June 3, 2020 • 49 mins
There is a common thread that runs through all top athletes, and that is the joy they get from overcoming obstacles. Bas Rutten is one such athlete that feeds off of the challenges put in front of him. It is a drive he demonstrated time and time again during his storied fighting career. In this episode of Fitness Disrupted, Tom sits down with Bas to discuss how he is able to take the lessons learned from overcoming adversity and apply them to achieving major success, both in sports and in life.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of I Heart Radio.
I am Tom Holland and this is Fitness Disrupted, Boss Bruton.
I get excited just saying the guy's name because he
(00:21):
just exemplifies everything that this show is about. Everything this
shows about overcoming obstacles, positive attitude, achieving beyond expectations, just everything.
Everything that we're in control of, our attitudes and our
ultimate destiny, regardless of those obstacles that you have in
(00:42):
front of you. And this guy did it in one
of the most insane forums, you know, the m M
A Ring. I've been watching his videos and you know
it makes ultra marathons and iron Man triathlons look ridiculous
in comparison. But everything's relative. And he is an amazing
example in the living proof of overcoming obstacles because the
(01:06):
two things he is two major obstacles as a kid
he blasted through and he's one of the most positive
people as you will hear, and energetic and and again
has every reason, had every reason back as a child,
and and so many obstacles along the way to give
up to have the yeah, but yeah, but and fill
(01:29):
in the blank. But he did. Let me give you
this bio. So some of you know who he is,
some don't. Many of you who don't think you know
who he is would recognize him from movies, TV, video games.
But here's his bio. So. Boss rout In is a
Dutch American actor, retired mixed martial artist, kickboxer, and professional wrestler.
He was a UFC heavyweight champion, a three time King
(01:53):
of Pancras World champion, finished a career on a twenty
two fight unbeaten streak with twenty one wins and undraw
and he was ultimately inducted into the UFC Hall of
Fame as a professional fighter. One of his favorite tactics
was the liver shot, which I'm sure he'll talk about
both punch and kick, and he popularized its use in
(02:13):
the m m A. Boss is known for his charisma
and has capitalized on his celebrity status since retiring from
fighting in he has worked as a color commentator and
several m m A organizations. Has appeared in numerous television
shows movies. One of my favorite is here Comes to
the Boom. He's a ridiculously talented comedic actor, which is hard.
(02:34):
Here Comes the Boom was with Kevin James, and he's
appeared in video games. He also coaches M M A
and has authored several instructional materials. He is a bunch
of products as well. By the way, here's the thing though,
at the age of six, he developed exema and severe asthma.
His ex ama ment he always wore long sleeves, turtlenecks,
(02:54):
and gloves, and his asthma meant he was unable to
partake an exercise and was squently relatively skinny. He was
bullied on a daily basis as a child. Boss became
interested in martial arts at age twelve after his family
went on vacation to France, where he basically snuck into
(03:14):
Enter the Dragon, starring Bruce Lee, at a local movie theater.
He was too young. He's gonna talk all about this,
but what I want to focus on is he had
the barrier to exercise with asthma. Was constantly in bed
as a child, constantly fighting severe severe asthma. So to
(03:35):
go from that, Yeah, but I have asthma. You're going
to be a professional fighter. It's a UFC champion and
severe as I'm gonna be an actor in Hollywood. So
he's gonna illustrate that no obstacle can stand in your
way when you were focused on achieving your goal and
(03:55):
you figure out how to get there. And we're talking
about the mental side. We're gonna talk about is workouts.
We're gonna talk about all that stuff and and prepare
to be ridiculously inspired and motivated. That's all I have
to say. Quick break, when we come back. By the way,
let me just throw you there right now. Go to
his website. He's got a couple Boss Routin dot com,
Elite m m A, Jim dot com. You can go
(04:18):
to his gym as well, Elite mm A, Jim dot
com and his instagram Boss Routin mm A. So visit
those sites. You can pull him up during the short
break and then he will be here. We'll be right
back with Boss Routin and we are back super special show.
(04:47):
Could not be more excited none other than former UFC
heavyweight champion turned acclaimed actor, turned serial entrepreneur. Boss Thanks
so much for taking the time. You are a busy man,
Thank you very much. Yeah, busy, but good busy. That's
a good thing. Good busy, right, And you know I've
often said, by the way, if I changed my name
(05:08):
as something with um out's like you're gonna Hellrigo back
in the day when I was first starting in fitness,
would have helped me immeasurably. Right, name like boss routine
goes a long way. It's just you know, and and
and hold of the boss rootsin is in. Uh, it's
a very regular name. There's not a Boss rootin there
as well. He actually has my Twitter hand Stop it
doesn't South you know, South badass. And there you go.
(05:28):
And now I have Tom Holland, the actor who is
screwing up my social media. But then again, you know,
I've got a lot of talking to Tom Holland the
other one. Yeah, she's not impressed. She's not impressed with me.
Well again, thank you so much for taking the time,
so excited to speak with you. It was so much
fun going back and watching old fights and things like that,
and just to get started boss again. You don't need
(05:49):
to tell your story. So many people know it, and
I gave it in the intro. I have spent my
life dealing with the yeah bots, you know. Yeah, but
I don't have enough time. Yeah but I'm too short.
You know, you had two extreme reasons to not do
what you did right. When it comes to exercise where
you had extreme asthma, and when it comes to you know,
being an actor, you know you had a skin condition.
So how did you just rise above that as a kid. Well, uh,
(06:13):
there's two things you can do right. You can be
look at me boo boo, also sad or you say,
you know, let's let's see if you can do something
with it. And that's what I did. I just you know,
I got bullied a lot, of course because kids don't
understand the skin disease. And but that you know, little
fire in me. And then suddenly when I started was
allowed finally, after a couple of years of begging my
parents to start martial arts, I started training with adults.
(06:35):
Somebody took me under a swing because there was the
tough guy who was dating my neighbor, Gill, and he
kind of put his arms around me, so to say,
and he took me to the progress the adult classes.
And then but the I mean, but in months, I
was start beating the adults. And then I overheard you
these guys talking about me in the dressing room. Oh
my god, this kid's got has a lot of talent.
And if you only Yeah, I heard before that you're
(06:58):
a leper or you know, like because of the skin disease.
You know, that's that's suddenly it's positive. And I started
listening to what they got into a five with the
biggest bully in the in my school, knocked him out
one punch, and that I'm telling you that from my
bully stopped right there. Yeah, that that tends to do
it right, when you pick up a fight with the
biggest guy and um, you end up winning. So that's
(07:20):
it's so powerful boss for people to hear that that
you know, and you said it perfectly. You use your
fuel as your fire right. You use that to not
keep you from achieving your goals, but actually motivate you
to get there, because I'm sure you use a lot
of that anger, especially you know in the fighting days
and then you know into your entrepreneurial slash actor days.
You just use that rights as a fuel, you know. Like,
(07:41):
but when I see now I watched back and I
see myself fight. Sometimes sometimes somebody says, oh today, Boston,
so many years ago foot this fight, and then when
I click on it, you know, I I still know
what I was thinking at that moment. If I didn't
like the guy or like the guy, you know, but
I realized there's a completely different guy than I am
right now, and I wasn't really like, yeah, we we were,
(08:02):
you know. I do the Ultra Marathon's, Iron Man's things
like that. Totally different, you know, different kind of discomfort.
But I always say I was much angrier back when
I was going faster and farther. Right, I'm I'm much
happier in a different way. I got. I got a
lot of that out right, And that's, uh, that's an
interesting kind of way, but it's it's a good it's
a good outlet, right, and it's okay to do that.
It's okay to to be angry and to use that
(08:22):
to to achieve your goals. Yeah, as long as you
use it for that. It's the same as when I
say that people, you know, as a fighter, as an
athlete in general, you need an ego, you know. But
the trick is to keep that ego just to sport,
to do your sport what you do, because what you
start carrying an outside which you sometimes see from other fighters, Yeah,
then you've become the douchebag. You don't to have an
(08:43):
ego for yourself. You know, do you always go to
the hardest, the fastest. You always want to be the best,
You always want to be It always motivates me. Man.
I I never thought I was there, not even close.
I would always think my opponent was pretty harder than myself,
you know, I could. I was really good it self motivation,
talking to myself and then just we should crap out
(09:03):
of me. I love that, and that that kind of
rolls right into what I want to talk about too.
So I'm big into the sports psychology. Did a master's
degree in that. And you know, even as you said,
as I was watching your videos, uh you know when
the fight where you had your stern and broken and
you know they're doing the close ups on your face,
you had obviously your mental game down incredibly. Well can
(09:24):
you talk a little bit, I mean, were you doing
the self talk? Were you doing the visualizations before the fights?
How are you using mental tools to to get where
you needed to go? You know, I first of all,
I break everything down in my head because love of people.
They they're they're afraid, and I go, okay, so what
are you fid up? Right? You know? And if you're
honest to yourself which you only can be, of course,
because you know immediately if you lie or not. But
if you just tell yourself, okay, what's the worst thing
(09:46):
that can happen? Okay, you gonna knock me out? Is
that really the worst thing that can happen, because apparently
you won't feel it? Okay, good again in a submission,
Oh I tap because if I don't tap, I have
a chance if I breaking my arm or whatever. Submission
has been So if I tap, no, that's also not good.
Why is the worst thing that kept Well, the worst
thing that could happen would be a complete mismatch, and
you're finding a guy who's completely tooling your schooling you,
(10:07):
making fun of you in front of an audience, but
with great matchmaking, that will never happen. So then you
start thinking, okay, so why would I be nervous? And
then you realize all the fighters they're nervous for the
back lass they're gonna get from other people. And the
way I talked to my students, I always say, if
they're a week before they fight, it's one of the
first fights. They're very nervous already a week before, and
(10:27):
I go, okay, let's visualize this Let's imagine your opponent
walks in right now and you both going in that room.
You're gonna lock the door. There's no windows, no nothing
in there, and you fight and then whoever wins, you're
not allowed to say whoever who who were lost? And
then you open the door. You both walk out. But
would you care if you would lose? And then well
they say no, I said why not? Yeah, because you
(10:48):
know he was your stronger. Okay, So that means that
you are not fighting for yourself. You're fighting to please
the audience. And once you start doing that fighting for
other people, that's when you put too much pressure on yourself.
And most of the time they see that they go like,
oh wow, it is true. Indeed, you know if you
put so much pressure on yourself. But you know that's
the trick. You're fighting and in competition for your competition
(11:09):
as well. You know why you need to push and
you've never been there and you're at the end of whatever,
the final run, the final swim, whatever you're doing, you
know you you need to go to a place that
you hopefully you've been there before so that you can
use that that moment to to to spark now yourself to,
you know, to go all the way. You know, there's
always but you needed a moment like that. For instance,
(11:31):
what I also with that you go to a safe place.
They always said, you know, go where it's comfortable. And
I go, that's what's so stupid what people say. And
I go, wait a minute, if I create that safe place.
So I will go to the beach a couple of
weeks before the fight and I would sit there suns comes,
sun comes up in the morning, meditate, see the sun
coming up. That will be my spot if I needed
(11:52):
to go somewhere, you see. So I started creating those
things that people say you have to do, but if
you never did it, you don't have a space to
go to. So but create one, you know, and that
that helped me just tremendously. Suddenly I wasn't nervous anymore
because now I was fighting for myself and that's for
my family, not for my friends. No. No, And it
sounds like of an ego maniac, But guess what if
I don't fight for my family, I don't have any pressure.
(12:14):
And if I don't have a pressure, I fight my best.
If I fight my best, I'm probably going to win.
And that means I get more money, you see, so
that my family. You know, it's amazing, is you're hitting
on all like if you actually study sports psychology, you
just hit on like three different specific sports psychology you
know tools, and you know you're doing this in the
nineties early nineties, even before a lot of the sports
psychology stuff was was popular, So you were doing visualization
(12:37):
and you had that place to go. And I gotta
even backtrack. There was so much in that um when
you talk about, you know, stress being a process and
a choice, and it's basically have I been there before?
And if so, was I successful? And if not, do
I have the tools that I need to get me
through it? And I love how you just go to
worst case scenario and and for so many people, as
as you're saying, it's really not that bad, it's really
(12:58):
not that bad, it isn't it is really not you know,
you look at the military. These guys didn't make a mistake.
They die, you know. Then and then let's go through
the excubutive sports, those egg games, the guys with motorcycles
that make three sole sold back. You see that, I
think that is they He goes, well, there they might
literally die with us. You got a referee pulls you off,
it's not that bad, right And if you're not afraid, Boss,
(13:20):
I was thinking about this. Did you ever see the movie? Um?
I was thinking about you the Ice Guardians, about hockey
enforcers back in the day. Oh no, But I heard
the guys with Ohio you would love the profiles a
couple and one guy said the only thing that scared
him was getting knocked out in front of his girlfriend.
That was all he cared about. That was you know,
it wasn't about uh, you know, the fans or anything
(13:42):
like that. It was just one person. But I so
appreciate what you're saying about doing it for yourself, and
I would say it's not an egocentric thing. I know myself.
When I was doing Iron Man's before the internet, Boss,
it didn't matter because no one could follow me, right,
no one knew what was Now I know in real
time that people are literally tracking my progress and when
something is hey wire. You know that's stressful if you
(14:02):
let it. But to your point, I learned over the
years to go, I don't care what they're doing, I
don't care that they're watching. This is about me, and
that's not ego centric, right, that's why we're doing. Yeah,
and listen, if you're I'm just running and cycling and biking,
you're getting hit and you know, body parts twisted and stuff. So, uh,
if you can do that, that's amazing. So you were
you were doing visualization, you were going to the beach
(14:23):
and you had that place to go and I do that.
You know when a swim goes hey wire, I go
to that place and you're still You're still moving forward, right,
you just have to move forward. That's the whole. And
you know what I love to bosses. I was watching
your videos and I saw the RS on your right hand.
I used to write suffer, So the opposite of what
your your message was to yourself to go harder, because
(14:43):
I generally didn't push myself hard enough. But you had
the R, which was what in Dutch for rusting. Is
that how you pronounce it? Yeah, yeah, coincidentally starts relax.
It's the same world, so coincidentally starts with an R
as well here with America. So that was good and
it's the translation the same way calm or or yeah,
being calm and literally because I did that because I
found out on the first of all I found On
(15:05):
the day of the fight out, I found out that
my opponent was thirty five parts every than I was right.
And then there were no weight classes. And then when
I asked how many rounds, he said one, and I
was so happy. And when I asked how many minutes
he said thirty And like, okay, now, allow me need
to sell. But calm myself down because I'm such a
hot head, especially at the time. You know, I will
be very technical, but somebody connect, Oh, I go nuts.
(15:26):
You know, I wanted to knock him out. So if
I lose control the first two minutes and I can
still and I can't put him away, and they got
twenty eight more minutes to go, that's the problem, right,
And I love that And it's so simple. Ye's so powerful,
right for you, that's what worked for me. It was
suffer and for someone else just doing that little thing.
And that's what you know, everyone can do to help
them achieve their goals. And it doesn't matter how big
(15:47):
or how small, it's just whatever works for you. And
as you're saying, it's not a matter if things are
gonna go wrong, But what right suddenly you're told is
thirty minutes. Suddenly this guy's you know, hardly in your
weight class, but you just keep moving forward. You go, okay,
I can deal with this, right, Yeah. You just prepare
for always the worst case scenario. That's what I always
did always, and if you do that, it can never
(16:08):
go wrong. I had asked my I lost the fight
one time because of stemina, or that will never happen again,
And then I became this incredible conditioning guy. I just
taught myself to love stemina because because of my asthma,
if I would get tired, I would try to stay
away from it because I was afraid of it, you know,
But that was because of my askma. Once I started
realized that, I go, wait a minute, dude, you gotta
simply push you. And so then when I got really tired,
(16:30):
I would go, I love that, I love and I
want to get more tied more time. But I I'm
telling you, it started working, and suddenly now I needed it.
It was almost like an addiction. Now I needed to
get super tired because then I would I guess it's
the runner's high, would you guys have I would feel
that my teeth would glow when I would drive, and
that changed everything. Now suddenly I knew how to push
(16:52):
and to constantly push and that was it. Yeah, you know,
you're we're built in the same way. As far as
the endurance goes. I do the durance because I know
you can go ahead of me in the race, but
I'm gonna catch you. And my line is as the
race gets longer, I get stronger as the race gets longer.
And that's my mantra. And you are using those mantras,
so you do have that self talk in your head
as you're in the later stages of the fight. Those
(17:14):
over times you did, you had I'm sure some mantras
like you were just saying, yeah, it's just just don't quit.
Don't good and you know, and if something slips in,
oh sho, he might beat me. And then then the
other voice is gonna say, okay, but you know he's
gonna have to work for it. You know, if okay,
I might lose, but he's gonna feel it that I'm
not gonna give it away, you know, And as long
as she keeps talking like that, and you know it's
(17:36):
also I had a few places that that really saved
my bott Also, like the second fight, I came in
already I was. I was cocky. The second fight, knocked
out my first supportant in Ja Ben, forty three seconds.
He was the number four. Now I was going to
fight the number six, Like god, it's gonna be easy.
So such an idiot. I was such an idiot. And
and sure enough, the day before I got sick, they
(17:56):
let me travel from eight o'clock in the morning til
the afternoon till the fight. Was that you have to
understand nighttime, his day time. So I fell asleep at
seven am and then they am They let me travel
for like seven hours, you know. So I was was
throwing up, I was doing everything, and then I almost
lost that fight, and I pulled it off. I literally
used his breathing against him, like I had so less
(18:17):
power left. And I saw I hadn't been a guillotine
at Tampa anyway. I see him breathe, and I know
that if he breathes in, and at that moment I
knew him in the gut he could do five thousand
and sit up today he will go down. So I
timed it perfectly and he went down, and that was
the moment. But I after the fight, I went back
to the dressing room that I was by myself and
I asked everybody to move out, and I told myself,
(18:37):
this will never happen again, dude, you will never think
it's gonna be an easy fight. So thankfully to me,
that happened early on in my career and I still
pull off a victory. My boy, I was that was
such an ego. Pride. Pride is the worst one. They
always say, No, every person in hell is proud, right,
that's it. Pride get makes us do the dumbest things
(18:58):
all the time. But you know what, people talk about
failure and we just talked about that a little bit.
Failure is is you know, I would say, there is
no failure, right. The failure is making the same mistake
over and over again. So you learned, and you learned
quickly obviously in your business, or you don't. But but
there's no failure, right. And people talk about all the time, Oh,
you're gonna fail. I've been told no, as I'm sure
you have thousands of times in my life. And that's
(19:19):
part of the success. You know what the cool thing
is with me, It's like, uh, they wanted me for
one more fight back in Japan, and now I knew
I had the power because it was a champion that
was undefeated for like twenty fights in a row. And
I and I said, cool, I will fight with this
amount of money, which eventually we got. And I said,
and I want the the rights to all my fights.
You canna have it too, I said, but I want
to be able to sell them. So they gave me
(19:40):
all my fighting thirty fights in Japan, and I started
doing my own commentary over those fights, so for the
people at home, they can see what I'm thinking. And
then you see me. For instance, my last fight I
lost against sam My lost loss was that but the
need bar and he set it up a certain way.
And then I go like five fights forward, and then
I'm fighting Mary Smidt, and I'm telling the people at home,
I say, you remember the fight I lost against again,
(20:02):
you know, remember what the set of us look at this?
And then you see me doing exactly the same setup.
And I beat Mary Smith with it too. So I
always said the loss. I've never been down. When I
was lost, I parted just as hard. I've never go
like to the dress room crying. I never had that.
I always saw, like you said, this is the biggest
learning curve there is. You know, this mistake I will
(20:23):
never make again. So, yeah, all these people are depressed
after the loss, I said, I'm sorry. I never had that.
I was never depressed. I just thought, okay, this is
not gonna happen again, and made me stronger. I'm stronger.
That's how I thought, right, Right, You just reframe it, right,
That's that's how it happens. You don't get good by
not you know, having those experiences. That's how you get good. Right.
Back to the guys on the skateboards. I aways look
(20:43):
at those guys, you know, motocross and stuff, and you think,
how many bones has this guy broken to get this good? Right,
that's what's so frightening. Yeah, no, right, that's that's right.
But that's one little mistake. You twist your ankle. Now,
you can't do anything like in martial arts, right. I
heard my risk for instance, you know, and I have
I have a really great way of dealing with that.
For instance, probably to be to fight, I hurt my
(21:05):
right wrist. Okay, that's God telling me your right hand
is strong enough. Let's focus on the rest, you know.
But we still have the other things that we can
work with. A skateboarder, if he twitches his ankle, that's it.
He can a skateboard at all anymore. So it's much
harder for him that he gets injured. So that means
also that he wants to really watch out, and you
know as well as I do. When she would start
(21:26):
really watching out what you do, that's when you of
course get hurt. So they walk in the fine line
as well, same as in any of those crazy ex
game sports. Yeah, I love that. And back when I
was training clients boss the same thing. When someone would
you know, break a leg or whatever it was, or
just have a minor injury, I'd say this is awesome,
and they go, what are you talking about. You've been
doing the same thing. We need to mix things up,
(21:47):
and now we have to write. Because people do the
same thing, they tend to do what they're good at
and they don't get better because it's working on your weaknesses,
right that that gets you there. So an injury is
not a setback, it's actually an opportunity to get really good.
You know, just just what I said in my talks
always I do public speaking and motivational talks, and I
said to whatever is part of what whatever you don't
(22:07):
like and it is part of your job. Do that
a lot, because, for instance, with me, I I lost
three times by submission. I got so fed up with myself.
I didn't have anybody to train with. I found once
parting partner, and I started. Because I never liked it.
I thought it was a stupid sport, you know, stupid.
But you know, once I forced myself, I started training
(22:27):
to three times to day only your submissions. And suddenly,
just like with stamina that I did, I started liking it.
Not only that, I became obsessed with it. And once
I became obsessed with it, now I really wanted to
do I mean I always talked about this. I woke
up my wife at least six seven times in the
middle of the night because I would dream a submission.
I would put her in that submission and then they
always shoulders, earning or legas already whatever it was. The
(22:50):
next day, I would do it training. You know, I
would love it. I would love it. But you know what,
because I started understanding it, I started loving it. And
once I loved it, I did it a lot. I
never lost to fight again. I didn't lose you my
last two fights and it's old because I didn't want
to lose one more time, and I had checked what
I was, what I didn't like the most. I said,
(23:10):
I'm going to learn teach myself to love this. And
once I started doing it, I started understanding it. And
most of the time when you don't like something is
because you don't understand it. But what you understand it, boom,
Suddenly it becomes something you want to do. You do
it a lut because you love it, and then you
become good. There's no other way that to become good.
You know. I once professor specifically, I'll never forget exactly
(23:31):
when he said it. He said, you know, if you
want to know what your weakness is, just ask your
competition and in your line of work. That's that's a really,
you know, tough thing to find out, but it's true.
And I remember vividly to football locker room wall. It said,
work on your weakness till it becomes your strength. Now,
I said, you don't have to make it your strength.
Let's just not make it your weakness, right, Let's not.
Let's not have it be a total thing that that
(23:52):
keeps you back. But I've said, boss, like, start one workout,
for me, the way to do it is start every
workout with one exercise you really don't like, just one
and just get that out of the way, and then
maybe two or three. But that is where change happens, right,
And that's what you're describing. That's so cool that you
say that, because I do the same thing, and I
give myself assignments also, like I would go before I
grapple for us, as I say, okay, so they've only
(24:14):
got to tech his left leg and his right arm,
you know. And then even if I hat of submissions,
I don't. I only go for those because apparently I
need to work on that. And then once you know,
and then these guys they start communicating with each other
because they knew what I was doing. They go August
the left night, right arm guys, So everybody wants out,
you know. So there defense automatically becomes better because it's
so now I need to be even more inventive in
(24:36):
order to still pull off submissions or that left leg
or the right arm. You see. So it always helps
you if you give yourselves assignments like that before you start,
right and just get it out of the way, and
they don't have to be wrong, and it doesn't have
to be you know, it just has to be consistent.
And one thing I want to swing too right away
because it's just amazing. So you were ahead of the
curve and sports psychology. And then I've heard you know,
(24:57):
your focus and your kind of strategy towards training back
in the day, and I love that. You said, you know,
you did very simple training and you said, you know,
nowadays there are way better ways to do it, and
I would argue the way you did it was a
great way and it still is right. So the basics work. Yes,
today we have more research and stuff and better fitness technology,
but you were so far ahead of the game with
(25:17):
your workouts. First of all, you talk about like specific
adaptations to impose demands. You're like, listen, here's how I fight.
So here's how I'm gonna do a bench press. Here's
where my hands positions are going to be. So this
is how I'm gonna modify the exercises. And it's ten
to twelve exercises. It's a minute on, minute off essentially,
and you're gonna do the basics over and over, right,
That's it. That's it, you know, and uh, and it
(25:38):
works and all these people they uh, they always say,
you know, a knock out. They try to be interesting,
you know, they go like, oh, it's knock present itself.
You don't have to look for the knockout. It will come.
I got it's complete bs because every knockout that I had,
what's a combination I worked on for the six weeks
before that fight. It's always like that. But I grinded
(25:58):
if I say I worked on something, well, I did
that combination at least fifty don of times, you know,
because I'll go over and over and over. I'm like,
I have this crazy mind. I can push so crazy.
I give you an example. I wasn't badass karate cup
and I went my first time booking class and I
started immediately with an A class, which is a professional guy.
And my hand was karate. My media the load that
(26:18):
below your head right, you don't have up at you
have because there's no head punch is allowed in karate.
So he as soon as she started hitting my head,
of course I cannot bring my hand slowly up because
the punches coming. I gotta go fat. So you overcommit.
While he knew right away if I overcommit, I'm exposing
my body and boom, he dropped me with the liver shop.
That's where my love for the liver shop give him.
So I got oh. I felt like a nightmare because
(26:41):
nobody ever did that to me. I didn't even know
what it was. And he explained it to me, and
my blah blah, I go home. I spent it. I
tell this to people all the time. I said, I
spent at least three and a half four hours in
front of a mirror, shadow boxing with my hands at
my jaw, looking at my hands that they will never
drop again. The next day, I went back to the
the gym and I clean eighty percent ninety percent of
(27:02):
the gym up. And they thought that I actually played
the trick on them, that I already knew how to bucks,
but that acting. And I said, no, I spent four
hours in front of a mirror. Lest people go, like
four hours life at all, try strife steen minutes and
then think what three and a half hours is? You know?
So I'm really obsessed. I need to fix it now
that it will be fixed now, not tomorrow, right away.
(27:22):
And then there's a great you know, the line is
for sports psychology. Again, It's not that practice makes perfect
it's perfect practice makes perfect, right, yeah, you know, and
there's so many people out there and they're making it
too hard and they're they're using all the fancy equipment.
I say it all the time. I started doing push
ups because herschel Walker did three hundred you know, push
ups and crunches every day, and so that's what I did,
and I got really good results from that, right because
I was consistent. So I just love that. You know,
(27:45):
you talk about you even talk about how you do
one minute you know on, one minute off, and then
the next week you had five seconds to the on
and take five off the rest, and then the next
week you had five seconds. So it's progressive, slow and progressive.
That's the trick because I don't want you over train.
And you know with that the perfect practice makes it perfect.
But I always did. But I was when I was
starting to fight. Every two weeks or so, I would
(28:07):
feel myself hitting a bag because always in my mind
I would think that I rotate really well, you know,
like the also things that your technical things that you
think you do well. But guess what, once you see
yourself doing it, it's okay, but it's not even close
to what you think it was so every two weeks.
If you do that, you can make the changes because
it's like you said, perfect tactic space. But if you
(28:30):
if I grind something in a combination for a hundred
and fifty two other times and then I realized I
did it wrong, and it's very hard to learn it,
so to say, you know to to to fix that problem.
So that's why I film yourself once a while, so
you know if you're actually doing what you think you're doing.
It's like dancing. I don't want to film myself because
I think I'm good and I don't want to start
(28:51):
expose myself. But you probably get it more than anyone else.
You know, the the questions about training, and you know
they're waiting for that you know secret quote. I hate,
I hate that term. There are the hacks, right, what's
the hack? What's the secret? And the secret is you know,
starting and progressing and you know, as you said to
you don't start with a minute on. Most people go,
why could do ninety seconds hard? And I say, actually,
(29:11):
you probably can't. When people tell me about that they're
doing hit workouts every day, I go, then you're not
doing them right right because they should be so brutal
that you need to rest that for the most part, right,
So start slowly and build up. But but you know,
we're flipping five pound towers tires right away, or we're
doing five second apps, right, We're not doing the grunt
work anymore. I had a quote for me on Forbes
(29:33):
and it's said Boston just said the best life heck
of all is just with the work, and I never
give up. That's it. And then I got it really
is too, you know. But then you know with you
at all, other professional at least and with me, when
I say go I go hunt, said, I'll go Hunt
to present. If I say somebody else a hundred percent,
I seem going seventy. There's a difference in what we've projected,
(29:55):
what we think is dent. If you do like I
do the minutes on the bank, but I said that
one minute an increasing five six. But if you do
with the power at the speed I do it with,
you can be the best positioned athlete. Your mouth will
open after one minute, right, because they all go like, oh,
I'm a nose breatherer, you know, Like I made the
training like a long trading device. Don't need three minute today, right,
(30:17):
and people go, yeah, but I breathed over nose. I
gonna do it. Oh so you're one of those guys
who goes to the gym and then you take the
weights with you on the street, right and he goes
of course, So that's exactly this. You just make it
strong for three and a half minutes. Don't worry. You're
not gonna forget how to breathe through you know. Yeah,
the bodies are really smart machine. It will figure it out, right.
You don't have to you don't have to consciously think
(30:38):
about that. I love that. Yeah, and you know, so
what's what's in the You've You've done so many products
now and by the way, I love you're acting. Did
you studiers at all? Just self taught? It was self still.
But you know, when I came to America, I within
three weeks that I lived there. That was in the
ninety seven, I start taking question at the Beverly Hills
Playhouse because I knew that eventually after fighting, this was
(30:59):
something I would like to do. And uh so no
going on stage and oh man, I mean remember my
first fights and then I remember the first time for stage.
Oh it's crazy how the hardware goes out right suddenly
in front of people. So it's so important to do
that to get used to it. Like in fighting. You know,
it's really easy fighting in the training, but to do
(31:19):
it under pressure with no rules for mistakes, that's a
whole different ball game. That is where you really separate
the fighters, you know that. I always talk about those
fighters who in the gym they beat world champions, current
world champions. Well once everybody thinks he's gonna be the
next champion, but somehow he cannot overcome the anxiety, you know,
and it doesn't come out during the fight. There's too
(31:40):
much pressure. So yeah, under pressure is everything. The best
the best line I do. And I use it because
a friend of mine, a mere Parts. He's like a
really freaking hardcore self defense instructor, like a crazy guy.
To google him, it's like what that and he all
he said that the seven are the best. He said, Okay,
if I have a plank with a one foot white
and it's twenty feet long, and I put it here
on the grass and I asked you to walk over
(32:01):
to make a pireaut in the middle, it's easy. Everybody
could do it. Okay, we take the same plan. We
put it in between two buildings. That's stories up. Now
do the same thing. And that's what I tell people.
That is now there's no room for mistakes. That's it
fighting as well. And what's like overthinking things like if
I give a right hand, that means my right side
of my body is exposed. He can keep me there
and can hit me the You know when you start
(32:22):
overthinking like that, yeah, you're breaking yourself down and there's
no way you get competed anymore. I Yeah, it's so
much about the brain. And I've I've said that when
I started studying and I looked at elite athletes and
you realize that for the most part, most of them,
you know, different in your sport, but you know, runners, cyclists, whatever,
they're mostly the same athletically. But it's who wants it more,
Who who's willing to push more? Who wants it that
(32:43):
day right? Who has their mental game together? As you're saying,
that is so much, and people don't give it enough attention,
No preserves, No, nobody does it. But but or they
think what without what is what I told you what
that is? I have a workout here that we do.
It's it's an audio workout. I career a long time ago,
and anyway, this five rounds or three minutes. It's with
sprawls and punch combination. It's really hard, and the minute
(33:06):
breaks because for us we want to do it every day.
I go, hey, let's let's use the minute break with
push ups. Let's catch our breath while we're doing push
ups or kettlebell streach. So now suddenly it became a
twenty minute warm up NonStop. And we would have professional
fighters commit to train with us who could not do
the warm up. And then I go, what is your fight?
He says do it half ways? And say don't fight.
(33:26):
He goes, what you mean? I said, there was the
warm up. We didn't even start it. This was not
we just taught ourselves. We just did it and dealt
with it. And suddenly it becomes normal. Everybody can do that.
It was not only me doing it. All my students
were doing it. You see, the human body, man, it
can do so much more than we think it can.
Just push it, push you to the core all the time. Suffering.
(33:47):
That is the best thing that you said. Already everything
comes good from suffering. You don't suffer for it, you
don't want it. You don't enjoy it, you don't do it.
If you get something for free that you have to use,
you don't do it. If you pay for it, Now
you respect and then you you say things like that
as all that's all to do with your bright and
with how you are wired. Yeah, there's so much. There's
(34:07):
so much we get out of suffering. I love that,
And we'll wrap it up with this is like, you know,
my my best races weren't my best memories. You know.
It's the race in Malaysia when I had a complete
meltdown and it took me, you know, twice as long
and I was hallucinating and seeing monk. That was the
one I remember fondly. As twisted as that is, right,
because you come out of that a different person. And
every time you do that, every time you go outside
(34:28):
your comfort zone. Everyone talks about it Boston, It's all
over Instagram, but so few actually do it. I say,
the answers are simple, right, it's the application that's that's
challenging for people. But you just have to start and
you have to be willing to do everything we just
talked about, right, and there is no failure exactly. That's it.
If you commit. That's with me. It's black and white everything.
If I say yes, I didn't say maybe, I said yes.
Once I say yes, it's yes. That's it that commits.
(34:50):
And so will be Will you be there on time?
I will always be. Actually I'll be fifteen minutes early always,
or fine at least because that I will never be
too late. You know, it's just how you wire. It's
just about building good habits. And once you have a
good habit, keep the habits. You know, Like I used
the example of using my current signal. I know it
was in the middle of the night, critical moment, there's
nobody behind me, nobody in front of me. I still
(35:11):
do it. I simply don't break the habit. It's very simple.
And once you keep doing that, you can do this
with everything, right, And it's it's just over time. In psychology,
it's you know, it's situational confidence. And you know, I say,
there's no small victories, right, they all they're not small.
They all build upon themselves. Right. I see so many
people ask me about confidence, How do I get confident? Well,
you get those small victories, and then you get a
(35:33):
little more confident, a little more confident, right, and you
you fail quote unquote, and then you come back, and
that's where people get confidence. But you have to put
yourself out there right and take the risks. You know,
I did. This is what I was a kid. I remember,
I was I was probably I was a thirteen years old.
I remember went by to school and I went through
a curve and it was a little scent on the
road and I felt and everybody, you know what, you know?
(35:55):
What do you do? So right away? And I you see,
nobody thought me this. I got to buy by the
back and a shame speed I went through the curve again,
and my buddy, why would you do that? I said,
because otherwise I'm good. If I overthink this, I never
want to do it again. If I do it now,
right now. And I think it comes from swimming. I
used to dive, and I like the somersaults and all
the kinds of stuff. If I would full flat, the
(36:16):
first thing you have to do is got to go up.
You're gonna have to do it again, because if you don't,
he said, overthinking, then maybe you're not gonna do it anymore,
you know, But if you're conquered immediately, I realized, oh
that was just an accident. Okay, now I'm good again.
So yeah, I always put yourself out there so great,
Thank you so much, and just it must be amazing
to you to stop and think back to that kid
(36:37):
we talked about with the issues you had and who
you are today. I mean, who would have thought as
we started by talking about, you know, extreme asthma to
UFC heavyweight champion in the world, you know, skin condition
to amazing you know, acclaimed actor, what's next? I mean,
you must have what are give me some big goals
that that are still out there for you? Well for me,
it's also I really enjoy it acting. So I got
(36:58):
a few things lighted up, like that, I invented the
long training device that I actually invented when I was
fourteen years old and right now is doing crazy things.
I mean it takes asked my way cp D. I mean, people, athletes,
everybody is freaking out on it. So it's it's really cool.
I've been doing it. It takes literally three to half
minutes to day. That's the only thing you need to do.
Some breathing exercises which I post every single day for
(37:20):
the last two years. I give you an example that
you so you breathe in with resistance, right, that's what
you're doing. So I used the setting in two thousand
eighteen and May two eighteen, I was setting a level,
setting a level, and I just leave it like that
because otherwise it becomes too complicated. Anyway, it took me
three minutes and forty five seconds to do my thirty repetitions.
I had to do thirty in hills with that with
(37:42):
a trainer would take me three minutes of forty five seconds.
About four weeks ago, just for fun, I grabbed that
same setting and I said, let's see how fast I
can do it now. I did it at fifty five seconds,
so I did three forty five. I went to fifty five.
That's in seventy five increase, which people get checked out
by Facebook page because I love everything, so you can
(38:02):
see two years ago, oh that's how we started, because
you know, so they can see I don't lie. And
that suddenly made people realize, wait a minute, that is
not ten percent increase is bizarre. So yeah, I love that,
and so that's where our focus is right now because
it's my my baby, so to say, and it's helping
a lot of people with anxiety of PTSD even now,
(38:23):
it's so incredible and Focal is a new company you're
working with. Yes, I love that stuff, you know, because
there's a lot of these skills for inst day of
a night and a day. Uh, I'm the guy and
you're probably on the same. I need something to go
to sleep because my mind will not do enough. I'm
completely all the time, on on on and and I
used to take things for that to go to sleep, right,
(38:45):
but and also during the day to stay awake. And
now what Focal did they put all these ingredients like,
for instance, healthy end And I used always think there's
a bill they have this in one pill, Lion's main
vitamin B six and the thing you need, all that
kind of stuff that's good for your memory. And then
what they do they add a CBD to it so
that will absorbs a better into your system and it
(39:05):
works all way better. And once I start thinking that,
it's a big difference. And the same they have also
for the night edition. And I always like to take
They have drops I always take with my even though
the CBD already in the pills, I like to take
a few more drops. Shocking and it's super high quality.
I was I was researching, and they were nice enough
to send me some stuff. And I'm always you know,
(39:26):
I gotta try new things. And all CBDs are not
created equal, and they are super high quality, which is
super important for for CBDs. It's everything, you know. It's
like when my body started this can lost. It is
a very close friend of mine and I knew that
as soon as she said, oh, I'm gonna do a
CBD product, I go, that's it. I mean, I know
because I know him everything that there's another guy. You know,
(39:48):
he won't do something ninety people do one. Always been,
always been like that, I know, twenty years and so
that's why I right away, Yeah, I was drawn through
the product and yeah it works with well, I'm like
you the one thing I know, as far as being
as healthy as possible, sleep is like, I can't do it.
And when they, you know, a couple of companies sent
me sleep trackers and I'm like, what you I know,
(40:09):
I don't get any sleep. Why do I need to
put something on my wrist to make me feel worse,
you know, getting up in the morning. And then asked
me if I had, you know, glasses of wine and
how much caffeine, like that's just horrible. I know exactly
how little sleep I got, but yeah, I'm using it too,
and it's amazing. I haven't dreamed for a long time,
and since I started taking this, I started dreaming again.
And and people always and I should have looked at it,
(40:30):
and should have, but they say dreaming is really good
for you, and I haven't been dreaming for years, and
suddenly I realized, oh wait a minute, was that. Oh
that was a dream. Oh I'm back to dreaming. So
I'm a I believe it's the focal night first that
they gave because they started happening out that. That's awesome,
not not nightmares, dreams though, good stuff for fights. Rights
(40:52):
such a pleasure. Thank you so much. I know how
super busy you are. Just such an honor, and thank
you so much for taking the time. You're very well
good of it. I had a great time. It's fun
to talk to a fellow athlete, you know, who actually
knows what they talk about. It's always fun. Well, you know,
one day we'll talk about my lack of fighting. I
was the short guy in the bars in Boston. I
got really good at fighting that because I wanted to
just as a defense mechanism from the old Irish Catholic.
(41:16):
You know, I walked in and suddenly it was like
that scene from Animal House, right with ten guys in
the bathroom waiting, so I could have viewed some of
your help the day. Have a great day and hope
to speak with you again soon. Bot. Thankright, Take it easy,
thank you, and we'll be right back. You know, I
(41:40):
often say I have the greatest job in the world
because I get to help people look better, feel better,
and live longer. One other thing that makes my job
so amazing is I get to talk to guys like
Boss Routin, and it's part of helping people look better,
feel better, and live longer. An amazing guy. What an
(42:01):
amazing guy? And you know I want to do five
hour interviews with with someone like him when you have him.
There's so much there, But you know, I want to
keep it simple, cut to the chase and give you,
you know, just enough to get you motivated, get you inspired,
give you some actionable advice on on what to do,
and wow, you know the yeah butts as as I
(42:25):
started the show by talking about with him, and if
you listen to the intro, is a guy who had
every reason to just go, Yeah, I'm gonna be in Hollywood.
I'm gonna be in movies. I have a really bad,
really bad skin condition, had to wear gloves, got bullied,
had really bad asthma. How is he gonna be an athlete?
(42:45):
How is he gonna you know, much less a professional
UFC fighter? And it's mindset. He's so positive, he's so
positive and and you know we are that. You know,
people often ask me, why are you so? Because I
have the choice. It's a much better choice, you know it.
(43:07):
Surround yourself with positive people. And that's the thing when
you start to get a circle of friends like Boss Rooting,
who inspire you, who motivate you. We're just positive. Misery
loves company and vice versa. Right. So, Wow, feels so
fortunate to have had him on. I hope you enjoyed that.
(43:28):
And I want to give you a little bit more
specifics because I know sometimes we get away and we
talk more about the the mental side, which is absolutely
super important. But I just want to go a little
bit deeper into his workouts for you, uh, for in
the show. So we talked about how his philosophy is
very simple. Training he basically does and used to do
(43:49):
ten to twelve exercises, and it's the basics that again
talk about on the show here all the time, the
stuff that works, and he focused on its strength and endurance,
not size. We didn't get to talk about that at
But if you look at him, especially against some of
the guys he fought against Holy Cow, there were some monsters,
but he was fitter, he was faster, and he did
(44:11):
the simple stuff that worked. So he talks about he
did pull ups, he did push ups, bench press, high poles.
It wasn't about vanity for him. Uh. He did high
REPSI reps for him. But again your goals most likely
a little different, but the point is there. He would
do basically fifty seconds per exercise with a minute rest,
(44:35):
and he would do abs and squats in between. Where
have you heard that before? So circuit training now again
he's preparing to to fight and to do uh you know,
grappling and different things like that. But conditioning rules still apply.
And as I said, he was so far ahead of
the game as far as conditioning. He doesn't give himself
(44:55):
enough credit, but his resume speaks volumes. That's the results.
The results speak for themselves. So one of his formats
he talks about is twelve exercises, where he would do
one minute on, one minute off, with a one minute
break in between, and you do that three times through,
So basically about a thirty eight minute workout. I actually
(45:17):
don't need to break in between because you're getting it anyway.
So twelve exercises, one minute break after each exercise, you
do that three times through. And I have a quote
here I pulled. He says people train too hard or
too long, so it's quality over quantity, it's excessive moderation.
And here's from a guy who literally had to fight
for his life, and the same principles apply quality over quantity,
(45:43):
consistency building up slowly. You know when you hear him
talk about not doing ninety seconds out of the gate, like,
what do you mean ninety seconds? But all out. So
on your hard days, go hard, and on your easy days,
go easy. And when you're doing your hard interval, that's hard.
And when you're resting, you rest, and you can have
your gray zone days, not hard, not easy, longer duration
(46:07):
recovery slash endurance workouts. But when you want quality over quantity,
and as he said, a lot of people think they're
going sev I'm sorry, and they're doing seventy. And like
I talked about all the time, endurance works, your workouts
should be those easy workouts. If you're truly doing the
(46:28):
hard workouts, you need the recovery and most professional athletes
will do one, if not to recovery workouts. After a
super hard one, a runner will go to the track
do their interval sprints. The next morning, they'll do a
couple of miles whatever, recovery easy run, and then in
the afternoon they'll do it again. But the basics and
(46:49):
the mental side, I feel so fortunate that that he
just was all over that, and he was doing the
sports psychology stuff without even knowing it. But we knew
that when you study sports psychology, you you you you
talk about how back in the day, especially before it
was even talked about, the athletes were doing this. They
just didn't know. It wasn't talked about, didn't have a
name for it. He was doing visualization, being on the beach,
(47:10):
going to his safe place, as he talked about it.
When things got crazy, he wrote the RS on his
hand to remind him to relax. When things got crazy,
he had the self talk to motivate himself when things
got stressful, stresses his choice. Listen to that podcast I did.
If you question that what a great time. Thank you
(47:35):
again to Boss Routin for taking the time. I hope
you enjoyed the show. If you can, I appreciate please
rate the show. Subscribe to this podcast too. I forget
to say that, but super appreciative if you do, and
I don't want to miss the show. We're gonna have
many more great guests, just like Boss, and it's gonna
be a mix interviews, studies, everything to get you to
(47:58):
be the best you can be, to achieve as Boss did,
goals that you don't think are possible. That's the show.
That's what I'm about. I want to hear more and
get more comments and emails from people, and I get
them all the time, and it's the single greatest part
of my job, my books, my videos, these shows hearing
from people who have made incredible changes in their lives.
(48:21):
So thank you for listening again. Rate the show please
please if you have not. If you have, thank you.
Tom h Fit is both my Instagram and Twitter. Uh
Fitness disrupted dot com. You can go there, email me
right through the site. Thank you for listening. I really
appreciate it. And remember there are three things you can control,
(48:42):
how much you move, what you put into your mouth,
and as Boss just explained so ridiculously well, your attitude,
your mindset, and that is awesome. I'm Tom Holland. This
is Fitness Disrupted. Believe in yourself. Yeah. Fitness Disrupted is
(49:04):
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of I Heart Radio.
I am Tom Holland and this is Fitness Disrupted, Boss Bruton.
I get excited just saying the guy's name because he
(00:21):
just exemplifies everything that this show is about. Everything this
shows about overcoming obstacles, positive attitude, achieving beyond expectations, just everything.
Everything that we're in control of, our attitudes and our
ultimate destiny, regardless of those obstacles that you have in
(00:42):
front of you. And this guy did it in one
of the most insane forums, you know, the m M
A Ring. I've been watching his videos and you know
it makes ultra marathons and iron Man triathlons look ridiculous
in comparison. But everything's relative. And he is an amazing
example in the living proof of overcoming obstacles because the
(01:06):
two things he is two major obstacles as a kid
he blasted through and he's one of the most positive
people as you will hear, and energetic and and again
has every reason, had every reason back as a child,
and and so many obstacles along the way to give
up to have the yeah, but yeah, but and fill
(01:29):
in the blank. But he did. Let me give you
this bio. So some of you know who he is,
some don't. Many of you who don't think you know
who he is would recognize him from movies, TV, video games.
But here's his bio. So. Boss rout In is a
Dutch American actor, retired mixed martial artist, kickboxer, and professional wrestler.
He was a UFC heavyweight champion, a three time King
(01:53):
of Pancras World champion, finished a career on a twenty
two fight unbeaten streak with twenty one wins and undraw
and he was ultimately inducted into the UFC Hall of
Fame as a professional fighter. One of his favorite tactics
was the liver shot, which I'm sure he'll talk about
both punch and kick, and he popularized its use in
(02:13):
the m m A. Boss is known for his charisma
and has capitalized on his celebrity status since retiring from
fighting in he has worked as a color commentator and
several m m A organizations. Has appeared in numerous television
shows movies. One of my favorite is here Comes to
the Boom. He's a ridiculously talented comedic actor, which is hard.
(02:34):
Here Comes the Boom was with Kevin James, and he's
appeared in video games. He also coaches M M A
and has authored several instructional materials. He is a bunch
of products as well. By the way, here's the thing though,
at the age of six, he developed exema and severe asthma.
His ex ama ment he always wore long sleeves, turtlenecks,
(02:54):
and gloves, and his asthma meant he was unable to
partake an exercise and was squently relatively skinny. He was
bullied on a daily basis as a child. Boss became
interested in martial arts at age twelve after his family
went on vacation to France, where he basically snuck into
(03:14):
Enter the Dragon, starring Bruce Lee, at a local movie theater.
He was too young. He's gonna talk all about this,
but what I want to focus on is he had
the barrier to exercise with asthma. Was constantly in bed
as a child, constantly fighting severe severe asthma. So to
(03:35):
go from that, Yeah, but I have asthma. You're going
to be a professional fighter. It's a UFC champion and
severe as I'm gonna be an actor in Hollywood. So
he's gonna illustrate that no obstacle can stand in your
way when you were focused on achieving your goal and
(03:55):
you figure out how to get there. And we're talking
about the mental side. We're gonna talk about is workouts.
We're gonna talk about all that stuff and and prepare
to be ridiculously inspired and motivated. That's all I have
to say. Quick break, when we come back. By the way,
let me just throw you there right now. Go to
his website. He's got a couple Boss Routin dot com,
Elite m m A, Jim dot com. You can go
(04:18):
to his gym as well, Elite mm A, Jim dot
com and his instagram Boss Routin mm A. So visit
those sites. You can pull him up during the short
break and then he will be here. We'll be right
back with Boss Routin and we are back super special show.
(04:47):
Could not be more excited none other than former UFC
heavyweight champion turned acclaimed actor, turned serial entrepreneur. Boss Thanks
so much for taking the time. You are a busy man,
Thank you very much. Yeah, busy, but good busy. That's
a good thing. Good busy, right, And you know I've
often said, by the way, if I changed my name
(05:08):
as something with um out's like you're gonna Hellrigo back
in the day when I was first starting in fitness,
would have helped me immeasurably. Right, name like boss routine
goes a long way. It's just you know, and and
and hold of the boss rootsin is in. Uh, it's
a very regular name. There's not a Boss rootin there
as well. He actually has my Twitter hand Stop it
doesn't South you know, South badass. And there you go.
(05:28):
And now I have Tom Holland, the actor who is
screwing up my social media. But then again, you know,
I've got a lot of talking to Tom Holland the
other one. Yeah, she's not impressed. She's not impressed with me.
Well again, thank you so much for taking the time,
so excited to speak with you. It was so much
fun going back and watching old fights and things like that,
and just to get started boss again. You don't need
(05:49):
to tell your story. So many people know it, and
I gave it in the intro. I have spent my
life dealing with the yeah bots, you know. Yeah, but
I don't have enough time. Yeah but I'm too short.
You know, you had two extreme reasons to not do
what you did right. When it comes to exercise where
you had extreme asthma, and when it comes to you know,
being an actor, you know you had a skin condition.
So how did you just rise above that as a kid. Well, uh,
(06:13):
there's two things you can do right. You can be
look at me boo boo, also sad or you say,
you know, let's let's see if you can do something
with it. And that's what I did. I just you know,
I got bullied a lot, of course because kids don't
understand the skin disease. And but that you know, little
fire in me. And then suddenly when I started was
allowed finally, after a couple of years of begging my
parents to start martial arts, I started training with adults.
(06:35):
Somebody took me under a swing because there was the
tough guy who was dating my neighbor, Gill, and he
kind of put his arms around me, so to say,
and he took me to the progress the adult classes.
And then but the I mean, but in months, I
was start beating the adults. And then I overheard you
these guys talking about me in the dressing room. Oh
my god, this kid's got has a lot of talent.
And if you only Yeah, I heard before that you're
(06:58):
a leper or you know, like because of the skin disease.
You know, that's that's suddenly it's positive. And I started
listening to what they got into a five with the
biggest bully in the in my school, knocked him out
one punch, and that I'm telling you that from my
bully stopped right there. Yeah, that that tends to do
it right, when you pick up a fight with the
biggest guy and um, you end up winning. So that's
(07:20):
it's so powerful boss for people to hear that that
you know, and you said it perfectly. You use your
fuel as your fire right. You use that to not
keep you from achieving your goals, but actually motivate you
to get there, because I'm sure you use a lot
of that anger, especially you know in the fighting days
and then you know into your entrepreneurial slash actor days.
You just use that rights as a fuel, you know. Like,
(07:41):
but when I see now I watched back and I
see myself fight. Sometimes sometimes somebody says, oh today, Boston,
so many years ago foot this fight, and then when
I click on it, you know, I I still know
what I was thinking at that moment. If I didn't
like the guy or like the guy, you know, but
I realized there's a completely different guy than I am
right now, and I wasn't really like, yeah, we we were,
(08:02):
you know. I do the Ultra Marathon's, Iron Man's things
like that. Totally different, you know, different kind of discomfort.
But I always say I was much angrier back when
I was going faster and farther. Right, I'm I'm much
happier in a different way. I got. I got a
lot of that out right, And that's, uh, that's an
interesting kind of way, but it's it's a good it's
a good outlet, right, and it's okay to do that.
It's okay to to be angry and to use that
(08:22):
to to achieve your goals. Yeah, as long as you
use it for that. It's the same as when I
say that people, you know, as a fighter, as an
athlete in general, you need an ego, you know. But
the trick is to keep that ego just to sport,
to do your sport what you do, because what you
start carrying an outside which you sometimes see from other fighters, Yeah,
then you've become the douchebag. You don't to have an
(08:43):
ego for yourself. You know, do you always go to
the hardest, the fastest. You always want to be the best,
You always want to be It always motivates me. Man.
I I never thought I was there, not even close.
I would always think my opponent was pretty harder than myself,
you know, I could. I was really good it self motivation,
talking to myself and then just we should crap out
(09:03):
of me. I love that, and that that kind of
rolls right into what I want to talk about too.
So I'm big into the sports psychology. Did a master's
degree in that. And you know, even as you said,
as I was watching your videos, uh you know when
the fight where you had your stern and broken and
you know they're doing the close ups on your face,
you had obviously your mental game down incredibly. Well can
(09:24):
you talk a little bit, I mean, were you doing
the self talk? Were you doing the visualizations before the fights?
How are you using mental tools to to get where
you needed to go? You know, I first of all,
I break everything down in my head because love of people.
They they're they're afraid, and I go, okay, so what
are you fid up? Right? You know? And if you're
honest to yourself which you only can be, of course,
because you know immediately if you lie or not. But
if you just tell yourself, okay, what's the worst thing
(09:46):
that can happen? Okay, you gonna knock me out? Is
that really the worst thing that can happen, because apparently
you won't feel it? Okay, good again in a submission,
Oh I tap because if I don't tap, I have
a chance if I breaking my arm or whatever. Submission
has been So if I tap, no, that's also not good.
Why is the worst thing that kept Well, the worst
thing that could happen would be a complete mismatch, and
you're finding a guy who's completely tooling your schooling you,
(10:07):
making fun of you in front of an audience, but
with great matchmaking, that will never happen. So then you
start thinking, okay, so why would I be nervous? And
then you realize all the fighters they're nervous for the
back lass they're gonna get from other people. And the
way I talked to my students, I always say, if
they're a week before they fight, it's one of the
first fights. They're very nervous already a week before, and
(10:27):
I go, okay, let's visualize this Let's imagine your opponent
walks in right now and you both going in that room.
You're gonna lock the door. There's no windows, no nothing
in there, and you fight and then whoever wins, you're
not allowed to say whoever who who were lost? And
then you open the door. You both walk out. But
would you care if you would lose? And then well
they say no, I said why not? Yeah, because you
(10:48):
know he was your stronger. Okay, So that means that
you are not fighting for yourself. You're fighting to please
the audience. And once you start doing that fighting for
other people, that's when you put too much pressure on yourself.
And most of the time they see that they go like,
oh wow, it is true. Indeed, you know if you
put so much pressure on yourself. But you know that's
the trick. You're fighting and in competition for your competition
(11:09):
as well. You know why you need to push and
you've never been there and you're at the end of whatever,
the final run, the final swim, whatever you're doing, you
know you you need to go to a place that
you hopefully you've been there before so that you can
use that that moment to to to spark now yourself to,
you know, to go all the way. You know, there's
always but you needed a moment like that. For instance,
(11:31):
what I also with that you go to a safe place.
They always said, you know, go where it's comfortable. And
I go, that's what's so stupid what people say. And
I go, wait a minute, if I create that safe place.
So I will go to the beach a couple of
weeks before the fight and I would sit there suns comes,
sun comes up in the morning, meditate, see the sun
coming up. That will be my spot if I needed
(11:52):
to go somewhere, you see. So I started creating those
things that people say you have to do, but if
you never did it, you don't have a space to
go to. So but create one, you know, and that
that helped me just tremendously. Suddenly I wasn't nervous anymore
because now I was fighting for myself and that's for
my family, not for my friends. No. No, And it
sounds like of an ego maniac, But guess what if
I don't fight for my family, I don't have any pressure.
(12:14):
And if I don't have a pressure, I fight my best.
If I fight my best, I'm probably going to win.
And that means I get more money, you see, so
that my family. You know, it's amazing, is you're hitting
on all like if you actually study sports psychology, you
just hit on like three different specific sports psychology you
know tools, and you know you're doing this in the
nineties early nineties, even before a lot of the sports
psychology stuff was was popular, So you were doing visualization
(12:37):
and you had that place to go. And I gotta
even backtrack. There was so much in that um when
you talk about, you know, stress being a process and
a choice, and it's basically have I been there before?
And if so, was I successful? And if not, do
I have the tools that I need to get me
through it? And I love how you just go to
worst case scenario and and for so many people, as
as you're saying, it's really not that bad, it's really
(12:58):
not that bad, it isn't it is really not you know,
you look at the military. These guys didn't make a mistake.
They die, you know. Then and then let's go through
the excubutive sports, those egg games, the guys with motorcycles
that make three sole sold back. You see that, I
think that is they He goes, well, there they might
literally die with us. You got a referee pulls you off,
it's not that bad, right And if you're not afraid, Boss,
(13:20):
I was thinking about this. Did you ever see the movie? Um?
I was thinking about you the Ice Guardians, about hockey
enforcers back in the day. Oh no, But I heard
the guys with Ohio you would love the profiles a
couple and one guy said the only thing that scared
him was getting knocked out in front of his girlfriend.
That was all he cared about. That was you know,
it wasn't about uh, you know, the fans or anything
(13:42):
like that. It was just one person. But I so
appreciate what you're saying about doing it for yourself, and
I would say it's not an egocentric thing. I know myself.
When I was doing Iron Man's before the internet, Boss,
it didn't matter because no one could follow me, right,
no one knew what was Now I know in real
time that people are literally tracking my progress and when
something is hey wire. You know that's stressful if you
(14:02):
let it. But to your point, I learned over the
years to go, I don't care what they're doing, I
don't care that they're watching. This is about me, and
that's not ego centric, right, that's why we're doing. Yeah,
and listen, if you're I'm just running and cycling and biking,
you're getting hit and you know, body parts twisted and stuff. So, uh,
if you can do that, that's amazing. So you were
you were doing visualization, you were going to the beach
(14:23):
and you had that place to go and I do that.
You know when a swim goes hey wire, I go
to that place and you're still You're still moving forward, right,
you just have to move forward. That's the whole. And
you know what I love to bosses. I was watching
your videos and I saw the RS on your right hand.
I used to write suffer, So the opposite of what
your your message was to yourself to go harder, because
(14:43):
I generally didn't push myself hard enough. But you had
the R, which was what in Dutch for rusting. Is
that how you pronounce it? Yeah, yeah, coincidentally starts relax.
It's the same world, so coincidentally starts with an R
as well here with America. So that was good and
it's the translation the same way calm or or yeah,
being calm and literally because I did that because I
found out on the first of all I found On
(15:05):
the day of the fight out, I found out that
my opponent was thirty five parts every than I was right.
And then there were no weight classes. And then when
I asked how many rounds, he said one, and I
was so happy. And when I asked how many minutes
he said thirty And like, okay, now, allow me need
to sell. But calm myself down because I'm such a
hot head, especially at the time. You know, I will
be very technical, but somebody connect, Oh, I go nuts.
(15:26):
You know, I wanted to knock him out. So if
I lose control the first two minutes and I can
still and I can't put him away, and they got
twenty eight more minutes to go, that's the problem, right,
And I love that And it's so simple. Ye's so powerful,
right for you, that's what worked for me. It was
suffer and for someone else just doing that little thing.
And that's what you know, everyone can do to help
them achieve their goals. And it doesn't matter how big
(15:47):
or how small, it's just whatever works for you. And
as you're saying, it's not a matter if things are
gonna go wrong, But what right suddenly you're told is
thirty minutes. Suddenly this guy's you know, hardly in your
weight class, but you just keep moving forward. You go, okay,
I can deal with this, right, Yeah. You just prepare
for always the worst case scenario. That's what I always
did always, and if you do that, it can never
(16:08):
go wrong. I had asked my I lost the fight
one time because of stemina, or that will never happen again,
And then I became this incredible conditioning guy. I just
taught myself to love stemina because because of my asthma,
if I would get tired, I would try to stay
away from it because I was afraid of it, you know,
But that was because of my askma. Once I started
realized that, I go, wait a minute, dude, you gotta
simply push you. And so then when I got really tired,
(16:30):
I would go, I love that, I love and I
want to get more tied more time. But I I'm
telling you, it started working, and suddenly now I needed it.
It was almost like an addiction. Now I needed to
get super tired because then I would I guess it's
the runner's high, would you guys have I would feel
that my teeth would glow when I would drive, and
that changed everything. Now suddenly I knew how to push
(16:52):
and to constantly push and that was it. Yeah, you know,
you're we're built in the same way. As far as
the endurance goes. I do the durance because I know
you can go ahead of me in the race, but
I'm gonna catch you. And my line is as the
race gets longer, I get stronger as the race gets longer.
And that's my mantra. And you are using those mantras,
so you do have that self talk in your head
as you're in the later stages of the fight. Those
(17:14):
over times you did, you had I'm sure some mantras
like you were just saying, yeah, it's just just don't quit.
Don't good and you know, and if something slips in,
oh sho, he might beat me. And then then the
other voice is gonna say, okay, but you know he's
gonna have to work for it. You know, if okay,
I might lose, but he's gonna feel it that I'm
not gonna give it away, you know, And as long
as she keeps talking like that, and you know it's
(17:36):
also I had a few places that that really saved
my bott Also, like the second fight, I came in
already I was. I was cocky. The second fight, knocked
out my first supportant in Ja Ben, forty three seconds.
He was the number four. Now I was going to
fight the number six, Like god, it's gonna be easy.
So such an idiot. I was such an idiot. And
and sure enough, the day before I got sick, they
(17:56):
let me travel from eight o'clock in the morning til
the afternoon till the fight. Was that you have to
understand nighttime, his day time. So I fell asleep at
seven am and then they am They let me travel
for like seven hours, you know. So I was was
throwing up, I was doing everything, and then I almost
lost that fight, and I pulled it off. I literally
used his breathing against him, like I had so less
(18:17):
power left. And I saw I hadn't been a guillotine
at Tampa anyway. I see him breathe, and I know
that if he breathes in, and at that moment I
knew him in the gut he could do five thousand
and sit up today he will go down. So I
timed it perfectly and he went down, and that was
the moment. But I after the fight, I went back
to the dressing room that I was by myself and
I asked everybody to move out, and I told myself,
(18:37):
this will never happen again, dude, you will never think
it's gonna be an easy fight. So thankfully to me,
that happened early on in my career and I still
pull off a victory. My boy, I was that was
such an ego. Pride. Pride is the worst one. They
always say, No, every person in hell is proud, right,
that's it. Pride get makes us do the dumbest things
(18:58):
all the time. But you know what, people talk about
failure and we just talked about that a little bit.
Failure is is you know, I would say, there is
no failure, right. The failure is making the same mistake
over and over again. So you learned, and you learned
quickly obviously in your business, or you don't. But but
there's no failure, right. And people talk about all the time, Oh,
you're gonna fail. I've been told no, as I'm sure
you have thousands of times in my life. And that's
(19:19):
part of the success. You know what the cool thing
is with me, It's like, uh, they wanted me for
one more fight back in Japan, and now I knew
I had the power because it was a champion that
was undefeated for like twenty fights in a row. And
I and I said, cool, I will fight with this
amount of money, which eventually we got. And I said,
and I want the the rights to all my fights.
You canna have it too, I said, but I want
to be able to sell them. So they gave me
(19:40):
all my fighting thirty fights in Japan, and I started
doing my own commentary over those fights, so for the
people at home, they can see what I'm thinking. And
then you see me. For instance, my last fight I
lost against sam My lost loss was that but the
need bar and he set it up a certain way.
And then I go like five fights forward, and then
I'm fighting Mary Smidt, and I'm telling the people at home,
I say, you remember the fight I lost against again,
(20:02):
you know, remember what the set of us look at this?
And then you see me doing exactly the same setup.
And I beat Mary Smith with it too. So I
always said the loss. I've never been down. When I
was lost, I parted just as hard. I've never go
like to the dress room crying. I never had that.
I always saw, like you said, this is the biggest
learning curve there is. You know, this mistake I will
(20:23):
never make again. So, yeah, all these people are depressed
after the loss, I said, I'm sorry. I never had that.
I was never depressed. I just thought, okay, this is
not gonna happen again, and made me stronger. I'm stronger.
That's how I thought, right, Right, You just reframe it, right,
That's that's how it happens. You don't get good by
not you know, having those experiences. That's how you get good. Right.
Back to the guys on the skateboards. I aways look
(20:43):
at those guys, you know, motocross and stuff, and you think,
how many bones has this guy broken to get this good? Right,
that's what's so frightening. Yeah, no, right, that's that's right.
But that's one little mistake. You twist your ankle. Now,
you can't do anything like in martial arts, right. I
heard my risk for instance, you know, and I have
I have a really great way of dealing with that.
For instance, probably to be to fight, I hurt my
(21:05):
right wrist. Okay, that's God telling me your right hand
is strong enough. Let's focus on the rest, you know.
But we still have the other things that we can
work with. A skateboarder, if he twitches his ankle, that's it.
He can a skateboard at all anymore. So it's much
harder for him that he gets injured. So that means
also that he wants to really watch out, and you
know as well as I do. When she would start
(21:26):
really watching out what you do, that's when you of
course get hurt. So they walk in the fine line
as well, same as in any of those crazy ex
game sports. Yeah, I love that. And back when I
was training clients boss the same thing. When someone would
you know, break a leg or whatever it was, or
just have a minor injury, I'd say this is awesome,
and they go, what are you talking about. You've been
doing the same thing. We need to mix things up,
(21:47):
and now we have to write. Because people do the
same thing, they tend to do what they're good at
and they don't get better because it's working on your weaknesses,
right that that gets you there. So an injury is
not a setback, it's actually an opportunity to get really good.
You know, just just what I said in my talks
always I do public speaking and motivational talks, and I
said to whatever is part of what whatever you don't
(22:07):
like and it is part of your job. Do that
a lot, because, for instance, with me, I I lost
three times by submission. I got so fed up with myself.
I didn't have anybody to train with. I found once
parting partner, and I started. Because I never liked it.
I thought it was a stupid sport, you know, stupid.
But you know, once I forced myself, I started training
(22:27):
to three times to day only your submissions. And suddenly,
just like with stamina that I did, I started liking it.
Not only that, I became obsessed with it. And once
I became obsessed with it, now I really wanted to
do I mean I always talked about this. I woke
up my wife at least six seven times in the
middle of the night because I would dream a submission.
I would put her in that submission and then they
always shoulders, earning or legas already whatever it was. The
(22:50):
next day, I would do it training. You know, I
would love it. I would love it. But you know what,
because I started understanding it, I started loving it. And
once I loved it, I did it a lot. I
never lost to fight again. I didn't lose you my
last two fights and it's old because I didn't want
to lose one more time, and I had checked what
I was, what I didn't like the most. I said,
(23:10):
I'm going to learn teach myself to love this. And
once I started doing it, I started understanding it. And
most of the time when you don't like something is
because you don't understand it. But what you understand it, boom,
Suddenly it becomes something you want to do. You do
it a lut because you love it, and then you
become good. There's no other way that to become good.
You know. I once professor specifically, I'll never forget exactly
(23:31):
when he said it. He said, you know, if you
want to know what your weakness is, just ask your
competition and in your line of work. That's that's a really,
you know, tough thing to find out, but it's true.
And I remember vividly to football locker room wall. It said,
work on your weakness till it becomes your strength. Now,
I said, you don't have to make it your strength.
Let's just not make it your weakness, right, Let's not.
Let's not have it be a total thing that that
(23:52):
keeps you back. But I've said, boss, like, start one workout,
for me, the way to do it is start every
workout with one exercise you really don't like, just one
and just get that out of the way, and then
maybe two or three. But that is where change happens, right,
And that's what you're describing. That's so cool that you
say that, because I do the same thing, and I
give myself assignments also, like I would go before I
grapple for us, as I say, okay, so they've only
(24:14):
got to tech his left leg and his right arm,
you know. And then even if I hat of submissions,
I don't. I only go for those because apparently I
need to work on that. And then once you know,
and then these guys they start communicating with each other
because they knew what I was doing. They go August
the left night, right arm guys, So everybody wants out,
you know. So there defense automatically becomes better because it's
so now I need to be even more inventive in
(24:36):
order to still pull off submissions or that left leg
or the right arm. You see. So it always helps
you if you give yourselves assignments like that before you start,
right and just get it out of the way, and
they don't have to be wrong, and it doesn't have
to be you know, it just has to be consistent.
And one thing I want to swing too right away
because it's just amazing. So you were ahead of the
curve and sports psychology. And then I've heard you know,
(24:57):
your focus and your kind of strategy towards training back
in the day, and I love that. You said, you know,
you did very simple training and you said, you know,
nowadays there are way better ways to do it, and
I would argue the way you did it was a
great way and it still is right. So the basics work. Yes,
today we have more research and stuff and better fitness technology,
but you were so far ahead of the game with
(25:17):
your workouts. First of all, you talk about like specific
adaptations to impose demands. You're like, listen, here's how I fight.
So here's how I'm gonna do a bench press. Here's
where my hands positions are going to be. So this
is how I'm gonna modify the exercises. And it's ten
to twelve exercises. It's a minute on, minute off essentially,
and you're gonna do the basics over and over, right,
That's it. That's it, you know, and uh, and it
(25:38):
works and all these people they uh, they always say,
you know, a knock out. They try to be interesting,
you know, they go like, oh, it's knock present itself.
You don't have to look for the knockout. It will come.
I got it's complete bs because every knockout that I had,
what's a combination I worked on for the six weeks
before that fight. It's always like that. But I grinded
(25:58):
if I say I worked on something, well, I did
that combination at least fifty don of times, you know,
because I'll go over and over and over. I'm like,
I have this crazy mind. I can push so crazy.
I give you an example. I wasn't badass karate cup
and I went my first time booking class and I
started immediately with an A class, which is a professional guy.
And my hand was karate. My media the load that
(26:18):
below your head right, you don't have up at you
have because there's no head punch is allowed in karate.
So he as soon as she started hitting my head,
of course I cannot bring my hand slowly up because
the punches coming. I gotta go fat. So you overcommit.
While he knew right away if I overcommit, I'm exposing
my body and boom, he dropped me with the liver shop.
That's where my love for the liver shop give him.
So I got oh. I felt like a nightmare because
(26:41):
nobody ever did that to me. I didn't even know
what it was. And he explained it to me, and
my blah blah, I go home. I spent it. I
tell this to people all the time. I said, I
spent at least three and a half four hours in
front of a mirror, shadow boxing with my hands at
my jaw, looking at my hands that they will never
drop again. The next day, I went back to the
the gym and I clean eighty percent ninety percent of
(27:02):
the gym up. And they thought that I actually played
the trick on them, that I already knew how to bucks,
but that acting. And I said, no, I spent four
hours in front of a mirror. Lest people go, like
four hours life at all, try strife steen minutes and
then think what three and a half hours is? You know?
So I'm really obsessed. I need to fix it now
that it will be fixed now, not tomorrow, right away.
(27:22):
And then there's a great you know, the line is
for sports psychology. Again, It's not that practice makes perfect
it's perfect practice makes perfect, right, yeah, you know, and
there's so many people out there and they're making it
too hard and they're they're using all the fancy equipment.
I say it all the time. I started doing push
ups because herschel Walker did three hundred you know, push
ups and crunches every day, and so that's what I did,
and I got really good results from that, right because
I was consistent. So I just love that. You know,
(27:45):
you talk about you even talk about how you do
one minute you know on, one minute off, and then
the next week you had five seconds to the on
and take five off the rest, and then the next
week you had five seconds. So it's progressive, slow and progressive.
That's the trick because I don't want you over train.
And you know with that the perfect practice makes it perfect.
But I always did. But I was when I was
starting to fight. Every two weeks or so, I would
(28:07):
feel myself hitting a bag because always in my mind
I would think that I rotate really well, you know,
like the also things that your technical things that you
think you do well. But guess what, once you see
yourself doing it, it's okay, but it's not even close
to what you think it was so every two weeks.
If you do that, you can make the changes because
it's like you said, perfect tactic space. But if you
(28:30):
if I grind something in a combination for a hundred
and fifty two other times and then I realized I
did it wrong, and it's very hard to learn it,
so to say, you know to to to fix that problem.
So that's why I film yourself once a while, so
you know if you're actually doing what you think you're doing.
It's like dancing. I don't want to film myself because
I think I'm good and I don't want to start
(28:51):
expose myself. But you probably get it more than anyone else.
You know, the the questions about training, and you know
they're waiting for that you know secret quote. I hate,
I hate that term. There are the hacks, right, what's
the hack? What's the secret? And the secret is you know,
starting and progressing and you know, as you said to
you don't start with a minute on. Most people go,
why could do ninety seconds hard? And I say, actually,
(29:11):
you probably can't. When people tell me about that they're
doing hit workouts every day, I go, then you're not
doing them right right because they should be so brutal
that you need to rest that for the most part, right,
So start slowly and build up. But but you know,
we're flipping five pound towers tires right away, or we're
doing five second apps, right, We're not doing the grunt
work anymore. I had a quote for me on Forbes
(29:33):
and it's said Boston just said the best life heck
of all is just with the work, and I never
give up. That's it. And then I got it really
is too, you know. But then you know with you
at all, other professional at least and with me, when
I say go I go hunt, said, I'll go Hunt
to present. If I say somebody else a hundred percent,
I seem going seventy. There's a difference in what we've projected,
(29:55):
what we think is dent. If you do like I
do the minutes on the bank, but I said that
one minute an increasing five six. But if you do
with the power at the speed I do it with,
you can be the best positioned athlete. Your mouth will
open after one minute, right, because they all go like, oh,
I'm a nose breatherer, you know, Like I made the
training like a long trading device. Don't need three minute today, right,
(30:17):
and people go, yeah, but I breathed over nose. I
gonna do it. Oh so you're one of those guys
who goes to the gym and then you take the
weights with you on the street, right and he goes
of course, So that's exactly this. You just make it
strong for three and a half minutes. Don't worry. You're
not gonna forget how to breathe through you know. Yeah,
the bodies are really smart machine. It will figure it out, right.
You don't have to you don't have to consciously think
(30:38):
about that. I love that. Yeah, and you know, so
what's what's in the You've You've done so many products
now and by the way, I love you're acting. Did
you studiers at all? Just self taught? It was self still.
But you know, when I came to America, I within
three weeks that I lived there. That was in the
ninety seven, I start taking question at the Beverly Hills
Playhouse because I knew that eventually after fighting, this was
(30:59):
something I would like to do. And uh so no
going on stage and oh man, I mean remember my
first fights and then I remember the first time for stage.
Oh it's crazy how the hardware goes out right suddenly
in front of people. So it's so important to do
that to get used to it. Like in fighting. You know,
it's really easy fighting in the training, but to do
(31:19):
it under pressure with no rules for mistakes, that's a
whole different ball game. That is where you really separate
the fighters, you know that. I always talk about those
fighters who in the gym they beat world champions, current
world champions. Well once everybody thinks he's gonna be the
next champion, but somehow he cannot overcome the anxiety, you know,
and it doesn't come out during the fight. There's too
(31:40):
much pressure. So yeah, under pressure is everything. The best
the best line I do. And I use it because
a friend of mine, a mere Parts. He's like a
really freaking hardcore self defense instructor, like a crazy guy.
To google him, it's like what that and he all
he said that the seven are the best. He said, Okay,
if I have a plank with a one foot white
and it's twenty feet long, and I put it here
on the grass and I asked you to walk over
(32:01):
to make a pireaut in the middle, it's easy. Everybody
could do it. Okay, we take the same plan. We
put it in between two buildings. That's stories up. Now
do the same thing. And that's what I tell people.
That is now there's no room for mistakes. That's it
fighting as well. And what's like overthinking things like if
I give a right hand, that means my right side
of my body is exposed. He can keep me there
and can hit me the You know when you start
(32:22):
overthinking like that, yeah, you're breaking yourself down and there's
no way you get competed anymore. I Yeah, it's so
much about the brain. And I've I've said that when
I started studying and I looked at elite athletes and
you realize that for the most part, most of them,
you know, different in your sport, but you know, runners, cyclists, whatever,
they're mostly the same athletically. But it's who wants it more,
Who who's willing to push more? Who wants it that
(32:43):
day right? Who has their mental game together? As you're saying,
that is so much, and people don't give it enough attention,
No preserves, No, nobody does it. But but or they
think what without what is what I told you what
that is? I have a workout here that we do.
It's it's an audio workout. I career a long time ago,
and anyway, this five rounds or three minutes. It's with
sprawls and punch combination. It's really hard, and the minute
(33:06):
breaks because for us we want to do it every day.
I go, hey, let's let's use the minute break with
push ups. Let's catch our breath while we're doing push
ups or kettlebell streach. So now suddenly it became a
twenty minute warm up NonStop. And we would have professional
fighters commit to train with us who could not do
the warm up. And then I go, what is your fight?
He says do it half ways? And say don't fight.
(33:26):
He goes, what you mean? I said, there was the
warm up. We didn't even start it. This was not
we just taught ourselves. We just did it and dealt
with it. And suddenly it becomes normal. Everybody can do that.
It was not only me doing it. All my students
were doing it. You see, the human body, man, it
can do so much more than we think it can.
Just push it, push you to the core all the time. Suffering.
(33:47):
That is the best thing that you said. Already everything
comes good from suffering. You don't suffer for it, you
don't want it. You don't enjoy it, you don't do it.
If you get something for free that you have to use,
you don't do it. If you pay for it, Now
you respect and then you you say things like that
as all that's all to do with your bright and
with how you are wired. Yeah, there's so much. There's
(34:07):
so much we get out of suffering. I love that,
And we'll wrap it up with this is like, you know,
my my best races weren't my best memories. You know.
It's the race in Malaysia when I had a complete
meltdown and it took me, you know, twice as long
and I was hallucinating and seeing monk. That was the
one I remember fondly. As twisted as that is, right,
because you come out of that a different person. And
every time you do that, every time you go outside
(34:28):
your comfort zone. Everyone talks about it Boston, It's all
over Instagram, but so few actually do it. I say,
the answers are simple, right, it's the application that's that's
challenging for people. But you just have to start and
you have to be willing to do everything we just
talked about, right, and there is no failure exactly. That's it.
If you commit. That's with me. It's black and white everything.
If I say yes, I didn't say maybe, I said yes.
Once I say yes, it's yes. That's it that commits.
(34:50):
And so will be Will you be there on time?
I will always be. Actually I'll be fifteen minutes early always,
or fine at least because that I will never be
too late. You know, it's just how you wire. It's
just about building good habits. And once you have a
good habit, keep the habits. You know, Like I used
the example of using my current signal. I know it
was in the middle of the night, critical moment, there's
nobody behind me, nobody in front of me. I still
(35:11):
do it. I simply don't break the habit. It's very simple.
And once you keep doing that, you can do this
with everything, right, And it's it's just over time. In psychology,
it's you know, it's situational confidence. And you know, I say,
there's no small victories, right, they all they're not small.
They all build upon themselves. Right. I see so many
people ask me about confidence, How do I get confident? Well,
you get those small victories, and then you get a
(35:33):
little more confident, a little more confident, right, and you
you fail quote unquote, and then you come back, and
that's where people get confidence. But you have to put
yourself out there right and take the risks. You know,
I did. This is what I was a kid. I remember,
I was I was probably I was a thirteen years old.
I remember went by to school and I went through
a curve and it was a little scent on the
road and I felt and everybody, you know what, you know?
(35:55):
What do you do? So right away? And I you see,
nobody thought me this. I got to buy by the
back and a shame speed I went through the curve again,
and my buddy, why would you do that? I said,
because otherwise I'm good. If I overthink this, I never
want to do it again. If I do it now,
right now. And I think it comes from swimming. I
used to dive, and I like the somersaults and all
the kinds of stuff. If I would full flat, the
(36:16):
first thing you have to do is got to go up.
You're gonna have to do it again, because if you don't,
he said, overthinking, then maybe you're not gonna do it anymore,
you know, But if you're conquered immediately, I realized, oh
that was just an accident. Okay, now I'm good again.
So yeah, I always put yourself out there so great,
Thank you so much, and just it must be amazing
to you to stop and think back to that kid
(36:37):
we talked about with the issues you had and who
you are today. I mean, who would have thought as
we started by talking about, you know, extreme asthma to
UFC heavyweight champion in the world, you know, skin condition
to amazing you know, acclaimed actor, what's next? I mean,
you must have what are give me some big goals
that that are still out there for you? Well for me,
it's also I really enjoy it acting. So I got
(36:58):
a few things lighted up, like that, I invented the
long training device that I actually invented when I was
fourteen years old and right now is doing crazy things.
I mean it takes asked my way cp D. I mean, people, athletes,
everybody is freaking out on it. So it's it's really cool.
I've been doing it. It takes literally three to half
minutes to day. That's the only thing you need to do.
Some breathing exercises which I post every single day for
(37:20):
the last two years. I give you an example that
you so you breathe in with resistance, right, that's what
you're doing. So I used the setting in two thousand
eighteen and May two eighteen, I was setting a level,
setting a level, and I just leave it like that
because otherwise it becomes too complicated. Anyway, it took me
three minutes and forty five seconds to do my thirty repetitions.
I had to do thirty in hills with that with
(37:42):
a trainer would take me three minutes of forty five seconds.
About four weeks ago, just for fun, I grabbed that
same setting and I said, let's see how fast I
can do it now. I did it at fifty five seconds,
so I did three forty five. I went to fifty five.
That's in seventy five increase, which people get checked out
by Facebook page because I love everything, so you can
(38:02):
see two years ago, oh that's how we started, because
you know, so they can see I don't lie. And
that suddenly made people realize, wait a minute, that is
not ten percent increase is bizarre. So yeah, I love that,
and so that's where our focus is right now because
it's my my baby, so to say, and it's helping
a lot of people with anxiety of PTSD even now,
(38:23):
it's so incredible and Focal is a new company you're
working with. Yes, I love that stuff, you know, because
there's a lot of these skills for inst day of
a night and a day. Uh, I'm the guy and
you're probably on the same. I need something to go
to sleep because my mind will not do enough. I'm
completely all the time, on on on and and I
used to take things for that to go to sleep, right,
(38:45):
but and also during the day to stay awake. And
now what Focal did they put all these ingredients like,
for instance, healthy end And I used always think there's
a bill they have this in one pill, Lion's main
vitamin B six and the thing you need, all that
kind of stuff that's good for your memory. And then
what they do they add a CBD to it so
that will absorbs a better into your system and it
(39:05):
works all way better. And once I start thinking that,
it's a big difference. And the same they have also
for the night edition. And I always like to take
They have drops I always take with my even though
the CBD already in the pills, I like to take
a few more drops. Shocking and it's super high quality.
I was I was researching, and they were nice enough
to send me some stuff. And I'm always you know,
(39:26):
I gotta try new things. And all CBDs are not
created equal, and they are super high quality, which is
super important for for CBDs. It's everything, you know. It's
like when my body started this can lost. It is
a very close friend of mine and I knew that
as soon as she said, oh, I'm gonna do a
CBD product, I go, that's it. I mean, I know
because I know him everything that there's another guy. You know,
(39:48):
he won't do something ninety people do one. Always been,
always been like that, I know, twenty years and so
that's why I right away, Yeah, I was drawn through
the product and yeah it works with well, I'm like
you the one thing I know, as far as being
as healthy as possible, sleep is like, I can't do it.
And when they, you know, a couple of companies sent
me sleep trackers and I'm like, what you I know,
(40:09):
I don't get any sleep. Why do I need to
put something on my wrist to make me feel worse,
you know, getting up in the morning. And then asked
me if I had, you know, glasses of wine and
how much caffeine, like that's just horrible. I know exactly
how little sleep I got, but yeah, I'm using it too,
and it's amazing. I haven't dreamed for a long time,
and since I started taking this, I started dreaming again.
And and people always and I should have looked at it,
(40:30):
and should have, but they say dreaming is really good
for you, and I haven't been dreaming for years, and
suddenly I realized, oh wait a minute, was that. Oh
that was a dream. Oh I'm back to dreaming. So
I'm a I believe it's the focal night first that
they gave because they started happening out that. That's awesome,
not not nightmares, dreams though, good stuff for fights. Rights
(40:52):
such a pleasure. Thank you so much. I know how
super busy you are. Just such an honor, and thank
you so much for taking the time. You're very well
good of it. I had a great time. It's fun
to talk to a fellow athlete, you know, who actually
knows what they talk about. It's always fun. Well, you know,
one day we'll talk about my lack of fighting. I
was the short guy in the bars in Boston. I
got really good at fighting that because I wanted to
just as a defense mechanism from the old Irish Catholic.
(41:16):
You know, I walked in and suddenly it was like
that scene from Animal House, right with ten guys in
the bathroom waiting, so I could have viewed some of
your help the day. Have a great day and hope
to speak with you again soon. Bot. Thankright, Take it easy,
thank you, and we'll be right back. You know, I
(41:40):
often say I have the greatest job in the world
because I get to help people look better, feel better,
and live longer. One other thing that makes my job
so amazing is I get to talk to guys like
Boss Routin, and it's part of helping people look better,
feel better, and live longer. An amazing guy. What an
(42:01):
amazing guy? And you know I want to do five
hour interviews with with someone like him when you have him.
There's so much there, But you know, I want to
keep it simple, cut to the chase and give you,
you know, just enough to get you motivated, get you inspired,
give you some actionable advice on on what to do,
and wow, you know the yeah butts as as I
(42:25):
started the show by talking about with him, and if
you listen to the intro, is a guy who had
every reason to just go, Yeah, I'm gonna be in Hollywood.
I'm gonna be in movies. I have a really bad,
really bad skin condition, had to wear gloves, got bullied,
had really bad asthma. How is he gonna be an athlete?
(42:45):
How is he gonna you know, much less a professional
UFC fighter? And it's mindset. He's so positive, he's so
positive and and you know we are that. You know,
people often ask me, why are you so? Because I
have the choice. It's a much better choice, you know it.
(43:07):
Surround yourself with positive people. And that's the thing when
you start to get a circle of friends like Boss Rooting,
who inspire you, who motivate you. We're just positive. Misery
loves company and vice versa. Right. So, Wow, feels so
fortunate to have had him on. I hope you enjoyed that.
(43:28):
And I want to give you a little bit more
specifics because I know sometimes we get away and we
talk more about the the mental side, which is absolutely
super important. But I just want to go a little
bit deeper into his workouts for you, uh, for in
the show. So we talked about how his philosophy is
very simple. Training he basically does and used to do
(43:49):
ten to twelve exercises, and it's the basics that again
talk about on the show here all the time, the
stuff that works, and he focused on its strength and endurance,
not size. We didn't get to talk about that at
But if you look at him, especially against some of
the guys he fought against Holy Cow, there were some monsters,
but he was fitter, he was faster, and he did
(44:11):
the simple stuff that worked. So he talks about he
did pull ups, he did push ups, bench press, high poles.
It wasn't about vanity for him. Uh. He did high
REPSI reps for him. But again your goals most likely
a little different, but the point is there. He would
do basically fifty seconds per exercise with a minute rest,
(44:35):
and he would do abs and squats in between. Where
have you heard that before? So circuit training now again
he's preparing to to fight and to do uh you know,
grappling and different things like that. But conditioning rules still apply.
And as I said, he was so far ahead of
the game as far as conditioning. He doesn't give himself
(44:55):
enough credit, but his resume speaks volumes. That's the results.
The results speak for themselves. So one of his formats
he talks about is twelve exercises, where he would do
one minute on, one minute off, with a one minute
break in between, and you do that three times through,
So basically about a thirty eight minute workout. I actually
(45:17):
don't need to break in between because you're getting it anyway.
So twelve exercises, one minute break after each exercise, you
do that three times through. And I have a quote
here I pulled. He says people train too hard or
too long, so it's quality over quantity, it's excessive moderation.
And here's from a guy who literally had to fight
for his life, and the same principles apply quality over quantity,
(45:43):
consistency building up slowly. You know when you hear him
talk about not doing ninety seconds out of the gate, like,
what do you mean ninety seconds? But all out. So
on your hard days, go hard, and on your easy days,
go easy. And when you're doing your hard interval, that's hard.
And when you're resting, you rest, and you can have
your gray zone days, not hard, not easy, longer duration
(46:07):
recovery slash endurance workouts. But when you want quality over quantity,
and as he said, a lot of people think they're
going sev I'm sorry, and they're doing seventy. And like
I talked about all the time, endurance works, your workouts
should be those easy workouts. If you're truly doing the
(46:28):
hard workouts, you need the recovery and most professional athletes
will do one, if not to recovery workouts. After a
super hard one, a runner will go to the track
do their interval sprints. The next morning, they'll do a
couple of miles whatever, recovery easy run, and then in
the afternoon they'll do it again. But the basics and
(46:49):
the mental side, I feel so fortunate that that he
just was all over that, and he was doing the
sports psychology stuff without even knowing it. But we knew
that when you study sports psychology, you you you you
talk about how back in the day, especially before it
was even talked about, the athletes were doing this. They
just didn't know. It wasn't talked about, didn't have a
name for it. He was doing visualization, being on the beach,
(47:10):
going to his safe place, as he talked about it.
When things got crazy, he wrote the RS on his
hand to remind him to relax. When things got crazy,
he had the self talk to motivate himself when things
got stressful, stresses his choice. Listen to that podcast I did.
If you question that what a great time. Thank you
(47:35):
again to Boss Routin for taking the time. I hope
you enjoyed the show. If you can, I appreciate please
rate the show. Subscribe to this podcast too. I forget
to say that, but super appreciative if you do, and
I don't want to miss the show. We're gonna have
many more great guests, just like Boss, and it's gonna
be a mix interviews, studies, everything to get you to
(47:58):
be the best you can be, to achieve as Boss did,
goals that you don't think are possible. That's the show.
That's what I'm about. I want to hear more and
get more comments and emails from people, and I get
them all the time, and it's the single greatest part
of my job, my books, my videos, these shows hearing
from people who have made incredible changes in their lives.
(48:21):
So thank you for listening again. Rate the show please
please if you have not. If you have, thank you.
Tom h Fit is both my Instagram and Twitter. Uh
Fitness disrupted dot com. You can go there, email me
right through the site. Thank you for listening. I really
appreciate it. And remember there are three things you can control,
(48:42):
how much you move, what you put into your mouth,
and as Boss just explained so ridiculously well, your attitude,
your mindset, and that is awesome. I'm Tom Holland. This
is Fitness Disrupted. Believe in yourself. Yeah. Fitness Disrupted is
(49:04):
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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