Red Hawk Essentials #32
Change Your Environment, Perfectionism, Win The Crowds or Win The Fight?
Change Your Environment, Change Your Habits
This is the best way to create and maintain healthy habits.
Relying on willpower alone to maintain good habits might not be sustainable. Especially over the long term.
Instead, I think it’s more important to adjust your environment to encourage good habits.
Get yourself around people who are also disciplined. Where it’s normal behavior and not something people talk about.
All the professional fight teams I’ve been around, that’s what the environment is like. You show up and work hard. That’s something I’m trying to build at my gym too.
If you have a partner, it’s important he or she wants to improve and help you improve too. It’s easy to get comfortable when you have a partner.
You might not want to get out of bed as quickly as before. When you were single, you could get yourself up, but now it’s warm and cozy.
If you’re around a bunch of losers in a small town and you can’t really change your environment, I think you could still have good habits.
It will be harder. And you have to become a rare person who’s super passionate.
But in the long run, I still think you need to put yourself in a place around smart people who are on a journey of constant improvement.
Check out Atomic Habits by James Clear. This book will help you break down habits into easy actionable steps.
Perfectionism In Combat Sports
Depending on the context, perfectionism can hold you back. Like if you’re trying to be creative, sometimes imperfect is better than perfect.
But in fighting, perfect should be a goal.
Obviously, you’ll never be perfect. But you want all your techniques and skills to be as sharp as possible.
Boxing, wrestling, sprawling, sweeps, submissions - you should want everything to be damn near perfect.
This is important when it comes to drilling. When you learn a new move, you should drill it over and over. Slowly and perfectly until it becomes almost second nature.
I see this with fighters and students all the time. They learn new moves and want to drill them really quick. But it makes them sloppy and half-assed.
I believe in drilling a new move until you’re perfect-slow. Once you get to that point, then you can pick up the tempo. Because if you can’t do something perfect-slow, you won’t be able to do it fast.
Even shadow-boxing. Shadow-boxing in perfect form is hard to do. No one’s punching back at you, so you gotta make sure everything is in perfect form.
Your chin is tucked.
You’re bouncing on the balls of your feet.
Your weight is evenly distributed and balanced.
Your punches are coming back as fast as they go out.
You’re hitting the bag in perfect form.
Hitting the bag is something I see people get lazy on. Hit that shit like it’s trying to knock you out.
In a real competition like a fight or jiu-jitsu match, things will get hectic. Things will get sloppy, but you have to try your best to stay disciplined with your skills. It’s a hard thing to do.
I’ve seen guys who know they’re losing and start winging haymakers. It’s easy to lose control when you’re trying to knock someone out or submit them. And you could get lucky with a shot, but most likely it’s the beginning of the end.
With elite fighters, you see them stay disciplined. Good fundamentals.
Being a professional is staying stubborn with your skills even when you’re tired.
Perfectionism in martial arts can be a good thing, but random shit will happen.
Just don’t let it fuck with your brain.
Thorne
Want to develop healthy habits this summer? A good supplement can help you out.
For a lot of UFC fighters, the brand of supplement they use is Thorne.
I also personally use Thorne as part of my daily supplementation.
It’s third-party tested for the best quality ingredients so you know exactly what you’re putting into your body.
I personally use magnesium before sleep, fish oils, amino-acids when I’m training hard, and their VeganPro complex protein.
If you’re in the market for some good supplements, Thorne is the brand I trust. You can feel safe and good about what you’re putting into your body with Thorne.
Use the link below and Throne will hook you up with a 15% discount on your order.
»» Click here to get 15% off of your Thorne order
Win The Crowds or Win The Fight?
If you want to make fighting your life, you have to win.
I’ve seen guys go in there and try to put on a show at the beginning of their careers. They go 0-3, but hey, the crowd fucking loves ya, right?
Well, now you’re gonna continue fighting for $200-$500 bucks. The promoters will bring you in as an easy W for the up-and-coming guys.
And that’s a hobby to get beat up once in a while, not a career.
Focusing on being a crowd pleaser is just a quick way to lose fights. Go in there with the focus on imposing your will on your opponent’s weakness and winning.
On the other hand, I do encourage fighters to have some personality.
Finding other ways to be entertaining like being cocky and flamboyant in some way is a good thing.
Some people get annoyed at it, but that’s entertainment. If people want to see you get your ass kicked, they’re emotionally invested in watching you fight in some way. Look at Colby Covington.
For my students with bigger personalities, I encourage them to bring it out. I never want to shut that down.
I have been in gyms where they do try to shut that down. They just want you to be humble. Just shut up and train.
Let’s not forget that the fight business is the entertainment business.
Obviously, getting better at your skills should be your main focus. But don’t be afraid to have a little personality.
That entertainment aspect will make you more bread in the future. Look at Sug or Conor.
But you still have to keep improving your skills and winning. You can be a social media star, but if your skills aren’t there, it won’t matter one bit.
Constructive Criticism
For a coach, mentor, teacher, or anyone giving advice - it's important to learn how to give constructive criticism.
Personally, for my students I like starting off with something they did right or something they're really good at. Then I follow it with what they need to work on.
It's important for coaches to be honest with their students, but also not take their confidence away. Even if they completely suck, you can't be brutally honest. Point out something they're doing okay, then give the hard feedback, then end with something good.
Quick Hits From This Week
Some good shit from James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter:
“The myth is that there isn't enough time. There is plenty of time. There isn't enough focus with the time you have. You win by directing your attention toward better things.”
If you take a day and track all the time you spend on things, you might notice you’re wasting a shit ton of time. Look at the screen activity tracker on your phone for starters.
“The person who focuses on one task and sees it through to completion—even if they work in a somewhat slow or outdated manner—beats the endless optimizer who jumps from tool to tool and always hopes a new piece of technology will help them finish what they start.”
Goes hand-in-hand with learning techniques the “perfect-slow” way we talked about earlier. Be consistent, focus, and stay disciplined. The only way you’ll lose is if you quit.
TimboSugarShow Ep. 239
How high is your emotional intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is made of these 5 things:
Self-awareness
Self-regulation
Emotion
Empathy
Social skills
Schimitty says he’s an 8 on a scale of 1-10… I’d say I’m around a 7. What do you think? How would you score yourself?
A women’s UFC
There are some fucking talented female fighters. But do you guys think a women-only UFC branch would last? From an entertainment standpoint, it might be tough.
Having multiple partners
I personally don’t think the open relationship dynamic works for most people. As great as it sounds, I think it should stay rare.
Red Hawk Academy Patreon
On Patreon this month, we’ve done a bunch of giveaways, podcasts, and vlogs.
We’ve been going 4 years strong with our Patreon. There are hundreds of videos on there, with new content going up all the time.
You can get exclusive access to technique videos, extra podcasts, and general healthy living videos.
I reply to everyone on Patreon, so if you have any questions, hit me up there!
»» Click here to check out Red Hawk Academy on Patreon
That ends it for this week’s Red Hawk Essentials.
Hope you enjoyed this one. Give me a like/comment/subscribe below.
If you’re new here, welcome to the fam! We’re dropping gems like this each week.
Luv ya, talk next week.
Tim
thanks Tim
1.Self awareness is the ability to recognize and understand your moods and emotions.
2.Self regulation is the ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods. To suspend judgement and think before acting.
3.Empathy is the ability to understand the emotional make up of other people and treating people according to their emotional reaction.
4.Social skills is in proficiency managing relationships and building networks.An ability to find common ground and communicate.
5.Empathy is the ability to understand the emotional makeup of other people. (READ,WRITE,TRAIN)