Packing thousands of straws together basically creates a low-tech pixel screen.
Each straw acts as an independent light pathway, perfectly mimicking how data channels work.
Cardio is mostly mental. Iāve believed this for years but Iām finally able to articulate why.
Watch some of the best wrestlers in the world right now. Bo Bassett. Mitchell Messenbrink. Jax Forrest. These guys look like they have unlimited gas. People assume itās some elite VO2 max, some superior aerobic engine. Thatās not whatās happening.
Pay attention to how they move. Theyāre playing.
Every shot isnāt life or death. Every scramble is an opportunity rather than a life or death crisis. They attack from bad positions. They back out and reset without hesitation if the feeling isnāt there. Thereās a looseness to everything they do that looks almost casual, but on the other side of that casual posture is devastating effectiveness.
That looseness isnāt a technique quirk. Itās a performance state. Itās the reason their cardio looks supernatural.
Hereās what I think is actually going on:
Tightness is metabolically expensive. When youāre stressed aka afraid, afraid of giving up position, afraid of losing, afraid of looking bad, your body begins to brace for impact. Muscles that shouldnāt be working are working overtime. Your breathing changes. Your movement loses fluidity. Every action costs more than it should. Youāre not gassing because your lungs are small. Youāre gassing because fear has a fuel cost.
The playful athlete doesnāt have that overhead. Their nervous system isnāt running a threat response in the background. This makes movement much cheaper. It makes decisions come faster. They can sustain a pace that looks impossible because for them, it actually is easier.
This is why you canāt just coach someone to āattack more.ā Coaches can tell their guys to go out and attack. Thatās good solid advice. But if the athlete isnāt in a playful state, if theyāre tight, if every offensive sequence feels like a high stakes gamble, the instruction wonāt translate. The body canāt cooperate. The mind will second guess everything they do. Theyāll gas early with no idea as to why.
The fighters that seem to have infinite endurance have trained themselves, or were born with a different relationship to competition. They reduce competition from a high stakes battle to a simple game.
Iāve watched this in myself for years doing jiu jitsu and boxing. The only time I get tired is when I leave that state. When Iām loose, playing, experimenting, being creative, my energy expenditure is different. I do things I didnāt know I could do. Time moves differently. The round ends and Iām surprised itās over. The moment I get tight, whether itās ego, whether itās fear, bad position, someone catching me off guard, my gas disappears almost immediately.
Thatās not a coincidence. Thatās the mechanism.
And hereās where it gets deeper: some athletes have to almost die to find that state. Youāve seen it in fights. A guy gets badly hurt, nearly finished, he survives and then something releases. The fear burns off. The body stops bracing. And suddenly the guy who looked dead comes back to life and starts performing at a level he couldnāt access before getting dropped.
That state was available the whole time. He didnāt need to get hurt to find it. He just needed to let go of what was costing him.
The best athletes donāt need the near death experience. They walk out already there.
Ali boxed like Ali talked, light, taunting, dancing, impossible to hold. Tyson boxed like Tyson looked, coiled, explosive, total predator. The ring doesnāt create a new person. It reveals the one thatās already there.
Which means the real question isnāt āhow do I build more cardio.ā Itās āwho am I when I compete, and is that person loose enough to play?ā
The future of grappling and combat sports belongs to the athletes who figured out play is the highest performance state. Not getting hyped up. Not being ultra aggression. Not discipline grinding through pain.
Play. Loose. Passionate. Present.
Train your nervous system to live there and your ācardioā will take care of itself.
Guatemala will let U.S. forces carry out strikes against cartel targets within its borders, following Ecuador's lead. Honduras may join next, according to the New York Times.