A NEW Model OF ATHLETICISM

Just watched the UFC and saw tough men, athletic men putting their best forward. Similar thing to what you see in rugby league, another very tough sport, team sport, men putting their best forward. Problem is that in the modern time we've lost models of athleticism that were valued and treasured by our ancestors. And so we only have this one vision of this competitive style of sports where it's one versus the other and this is what's entertaining. But if you look back in music, the music that we have now wouldn't have been valued highly by people in the past. And you look at the classical music that took many generations to arrive to, the composition and the complexity of music, which is objectively much harder to produce and to reproduce. And we're not really doing that like we used to. In terms of classical music. You see the same thing with classical architecture and the beautiful buildings of the past, the cathedrals and other buildings and the huge structures that were collaborative structures like Amsterdam and Paris. We have man made canals that were built by people in collaboration towards a higher quality of life. And this is what I'm proposing to the athletic world is that we can have collaboration towards a higher quality of life through athleticism. And we did have this in the past. If you look back, you can see the music, you can see the buildings, and you can see that we're not doing things anywhere near to the quality that we were doing before. We weren't building these things that you look at and just magnificent in terms of the beauty and the effort that went into them. They were built in different logic, by different times. And the same thing is true for athleticism and athletes of the past. Still today in Russia there are many circus schools. Ukraine also has good circus schools, Armenia, the former Soviet Union. And circus was something that was really big all across the whole continent, from the edges of Asia, Chinese artists, all the way to England. And you can see the history of those performances. And what they would do is come together and show the their abilities and what they developed generation after generation, improving athleticism and they would come together together with the merchants. So there was a selling going on and trading and you know, find goods that were cultivated with the same kind of mentality. In fact, like the guilds that were producing great wares of art were treasured and revered and brought together in the best. And the same thing was happening with athleticism. And how do we do that again? You know, that's the question that I'm asking myself and that I value most. I know it sounds kind of abstract, but it also works in making our current athletes inside of the current paradigm better. If you look at Usyk, currently the best heavyweight boxer in the world, you go and look at his training on YouTube, you see that he's developing himself as a more well rounded athlete in the way that circus performers did in the past. And the overall vision of athleticism for a Swiss village, for example, you can find again on YouTube, you can go and see what did they value in the Swiss villages, those places that built amazing structures and canals and beautiful houses over the centuries gone past. They valued running and throwing stones. They valued this other sport that they're shooting things over yonder and catching them. They valued their traditional dance. They had a kind of wrestling that was a little bit like sumo wrestling. But what's interesting about this is when it's village games, it's in the culture that everyone participates in. It's not this abstract idea that we have at the moment of like one person from the village or one person in the city is doing breakdancing, another one's doing salsa dancing, another one's doing something else. They had a coherence within their village and they built from generation to generation their abilities in music, in architecture and in athleticism. And we're losing that. We've lost that watching the ufc. Okay, these guys can move really well. But there's also an inherent message of the uselessness of life and fragility and the destruction of another person where it doesn't have to be like that. And that's not what happens with classical music and classical architecture. So there is a model for that with New Athlete. This is what I'm putting forward. New Athlete Project is putting forward a new model of athleticism that builds individuals in a similar way to how men were required to be for their tribe, for their village in the past. And valuing individual development of athleticism and performance is something that I would encourage you to think on and consider for yourself and also for future generations. What do you want to bring your children up into when you develop all of these areas? Like Usyk is acrobatics. Maybe he's not developing so much. There's a little bit of spinning, but this is the one that he's missing the most. But he's practicing consistently. Basketball and soccer and some tennis. You also see the Dagestani athletes. They're playing their own version of basketball, they're playing soccer. Not just for five minutes for a warm up, they're playing for hours at a time. And they value it. They're playing paddle. You build Better athletes that can perform better. If you do want that specific, you know, current dominant paradigm performance to win on the weekend, you need to build more rounded athletes. The combat component is obviously there for. For usyk, the dancing ability. You can see USYK dancing. Most of the combat athletes have good dance. If you look at rugby players, the ones that can dance are better players. They're harder to tackle, they're harder to deal with. So there is a clear paradigm and structure here that can be developed. And to the modern strength and conditioning coach, this sounds kind of ridiculous, but to any athlete, it sort of makes sense. You developed yourself between the ages of 0 and 15 to the point where clubs were interested or your professional contracts, or you could get into a top fighting gym or whatever it is that work that you do between 0 and 15 was very creative, and it was across lots of different abilities. We're stunting the development of our babies in a terrible way in the modern time. Prams, high chairs, baby carriers. We're consistently restricting the movement of babies, and it means they can't develop as they should develop. The development of the brain initially is mostly around movement, and then later it becomes more about feeling and more about emotional intelligence and higher thought. We don't get to where we can get to with the higher thought to have that classical music and architecture and coherent society that built those grand structures of Amsterdam and Paris and such. You don't get that if you restrict the babies. And that's what's happening is that from. From very early on, because we don't have a paradigm of athletic development, we think, okay, yeah, when they grow up, they can go and do some CrossFit or some Hyrox or something and get their heart rate up and burn some fat. This is not it. This is. It runs much deeper. This is philosophy of life. This is the flourishing of life. By being overly fearful of damaging our babies. Babies are tremendously robust. They're much more robust than adults. They're not in danger. They need to fall. Falling is a key part of the development of their coordination. They have deliberately extra squishy bodies and brains, and they can fall, and they need to fall to develop themselves. My boy, at four months old, he was leaning against these things, standing in the gym in Montenegro. And the other guys were there and we were training, and he was watching us train. And then he'd be standing there for five minutes, and then he would tumble down and he would cry sometimes, but many times soon after that, he learned to fall onto his butt. And he walked at eight Months. He walked very early. Now, I know there's individual differences between children, and I'm not saying my child is going to be the most super athlete, but I do know for sure that he's been given the opportunity to feel into his environment, to move, to play. And it really does run deeper than. Than the current paradigm. We're either thinking about professional sports where it's like competing, winning contracts, sponsors, you know, pretend you're drinking out of a monster can, which is obviously nothing to do with the athlete's preparation to drink this stuff or be involved with these things. It's all a big distraction and facade for big business. And it's pushing that paradigm of competitive nature. Dog eat dog, it's you against the world. We have this idea and then we have the other, let's burn calories, let's look good in the mirror, but we don't actually have to be good at anything. The UFC fighters and the rugby players, like, they have fantastic movement, but it's a shame that it's not being taken as far as it could in terms of athleticism. And then we have this basic paradigm of like, oh, I'm just going to punish myself into 10,000 steps every day, and I'm just going to know, be able to do a few lifts so I don't get fat, or I'm going to push my heart rate up or burn some calories. There is another way. And the other way does exist through history. And when you do it, when you experience it for yourself, particularly around others who are also moving into this paradigm, it's a beautiful thing and it's. It's a better way. And this is what I'm dedicating my, my life to. This is what I'm building. And I love it when at any age we can recreate that baby, like, development, that zero to five type of development, and give a man the courage to learn again, to dance, to do some combat with someone who they know is not trying to kill them, to play with balls that they haven't played with before. It opens up a new paradigm, a new perspective for the future. And this is what we need. If you would like to experience it for yourself. I made a free component to the new Athlete Project app and you can join it through the description. Of course, this is a business and we are building physical locations. It does take significant investment to build the app and to be able to do the things that we're doing, but we're also committed to putting out free content and free support for anyone who wants to experience something different as far as athleticism goes. And it is something different. The areas that you haven't developed in the past, particularly in dancing and combat, are often ones that people have left completely to the side or acrobatic ability. When you take these on, when you take on. Maybe you did sports that used the hands, but you didn't use the feet at all. Maybe use the feet playing soccer, but you didn't develop your hands. When you fill in these gaps and take on these weaknesses, you become someone else. And that's the invitation to become someone else through athleticism. Pass that on to other generations. I don't know if we can solve the problem of the music industry and the music that we create today and how that's pushed on us. I don't know if we can resurrect the architecture. I don't know if we can make it that people can professionally develop themselves into amazing athletes in the way that happened in the past more commonly. But I do know that you have the decision, you have the choice of how you develop and what you do with your physical body each day. I have that opportunity to develop myself, to move myself physically. And I know we can move away from that at times as well. I had times where this wasn't a huge priority for me. I was doing other things. Things. Get busy in life thinking about other priorities. What I can say is that by putting the focus on this and by sharing this paradigm with my baby, it's been massively life enhancing for me and to see my boy developing in a very different way to what I see typically. And even the experience that I had with my other two children, it's very powerful. And so this is the invitation. If you would like to join the app for free, you're welcome to do that. If you would like to comment with your understanding of this, maybe you've got things you can educate me on around the history of circus, the history of athleticism. This is a project under construction that I'm working on, particularly the the baby and infant side of things. Something I'm going to put a lot of energy into over the months and years ahead. I've been really dedicated to this for the last year as I sort of unfolded this broader paradigm and finally decided to face the weaknesses of not being able to dance and not feeling comfortable at all in combat and not being able to balance myself acrobatically faced all this stuff in my 40s and that gives me the confidence to say to you that you can get much better and you're going to enjoy that. So I hope this was valuable, and we'd love to hear your thoughts. What comes up for you as you listen to this?