What’d we say? | Podcast Transcript

(00:00):

What’s good. Thank you for joining me. I’m Johann Francis and welcome to my show. Ego Killer! Here on the show, we cover all the moves you make inside the gym so that you can move better outside in life, outside in life is our playground. It’s where change happens, but we iron clad our habits inside the gym. Here’s where we learn our limits. We learn how to push past our limits. And when you learn what that threshold is, you deepen your knowledge of yourself. You get to know yourself better. It’s like going on a really long date with yourself, right? It’s therapy for the body.

(00:47):

And in order to get to know more about yourself, you gotta understand that there is a wellspring, a wellspring of character and personality beneath the surface. I’m sure you guys know it. I believe you guys are like that. I know I am. I know you wouldn’t be able to tell what I’m physically capable of. Simply by looking at me, you’d have to see me rock. I’d have to see you guys rock, which is why it’s so confounding and painful. When somebody refers to you as a one and done, Ugh, the disrespect is real. When someone calls you a one and a done, you ever been called a one and done, maybe not to your face, maybe not tacitly, but somebody offers that you only have enough substance to sustain a short idea, right? Or that your ideas have zero to do with a greater picture. You’re written off real quick. You ever been showed the door a little bit too early, or somebody referred to you as a one and done.

(01:51):

Maybe someone made a path passing aesthetic reference to the way you look and assume that you’re capable of all kinds of prowes right? All kinds of physical feet, jumping tall buildings in a single bound, but that’s it. After that you need a nap and a cigarette you ever been referred to as a one and done like how cruel, how disrespectful, how superficial and no one wants to be the one and done, right? No one wants to be referred to as one and done because it implies you lack depth that you lack actual operational skill. And how messed up is that. Even if we’re talking about the, the field of physicality in life, maybe you’re practicing, right? Maybe you’re doing your, your heavy bag drills, right? Or your working toward a goal, working the triathlon, right? Maybe you’re doing your cycling. And when you start training, you’re training up against somebody who’s coaching you.

(03:02):

And they’re kind of like, man, you got no depth to your game at all. This is so painful because it is underscores the idea that of superficiality, right? Oftentimes people will misjudge us superficially. Most of the time, these things are based on aesthetics. Most of the time when we’re misjudged in those ways, it’s because folks will look at you and assume that you’re not capable. And your idea is don’t line up with the quo Tian ideas with the mainstream ideas of the day. So maybe you’re in the boardroom offering up ideas, serving them up, serving them up. And they’re just getting bracketed back to you. Like, you know, like Naomi soccer or something, you know, being a one and done is nothing nice. So inside the gym, I want you guys to train for duration, train, to not be a flash in the pan.

(04:03):

There is a couple of reasons. This is important. I’m a, I’m gonna lay ’em out for you. Let me know. Let me know what you think. All right. So firstly, it’s like this stress stress in life. It is really like an accumulation of stressors that are brought on by triggers or they’re really intense triggers that happen outta nowhere. Now, if they’re really intense, acute stressors is good to be able to respond end. It’s good to be able to respond. Those are the stressors that we’re all well aware of. Like I’m afraid of bees, right? So I do not go to the rose garden right here in San Jose. I don’t go to the rose garden in the summer. For example, I’m not really afraid of bees, but I’m saying this is the way that I avoid the trigger of stress, which is not a big deal.

(04:55):

I can avoid the whole rose garden. Ain’t nothing right. That’s nothing. But what if those stresses are more acute? What if they’re more, I guess, daily or surrounds you all the time, then it could become a lot harder to avoid. That’s why we don’t wanna practice avoidance. When it comes to our stressors. When the stressors appear outta nowhere like that, it’s like you training inside the gym to be a one and done well, if you train, just to avoid that one thing, if you train so that the acute stresses in your life are, you know, avoidable or doable, that’s all you’ll ever get good at unfortunately stressors, they add up, they add up, they build up. They accumulate not only that, but avoidance is a very skin deep type of reaction to stress. So we have to train for duration because the accumulation of stress, the buildup of burnout inside our daily life is very real.

(05:59):

I’ve told you many times, or I’ve said on this show, like what happens? I feel like when most of you, when you come in to see me or coaches like me, 90% of you, you’re looking for a new work life balance. And I do mean 90%. A lot of you are out here looking for a better work life balance. You’re that imbalance is eating away at your physicality, which is tearing away at your eating pattern, which is having the deleterious effects on your long term health. Your work life balance is. And so what happens is we come to the gym to establish new habits, new mindsets, and ironclad, Bulletproof our body for those stressors, if I want a bullet proof of a bullet resistant body, well I’m only gonna train just as long as it takes to respond to acute stressors, I’ll train to be a one and done, excuse the analogy. But life sometimes has the, a plum, I guess, to not just throw one bullet at you, one stressor at you, but life could spray the block, right? <Laugh> and so it’s important not to just train, to avoid one stressor. We have to train for duration.

(07:27):

This became clear to me a few years back, I’m inside a room of Moi fighters like six years ago now. It’s men, it’s women, it’s tiny little shorts everywhere. I’m the tallest one. I probably weigh the most. And I’m, you know, I’m a stringy guy or wiry I’m wiry, you know, but here I am. I’m the most green out of everybody in a room. So here we go with the Mo tie with the elbows, with the knees, this is a kickboxing technique. And me and the shorter guy that I knew is inside the gym doing our sparring session. And we’re in the clench. Now, a clench is a conundrum of a situation where we’re jockeying for position. Our hands are roped inside of each other one on top the other on the opposite side and we’re jockeying for foot position so that we could throw the best knees and a best case scenario.

(08:25):

He can throw me on my and get me to stand up again. If he does this repeatedly, the act of standing up makes me more tired and easier to hit. That’s the clench. Did I mention that everybody, men and women in this room, bad asses just certified bad asses, right? Capable of knocking down people twice, three times their size cuz they’re badass, amateur and professional tie fighting wig splitters <laugh>. So I’m in the room. I’m jockeying for position with this dude. He’s five, six. Maybe he is like 1 65 and we’re locking up all of a sudden as he’s kneeing me in the ribs, right? He’s tapping me in the ribs, trying to get me to respond. I lift up my right leg to respond. All of a sudden the entire earth decides to do a Summeral and not alert me.

(09:21):

The ceiling is now underneath me. The floor is now above me. And then boom, everything goes back to normal. Only what the hell. I’m on my back. I lo my mind back and I’m listening to this man chuckle and he says <laugh> beach muscle. The disrespect is real. This man implied that I only work out. I only get strong so that I can rock out, show out and show up at the beach and at my skill set. And that my skillset was about as deep as a puddle, right? How dare in that moment for whatever reason, my aesthetics told him that I one ready for it.

(10:08):

Can you believe that? Have you, that has that ever happened to anyone? Has that happened to you? Someone, you know where you’re referred to in such a way where it’s like, yo, I have more depth than that. And there’s nothing more insulting than being characterized as someone that only has aesthetic depth and lacks anything behind it. I think even worse still, if somebody misjudges your intellectual depth, you ever been inside the room of ideas, brainstorming with your team and your voice just gets real, real quiet, because you’ve been written off far too many times.

(10:50):

Maybe at some point we start to listen to that. We start to listen to the messages of others. Instead of being vociferous in those situations, it ends up like, yo, maybe I should shut my trap. Maybe I should just work out to look good. And that’s it because it’s so freaking glorious. You can go on right now to social media. You could do your, your thumb exercise, swipe up on those reels and look and see how many people are showing out, doing the thing, working power lifting for glory, glory lifting, and they look great doing it. It’s easy to find. All you gotta do is flick that thumb up and you find it. And so it becomes very tempting to wanna work for short duration, to lift as heavy and as hard as you can then bail the hell out right afterward. Cuz you did that. Right, but I never want to get stuck inside the domain of the one and done. No thank you. No thank you. All right. When I say one and done, I’m not talking about the college athlete turn pro about to make money. Cuz there are some huge flaws with that game there too. However I am talking about in the world of ideas in the world of physicality. So what do we do? We train for duration.

(12:25):

When we want to inside the gym, train to one and done ourselves, right? We want to train to kind of be hot for a second. That’s great. But there’s all this extra time where you’re resting. So you might do heavy lifts, heavy squats, heavy bench, press 3, 6, 8 reps put that weight down. You got all this extra time, right? You got all this extra time. Well not only do you have extra time, you have extra body, you have extra body. If you did your heavy back squat, you have a whole upper body that you could go really heavy with back to back. We have ancillary muscles that we need to be training. When we’re done going really heavy, we start to taper and go light with our compound move for the day we start to go really light. Maybe then we start thinking about doing body weight after that.

(13:23):

And we taper the intensity down inside the gym in order to avoid in this case, the very crushing reality of people calling us a one and done trained for duration. Maybe it’s up to you to feel a little silly and jump on that treadmill and go past 3.5 for once you want to do it on an incline, all right. Maybe it’s time to start jogging. God forbid. <Laugh> right. And I say that in kind of condescending kind of way. And I apologize for that, but I mean a lot of us were too cool to be caught dead on a treadmill running and that’s fine, but we still gotta work towards getting, getting that heart going. I know a lot of us out here, our doctors want us to get our heart going and we’re so used to just lifting. I know we talked about it before.

(14:19):

We’re used to lifting and doing the things that we’re comfortable with, but we gotta get that heart moving, man, because that aesthetic one on 1, 1, 1 and done. Steve’s just, ain’t it. We’re supposed to be out here for a long time in this case, not a short and a good but long in this particular case, right? We have kids in this, they need us around. We have cousins, we have loved ones. All right. And so we need to be around long enough for ’em a forum, not only to just exist, but to perform, to access life right at that second tier, that next tier of existence where we’re actually impacting the world around us. That’s what we need to be doing. That’s why we’re here to do that. That’s what it is. And so when you’re a one and done, you can’t really do that.

(15:14):

I am proud to say that about at this point a year ago, I met up with the same crew again. That’s right. We got to scuffling again inside the gym sparring. It wasn’t the same, same crew, but a couple of the guys were still there including Mr. Beach man. This time, Mr. Beman was a little bit older. He’s a little bit older. He’s older than me by I think at least five years, but now he’s in his forties and he’s, you know, admittedly older and not up to task. Like he used to be he’s human, but we got to working.

(16:00):

We got to working and of all the times that I worked, this was the best I’ve ever done. Working with him, working with mans. And I was able to at least lay some shots on him that I had never able to do before low those many years calling me beach muscle made me think about how I can stay active, how I can work on things when I’m not, when I’ve done the work, there’s still more work to do. How I can commit myself to creating sustainability sustenance in my vibe, in my fitness, working on my injuries. When my body sore, working on recovery as much more than just doing nothing, spending more time stretching and getting mobile before I lift heavy so that I don’t crash out earlier, spending more time doing higher rep counts, never taking time off under, excuse me, understanding that there is no finish line. That’s what I learned. And so when we got to sparring again, I’ve touched them up better than I ever had.

(17:12):

Both of us guessing rounds over. We go to sit down. I said, so who’s beach muscle now. And he laughed a little bit and I go, I’ll never forget when you called me beach muscle. Before when you tripped me, he laughed again. We got to talking after and it felt good. Trained to sustain. Please train to sustain. All right. Trained to sustain. Not only for sustainability’s sake, but train so that there’s more underneath the surface. We don’t want to ever get shut out of the room of ideas because other people might look at us, unfavorably, aesthetically and misjudge us. We’re never gonna change. Anyone’s mind on our aesthetics, on how we look, what we look like, but we can always sustain. And I just wanna make sure that we’re gonna be alright. I also wanna make sure that yo, I wanna make sure that you like this episode so you can show me if by going on to podcasts and rating it. You rated I’ll send you a free gift. I promise. Try that one out. I hope it works out for you. Let me know how it goes on the website@egokillershow.com and until then

(18:49):

Stay up.