moments when your breath is on point and you see the blue sky through the clouds and your mantra is money. Meditation begins when the mind drifts and you make the choice to return back to the practice. Practice is noticing when you deviate and coming back to the thing. The finish line is also the start line. We do the thing, we fuck it up. We come back over and over. If you come back, you're in the game. If you pick up your toys and go home, you're not Again. Just understanding that I don't know. All of this stuff is supposed to be hard. That's one of the things that bothers me in this world where people are mad that things and it's like what are you? Why are you in a? Why are you in a fucking CrossFit?
Speaker 1:gym yeah.
Speaker 2:What Everyone signs up. Every single thing that we're supposed to do is hard, and it's not always the same version of hard right, like pressing up that bench press is a whole different thing than I got to keep my pace. Or I'm going to show up the next time that we're going to practice muscle ups and I'm not just going to like swear them off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think the to that point it's like the for a lot of people. It's like you know you're at everybody's at a different kind of stage and what it means for this to be hard for. For someone who's gone to a CrossFit gym, been doing CrossFit for 10 years, walking through the doors is no longer necessarily hard. Right, what's hard is. I know what this workout is. I know what it requires of me, because in CrossFit we do things for time, for reps, for work. You know we try to post a score, we try to do things as well as we can. I know what this requires of me and I'm just not either feeling it today or God. I'm nervous about this because I know how bad this is going to hurt versus the beginner, where it's like, hey, the wind is actually just walking through the door, right, and it's like once they get, once you get into the gym, we're not as concerned about you optimizing the level of intensity for this person. It's just like I just need you to get. I just need you to accumulate days of walking through the door and eventually you get to the place where the, you know what's what the, where you're going to actually have to force your own development is actually making the effort here, similar to your skill development point is like there, there's basically no, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I had a meeting with a member the other day who wants to qualify for quarterfinals. There's no. I've almost never met a CrossFitter who has a goal like other day who wants to qualify for quarterfinals there's no. I've almost never met a CrossFitter who has a goal like that, who isn't willing to spend time working out.
Speaker 1:What I do find and I'm sure you do as well is like hey, I actually don't need you to work out anymore. I need you to track your macros. I need you to sleep eight hours a day. I need you to. I need you to. You know, you know that skill that you've been working on like, sort of like once every two weeks, like if you want to get this skill like, I want you to work on it every day. And I have no idea how long it's going to take, because I have examples of people who are generally really athletic and can pick something up super fast, and then I have some people who don't have an athletic bone in their body but they have the work hard mindset and it's going to take them three months to figure out how to do a double under, for example, and then it's a painstaking process and with the skill stuff it's very much like you can't hard work yourself out of this right. There's a very specific kind of order that things happen in order to get better at this thing.
Speaker 1:It's a different for sure, but it is a lot of when. It is like when the hard work is, hey, I need you to put this thing down and don't touch it for a week. Like I need you to leave, I need you to go, I need you to not work out for a week, and it's like when the requirement is that or it's the hey, I need you to ignore this skill for a week. When that's the requirement, it's like people all of a sudden are just like I don't know what to do with this information. I need you to actually work out less and I need you to sleep more. It's like what do you mean? Like no, that's not how this works. You know someone giving the pushback and I'm like, hey, I get it, I don't need you to be prepared to work out for five hours a day. I need you to be able to give really good intensity to one workout a week for three weeks. That's it.
Speaker 1:You want to go to quarterfinals. That's what you need to be able to do. How do you get there? I need you to shed body weight. I need you to learn how to sleep. I need you to do these super basic things that have nothing to do with your willingness to operate at a heart rate of 180. And a lot of people are just like I'm not willing to do that. I don't think it's.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's always, I mean that is true, but I think it's always a willingness thing. I think it goes all the way back to what we said at the beginning, where you can't snap your fingers and have give them the diet and sleep habits that you would want them to have. Sure, give them the diet and sleep habits that you would want them to have, sure. And sometimes it's not just I need to learn those things and I'm going to work at them, it's I keep seeing progress. I am currently at the level where I can out train a bad diet and bad habits. I need to reach that wall. You know where you get the diminishing returns and you're like, damn, I'm putting a lot of fucking effort in here and I'm not really getting anything in return. Yeah, and then they can see hunter up up in the up on the mezzanine smirking like, yeah, I'll track, I'll get up, I'm ordering a fucking scale on amazon, right now a food scale and a body weight scale yeah, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So part of it is just like we know what we know, we've experienced what we've experienced. But making that jump to being a quarterfinals athlete requires those things, but you aren't going to execute on them until there's like a reason yeah, all right. Where does this mental block truly begin or live? And I'm talking about resistance as a gift. It's typically when you feel like shit mentally, when like whatever hardship you are incurring again in life, training and any of those things like really has you down, really has you in a bad spot. That's when you feel like it's cruel and unfair, etc.
Speaker 2:What's great about it is on a long enough time horizon. That's the level of resistance. That is the 250-pound bench press to your 200-pound bench press. That ends up being one of the better gifts that you have in your entire life. But life will absolutely kick your ass and when it shows back up as a gift is something that potentially takes some time. But again, if you're open-minded to this and again, the more life experience you have, the more shit that you go through, the more you can realize this will end up being a defining moment in a positive way.
Speaker 2:But is that six months long? Six years long, 60 years long, that kind of deal, and we all have our blind spots. So there are places along this whole spectrum and this would be a very vast. We don't have the time to give you guys 100 examples of where this would come from, but we all have our blind spots all along it.
Speaker 2:So we could be talking to someone right now who's like you want to see me go into the fucking hurt locker on you know 800 meter run repeats or this or this or this. Like you want to get me in the wrong mindset, give me a barbell. I'm sure that exists, right. Like I know that I my whole life, when I run or I bike or I do whatever, or I do CrossFit, I do Metcons, I just keep getting faster and it's fucking awesome. Like every time you ask me to lift weights, I hate it and think it's making me weaker and like less of a human. So your blind spots are going to be in different places, I just know for me personally you know, being a self-proclaimed meathead like the most obvious one is literal resistance training like that kind of thing sure, all right.
Speaker 2:Step number two proof equals confidence hunter mentioned. Like you talked about the idea of you're not going to try to do something. You know what I mean. That's like, not possible, like what is? What is the point of of attempting to do something like that if you're not delusional? If we want to reverse engineer that, the idea is there are people who know what they're capable of until the stakes are increased, and then they just lose their marbles.
Speaker 2:Like that's no longer the thing and the way that we build. That is being intentional with tracking what happens in the gym. And that's man. That's everything Like. It could be that you're intentional with tracking how much better you do in workouts when you warm up the way that you're supposed to, so that you can bring that into competition with the fact that you finally got old enough that you're doing a 15 minute cool down and it makes you feel better the next day. I'm finally adding I'm always doing sets of two on muscle ups and now I'm doing sets of three and sets of four. I'm finally adding I'm always doing sets of two on muscle-ups and now I'm doing sets of three and sets of four.
Speaker 2:I know what this combination of movements feels like. I've had rowing intervals where round two felt like the end of the world and by round five I felt really good about myself. Again, that sort of deal. We need to create a reality before we step into a situation where we start to be unrealistic. And I didn't really think about it from this perspective, but the delusion element is huge here.
Speaker 2:So you're going to have the kind of athlete that's like I can't do this, I can't do this, and you're like see, you did it, you already did it. You actually even did better than the thing that you think you can't do, so let's set that aside. But you could also have the person that's like I think that I could do this and you're like what are you talking about? What is happening here, and probably not enough time left in this episode to go over? Delusional confidence is typically actually the exact opposite of confidence. You know what I mean. It's creating a character that you hope manifests somehow out of thin air, and essentially what we're doing is we're using that information to identify whether what is being asked of you in a high stakes environment is not possible or likely, or if the circumstances are clouding your judgment.
Speaker 2:So, like this is a. This tool, as a coach, is you have to know what your athlete is capable of.
Speaker 2:You have to right, because either scenario, either side of that will ruin a competition so fast and one of the ways that it plays out is you will see your athlete, if it's a three-day comp, bomb day one and crush day two and three and never really know. I saw this all the time earlier on in CrossFit. The person that wasn't doing all of these steps arrives at the competition and is a shell of themselves, and then the stakes are lowered because they know that they can't reach, that they're not going to be in the final heat and trying to get to the games or get on the podium or whatever it is. The stakes are lowered and then the confidence returns.
Speaker 1:That kind of thing yeah, yeah, I mean, I think this is where for me, I know you do this with your athletes, as far as you know, maniacally recording things like paces and splits, and it's like, hey, I know you, yeah, yeah, your notes say to do this and you think it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1:But here's the date, the time, the training yeah, you did it to yourself not only you did that, like I'm sorry, like yeah, you know, and and in a way that there's there's a comfort in that right. It's like this is just objective fact, like it has nothing to do with your feelings. I'm I'm personally somebody who likes to, wants to see that like if, if I'm an athlete, I just like I want to know, like I have done this before or I've done something so similar to it that I can infer that I'm capable of doing this. And I think a lot of athletes, you know we see athletes kind of fall into.
Speaker 1:I don't know if there would even are more than two camps in this scenario, but when it comes to competing, it's either you know, it's the athlete who's a game time athlete who, like, maybe their training hasn't necessarily reflected what they're actually capable of, and then, when it comes time to compete, they're able to flip that switch and really get after it and have a have a level of confidence in.
Speaker 1:You know whether it's that's been developed through playing other sports as a kid or actually just you know whether it's that's been developed through playing other sports as a kid or actually just you know, maybe when they are training they're taking a little bit more stock of what they're, you know, actually doing than then maybe they give themselves credit for. Or the other end of that spectrum obviously is the athlete like you referred to, who maybe trains hard. They get onto the competition floor and the lights are just blinding and it's like I, I'm, I'm a shell of myself and I think it's you know. Knowing which type of athlete you are, I think is really important. But a saying that I thought was really relevant, in the military especially, is you don't rise to the occasion, you fall to the level of your training, and I think that's specifically applicable to somebody who really struggles with that kind of like game day. You know whether it's the anxiety it's both sides.
Speaker 1:I think it's both for sure. But it's like, hey, at the end of the day, like you can only expect to do what you've proven that you've done before. There's obviously, you know, when you get the uh, when you get the adrenaline and you're you're fired up to do something that you're excited about. You know, hopefully you can, hopefully you surpass what you're capable of, but you can perform at least what you're capable of for the most part, right barring a serious, you know, mental meltdown, lapse in confidence, whatever it happens to be. But I think this is where it's like tracking your results, tracking what you've done before, making notes about your training. And I think this is where it's like tracking your results, tracking what you've done before, making notes about your training. And this is this is what tony did. This is like the.
Speaker 1:There was no difference between his, the program, the volume, anything that he did. It was simply a shift of mindset of like, I'm focusing on this thing, I'm taking notes. Okay, I know I can hold this pace on the echo bike. Therefore, I'm going to hold that pace when I have to do 50 calories sandwiched in between some toes to bar and running at Wadapalooza. It's less of a it's. It's just the decision has already been made for you as to what, how you're going to execute this event, this workout, this training session, whatever it is, and then you can just actually focus on the in the moment execution of said thing.
Speaker 2:And the clearer of a picture that you have of your strengths and weaknesses. It comes from that kind of thing Like, okay, I actually have. Like this is based on facts. That's when you can double down on this idea because you can I believe you can, you know create your generic linear progression program and bring your brain along for the ride. So I know exactly what I need to work on and I'm really good at some things. I'm okay at some things and I'm not so good at some things, and I know that typically, when you are on the side of not being as good at it, you get some of those beginner gains.
Speaker 2:So we're going to write you a linear progression program where we're just going to get you stronger or faster or more skilled or build capacity.
Speaker 2:And you are identifying in the moment I, you know my, my EMOM used to be one muscle up and then it minute EMOM.
Speaker 2:And this workout that has I don't know 12 reps in it, 15 reps in it, 20 reps in it, that used to just kill me. Like there would be no way, if you went through a progression like that, that you could see a workout where, like it's not even you know remotely close to being the same thing as how far beyond that you've become. And that's why I think again the whatever you want to call it we've we've often called it being a student of the game like relinquishing that responsibility, trying to put it on a coach, trying to say, like you know, it's the athlete that's like I don't even know what Fran is, you know what I mean. Like you don't have that like historical element of things, you don't remember any of the workouts that you do. I think that all plays into something that we'll talk about a little bit further on with like potentially self-sabotaging or not trying as hard, because then you can say you didn't try as hard.
Speaker 1:That's sort of mindset.
Speaker 2:Step number three identify your identity. Much of our work to this point can be done outside of the spotlight if that is your preference, but we're about to step into the spotlight. So again, a lot of this work that we're trying to do, a lot of this wisdom that we are trying to impart, open-mindedness and perspective we're trying to help cultivate and facilitate is done in a Zoom call, in person, out on the gym floor. It's done in your everyday life in a lot of instances and we can get a lot of people pretty damn confident in a low stakes environment. But if we are going to cross that threshold and not necessarily go into what would be considered a high stakes environment but a higher stakes environment you have to know who you are and who you're bringing along with you before you leave the comforts of whatever space you inhabit in your day-to-day. Get extremely clear on your identity who you are, what you stand for, what do you represent, what do you hold most important in that world? Whose opinion is valid in upholding this identity and then you lock that shit in Before we cross the threshold. Who am I? What do I want to accomplish? What is realistic for me to accomplish?
Speaker 2:So many people don't lock that in, don't have the clear perspective just in their day-to-day. So then when they are put in an uncomfortable situation they can't lean on it. They don't know who they are, they don't know what they stand for, they don't know what they're trying to accomplish. Everyone's opinion is valid. That sort of thing and we high stakes situations in that way. It makes absolutely no sense. If things don't go perfectly, the workouts aren't written exactly the way that you want them, it's just not going to go well. It's so important to know who we want to be and what we want to be and talk about it and live it and then lean on it in those situations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think a lot of that is knowing, because your, you know your identity is not necessarily what you say it is. It's a, it's a combination of the perception that you put out into the world, but also what the world. There's a a social element to what your, you know your identity is. If you are perceived as the person who, for example, like you know, always falls apart, doesn't I never sign up for the open because, well, I, I just don't want to this year, like, oh, my back hurts and I get sick every time the open rolls around.
Speaker 1:It's like yeah it's like that's your identity, like other people are going to play into that, not necessarily because they are doing so maliciously, but it's like if that's the identity that you, you know, the facade that you have, then you need to expect that other people are going to feed into that and it becomes a potentially very negative feedback loop.
Speaker 1:Right, so it's a combination of knowing, like you said.
Speaker 1:You know, what you said I thought was have over the phone or over the computer does not seem to be the same person who goes out into the gym floor and interacts with so-and-so, because you have way less confidence when you're out there, when those guys you know, when you're training with these people, versus, like, what I hear you saying is you know you and I are on the same page, but as soon as I leave or as soon as I walk away or you go out into the world, so to speak, there's a different identity that's imparted upon you by other people and there's a negotiation to how you change that.
Speaker 1:You can't just necessarily change exactly how you're supposed to be perceived by other people, but then it becomes a matter of well, whose opinion do I actually care about? It becomes a matter of like well, whose opinion do I actually care about? Right, like someone on the sidelines telling Scotty Scheffler to hit a nine iron instead of a pitching wedge. It's like Scotty Scheffler's never going to fucking listen to that person Like why would he ever in any circumstances listen? But you know, we us mortals. You know it becomes very easy to hear that one little thing off to the side that says so-and-so should do this, or like oh my god, I don't know if they can do that in those moments.
Speaker 1:I'm ready to scrap yeah, uh, and it's just like yeah, for sure. You I mean hear it in the warm-up area like someone is someone who has absolutely no business giving an athlete advice tells them like, oh, you should do this or that. And it's like motherfuckers.
Speaker 2:Stop that.
Speaker 1:Like those instances is yeah um, but that, yeah, that I, that identity component is is super important and it's and it like it takes practice, like like anything yeah, and there's a something that I didn't put into this, that just popped into my head is there is the idea of the audit.
Speaker 2:So things have already taken place. I've locked in who I am and what I stand for and who I want to be, and then I go through a particularly challenging situation. Now is my interpretation of that situation everyone else says this went well or this went poorly or is my interpretation of the situation looking back on it and being like I would have done things differently or I would have done things the same? And it can still feel bad when you did things the way that you wanted to, but the ability to move on after that is significantly easier. I carried myself the way that I wanted to and it didn't work out the way that I wanted to, but like I went into it with. This is my expectation of myself and I like held true to that, like that's more important than I didn't hold true to it, and the outcome was positive, like in the long run.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's all right, that's no go for it, I was just gonna.
Speaker 1:I had a super small like anecdote to that. It's funny. I got a. I got a putting lesson a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 1:Um, like part of part of the lesson was like having a routine, which is why you see golfers, for example, have such some faster than others, but like a pre-shot routine and it looks like they're doing like a bunch of random shit. But I also it's funny I saw a video of scotty scheffler, like two. I saw a video of Scotty Scheffler, like two side-by-sides of Scotty Scheffler getting ready to tee off and two different events, two different days, two different like literally everything is different. Except you know Scotty's got a driver in his hand, he's getting ready to tee off and you time up the videos and they're identical right Two completely different times and places. But he has a very specific routine the number of times he like does his little half practice, swing from behind the ball, lines himself up, sets up the same way. It's all the exact same.
Speaker 1:And the lesson was like, hey, it doesn't matter what your routine is before you hit this putt, but you need to have one. And so if you go through your routine you line it up, no-transcript. But if you did everything up to that point correctly, you did your routine, you did your practice strokes. Maybe you just hit a bad stroke, whatever, whatever it was, it's OK. Like the result is less is less important in that situation than like all you can say. All you can do at that point is say to yourself, well, I, I did everything that I was supposed to. I did it. I did it all up to that point. The ball just did not go in the hole. And like, having that mindset was super freeing where it was like, oh okay, like you know, tour tour pros average 50% from eight feet.
Speaker 1:And like an amateur golfer sees an eight foot putt and is just like I have to make this and it's like no, what you have to do is go through your exact routine, do exactly what you know how to do and if it goes in, it goes in. If it doesn't, you can't, you're not like you have no reason to be mad about that. If you rushed it, you didn't, you skipped your routine, and then you miss the putt, then you can say like, well, fuck, you do everything right up to that point and the ball just doesn't go in the hole, the lift just doesn't go up. You can't be mad about that. You say I did. You know, I did everything in my power to make that happen and it just didn't happen.
Speaker 1:It's much more freeing than you know the alternative of just like fuck, why didn't that happen. It's like I got seven or eight things, seven or eight reasons why that didn't happen for you, because it was nothing like what you've done historically or what you know you've done in practice yeah, I mean you're standing there as a coach and you see the rope pace at three yeah what are we what?
Speaker 2:yeah no, what are you doing?
Speaker 2:right now you can't win a 30 minute workout in the first 10 seconds, stop it. Yeah, the it would probably be a misfit after dark episode, one life lesson that'll really clear things up for everyone is that control is an illusion and that everything is chaos. So you might as well fucking stop trying to have a tight grip on everything. Can't make me All right. Step number four, vulnerability, is the bridge from confidence in your safe space to confidence period. So is your identity locked in Check? Now you can get really fucking clear about what you're trying to do, what you're about to do, the mindset, the attitude that you're trying to bring to this other situation.
Speaker 2:Really specific example the impetus for this episode is Paige's progression from World Fitness Project 1 to World Fitness Project 2 and something very specific that happened at the second event. I will put it out there Paige is the unicorn that does the work and is very competitive in the moment and really sort of pushes towards that thing. That's what we're striving for. We put in the work. We have the humility to know that if I go in and I get after it, I'm going to get better, and when I get out on that competition floor, I'm going to be an animal and attack and not just kind of stand back. So we've talked about it already a bunch.
Speaker 2:If you listen to this podcast you know not a good situation at the first WFP event for Paige. I had never seen her like that. I'm very down on herself. Confidence not there, it's just a very different mental, physical representation, body language, all that front page, really great prep going into WFP2. Definitely better finishes at the start, but not where she wanted to be yet.
Speaker 2:And her reaction to thought like one of the mistakes she was making is she was trying to kind of guess the pace of other people and like this specific person is going to slow down at this moment in this workout and that's where I can catch them instead of what is the solution for me to get from point A to point B as fast as possible? Her reaction to it was this smirk of like wow, these girls have gotten fast and I just need to go faster. The solution to this is I'm just going to go harder and I cannot tell you how much work it takes, both from an experience standpoint, in logging your 10,000 hours in the gym like how much of that it takes to get yourself to that point. But that reaction in that moment. I mean we updated I think three, specifically three machine paces to be significantly faster in events that happened afterwards and she held those paces in all of those events because she knew that she had to.
Speaker 2:She's like whatever I think it is, it's 200 cals per hour faster, it's three Watts faster, it's you know however many seconds like one of them was 10 seconds per 500. Like that's what it's going to take for me to get here and I might as well go out there and try to do that and try to end up where I believe I belong on the leaderboard than it is to be like fuck, I just don't have it, I'm not going to be able to keep up with these people. That reaction is like as a coach and I believed it and she was able to execute on that idea is just one of those moments where it's like this person doesn't have like their whole worldview was not wrapped up in event one or event two. Right, and what a silly thing. You know you're on this earth for fucking 90 years or whatever, and you're obsessed with a five minute stretch of one event of like you're gonna end up doing hundreds of events competitively in your career. So just kind of a healthy mindset and like really leaning into the idea of competition.
Speaker 2:The last piece before you jump in is the example of what flow state is. The research on this is really fascinating and resonates with me a ton. I was not diagnosed with ADHD until my 30s and for me I was the opposite. I was I need the high stakes to perform. That's how I was in sports Like not great. In practice, like not a particularly hard worker in terms of prepping myself for the thing, and I don't, I didn't really feel like I had the language or the tools to do so.
Speaker 2:I don't necessarily like blame myself, but understanding that like, like that, that diagnosis and the idea that like, like, like people with ADHD are incredible at hyper-focus when they're interested in the thing they can like disappear into why I can write programming for like five hours in a row and be jacked up about it and why I have no idea where my keys are ever Like that kind of thing, and it is explained with this idea of flow. State is when challenge and interest intersect. Yeah, we need to be challenged in a realistic environment, right?
Speaker 2:Like again I was about to say it's an appropriate challenge. It's an appropriate challenge, but it's something that's like stimulating, that like you have interest in, that you're excited about. That's really challenging and that I don't know. That, to me, just encompasses so much of this conversation and the idea of being vulnerable, like for you to be at your best, you need to be challenged. So wanting things to go smooth and go easy will not get the best version of you out of yourself, like that's not the way that your brain works.
Speaker 2:There's going to be and it's funny because there's almost always with, like that athlete that's like just below games level or just below where they want to be. It's almost always that one, that athlete that's like just below games level or just below where they want to be. It's almost always that one event where they're like I don't, like, I don't know what just happened, like how did I keep up with the best person here? And it's like watch your body language, like you. It's like when you fucking go for a drive and you don't know how you ended up, like you know, at the destination, like that kind of thing. Like you just really get locked in because the challenge was there and your ability was there and it was just kind of this sweet spot for you to finally experience a flow state.
Speaker 2:But trying to reverse engineer that major ingredient is being challenged. So, like you don't want things to be easy, you want to go there and say I've already figured out who I am and who I want to be, and how hard I've worked and what I represent, so the outcome here isn't like going to change my life, that kind of thing. So I want to be challenged, I want this to be hard, I want to step out there and have this be the kind of thing that brings that version of myself out, and the more open you are to that, the more it's okay. Now it's two events, three events, four events, five events, and you know it's never going to be all of them. Unless you're our shining example.
Speaker 2:You know Tia coming back from at syndicate, coming back from being pregnant and essentially being in flow state the entire time. It's just like what the fuck did she? Did she put it on hard mode intentionally, that kind of thing. So yeah, the again the, the original thing that I said. Vulnerability is the bridge from confidence in a safe space to confidence period. You have to be willing to put it on the line and be okay with whatever outcome before you get started.
Speaker 1:That's when you can allow yourself to actually be confident in ultra high stakes environments yeah, and I think the only thing I have to add to that is, like that, the ability to enter the flow state. So like the, the interest obviously is the requirement, but the, the effort and the challenge needs to be just outside of what you're capable of, but not so far outside of what you're capable of, that it's that. It's impossible. Right, it's the and, and I think that the important element of that is, in order to know what you are maybe capable of but maybe not right, that's kind of where maybe that flow state might live for you is just outside of your realm of comfort. You have to have information as to what the actual realm of comfort is. Right, what is that? Is the benchmark that says, like my interest is there, but the challenge isn't. What is the notch just to the right of that where the interest remains there?
Speaker 1:But the challenge is actually, you know, is actually provided and an understanding you know.
Speaker 1:And then from there it's like, well, I can go into this event and maybe hold two or three seconds faster than I have in training, because I know that I can hold this in training and I also know that you know, I know what the stakes are in this event, maybe it's the final event, maybe you know, or whatever it happens to be, and I can like actually you know proactively seek that you know that challenge and maybe enter that flow state on my own, because you know, understanding that, like you know it is, having that challenge and knowing where it lives like just by definition, requires you to know where it does not live, which is like having the information from training as to what you know you're actually capable of and then putting yourself either in a situation in training or, more likely, in competition, where you can enter that flow state of like.
Speaker 1:This is in the pocket, this is the pocket, this is the zone. It's the same flow state and the zone are the same thing. For anybody who doesn't actually understand that, it's the zone of proximal development in which the challenge is just hard enough to actually obtain progress and obtain growth, but not so challenging that it's frustrating and not so easy that there's no adaptation. It's how you get toddlers to talk. You speak at a level that's just outside of what they're capable of. When you train, you train at a level that's just slightly outside of maybe what you're capable of in order to create that adaptation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the only thing I'll add there is that's half of the other side of the coin is the interest piece. Right, so I have a talk. Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be a lot easier to get him zoned in for talking about garbage trucks you know what I mean, but for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, all right. My final thoughts are also step five. There it's just there. There is no destination here. There's no destination anywhere.
Speaker 2:We just keep you know whether it's an evolutionary thing, whether it's societal. We keep trying to iterate, we keep trying to improve, we keep the stakes, continue to increase. People think that they have a mountaintop and then, like it takes reaching a few of them to be like I mean it, like and it's not because you chose the wrong thing, it's because of the mindset that you could arrive somewhere and everything will be great, right, like we all know people or have been in situations where, like everything's going to be fine at this point, like I'm just waiting for this thing to happen and that's just not the way that anything works. So my final thoughts are we're going to keep going and we're going to rinse and repeat and we're going to start back over at one, or we're going to raise the stakes so much that we end up, as a confident person, back in a place where we are a fish out of water and we got to go, you know, put all four steps up on the wall and be like okay, where am I lacking here?
Speaker 2:What is, what is the current problem and what is the iteration of something that I've already done? That creates the bridge from like, okay, I was able to do this in this environment. Now I'm not. You know, I've got imposter syndrome, could be a bunch of different things, but we're just not. You guys wouldn't keep listening to this podcast. We wouldn't keep signing up for the open, like insert whatever goal you have in your life, like it just again continues to, the goalposts gets moved, and understanding that that's the case is incredibly important, because you're going to have to refine these tools the more that you move the goalposts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think my final thoughts on this topic specifically like this is just kind of how I like to approach things is that confidence comes as a result of of training, of obtaining knowledge. I don't think it's something that's necessary. You know, make the argument that some people are inherently more confident than others, but I think if you've dug far enough, you'd find the reason for that. You know whatever that happens to be. But, as you know, as you grow up and have a better understanding of you know, I guess, the world, I think it hopefully becomes more apparent that, like, confidence comes as a result of understanding what you're undertaking and also understanding that you don't understand a lot of what you're undertaking.
Speaker 1:Right, it's like that. It's that kind of growth mindset where it's like I know just enough to be dangerous, but I also know what I don't know, or I know that my knowledge is limited to what I know and I'm not so confident to say that I know everything. It's the right balance of confidence that you could, as a result of education, of training, of practice, whatever it happens, to be paired with the humility to say that I don't actually know all of this, but I know just enough to get me going here and then I can you know, hopefully infer my way, walk around in the dark a little bit, bump into a couple of walls along the way and, you know, eventually develop more confidence in my ability to execute on whatever it happens to be that we're talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's always. I mean that's I'm. I'm almost halfway done you know, with life. And like the further that you get along. You're just like it's such a young man's game to think that you know anything or that you've experienced anything at all.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I the way that, like I always need a like, a visual representation of these things. So it's like you start out and like I'm watching my kid and like his world is. You know, it was like a few rooms, and then it's like a few rooms in a car seat and then it's a like you get on the airplane for the first time and you keep like thinking that you've got it figured out, and then a door opens and you're like what the fuck is that?
Speaker 2:and like like the easiest. The easiest one is knowledge. Like if you're just a genuinely curious human being and like you think you know shit and then you get like I don't know quantum mechanics for dummies and you're like I'm the dumbest person alive and then, like you wrap your mind around that and then that opens another door and you, you know, like thinking about, like how big the universe is, and your speck of dust on a rock you know hurling through space, like all of that stuff. It's the same with experience, it's the same with all of this, and it's very helpful, I think, to like surrender to that Cause, like young people are trying to control the situation.
Speaker 2:Again control is an illusion. Everything is chaos. Keep that in mind. You will eventually give into that, I think. I don't know, maybe you'll be on your deathbed when you figure it out, but very important.
Speaker 2:Did we do it? We did it. Thank you for tuning into another episode of the Misfit Podcast. You can head to the link in bio on our Instagram and get signed up for any of our individual programs on Fitter or Strivee. If you're looking for our affiliate programming, you can head to teammisfitcom, click on the sign up now button and get a two week free trial to SugarWad, StreamFit or PushPress. See you next week Later. We're all misfits, All right? You big, big bunch of misfits.
Speaker 1:You're a scrappy little misfit just like me. Biggest bunch of misfits I've.