 So heading down to LA deadlift competition a couple days Gonna hang with the homies for the rest of the week as we talked about I'm not that excited to compete But I am excited to come kick it with the homies. So Started the weight cut started Losing some poundages. I was about 202 the night before Thursday night before Connor and I left I was fairly committed to making 198, but I didn't want to sweat it out. I didn't want to actually do a full water Cut I just thought I'd cut some cars and see what happened And just slowly lose it You'll be a designer like this zipper ain't cutting it look We're gonna make a lot of money here on YouTube you or not You smile at that camera so we can get these likes right hands will double you Who's your favorite uncle? What's your favorite uncle? Uncle Mike? Come on Mike. He's the one that's gonna give you your first beer when you're 12 He's gonna teach you how to get the ladies. You can teach you how to lift some weights teach you how to play the basketball All the fun things come on Mike, you know, I bet Uncle David's pride pretty fun, too Drive was easy one stop grab some food rolled into downtown try to meet up with some of the homies grab the Airbnb which we stayed up before it's super easy super convenient key lock don't mess with anybody by the bone by the Bing by the Bing boom boom As an athlete as some of you guys hopefully saw the video with Dean Stark that I did before my basketball coach He taught me at an early age kind of about preparation and processes building a process into Success preparation into success preparation into at least being able to do your best and everything you do and also Further as an adult I've read and listened to different podcasts and people talk about flow state I didn't understand what flow state was until I was older probably within the last couple years, but Some of my memories going back in time while I played basketball flow made so much sense to me Don't listen to my definition of flow because it's gonna be butchered and messed up But for me flow is a state in which you you know time is slow and fast at the same moment You you lose yourself so into whatever activity you're doing for me I think it's easiest when you're very skillful at whatever you're doing and then you just literally let the creativity or let That skill do itself my best example is I can teach a lot of you guys how to dribble a basketball through the legs But for you to do it in a game you're gonna think ahead It's on defender there dribble ball through my legs rather than if you played basketball your whole life and you dribbling through your legs It's just Unconscious then when you're going in the game and that defender goes to for a steal you'll just go through the legs It just happens That's like you know the micro of what a flow state is and then you do that over and over and over and you Just let your skills paint on the court and you're just you're just you're just along for the ride your body your mind Or your skills are so attached that they're doing everything and your consciousness is just cruising along with it I think that can happen on almost anything It's have maybe a couple times with me for lifting where I like trained for two hours, and I didn't even know it I was just like like crushing deadlifts rest mine still so focused crushing deadlifts rest, but that's very rare It's happened sometimes with writing or programming or working Or sometimes I'm just doing research or I'm writing programming and the clock it I look back up And it's like midnight. I started at 9. I don't know what happened. My mind was just working. I think it's very common among artists people that paint edit film Draw pottery whatever it might be that they can really get into a flow state And they're just so absorbed in what they're doing and their skills are just unleashed Well, their body and their mind and everything's connected So to get into the flow state a little bit better whether it's competing or Preparation and maybe not an even flow because I think flow is so particular And I know there's a lot of research and people that are really into it and how to get in and out of it But even just to do your best and something I like to build a process. So whether that's shoot a video You know, maybe it's the day before me and Connor talk about a concept Then in my mind I visualize what I'm going to talk about broadly I almost I'm not that good at writing, but I'm pretty good at making notes in my head So I'll make like four key points. I want to hit and then if it's a complicated video I'll actually write down notes within those four key points If not, I like to just do it on the spot because a lot of things that we talk about are one Experiences or about my life. So I don't need to like study those things I want them to be organic and just let them come out of me or two. They're about training Which is something I'm super confident in, you know training nutrition strength and conditioning things that I've done for 10 years And studied so well I think that I'm best at just expressing it on the spot and expressing it and that's where I think my gifts as Maybe a content creator or coach come that I feel so confident in these things So that's kind of the process for that and then I'm sure Connor has a process where he Uploads the video or maybe he'll drink a cup of coffee upload the video Make sure that his music's playing whatever it might be But if you build a process with everything and then it's the release of the videos There's a process as well, you know, there's a time to alright We're gonna put it on YouTube then I'm gonna put it on Instagram then I'm gonna put it on Facebook Then I'm gonna share it on Twitter and then I'm gonna comment and then an hour later I'm gonna go check on the YouTube and answer all your guys's comments That's kind of a process as well a Process to stay organized a process to stay productive and a process to give yourself the best chance to succeed And so I have the same thing with you know, the meat I have my boy Justin Kalkin competing and I told him like look dude I want to be there for you, but I also want to do well So I'm gonna go through my process of getting myself ready to lift and then I'm gonna be there as soon as I can To watch you lift and do your best although I'm trying to take this meat a little less serious and try to have some fun I still want to be mentally prepared so then You control the variables you can so if I can't control what happens to the meat or maybe if my body's not ready or whatever I can control my mental state and be ready to compete when I need to compete and that's kind of the whole ideal of this process You can't control all the variables Connor can't control if the footage or the card goes corrupt But if he controls every process in between and lays it out perfectly and stays organized Then he minimizes those chances of these little shit things happening And even if these shit things happen the card goes corrupt or we lost footage or the camera wasn't right Then he knows that he did everything he could and then that one thing happened wrong and that's very like just What sports is you do everything in your in your power to get ready to practice to prep as well as you can physically? Mentally and then what happens on game day not everything can go perfect But you also can't control everything so you do as much as you can to control And then we know we can point to this happened because of this and that's the same thing I like to do in life you try to control your mindset you can try to control your habits You can control who's around you control who you hang with where you send your energies and then bad things will happen in life But you know why how and you know how to avoid them by setting up these processes or at least how to minimize them by setting up these processes So second day in LA we had way ins typically depending on the Federation powerlifting you do there's two hour way ins or there's 24 hour way There's two hour way ins or 24 hour way ins this competition is 24 hour way in so I lift on Sunday We wait in Saturday morning. I think between 9 10 30 I showed up around 10 was the gym was packed and the energy was good, but the line for way ins was short So wait in real quick. I ended up the night before not deciding not to cut. I did a quick weigh-in at the gym Unofficial way in and I weighed 207 with my clothes on I don't know if that was a misread or if I kept my keys in or what but I was like that's too heavy I don't actually want to cut because the plan was to not eat then I said screw it We went to Bart's house had a cool bonding time just had the homies there ate dinner hung out And so I didn't want to make the full cut. I said if I weigh in a little heavy, I'll go to 20 I don't really care so grab some ice cream chilled wait in officially the next morning at 202 Which means I probably could have made not 198, but it is what it is There's other powerlifting competitions. I'll be stronger. I'll be weaker. Just how life goes Then we just chilled we went and grabbed some food Hung out with the homies. I watched a good amount of the meat The environment's just fun sometimes because Barbara gaze like such a family everyone's there just hanging out helping each other Cheering each other on powerlifting meats are pretty cool. Although If you don't know what's going on and you're just kind of watching the lifting it can be pretty boring It's not much of a spectator sport But the environment the warm-up room the teammates the camaraderie of the entire event is what makes powerlifting really cool The community everyone's cheering for everybody. No one wants anyone to do poorly. So that's really fun So Connor and I like this Airbnb spot cuz it's downtown even though I don't love downtown But it's close to Whole Foods and it's close to Barbara Gates So I went to Whole Foods got a little bit of dinner some snacks to get my bloat on Because shreds life is coming after this competition. So I want to eat up my last bit of cookie So grab the Whole Foods cookies who came and basically just chilled out Try to get ready for the next day and I was that was kind of the first two days of the trip again it's just building up those processings and maybe boring, but that's just kind of what we had to do and then Get as ready as I could mentally and physically for the meat. We went to bed. Maybe 930 or so Tomorrow we got a lift. So stay tuned that video coming soon I'm going to bed and we're gonna chill