Blauer_Origins of The S.P.E.A.R. System™.mov

I said to one of my best instructors, I said, hey, Warren, put on some gloves. I'm gonna put on mouth guard. We're gonna do this drill. And in this drill, what I want you to do is we're just gonna start a conversation because we always get in the ring and do shit. We always, you know, we always start the scenario, but I want to isolate shit. I really got into isolation training, and this is like a long time ago. And I said, here's. So you just start any conversation you want, and then whenever you want, just fucking throw a punch. We'll see what happens. Well, the first thing I noticed was it was very cool, was he put the gloves on and he asked me, he said, well, what are you gonna do? I said, well, nothing. I just want to see what's gonna happen. We set up a camera, video tripod, the whole deal. We're just gonna film and see what happens. So he goes like this. He goes, so you're not gonna hit me? I said, no. So he goes, okay. You know, like, so suddenly immediately got adrenaline dump going. Okay, that was weird. Weird, you know, and it's like I'm hallucinating this drill. Never done it. So I put my mouth guard on. The first thing he does, he slowly walks to encroach me. And as he moves in, I blade and my hands start to come up. And I realized intuitively, right there, that's wrong. That's completely wrong. Because my sport and I define sport as when we agree to do training, I don't mean it was a sport, okay? If you agree to rules in a street fight to the death, that's a sport. Do you understand? Hey, let's kill each other. But we'll start at 2:00'. Clock. That's a sport. So I go, well, it's 1:45. You want to warm up? Yeah, here, let me help you. If you sucker punch the guy before it starts, that wasn't the sport. So what's interesting about this is there were a bunch of reps where I tried to do wax on, wax off, because now I'm getting in the zone. I'm warmed up a little bit. And what would happen is he'd throw a haymaker and I'd go, yeah. And then a left hook would come out and I'd stand. Boom. And I'd get nailed with it because I didn't know what his next move was going to be. There was no boxing rhythm whatever at the end of two hours. And some of you heard the story, but it's always worth repeating for a couple of reasons, and that is at the end of two hours, my face was swollen, I had a migraine, I was bleeding in my mouth, mouse under an eye, fat lip. And one thing I talk about, it's not to get a pat on the back. I've known martial artists and instructors for years. I don't know a lot of guys that would do a drill or females that would do a drill where they got their ass kicked for two hours. Because I was the punching bag for two hours on a quest to understand something. I didn't even know what the question was. Do you understand what I'm saying? I did that, and I know a lot of people. And it's one of the things that's amazing about CrossFit. If you do it right, it's always scary and it always sucks. And so what we tend to do as human beings is we do drills we're good at because we're so fucking insecure at a certain place, most of us, that we do things that we're good at, so we feel good about it. And if you really want to stretch yourself as a warrior, there's a famous warrior maxim says that great warrior understands or seeks weakness. Great warriors seek weakness. And if I say that, if I put that on the board there, most of you at first dissection would go, yeah, the weakness in the enemy. I'm going, no, motherfucker. The weakness in you. If you had to beat you, where would you attack you? What would you do psychologically, emotionally, physically, to attack yourself?