Let's get this party started. Does anybody here know who Brittany Griner is? She is the Texas WNBA player who was arrested a few months ago for smuggling cannabis oils into Russia. So she was picked up by Russian customs.
They stopped her, arrested her, charged her with smuggling drugs into their country, and sentenced her to nine years. In the United States of America, we sit and spend a lot of fucking time talking about white privilege and male privilege. This privilege, your privilege, that privilege.
The fact is a lot of these people who are even talking about privilege forget just the fact that you live in a country that has freedom of speech, and you're able to say the shit that you say is more privileged than most people in the world.
Brittany Griner is a phenomenal example of a spoiled rotten American thinking that they can go wherever the fuck they want and do whatever they want and say whatever they want and behave however they want without fucking consequence. Because she's a minority and she's part of the LGBT community.
The irony behind the fact that this woman was smacked with a nine-year prison sentence is about as good as it gets because she went from being the person who, not very long ago, talked about how she was going to refuse to stand for the national anthem for the entire season that she played basketball, talking about women's rights and gay rights, and this very active political activist using her platform as a sports star to claim that she is underprivileged and didn't have the same opportunities that all these other majorities have. The fact of the matter is, she's so entitled that she thought she could go into another country where that drug is illegal and smuggle it through their customs without consequence. They were like; you do the crime, you do the fucking time here in this country. Here in this country, you do the crime, 9 times out of 10, you don't even do time.
So I did a quick search on Britney Griner and the very first search that came up or the result that came up, the headline is Trump's GOP adds insult to injury as Brittney Griner remains jailed in Russia.
The next one, Brittney Griner Verdict: Conservatives Join Trump in Siding With Russia After Brittney Griner Guilty Verdict.
She's not just going to prison. She's going to a work camp. So why am I sharing this? Because this week, they tried to file an appeal to have her sentence suspended, and that appeal was overturned, and they upheld the sentence. When I searched her name, all these left-wing political media outlets talked about how she was a political prisoner.
Once again, we have the media of the United States of America painting somebody who made a choice to do the wrong thing, going out of their way to think that they're entitled and didn't have a consequence for their behaviors, and now they're being painted as the victim.
Every chance the media gets, they look at these minority groups, and they somehow overlook the fact that she thought that she was just gonna take her weed into another country and make it through customs without suffering the consequences. And even if she was caught, there was nothing going to happen. Now because she made that choice and she's being forced to suffer the consequence of her action, she's a political prisoner.
You do the crime, and you do the time period. You would not be in a position to be a victim unless you had made a choice to violate or break that.
Period. If you are so concerned with being a victim and you know that the country that you're going to, you are under entitled, or you don't have the privilege that all these people have, then you would think that since you're so hyper-aware of that, that the fact that everybody's making your life harder and they're looking at you through a micro-lense, that you would be on your best behavior?
Just a thought, right? So like, if I got caught with my hand in the cookie jar, the next time I go to get get a cookie from the cookie jar, I'm gonna try to be extra careful. Then I don't get caught again.
Just the thought.
And so here's the other thing, and this is kind of something that I want to touch on. There are a lot of veterans who've spent time in Iraq, who's spent time in Afghanistan, who's spent time in the Middle East, Syria.
I've had people that I've worked with who've been in South America. The USA, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, we call that five eyes. If you're familiar with military lingo, five eyes, they are the only countries in the world that are tolerant how we are. We, as a Western culture, are so entitled and so far disconnected from what's happening in these countries, like in the Middle East, that you think the problems we have here are bad with people, not with the wage gap, abortion and all these hot button topics that people are talking about.
Do you think it's bad here? Go to Afghanistan. Start talking about equal rights in Afghanistan. Start talking about social justice in Afghanistan. Go to Russia, start talking about that. I guarantee your shit won't be as tolerated.
As far as this is, this country is concerned with your lack of freedom and your freedom of speech and censorship and all the things that you're facing here. It's 10x worse there.
And so Brittany Grinner, who's filing these appeals and trying to get the Biden administration to negotiate for her release and go through all this, that she plea pleaded guilty to smuggling drugs into their country.
She made the decision that's what she was gonna do, and now she's having to suffer the consequence. And our society is painting her as a victim. She is not a victim. Do not be fooled, and to allowing the world to show you that playing the victim card is okay because of it. You have to understand that if you are willing to behave a certain way, there is a consequence.
So this kind of takes me to one of my favorite books that I wanna read a caption from. And this is from the book Hard Times Create Strong Men, written by Stefan Aarnio. This book is phenomenal.
It's changed my life, and I'm actually just made the commitment to myself that I'm gonna read this book again. Here's the excerpt from his book, Chapter 29 The World Belongs to Warrior Cultures.
"Societies are born out of intolerance, and they die when they become too tolerant to function. America was born as an intolerant nation but has become an over-tolerant one. Tolerance leads to weakness, and weakness and weakness lead to hard times. What is next for our weakened nation? Every single glorious empire has been taken down by strong, violent, and hungry invaders seeking luxuries.
They lack people who are poor, the have-nots. The frustrated youth of history have always attempted to rise up for a better life. The world and the future belong to warrior societies because good times create weak men, who will ultimately be destroyed by the strong men outside the gates. Peace is unsustainable unto itself because we live in a world of haves and have-nots.
Inevitably, there is a gang, a group of have-not men out beyond the frontier. Hard times create strong men and weak men create hard times. It is the inevitable cycle of life where great empires are built and destroyed. Unfortunately, millennials are currently living in the era of weak men that drown in ephemeral pleasure and limited desires.
However, strength and greatness are determined by oneself, and so this is the best time to seize everything you have ever wanted."
What this is saying is that we now live in an era of weak men, and the reason we live in an era of weak men is that we have such good times, peaceful times.
We do not live on this frontier of survival. There is no angry tribe of less tolerant men standing outside of the gates of our society, knocking at the door, trying to take what we have. But he says peace is unsustainable unto itself because we live in a war of a group of have-not men out beyond the frontier.
What that means is there is a less tolerant group of men out there who want to come and take what we have. That's what that means. That's the cycle of life evolution and the growth of society over time, the rise in the fall of a society starts with less tolerant men.
Let's make a little bit of a transition here. I got a text from one of my clients and he basically said, "Hey man, can we do a quick phone call?"
Like, Yeah, sure, what's up?
"Hey man, I'm just kind of curious. How much does missing out on a night of good sleep really affect the quality of your workout? And I'm like pretty significantly. I would make the argument that getting a good night's sleep is the most important without even any comparison, as it pertains to the quality of your mental state, the quality of your physical state, your performance level, and also your ability to recover.
If you have, it also affects your hormone production in your body as well as a slew of organ functions, mental functions, and cognitive functions.
If your sleep deprived, everything begins to shut down. My advice to you is always to prioritize sleep, nutrition, then lifting in that order. Those are the three most important. If you're trying to lose weight and create positive and sustainable habits and stay on top of your health and make your out the priority as a man, sleep, nutrition, training, are the most important.
If you do that, you can stay consistent, you'll be healthy, you'll stay on track with your health, and you'll have a much easier time performing when you do. He called me back and said, "Hey man, you know, I tried to get a good night's sleep last night, didn't do so well. I decided, though, today during lunch, I was going to try and hit my deadlifts. And once again, I kind of hit a plateau with my deadlifts. I performed worse than I performed yesterday and I'm kind of down on myself. What do you have to say about that?"
So I want you guys to kind of take some time to think about this as you've been on this journey to lift weights, to get in shape, to be healthy, to eat right, to make your health a priority. I'm sure that every single one of you has run into one of those situations where you were actually taking steps backward. You were having trouble, you weren't performing as well, and all these things were happening, and then you're kind of in the same boat as this guy, right?
So I asked him, "Why did you hire me?"
We've been hitting PR's, and we've been working really hard to get you on track. You're lifting really, really well. Since you started with me, we've been going this way. Every week is better and better and better. We're going on week six right now, and you're kind of hitting a wall.
This is why you hired me.
It's easy to go to the gym and stay in shape, stay healthy, lift, and eat right. If I give you a plan and it fits kind of what you're trying to accomplish, that's easy.
Where it becomes difficult is when there are distractions, when there's a plateau, and when you start to doubt yourself. When you think too much when your mind starts to take over, and you, the weakness sets in, and you start making excuses and you start wondering if you're doing what you should be doing, and your insecurity set in, the uncertainty sets in, you start questioning everything that you're doing and if you're doing it right, or how much you should be lifting or what you should be doing.
Then you have family members and friends who criticize you in the world, and they make it even easier to create that excuse and want to fucking quit.
If being successful was easy, everyone would be fucking successful.
So I asked this client, "What is the difference between a novice and somebody who's intermediate?" Experience. That's the difference. "What's the difference between somebody who's intermediate and an expert?" Commitment. That's the difference. An expert, somebody who's at the top tier, the best in the world at what they do. They have committed themselves to the process. They have not committed themselves to the outcome. They've committed themselves to the process, and they understand that progress is not linear, and they're not expecting to hit PRS every week.
They enjoy the journey and the act of doing what it is that they do, and they love it so much with so much passion that they've made it their purpose, and they've chosen to pursue that relentlessly with 100% commitment. That is the difference.
Most of you guys already know what I have to tell you. You already know the information that I'm here to share with you on your workouts and your nutrition, staying on track and staying disciplined and having a work ethic, and being good fathers, husbands, and leaders, right? You already know what's right.
You know the difference between right and wrong. The reason why it's so difficult for you to stay on track and do the things that you want to do is twofold.
The first is because A: it gets hard. It's easy to stay on track with something when it's easy. It's not until it becomes hard and difficult and challenging that you have to prioritize your time and make the time and overcome the obstacles, break through plateaus and deal with injuries, deal with criticism and deal with all the mental shit that comes with the pursuit of whatever the goal you have is that is going to.
It's not until you go through those things. You are actually starting to see the real progress and the real change.
When you're lifting weights, and you're doing a set, your workout doesn't start until it hurts, until it burns, until the fatigue sets in. That's when your workout starts.
It's not the first weight you lift. It's when it starts to hurt. When you start questioning whether or not you want to keep doing it, when you start creating excuses in your mind, when you start doubting whether or not you can do it, that's when it starts.
Most motherfuckers out there will never grow and become because they quit when they started that path to greatness. Anybody can be decent at something, and even if you have a certain amount of talent, you can only go so far without commitment.
So that's the first piece of perspective I want to give you.
He doubted himself. He was questioning himself. "Why am I not strong as I was last week? This sucks." I gave him that feedback.
The second piece of feedback I gave him as I said;
"When you hired me, your goal, wasn't to become a bodybuilder. You told me that it was not to become a powerlifter. It was not to become a better athlete. It was not to do any of those things.
And I can tell you right now, if I was coaching you to be a better athlete, as hard as I've been having you work for the past six weeks, it would probably be a good idea for us to do a deload week so that we can give your central nervous system a break. Okay, that's normal.
But what you did when you hired me is you told me that your goal was to be the meanest, strongest, hardest-to-kill motherfucker that you knew. That's what you said. You said you wanted to be as hard to kill as possible. Well, I'm here to tell you that there are savages at the fucking gate. You guys don't even know they're there, and they want your fucking dinner, and those dudes aren't doing deload weeks."
They're not taking a break because they're tired and didn't get a good night's sleep in their comfortable little baby bed with their baby bottle last night.
They are still working.
And so if you told me you wanted to go fucking compete in a powerlifting competition, or go stand on a stage in a pair of skis and have a bunch of other men judge your physique, the way that we would be training would be a lot different than the way I'm training you now. The way I am training you now is that when you fucking grab somebody, they know you're there. When you shake his hand, he winces a little.
So keep that in mind. When you are going through your training, you need to be very precise and very specific about exactly why you're doing what you are doing because that is going to dictate the way that you train.
If your goal is like most of the men in our community and me, and you want to be the hardest motherfucker there is to kill you, don't get a fucking break, period.
We are the ones who are going to be prepared to let a motherfucker fuck around and find out. That's my goal with this.
There's a threshold. And if you cross that line, if you cross that boundary and you fuck with me, you're gonna have a bad day. As long as you leave me alone, you let me live my life. We're cool.
You let me live the way that I wanna live and don't force your bullshit down my throat or try to indoctrinate my children, and we're cool,
There's no time out when you're fighting for your life.
Something is better than nothing when it comes to your training. You're not always gonna be perfect. Your progress is not gonna always be linear.
The days where you can't perform your best, the days where you're not mentally there, where you don't want to show up, where you're not motivated. The days where you're second guessing yourself and your weakness start to creep in, and your insecurities, your doubts, your uncertainties, and all that shit starts to pile up, the day where you're starting to feel fucking sorry for yourself. The day when you're looking for somebody to appreciate you or validate you or give yourself a pat on the back and tell yourself you're doing a good job. Those are the days when you show up, and you give it your all. Even if you didn't perform as well as you would have at a hundred percent and you still showed up, those are the days that are going to make you a man and make you the man that you want to be.
I asked him,
"What did you deadlift last week?"
He said, 385 for reps.
"What did you deadlift this week?"
365 for reps.
That's 365 pounds more than the next fucking guy.
Being a high-value man in today's society basically comprises of showing up and being consistent. Can you do that? You're in the top 10%.
To get the top 1%. All you have to do is show up and be consistent. Even on the days when you don't want to or when it becomes difficult, fuck your feelings. They don't get a vote.
Stay vigilant. See you soon.
