Cultivate Your Athletic Garden

We're not men of the jungle. We're not men of the city. We're men of the garden. We're meant to cultivate what we can do with ourselves physically is develop athletic ability in a way that no other species can. Dogs are athletic, cats are athletic. They can do great things, but they can't develop themselves in the way that we can. I'm not the world's best soccer player, but I love being able to develop my ability to play with this ball in the same way that children develop themselves instinctively. My boy loves when I help him to stand up, help him to stand on these stall bars at six months old. So that's what we're here for. You decide what skills you want to have, what you want to be great at. You decide what physical environment you want to live in to be conducive to the experience that you want to have. That's what men of the garden do. They cultivate their environment. They cultivate themselves. They cultivate their environment. Figure out what's not working, build something else. Been having trouble with my legs most of my life. So the trick is to look for solutions. Understanding short and long range. If you train the muscle under length, you prepare the tendon for other stuff. Recently set myself the challenge of running 100km. Part of the reason for me playing soccer this morning is because I'm committed to running that 100km. If I can play like this on my feet for a couple of hours. It's not specific to running, but I'm on my feet, balanced, my feet are getting stronger, my heart rate is above resting. And at the same time, if I was to do a lot of practice like this, which I haven't been going to be much better at, soccer as well. And I'm showing you in the hope dream, the wish that as an adult man you can find your own way back to the garden, to cultivating yourself, to cultivating an environment that is conducive to the life you want to live. I was listening to Rudolf Steiner yesterday. He's talking about working class and the non working class. This book from 120, 110 years ago, something just after the First World War. I think he was talking in this particular lecture. This idea that you work 10, 12, 8, whatever hours a day, something that you don't really love, is pretty abstract. We've set things up so that that's an option. Some people take that option, but really it's not the way it has to be. It's not the only way. It didn't used to be like that. The, the idea of being a working class man working in a factory or, you know, nowadays most of it's on the computer. Didn't used to be like that. If you're going to build a house, you could build a house, then you've got a house. If you build 10 houses, then you've probably helped a bunch of people out. You're probably set for life. Now the modern builder is going to build 30, 40 houses and still might not own his own house, still might not be set for life. So there's other options. What is it that you're cultivating in yourself? If you cultivate skills, maybe you're much, much better on the soccer ball than I am. Maybe you're able to maintain a better spinal position. It's one of the things I got out of the functional patterns. Visit from Sebastian, biomechanics expert. He's been massively influenced by functional patterns, but he's also been a keen student going in his own directions with things. He show me how simple it is to be able to reset my thoracic spine and then that becomes an option. The same way that once you learn any new skill, that becomes an option for you, becomes an option for you to teach that skill, monetize it, use it, pass it on to the next generation. What would a lifetime of cultivating look like? How would you choose to live? Love you. To answer that question, you can answer it in text, but the real answer is the answer with what you can do. This is honestly where I'm at with the soccer ball. Ten years ago, I could barely string two juggles together, but I was starting to learn five ball juggling with my hands. And I had the realization of, well, there's an area of the garden there that's been untapped, untamed. Think about the Japanese gardens. So beautiful. Everything, every leaf in place, beautiful. We're men of the garden. What would that look like in terms of your own vision of athletic ability? Being able to be on the feet all day is a superpower. To run 100km in a day requires the cultivation, the ability to be on the feet. That's what I'm doing right now. If I was to do this for an hour a day, I ask people who want to be professional soccer players how much time they're spending training on their own. The usual answer I get is zero. They're like, oh no, we train with the team, who's going to touch the ball more? Me doing this for two hours a day or four Hours a day or you with your team. Now, I understand there's a role for team play and vision. And if you're poor in that area, if you struggle to see the game, then maybe that needs to be the focus. But if the ball is so automatic for you that you barely have to think about it, then obviously you're going to have better vision than the player who's scratching to keep control of the ball. So there's a new paradigm for professional athletes. Kobe Bryant played a lot of soccer. LeBron James played a lot of basketball. Yeah, he played a lot of basketball. Played a lot of American football as well. This idea, cultivating a broader garden. If you're only growing tomatoes and potatoes, you're much more vulnerable than if you have a whole permaculture set up. If you have goats and chickens, ducks, well, that's the same with athletics. It's the same with the garden of your athletic ability. It's too small, it's too narrow. I can bounce a basketball. Cool. But the best basketball players were good at something else. They developed a broader range of skills. It's well proven in the research now. But this goes beyond athletic ability, goes beyond farming, gardening, self sufficiency. This is a life philosophy. You've never sold a $10,000 product. Well, you don't have that within your garden. You don't have that within your athletic realm of possibility. So sell a $10,000 product, work towards that. It doesn't even have to be something that you've made. Could be solar power, it could be a water filter, or it could be your own product. Come and spend some time here with me. If you'd like to spend five days here with me and have me teach you this life philosophy while living it and support you to be able to make money, you want to do the three things. Athletic, rich, or smarter. Athletic means being healthy enough to be able to play like this, richer. Get to a position where you can buy a village where you can make a contribution to mankind, and then smarter. We've got nine volumes of genius to develop. Languages, music, art skills, spatial awareness, athletic ability. We've got nine volumes of genius to develop in smarter. When you adopt the life philosophy, it stops being a mystery. It stops being a mystery if you adopt the athletic philosophy. Continuing to improve yourself. Started rope flow just while I was in Mexico, just before we left. Now I can do rope flow. I could be able to do it better. I like incorporating with the footwork. I had Tim from Tim's Gym, one of the best in the world. At this stuff. Come and show me some things. If you keep adding to what you can do, keep redefining what you do, you become the best in the world. There's no one who can match my athletic ability. Snatching 100 kilos, doing the road flow back, somersaults into the water, soccer pipe ball, juggling standing up on a Swiss ball. It'd be good if there was, but it would take this philosophy catching on with men in the garden. Because man in the city never going to take this on. I get some buy in. I've had hundreds of students, but the philosophy hasn't been as clear, clean as it needs to be. I didn't have the villages before either to really make this the other way, Make this a life philosophy. There's universal positions and abilities for sport. Find the timing, find the body positions. Who would you become if you decided to cultivate? Cultivate the garden of your mind, the garden of your body. It's the vision. What's the vision? The goals to do 100 of those. The goals to do 100 single foot juggles, 103 ball throws left hand. 103 ball throws right hand. 100 single foot. Single foot juggles left and right 100 kilogram snatch, which I've done before, but it was 10 years ago. 2014. A lot of work to do. Squishy mat here makes my foot ankle work harder. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Life can be beautiful if you cultivate the garden. If you don't cultivate the garden, life will be what it is right now for most people, which is rough and getting rougher. Let's go.