Cardio is mostly mental. I’ve believed this for years but I’m 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 it’s some elite VO2 max, some superior aerobic engine. That’s not what’s happening.
Pay attention to how they move. They’re playing.
Every shot isn’t 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 isn’t there. There’s a looseness to everything they do that looks almost casual, but on the other side of that casual posture is devastating effectiveness.
That looseness isn’t a technique quirk. It’s a performance state. It’s the reason their cardio looks supernatural.
Here’s what I think is actually going on:
Tightness is metabolically expensive. When you’re stressed aka afraid, afraid of giving up position, afraid of losing, afraid of looking bad, your body begins to brace for impact. Muscles that shouldn’t be working are working overtime. Your breathing changes. Your movement loses fluidity. Every action costs more than it should. You’re not gassing because your lungs are small. You’re gassing because fear has a fuel cost.
The playful athlete doesn’t have that overhead. Their nervous system isn’t 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 can’t just coach someone to “attack more.” Coaches can tell their guys to go out and attack. That’s good solid advice. But if the athlete isn’t in a playful state, if they’re tight, if every offensive sequence feels like a high stakes gamble, the instruction won’t translate. The body can’t cooperate. The mind will second guess everything they do. They’ll 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.
I’ve watched this in myself for years doing jiu jitsu and boxing. The only time I get tired is when I leave that state. When I’m loose, playing, experimenting, being creative, my energy expenditure is different. I do things I didn’t know I could do. Time moves differently. The round ends and I’m surprised it’s over. The moment I get tight, whether it’s ego, whether it’s fear, bad position, someone catching me off guard, my gas disappears almost immediately.
That’s not a coincidence. That’s the mechanism.
And here’s where it gets deeper: some athletes have to almost die to find that state. You’ve 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 couldn’t access before getting dropped.
That state was available the whole time. He didn’t need to get hurt to find it. He just needed to let go of what was costing him.
The best athletes don’t 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 doesn’t create a new person. It reveals the one that’s already there.
Which means the real question isn’t “how do I build more cardio.” It’s “who am I when I compete, and is that person loose enough to play?”
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 “cardio” will take care of itself.
@ellobosalvaje@Nick_Just_Nike I think we’d have more phenomenal athletes, if the average guy didn’t shun the idea that “play” is essential in performance
The insecure male athlete mocks the idea of play, as it’s “feminine”
But there’s nothing more masculine than dominating an opponent while having fun
@ApexSapien Disturbing content
We know she’s coping
We know she hurts deeply from still missing out on motherhood: her innate biological and spiritual calling
But to cope, she posts these horrific videos to a low iq audience, desperately seeking validation for her immense heartache
Pain.
He didn't die young. Just like Rich Piana didn't die young. Just like Zyzz didn't die young
When a man constructs his identity around a specific image of himself, God starts a countdown timer
And time is up exactly when he achieves it
If you see yourself as a physical form, that's exactly how reality will treat you
If you see the highest objective of your life as actualizing that physical form, reality will give you all the time you need, yet simultaneously not a second more
Reality can be conceptualized as a learning machine where all wishes are granted
You wish to take form for a specific reason, so you incarnate with a subjective sense of "I". This "I" is interwoven with a core intention. And for human birth to happen, the intention must be so strong it compells physical incarnation so it can be experienced
Every moment of the life, regardless of whether it is clear to the human or not, is then devoted to manifesting this intention
This may look paradoxical on the surface. For instance, if someone intends to experience freedom, it may initially look like the pain of experiencing every illusory limitation so they can be seen and disregarded
Look at an individual moment of suffering and you are likely to miss what's happening and how everything serves you
Just as believing these bodybuilders lives were "cut short" demonstrates you still believe there are mistakes
There aren't any mistakes. It doesn't work like that. Every single moment of anguish and bliss is exactly what you signed up with the original intention that prompted your incarnation
Individual life streams end exactly when the original intention is made manifest, no exceptions
If a bodybuilder came to experience what it is to be physically beautiful, or to have tremendous muscle mass, or to be physically envied by other men (perhaps seeded by having been ugly, scrawny or rejected in a prior life), and everything in him drives towards it. Then that's exactly when the story of his life ends
There are even cases where a bodybuilder reaches beyond form and seeks to have his legacy inspire others. In this case, the perfect legacy is often not a long life. It's dying young, at the precise peak and letting the brief intensity of the fire be a stronger message than any slow decline into old age could ever be. Zyzz falls into this category
Reality always manifests your deepest intention. It's always listening, always saying yes to your heart, always granting your deepest wish, even if you temporarily forgot what that might be. And long periods of forgetting and pain might have been exactly what was necessary to fulfil the wish
You might start thinking of elderly bodybuilders. But in every single example, if you look deeply enough, you will find a different wish driving them
Take Arnold. He grew up with an abusive father. His deepest wish was to become untouchable. To erase every ounce of feeling small or powerless or unwanted. He conquered bodybuilding, but it was about the would, never about bodybuilding. And when he did, he found that same bottomless void of trauma waiting, so he moved to the next thing, then the next, and the next
He is still not done with this story, which is why his life continues. Even now, he continues grinding and seeking a form of ultimate power or legacy that cannot be taken away. That's the surface level wish. But the evidence of his life shows his deepest wish might be to see through the illusion of power by first experiencing every form of it
Lives last the precise amount of time they need to in order to fulfill the deepest intention
So when you see a bodybuilder die young, know that it has absolutely nothing to do with steroids. It's exactly what they signed up for. Exactly what they wanted. Their divine intention made manifest perfectly in the world of form
@ApexSapien “…like I’ll have my ownnn money. But like I’ll never have to worry if he’s got me or not.” Bytches want their cake and to eat it too but life don’t work that way
The fire I feel in my gut, to be the absolute greatest version of myself I can possibly be, burns brighter and more brilliant than ever before
Cackling like a psychopath at the idea of anything that tries to stand between me and victory