Immortal Wisdom Weekly #50
The Confidence To Be Great, Uncoachable vs. Coachable, The Fighter In Us
Update On Mark Coleman: He’s Back!
If you’ve seen what happened to Mark and his family over the last week, I have some updates.
So Mark got discharged from the hospital after the fire incident but ended up getting readmitted shortly after.
At first, they thought he had a heart attack, but it ended up being pneumonia.
Because he’s a warrior, he fought through that and now he’s back home again and looking good.
So please send Mark and his family some positive energy and prayers, whatever you’re into!
The Confidence To Be Great
Remember when you were a kid and your parents told you that you could do anything if you put your mind to it?
That is the type of borderline delusion you need to have in yourself to be a great fighter or champion in this sport.
Obviously, there are limits to everything. Anything realistic is on the table.
To be a superstar in terms of fame, all the belief in yourself won’t do anything for you. It’s all about making others believe in you.
Some guys are very confident in themselves, but they don’t speak out a lot. They don’t have the personalities that go viral or are marketable on a large scale.
But that strong self-belief is a good thing.
If you notice a lot of guys coming up in the beginning, their belief isn’t that strong. But as they get more experience, it grows at a rapid pace.
Because they’re reinforcing what they say they’re gonna do. So there’s evidence there. That’s what your mind needs.
A good example of this is breaking through plateaus in weightlifting. If you’re trying to bench 410, but your previous max was 405 – you still have confidence you can do it.
Because there’s a history of evidence of you getting all the way up to 405. All of that took a certain level of work, dedication, and mindset.
That’s why you see guys build in confidence so quickly, particularly in the UFC. Because for fighters outside of the UFC, the UFC seems like a big thing and the end goal.
And I think for most guys when they finally reach that dream and get in the UFC, they start questioning whether or not they belong there.
It’s the big leagues now and you’re fighting fucking lions every time.
But as fighters stack victories and build evidence, that confidence starts to grow along with it.
Uncoachable vs. Coachable
There are different levels when it comes to coachable vs. uncoachable athletes.
For the extreme levels of uncoachable, you don’t even wanna work with them anyway. It’s not enjoyable and I’ve dealt with those people before.
Whether they have success or not, it’s up to them and I don’t want to be around it. I’ve built my gym up to a point where I can pick and choose and I don’t want that shit around me.
It’s my gym and if you don’t want me to coach you, then there are plenty of other gyms out there.
At my gym, there are plenty of guys who aren’t the best athletes, but they’re very coachable.
Obviously, there are genetic limitations to athletic ability. If you’re on the lower end, no amount of coaching can get you past the hump.
As a matter of fact, we’ve had a few guys who didn’t win the genetic lottery, but they put in a ton of time, a lot of hard work, and listened. And unfortunately, there’s a ceiling for them, it is what it is.
Finding the right balance between exploiting an athlete’s natural talent and coachability is a rare thing.
But that’s when guys start to succeed.
I don’t mind if someone's not overly coachable. Because they need to believe in what they’re doing.
When you’re coaching someone, you’re kinda brainwashing them to believe what you’re teaching.
If they really believe in what they’re doing on their own, my job as a coach is to reinforce that versus trying to re-coach something.
It’s a pretty interesting topic especially when I’m talking to my guys at the gym.
I always say when it comes to being coachable, there is no right or wrong. It just comes down to what works and what doesn’t work.
What works for you may not work for someone else. Vice versa.
When you’re coaching, there is an extent of technique and teaching them your style. But it’s more like guiding them through their journey.
The best guys are the ones who want to overwork. And your job is to tell them to stop and take a break.
Those are the guys I personally like the most. And I think those are the guys who have the most success.
But the job of a coach is to see things the athletes don’t see. Give them outside opinions, open their minds, and keep them in line.
The Fighter In Us
You might’ve seen the recent thing with Dustin Poirier and jumping guillotines. Even though his coach told him not to multiple times, he kept doing it.
I’ve actually had the opposite happen. My coach kept telling me to do something over and over, and I wouldn’t do it.
We do all this practice and prepare as hard as possible, but when we step foot in the Octagon – everything goes out the window sometimes.
That’s just the fighter in us. We just wanna fucking go for it.
But I think this ties right into what we were talking about before. Dustin Poirier probably hits the guillotine all the time in training, so he had a lot of evidence that he’s good at it and it works.
Also, piggybacking off the previous section, the coach's job is to tell Dustin to not go for it. So they were saying the right thing.
But I do think coaches need to be careful when they’re cornering guys. You don’t want that battle in the fighter’s mind.
At the end of the day, Dustin is the one in there fighting. He sees his opponent leaving himself open for the guillotine. The last thing you want is Dustin second-guessing himself and thinking about how his coach is telling him not to do it.
I think that’s a tough battle for a fighter’s mind. He should be free to do whatever he wants. That’s my 2 cents on it.
There are two sides to it. But you gotta allow the fighters to be themselves.
Slay Your Inner Demon Weekly
The real game is on the inside.
Every day I wake up and pick a tougher fight. A fight with that bitch ass inner demon inside of me. Every day my purpose is to starve that motherfucker of any little drop.
He never dies though! He’s always there, ready to strike at any moment and take over my mind and take me where I don’t need to go.
So in this weekly series, I’m gonna document challenging shit I’m doing to test myself. I hope this encourages you to do the same and unlock your highest potential!
My hard thing this week was dealing with everything with Coleman. Seeing him go to the hospital was tough.
I did a lot of media this week surrounding those events. It wasn’t a physically hard thing, but it was a mentally difficult time. Just trying to show my support any way I can.
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That ends it for this week’s Immortal Wisdom Weekly.
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Matt “The Immortal” Brown