Ryan Hall: Value of Competition | Take It Uneasy Podcast
00:00:00.000 | You have been both a supporter and a critic of competition.
00:00:04.200 | What do you think is the value of competition for a martial artist?
00:00:06.960 | I believe that the value of competition is in that it teaches you the true
00:00:11.160 | purpose of martial arts. And again, the true purpose of martial arts is being able to
00:00:14.440 | defend yourself and whatnot and all of these other things in real life, yes.
00:00:18.000 | Because let's say you win an 80cc gold medal,
00:00:20.400 | but
00:00:21.280 | you know, you get slapped around by someone bigger and stronger than you at a bar.
00:00:24.920 | People will talk about how sweet that gold medal is, but for the rest of your
00:00:27.960 | life it'll feel pretty hollow. That's not what we're looking for.
00:00:31.400 | What I'm talking about, I guess, is what I believe competition develops if
00:00:34.560 | approached properly,
00:00:35.760 | is proper focus, proper dedication. Because anytime you have a very defined goal
00:00:40.240 | and strong opposition, it will force you to be better, period.
00:00:43.600 | The better your opposition is, if you focus and you take what you're doing
00:00:46.600 | seriously, the better you become, period.
00:00:48.500 | People are better wrestlers today than they once were. People are better
00:00:51.560 | basketball players today than they once were. Military is better now than it was
00:00:54.760 | in the past because of all of the competition
00:00:56.920 | that has existed over the course of time.
00:00:59.720 | And if you go out in competition and just kind of
00:01:03.040 | bullshit it, if you're like, "Oh, I'm going to go out and see how it happens,"
00:01:05.960 | that's a cowardly way to approach competition and that gets you nothing.
00:01:08.760 | That doesn't teach you
00:01:10.160 | to really do the right things. And the same thing, not properly
00:01:13.640 | preparing. Even if you win,
00:01:15.120 | that was a cowardly way to approach it because you intentionally left yourself
00:01:17.800 | out, which was,
00:01:19.160 | "If I win, oh man, I'm talented and blah-de-blah. And if I lose, it's,
00:01:22.680 | well, you know, I didn't really train that hard." Well, if that's
00:01:25.800 | the case, then you shouldn't have been out there. Win, lose, or draw. I don't care
00:01:28.520 | if I've got a student that I think is going to win gold at the world
00:01:30.680 | championships. If he or she does not train properly ahead of time, I will not
00:01:33.640 | allow them to go. And if they go, I will send them off the team.
00:01:36.360 | You know? And hey, they can do what they want. They're a grown adult. I'm not the
00:01:39.160 | boss of them, but I am the boss of my team and the boss of my gym.
00:01:41.720 | And that's not how we conduct ourselves. And it has way less to do about the
00:01:45.640 | physical, you know, the result than it does about the proper preparation.
00:01:48.600 | Because proper preparation and proper focus and dedication
00:01:51.480 | over the long haul yields positive results. But most importantly, it's about
00:01:55.400 | are we conducting ourselves in an honorable and respectable manner.
00:01:59.080 | So, I believe that competition really teaches us that. Because
00:02:02.360 | in the room, you know, there's always like, "Oh, it was practice. Oh,
00:02:05.880 | I was kind of this to that happened today." The other thing, when you go to
00:02:09.240 | competition, everyone is, that's on. Everyone is on
00:02:12.120 | that day. Because everyone is trained for that specific moment. And
00:02:15.240 | we'll see what happens. So, you get the most honesty out of a time like that.
00:02:19.160 | And the higher the level, the better it gets.
00:02:20.920 | And, you know, provided that there's not a lot of cheating. But regardless, you know,
00:02:24.520 | from an athletic performance perspective, it is the most honest thing.
00:02:27.080 | Because, and it's the toughest as well. Because it takes
00:02:30.280 | courage and it takes some heart to really properly prepare
00:02:33.000 | and put it on the line. Because you're risking horrible disappointment.
00:02:36.520 | I've prepared so hard before and tried so hard and I've won.
00:02:40.200 | And I've prepared other times and I've tried so hard and I've failed. And it
00:02:43.240 | hurts. It really hurts. It doesn't hurt nearly as
00:02:45.480 | much if you kind of half-ass it. Because you didn't put that much into it. But
00:02:48.360 | again, that's how a coward approaches things.
00:02:50.360 | If you have, if you're going to conduct yourself the right way, you prepare
00:02:53.720 | properly, you train hard. And then win, lose, or draw, you deal with
00:02:56.840 | the results. And that's what I believe is the real benefit of competition if
00:03:00.200 | approached properly. Do you admire somebody who sacrifices,
00:03:05.800 | you know, like 10, 20 years of their life in that singular pursuit
00:03:11.080 | of competition towards a gold medal at the Olympics,
00:03:14.520 | say? Just most of the Olympians do. Goodness, absolutely. I mean, I admire
00:03:18.120 | anyone that's willing to sacrifice and willing to work hard in any
00:03:21.240 | area of life. Actually, a book that I'm reading again that I really, really like
00:03:24.360 | is Dune. It's, I don't know, I'm kind of like
00:03:27.800 | sci-fi nerding out on everybody. But basically,
00:03:30.200 | you know, one of the things that, you know, one of the
00:03:33.480 | things that the author was kind of Frank Herbert, and it's
00:03:36.920 | widely regarded as one of the, you know, greatest science fiction novels ever, if
00:03:39.400 | not the preeminent. But anyway, one of the things he said, you
00:03:42.280 | know, is if you search for freedom, you
00:03:46.600 | actually end up becoming a slave to your own
00:03:48.440 | desires, ironically. And if you search for discipline, you
00:03:52.120 | find liberty, because you're able to make yourself do what you want in the long
00:03:56.320 | run. Whereas if I'm like, oh, I'm gonna do whatever I want all the time and, and
00:03:59.180 | screw you, Dad, I'm gonna do what I want, and that's kind of like a teenager-type
00:04:01.960 | attitude, you end up getting into a bunch of nonsense. But anyone that's able, and
00:04:06.360 | again, this doesn't matter, it doesn't mean that it's athletic, it could be in
00:04:08.880 | any area of human endeavor, any area of life. It could be parenting, it could be
00:04:12.880 | military, it could be athletics, it could be business, it could be school, it could be
00:04:15.680 | anything. But as long as you're making, you know, an incredibly large commitment,
00:04:19.800 | I have an immense amount of respect for the, for the level of dedication, that, and
00:04:23.400 | the level of commitment, and the level of risk that it, that you're taking
00:04:27.520 | emotionally, psychologically. Because, hey, like you said, you work 20 years, you get
00:04:31.280 | that gold medal. But there's other people that work 20 years and got the silver.
00:04:35.080 | Most people. Most. Yeah. Metal. Now, most people, most people that think they work
00:04:39.640 | hard don't, I'll be frank. You know, like, seriously. I said that in class the other
00:04:42.600 | day. Like, again, it's like, I don't want to be too negative, but most of the people
00:04:46.440 | that, most people that think they work hard do not. How do you know that if
00:04:49.440 | you're working hard or not? I think you know. But most people are not very honest
00:04:54.880 | with themselves. They, most people would press a button, in my experience, you
00:04:58.680 | know, like, would prefer to be, look like the thing, than be the thing. Right. And,
00:05:03.400 | you know, that's, that's fine. But it really, I can't, I think Sun Tzu said it,
00:05:08.960 | it's like, "Victory is reserved for those willing to pay its price." And there is a
00:05:12.000 | price. And now, that doesn't guarantee that if you pay the price that you will
00:05:15.120 | have victory. But you guarantee, but, I mean, from a physical perspective, but you
00:05:19.160 | will have the moral victory regardless. Because you will have, you will have
00:05:21.680 | learned discipline. You will have shown, not only to others, forget others, you do
00:05:25.080 | it not for others, but for yourself. You, you show that you are the master of your
00:05:29.560 | own mind, and of your own body, and of your own circumstance. And you can
00:05:32.480 | discipline yourself, and focus, and you deny yourself certain things in the
00:05:36.760 | pursuit of something, something that is valuable to you. And that is incredibly
00:05:41.360 | useful in any area of life. And that's, I mean, not shocking to me why the same
00:05:45.200 | reason that you'll see guys that were, you know, like high-level military, like
00:05:49.240 | kind of big dogs in SF world, get hired by, let's say for instance, a Fortune 500
00:05:53.760 | company. Because what would they know about business? Nothing. But also
00:05:57.760 | everything. Because that level of focus and dedicate, like you don't get to that
00:06:02.520 | level of ability in something by accident. And that's what I think, you
00:06:07.880 | know, like again, the value of competition, and what they do, competition
00:06:10.640 | only. It's as serious as it gets, you know. Because if you don't get the gold
00:06:13.960 | medal, you may not, you may not walk out of it. But basically, I have an
00:06:19.080 | immense amount of respect for anyone that is willing, and able to, over the
00:06:23.000 | long haul, put that time in. But I have to, trying hard doesn't mean just getting
00:06:27.000 | on an air done bike, and walking off the mat, or having to be carried off the mat.
00:06:30.880 | It means thinking, approaching, reassessing, re-evaluating, saying how
00:06:36.080 | could I be better? And it takes honest, honest self-analysis. And also it takes a
00:06:40.920 | lot of times, because let's say, you know, I think I'm doing well, but I have to say,
00:06:43.440 | "Hey Lex, you know, I mean, no matter how well I believe, I look at myself, I'm
00:06:46.940 | still biased. I'm still looking at myself. What should I be doing better?" I'm
00:06:50.840 | gonna find other people that I respect, and people that I think can tell me, and
00:06:53.280 | I'm gonna ask them. And then I'm gonna have the courage to listen to them, and
00:06:56.440 | not just dismiss what they're saying out of hand. And if you're doing those things,
00:06:59.840 | then I believe that a lot of times you're working hard. But I know plenty
00:07:01.960 | of people that come in, it's just like in Jiu-Jitsu. There's plenty of people who've
00:07:03.960 | been training for 15 years that frankly suck. And there's plenty of people that
00:07:07.400 | have been training for four that are pretty dang good, you know. And again,
00:07:11.280 | are they the best person that's been training for four years? It's still,
00:07:14.040 | compared to like Cobrinha, not that good. But they could be really, really, really
00:07:17.680 | good, because they understand how to be directed, and how to focus. And I believe,
00:07:21.640 | and this is something I've discussed, you know, before with some other, you know,
00:07:25.320 | friends of mine, you know, that some of whom are at a very high level of MMA,
00:07:28.400 | others that are at a high level of Jiu-Jitsu, wrestling, or whatever. Look at
00:07:32.840 | guys like Randy Couture, guys like Rick Hahn. They're on their second career.
00:07:37.120 | They started MMA when they were like 32, and yet they got to the top. Maybe they
00:07:42.320 | weren't always champion, but they were freaking good. Why? Because their 26-year-old
00:07:47.280 | self would be scary. But, you know, like, hey, they know what it is to be
00:07:52.000 | dedicated and work hard. Because again, they're Olympians, like you said, on a
00:07:56.000 | level that a regular person has no concept of. So I think that that is
00:08:00.560 | ultimately the skill. It's not the, "Oh man, this person's dangerous because he's
00:08:03.880 | got good Judo or good wrestling." No, this person is dangerous because he or she
00:08:06.840 | knows how to work their ass off, and be focused on a level that most people
00:08:11.240 | can't comprehend. And that's what produces success in any area of life, in
00:08:15.120 | my opinion. Yeah, and be brutally honest with yourself at all times. And it stings
00:08:19.640 | sometimes, you know. I think it's like the price of looking inward,
00:08:24.280 | you know, objectively, is that you're not gonna like what you see a lot, you know.
00:08:29.000 | And because even if you're like, "Oh man, I'm 90% the way I want to be," it's like
00:08:32.760 | if you are going to take that next step, in my opinion, you're gonna focus on
00:08:35.880 | the 10%, because it's like, "Oh man, we're doing a lot of things good. Yeah, who
00:08:38.720 | gives a shit? Let's talk about what we need to improve on." You know, and that's a
00:08:42.080 | little bit less fun, but in the long run, I think it's what's gonna
00:08:46.680 | drive you to a higher level. But at the same time, I think it's what makes a lot
00:08:49.200 | of people that are like that a little bit neurotic and nutty by a
00:08:52.340 | normal standard. But again, you show me someone that's super well-adjusted, and
00:08:56.080 | I'll show you someone that's probably not a high achiever.
00:08:59.720 | you
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