Better Athletes Do These Three Things

There's a man named Cody Hawkins who's working to become the go to man when it comes to catch and pass in rugby. Now, why is this relevant to you? It's because if you're in the wrong boat, then no amount of rowing will get you to the lead. Right, this is clear, this is the Warren Buffett quote that I'm paraphrasing. So if you train the wrong way for catch and pass in rugby, then you're not going to have the best catch and pass. But there's another prerequisite, is that when everyone has a good boat, you're going to need to have done at least as much work as the other competitors to stand any chance. So I recently had someone who competed for Yugoslavia. His father competed for Yugoslavia. He came to the Montenegro village to train and we did a squat challenge. We were squatting for as many reps as possible on the two second timer with 40 kilogram weight. And he was talking about the amount of repetitions that his father was able to get. And it was a phenomenal feat of high repetition squatting that this champion Yugoslavian rower was able to achieve. Now, there will always be that foundation of, of massive volume beneath any champion. If you look at Westside barbell, I love talking about Louis Simmons and the Westside barbell method. People in powerlifting hate on west side barbell because it's not the most specific method for powerlifting, but in terms of force production and being able to produce a lot of force very quickly, extreme power output, but also being able to lift extremely heavy weights, they were the best, but they also had the repetition method where they were doing the most volume as well. And what's interesting is that Louis, even in his 50s and 60s, was training with a massive volume and it was massive training volume that was keeping him healthy. So he believed in getting more repetitions than the other competitors and getting very little specific volume, but continuing to create a learning environment where they were always maxing out on a different lift. So they would every week practice doing something as hard as possible, as heavy as possible. They had the max effort method, so they would lift to a single one repetition on a movement and they would go for a new personal best. And they would have a lift at around 95%, lifted around 98% of their best ever. And. And then they would go for 101 or 102% of their best ever. This was the method. And they would consistently change the movement that they were using for that one repetition. What that meant was like with The Poliquin method, where he consistently changed the type of training and changed the movements. Subtle changes in the movements. Like Pavel Tatzelin, with his subtle changes in the movements, you're going to end up with a bigger base of skill for the task that you're looking to achieve. Now, this is also true for sports. We know that athletes that compete in multiple different sports in high school are more likely to become professionals, they're more likely to get to the highest level than those who specialise at the high school level. It's the same concept at work here. When you're a coach, you can see, okay, this guy did a lot of other stuff other than just play rugby. When you work with rugby league, you can see the ones who are like, you did something else. It's like, yeah, I was into breakdancing, or, yeah, I was into gymnastics, or sometimes there's a martial arts background. You had a lot of karate. And it's clear that they built a much bigger general base. And so the conversation this morning with Cody Hawkins, who's working with the Mongolian rugby organization, which is pretty cool, and it looks like we're going to have the opportunity for the uncommon village experiences to happen in Mongolia maybe in 2024, maybe in 2025, but we're in discussions to be able to have experiences in Mongolia, Mexico and Vanuatu and Montenegro, you know, aren't exotic enough. Then imagine also being able to go to Mongolia, getting a city experience. But then you're going to go and see the country, you're going to see what. What that place is about as well. The bigger your frame of reference and the more you can see other ways of doing things and other ways of looking at history. You know, from what I understand, they're very proud to have the heritage of Genghis Khan and, you know, going and conquering the way that the Americans look at the influence that they've had on the world, the massive influence that's come out of the United States over the last century, something that they're proud of. And most of the world look up to at least some components of modern America. It might not be the military, but it might be with the sports, it might be with Hollywood, it might be with technological innovation coming out of Silicon Valley or, you know, Elon Musk's work coming out of Texas. Yes, he's South African, but he's. He's gone to the United States to become the man and do what he's done with X and Starlink and SpaceX and Tesla. So for Cody, if he's going to have that impact on Mongolian rugby. And then he's also working with the team in England. It's like, how do we go to the extreme of generalization so that the athletes are like the breakdown. So the trampoline is the martial artist. How do we build that foundation? And so they should be able to juggle with their hands and their feet. They should have extreme catching and throwing ability. You should have extreme balance and coordination at a general level. But then on top of that, extreme dexterity. On top of that, we need to then go to the highest heights of specificity. Now usually in rugby relative to basketball, I would say rugby league players and rugby union players would touch the ball probably like 50 times less than a basketball player. That would be my guess in their career. And the rugby ball is probably more difficult to deal with in the hands because it's not round. So if you get the wrong part of the ball that you're not expecting, then you're not going to be able to deal with it as well. They might not touch it 50 times less, but probably because you think about how much they're bouncing the ball in basketball. And then when you train basketball, because it's a five sided game, there's only ever sort of 10 men involved. And a lot of times you're going to work with less than that. It's very possible to play a lot of one on one. You touch the ball a lot one on one. If you're a basketball player, you go to the court on your own and you practice. Where with rugby it's more difficult because you can't bounce the ball against anything as easily. There's nothing really to shoot at. If you're the kicker, then fair enough. But it's kind of a lonely, awkward sport to practice on your own. And so it's very likely that the best basketball players have touched the ball 50 times more than rugby players. And so what would be possible in terms of skill control with the ball for most players is probably a lot higher level than what's currently seen. And when I say a lot higher fractions make all the difference in elite sport, you only need to be 2 to 3% better than all the other teams and you're going to set all time records, you're going to consistently win. If you're 5% better, then you dominate by so much that it's ridiculous in world records. In individual sports you don't see 5% difference. But the way that we go about development in team sports is often not as individually focused we don't necessarily seek that individual progression with the same hunger that we would if we didn't put things down to team play. If each individual had more responsibility. The responsibility of a martial artist or a ballerina or a circus performer. Your hand balance is practiced every day for at least, you know, multiple hours. They're often doing for like four hours a day. Concert pianist, you know, you're expected to do four hours a day. And it just doesn't work like that in rugby. So there is a real possibility that with analysis and with focus and with specific drills, measurement, things can go to another level. Now, if you're not really into sports, you're probably already tuned out. If you're thinking about becoming an Olympic champion or a world champion, then you might be really tuning in and thinking, well, yeah, catch and pass, that's just one element. And then we've got footwork, and then we've got contact skills, and then we've got all the team awareness, the tactical stuff, the set pieces. That's the fun of it. The fun of it is in the achievement culture. The reason sports are so prized and are so valued in society is that they're expressions of excellence. And that's how civilization is built. It's built on the idea that maybe I can do this better than the previous generation. And we see with sports that they have improved exponentially over the last hundred years. Now maybe they're taking the place of more important progression and expression, which could be more generalized. If you look at yoga or martial arts practice, where maybe everyone did it, you know, I'm recently learning about Filipino knife fighting, and all the men of the village would practice their knife fighting. And so maybe these sports and the idea of, okay, they're the athletes and we're the non athletes, and therefore they develop themselves physically. And. And we kind of look on them as the different ones, the jocks, and they just develop themselves physically, but they're not all that outside of their sport. What if we needed that achievement culture? What if we all need that achievement culture? And what if we all need that general base? What would that foundation look like? It wouldn't look like people going to the gym today. Someone who's a real expert, if you imagine coming from outer space or coming from another planet, where the culture was built around consistent physical development over the lifetime, what would they do? What would their daily practice look like? They'd be throwing spears and axes with both hands. If they valued defense so that they would never have to defend themselves, would they be doing that? Would they be able to kick and run and sprint and what would they be able to do? Would they be able to use sticks like hockey players, but use them in battle, use them left handed, right handed? Is hockey a derivation of sword fighting? And then is this excellence in culture meant to be brought into the philosophical realm as it was with the ancient Greeks? So can we challenge these athletes and non athletes of today? What about if we simply became men seeking excellence, or a society and culture seeking excellence and it was normal for everybody to be able to defend themselves and express themselves more fully physically? What would that look like? This is the question that I believe is worth answering. And I am assembling a team of practitioners, professional athletes, Olympians, coaches, who are open to this exploration of what could we do? For sure, ATG and athletic truth is a component of this, this idea of the physical underpinning of tendon, foundational strength that we can then go and express with things like parkour or dunking, or upper body plyometric work. No doubt that that is a key piece of the puzzle, but there's all these other pieces as well that we need to develop. We can develop and the fun is in developing them. But then what is that culture, if it's something that we do en masse, that's external to the current games that we play, Whether you play the sport and you want to continue to win and you know, go to the Olympics and win the gold, you do it with a different mentality from what I'm talking about here, where it's a life expression, it's a philosophy of continually developing yourself and in the general base and in the foundations as well as in the ultimate specificity, being creative with how to solve that challenge from top to bottom, but then taking that same achievement philosophy into business, into memory, into study, into drawing, into art, into music. Does it sound like a renaissance? Does it sound like a rebirthing? It seems as though that was what was happening when Florence was built, the cathedrals. My understanding is that Leonardo da Vinci would challenge any man to a strength contest. Now it's understood that he was a left handed male. Some say he was bisexual or homosexual. I don't know. They tend to tell us that everyone in history was bisexual or homosexual. So since that is the modern narrative, it becomes a little bit less believable. But there is also a book written about da Vinci's brain which suggests that left handed homosexual males are the most creative, the most likely to come up with new concepts. Now, regardless of the sexuality, peace. What da Vinci did, what Michelangelo did like the actual absolute beauty that came out of Europe in that time maybe 500 years ago, that didn't come from one generation, that didn't come from an individual, that came from successive generations of men doing their absolute best for their lifetime and passing on their absolute best to the next. Now I'm all for Cody Hawkins taking this to Mongolia and to professional rugby players and young players who want to improve their catch and pass and want to improve their kicking, other aspects of their game. I think he's doing something good. I think he's doing something beautiful. We should do things that are good and beautiful, but there's a bigger thing here that we should all be pursuing. How do I add value? How do I do something good and beautiful in the building realm, in the art realm, in the music realm? A great place to start with it is in physicality. Be willing to do tough things each day. It's understood that the ancient Greeks would, if they wanted to be in the philosophy, they would also have to train with the athletes. They would also wrestle and do strength work. I think that's how it's meant to be. I challenge any modern athlete wanting to win something to take on this philosophy of being an absolute artist and craftsman with what they do to redefine the sport. I challenge every coach to take on this responsibility and philosophy, to redefine what it is that they love most. My goal is to bring those men who've made that decision together so that they can push the ideas against one another's and see what comes out the other side. When we continually associate with others who've chosen to redefine an area, it's a beautiful thing. It's always a great thing. I had the opportunity to work with Sonny Bill Williams. We did one of our training camps out of the Australian Surf center and we were able to use the trampolines there. And it was a great place to train the creativity across sports. When professional athletes from different sports meet each other, they already know that they have something serious in common with the consistency and discipline that they've been able to show. But unfortunately, the way the modern athlete is treated is that they're boxed off. They boxed off away from political and philosophical interest. And that's not true for Sonny Bill Williams. But it is true for most athletes that they choose not to engage in business, not to engage in politics, not to engage in philosophy. And it doesn't have to be that way. So this is the challenge that I would set forth for any man listening to this, have a free level of connection and communication. Test it. Uncommon gentleman's club. Join as an uncommon man. Work your way to being an uncommon gentleman. Maybe you already joined as an uncommon gentleman if you already have a lot to offer and you can apply directly for that status. But the goal is to bring men together who've made these decisions and see what's possible. That's also good for women to do whatever they would like to do. My understanding is that the women's wiring is very different from the wiring of men in general. Everything's on a bell curve, everything's on a spectrum. But what I understand is the experience of a man. I understand working with male athletes. And so my journey is to optimize and upgrade the experience of men, to lead great families, to be great fathers. And that is the journey, that is the process, that is the challenge. If you are with this journey, if you identify with what we're talking about here, then let's continue the conversation. Building these villages around the world and building a program to develop men and develop businesses, you don't need to get involved in coming to the physical locations. You don't need to be in the education program where I help you build a business and help you become one of the leading coaches in the world in a certain niche. Maybe you might want to do that in the future and you're curious about it. Maybe you simply want to be around other uncommon men because chances are, wherever you are, you're not surrounded by them. Or if you are, it's that they're uncommon in a very specific thing. You're in a swimming squad and there's other swimmers around, and that's kind of cool. But you wish there were others who were really interested in business and philosophy and pursuing the best themselves in multiple ventures, multiple endeavors. So I'll put the link here where you can connect with this and we will have regular discussions. Also, part of the philosophy of what we're doing is connecting men all around the world with each other. What I've found is that the number one thing for mental and physical progression is to connect with other high achievers. We all know this thing of you, the product of the five people you spend the most time with. And yet when we talk about the mental health challenges, we're saying it's not weak to speak, which I think is also the wrong message. But. But then we're focusing on diet and sleep and sunlight and all these things. And they all matter to an extent. But I can tell you, you can mess up all that stuff. And if you're around. If you're a part of a strong team, if you're in a brotherhood, you'll get by, you'll get through, you'll get to the next level. This is the Navy SEAL experience. Like, it's not going to be easy. It's not going to be always beautiful. But if you're driven by purpose and mission, you're winning respect. Then you can get through just about anything. And that is the environment that is most important to cultivate and get yourself into. I'm all for sunlight and good food, but it just doesn't do the job. What does? The job is when your spirit is on fire and you have purpose, you have a mission, you're doing something important. And all of these people who are telling you about health, they all have this other thing where they're respected, where they're leading a tribe, they're playing an important role. So Uncommon Gentleman's Club is the starting point for becoming a leader. Maybe you enter as a great leader already, in which case you'll be invited to be a specialist consultant to the men who have decided to work with me to become Uncommon Men. To follow the path that many of the great people that I've worked with have been down of spending significant time together talking about how we can make the world a better place. If you've listened this far, I appreciate that you're interested in this path and that you're looking to improve yourself. I do think that there is another level that we can get to as men, as mankind. The upgraded athletic experience is a great place to start. So if you enjoyed this, please send it to someone who you think it would resonate with. Please leave a comment and I would love to hear from you in what resonates with you with this. Drop me a message DM on Instagram or drop me a reply here and let's continue the conversation.