Jiu-Jitsu as Stress Management

I'm going to attest to that for someone who used to do BJJ once in a blue moon ago. Literally like you have someone who's trying to like jump around your neck. It forces you to slow down. Yeah. Like it literally forced you just to go stop. Okay. I'm going to assess the situation. Okay. How do I get out of this without getting choked the fuck out? Absolutely. And the real idea is if you peel back and you look at what is the purpose of meditation, like what are you trying to achieve in meditation? It's to actually take a step back, slow down and just observe thoughts really and just like not overthink things. And when you're doing Jiu-Jitsu, the reality is quite often the only thing you have to think about is how do I break this grip off my neck? How do I get his weight off me? Like it's just such a simple thing that brings you back to this sort of primal survival mode where the issues you're experiencing day to day, relationships, jobs, stress, money, finance, all of these things are inconsequential when you have to move a physical weight off you. It also teaches you how to control that stress response because, okay, you end up on the bottom and someone your size or bigger is on top of you and you can't breathe and they're covering your face and you're trying not to give them something to lever into an arm bar or a triangle or whatever. and you have to learn, okay, calm down because getting, getting like crazy and freaked out is not going to help things. And you're going to burn all your energy. So you learn just to, you learn just to frame up and just wait and to just be very patient. And the first few times you roll, it's like one minute in and you're dry heaving and throwing up outside. Then you're like, everyone's like, dude, you got to calm down. So you get on the bottom and you calm down. Now you're rolling for three minutes. Okay. I can do this. And then after a few weeks, you're rolling for 20 or 30 minutes and you're not even tired. And it's like, I now can control my emotional state. I can control that stress response. And then when you're outside of the, outside of your, your club, you're like, okay, what's going on right now is not that big of a deal. I just need to frame and relax and take care of it and look for an opportunity. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing. Like, that's beautiful. You touched on about like, fuck, that was good, right? That was good that was good that's fantastic for a guy that's been doing it for how long um the reality is you start to learn to at least be uh attuned to and sensitive to your psychological responses to difficult situations and i always explain this to people like i mean i work in an office i'm a designer so i go into some heavy design heavy office type situations and i always look at as no situation is ever going to be as hard as having someone like with their hand on my throat knee riding me mounting me taking my back and in that moment all i care about is trying to escape that situation nothing in life is ever really as hard as that most of the time in that moment in that moment that's the thing a lot of people who've never experienced jujitsu listening in they're not going to understand just how challenging it is they're not going to understand like how much it's going to test their character to stand up or you know lay down in in this case and and really try and figure this thing out It is such a challenging undertaking and that what I love about it That why my journey has been so back and forth over the years with it but it is a very very serious undertaking and you command respect when you start to get good at it and that's the thing. It's not about the belts, it's not about the grades, it's not about the achievements, but the lifestyle. When you can incorporate that into your lifestyle, so many other things within your life will change with it as you get better at it you get better at coping with different situations definitely i was gonna say when people ask me oh do you think i should do jiu-jitsu you think i'll be good at it i'm like i don't know if you that's inconsequential the reality is i guarantee you that if you stay at it long enough you will be 100 better than the person you were when you walked in the door the first time you won't even be the same person because the reality is in order for you to become better at that and to improve you need to change you need to change how you respond to losing, to failure, to stress, to all these difficult situations. And you won't improve unless you change those qualities about yourself. Yeah. And you and I had a great conversation about this after you taught me some lessons. And it's like, you know, there's no place for ego on the mat because ego gets you hurt. And you learn, we talk about empathy in this podcast. You learn a lot of empathy because you can seriously hurt them or they can seriously hurt you. And when someone's choking the shit out of you and you know it, it won't take much for them to end that shit for you you learn to respect it and then you will learn to respect the other person when you have them in that position it's like okay i'm just gonna go just hard enough to get the choke and then they tap and i'm done and it gives you a lot of respect for not only yourself but other people but human life and empathy and saying okay fuck man i've got all this massive control and power that i can have and it gives you a lot of respect for it absolutely and it's a very humbling process as well and like particularly with any kind of extreme sport you do whether it's weightlifting or jiu-jitsu, it does expose and highlight the very real limitations you have. And that's not a bad thing. Learning the limitations you have and trying to work around those and push those, like learning that you can only lift a certain amount and not letting your ego get in the way and walk in and say, look, I'm going to lift 600 kilos today. It's only going to get you hurt. When we talk about respect, I just want to say this one time. I've got a lot of respect for you, Luke, because when you got onto that mat, I could see in your eyes you had no interest in rolling with Brenton. You tried to talk me out of letting Brenton get on that mat with you, but you stuck with it. There was a good, I reckon, 30 minutes, 30 to 40 minutes that you got your ass handed to you by Brenton for the first maybe 5 to 10, and then you allowed Brenton to show you a few things. And that is the essence of jiu-jitsu. You've got to get your fucking head smashed in first, learn your humility so that those above you can show you what you need to know and that that is that is part of the art you need to lose you need to be the nail before you can be the hammer and so like i've got a lot of respect for what i witnessed there on my you know four by four jigsaw mat in our little studio here tonight look here's the thing you want to learn you roll with a master you roll with somebody who actually knows their craft and yeah you're probably going to get your ass handed to you and you say okay i realize that you know how long you've been training okay i'm making a timeline of how long it's going to take me to get good like that because that's that's what you're searching for that's right and if you're you look for a mentor mentors come in lots of shapes and sizes and they come at different times of your life and i'm saying okay next time in melbourne you know what i'm gonna do we're gonna fucking get on that mat or somewhere else and he's gonna choke the fuck out of me and i'm gonna go okay you're gonna learn more and i'm gonna okay how do i prevent that and what do i do and i'm gonna come back for more and more and more and he's going to choke me out. He's going to arm bar me. He's going to arm a plot of me. He's going to do all this shit to me. And every time I'm going to learn something else, I'm going to take that back with me and I'm going to process that. But if I don't have the humility, if I'm not humble enough to accept that instruction, then I'm not a worthy student. Could not have said it better. Thank you. No. Thank you for allowing me to witness that. Good on you, Brenton, for kicking his ass and teaching him a thing or two. You really fucking enjoyed that, I know. I think we all did. And Isaac over there was losing his shit. He was loving it. He walks in and I'm like, oh, fuck. Here's the grip. He's so much bigger than I imagined. And he comes in like, I've got my Gi stuff in a duffel bag. He's got like the professional backpack. And I'm like, then he walks out. He's got a black belt on, but it's gray. So I'm like, holy shit. I do want to shout out to MMA Fight Story. Gave me that amazing bag. So good deal. Anytime I have the chance to roll with a black belt, I'm going to roll. and I know I'm going to get the shit kicked out of me, but I'm going to learn a lot. Wow, the phone just rang again. That's a first for the Unknown Strength podcast. There's a lot of firsts on this episode. I'll tell you what, the phone's ringing off the hook here at Fitline Personal Training. Are we taking calls tonight? Caller, you're on the line. Do you have questions? Yeah, let's bring it back to like the 90s. No, that's...