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.
Elon is taking Space X public before the AI bubble pops and the companies valuations are cut drastically
Will go down as the most genius stock move of the last 50 years
Giga brain
He wants to be first to extract all the AI hungry liquidity, the last one to IPO between Open AI, and Anthropic will do the worst
#spacex #ipo #stocks #ai
EVERY SINGLE TIME an asset has "guaranteed" returns like this treasury companies they always implode
You cannot have something for free
You must pay for gain with risk
This happened with Luna and FTX and it seems no one learned their lesson
Avoiding confrontation is single behavior that will ruin your life
You must CONFRONT. Confront your problems, confront your avoidances, confront those behaving improperly
The only way out is through. And to blast through requires confrontation
Be at peace, then, put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations, and say continually: The Lord is my strength and shield; my heart has trusted in Him and I am helped.
-St. Francis de Sales
Life is a war. Its a war to create the reality you want. Its a war to become the most capable, honourable, competitive, articulate and excellent version of yourself possible. It's a war against weakness, limiting beliefs, laziness/scarcity to create excellence and self respect.