Martial Arts Benefits Outside of Training With Richard Matthews

Richard Matthews: [00:00:00] So my name is

Richard Matthews

and I am a

full time traveler

I’ve been on the road

for six and a half years

with my wife

and four kids

and we run

a company called

Push Button Podcasts

so we help

small businesses of

all different types

use podcasting

to help grow

their companies

and so we’ve managed

that whole company

and the growth

and everything on

that while traveling

full time

and this last year

in January of

or February of 2023

we started working

with I started working

with Master Victor

to really start up

level myself

so I could continue

and grow the way

that I wanted to

grow my business

we started a

push button podcast

and we’ve been running

that from the road

and part of my goal

this last year was

to really be able

to step up into

the leadership role

as our company

started growing a lot

​[00:01:00]

Master Victor: We’re here with Richard Matthews and myself. We’re going to be talking about the martial arts benefits outside of training. So, you know, how does that integrate into your everyday life? and we have some, you know, firsthand accounts here and Richard will give, be given us some insight on how.

You know, training martial arts has changed his life in many ways. And you want to say a little bit about yourself?

Richard Matthews: Yeah, so my name is

Richard Matthews, and I am a

full time traveler. I’ve been on the road for six and a half years with my wife and four kids, and we run a company [00:02:00] called Push Button Podcasts. So we help small businesses of all different types use podcasting to help grow their companies. And so we’ve managed that whole company and the growth and everything on that while traveling full time.

And this last year in January of or February of 2023, we started working with I started working with Master Victor to, really start up level myself. So I could continue and grow the way that I wanted to grow my business. We started a push button podcast and we’ve been running that from the road. And part of my goal this last year was to really be able to step up into the leadership role as our company started growing a lot. And I know, part of that for me was getting in and starting to work with, with you and sort of uploading, uploading my own personal performance.

Master Victor: Yeah. And I remember when we started, you know, working together, you originally wanted to practice martial

arts, to get essentially the physical benefits of it, you know, the, you know, being able to. Do more exercise with your kids and all these other things. And after [00:03:00] talking with you a lot, there have been kind of unexpected results from the training that you didn’t necessarily think of when you first started training, would you say that’s pretty accurate?

Richard Matthews: Yeah, it’s really, it’s really accurate. So like, I know when we first started talking, my goal was I call it fit, fit young forever. I want to be fit and young forever. That’s my goal. and Part of that is just like, I’ve got a bunch of young children, right? I got four kids, you know, ranging from four to 14 and we travel and we adventure a lot.

And I was just like, I want to be able to keep up with them as they grow into their, you know, young adulthood and young adult lives and whatnot. And and you know, my son wants to learn to windsurf, so I want to windsurf with them. And, you know, my daughter has different things we want to do and we’re trying to travel the world and we want to be able to like hike Machu Picchu and do all those things.

And I like, I’m, I wanted to. Just be fit for those things. And so when we started, I wasn’t even thinking this is going to benefit my life and my business and other things. I was just thinking I can use martial arts as a way to get fit. and getting [00:04:00] fit is, you know, it’s part of my life goal anyways. So, I was on, you know, I like, I know a lot of people when they talk about getting fit, they’re talking about like losing weight and getting stronger and stuff like that.

I was actually going the other direction. I’ve always been scrawny. I was like 119 pounds. a couple of years ago and I’ve never been over that and I’ve never been able to put on muscle or gain weight or do any of those things. So I wanted to get bigger like it actually, you know, have a good physique that goes along with that.

And I wanted to have all of those, those benefits. And then the stuff that we’re going to talk about today, a lot of it was unexpected. It wasn’t part of like why I wanted to train in martial arts. It was just like benefits that started happening.

Master Victor: Yeah, and I guess a good starting place for that would be enhanced cognitive functions. And what I mean by that is, you know, cognitive as in like your brain thoughts, brain thought patterns, and how quickly you’re able to think and, you know, navigate through different situations. Cause through our training, you know, where you’re having to, you know, exert yourself physically, but still have this kind [00:05:00] of awareness of yourself and the things around you. and the more you train, the more exhausted you get, and it kind of forces you to really narrow down that focus into the moment. and how would you say that the martial arts training has enhanced that cognitive function in your everyday life?

Richard Matthews: So this comes up pretty regularly in the business world. Right. And so we’re constantly, especially like the way that we’re growing and everything, our company, like I said, I mentioned this before. our company grew. eight and a half X last year since we started like the martial arts training to the end of the year and that’s a lot of growth to deal with. so it’s a lot of clients. It’s a lot of, yeah, it’s a lot of speaking engagements. It’s a lot of hiring people. There’s a lot of, a lot of systems and processes that we’re building. and you know, it’s it’s a weird sort of analogy to draw, to say that like, Hey, martial arts, you’re focusing on like your, your.

You’re focusing on like the movements that you’re doing and you’re working at a really high level So your heart rate’s high and your [00:06:00] breath rate’s high and just everything is it’s like a high stress sort of environment to be working in and one of the things that you teach regularly through that is like how to do the breath work and how to How to how to enhance your focus so you’re you’re not focusing on like the stressors But you’re focusing on the actual actions that you’re taking and that sort of training has Bled over into the business world where despite all the stressors that are happening and growing the business.

I’m able to focus really Focus in really deeply on whatever it is. I’m working on right now And part of that has also been the ability to switch focus really quickly so like, you know my my day like you look at my calendar It’s like packed full from you know, the moment I get up till the moment I until the moment we’re done you know and I have I only do generally four hours a day of work on the business, but like those four hours are just packed and it’s, it’s shifting from, from hiring people to working with existing clients to sales calls to, messages with my team and stuff like that.

And then working with. Software and other things. And so it was like, I have to like shift categories [00:07:00] regularly. Cause you know, as a CEO of a growing company, I have to like take on and off different hats all the time. And so part of that cognitive function is being able to keep the high level of activity and keep the focus really good and be able to switch that focus from one thing to the other, rapidly.

And I know that this has been one of the most stressful years that I’ve been through from a growth standpoint, but. Looking back on it and actually like going through the process, it was easier than less stressful times in my business. If that makes sense, because of the additional training I had, and because of just because of all the The work we’ve been doing on learning how to focus and handle the high levels of stress, where it’s like my, my baseline for how well I handle that stress and handle that, those kind of things, and I’m using, I’m using the term stress, like, to cover both eustress and, you know, positive and negative stress, because it’s not, it’s not all negative stress, like, it’s, you know, we’re doing cool things.

My baseline for what is actually hard has changed a lot. and [00:08:00] so it’s a lot easier to handle and deal with, like, all the things that I’m doing right now and just be able to keep a sustained level of activity over months and months of time where I would have been. burnt out from the, you know, from the lack of cognitive function, you know, from stressing it out.

And I just, I haven’t been, I haven’t, I haven’t run into any of those where like, I know, you know, just to move it back into the training thing. I know, when we first started back in like February, March timeframe, we’d go through and we do some of the, I think you call it hit training.

like high intensity interval training. And we’d get to the end of that high intentional interval training. And I’d be like on the ground, like panting, like, I’m going to die. and you know, we like this last week we go through and do some of these things. And it’s, it’s like, it’s not that it’s gotten any easier. It’s, it’s not, it’s not a, you know, it’s the same the same level of work that we were doing before, but my capability of handling it, you get to the end of them and it’s like, we could do that again, right.

And that’s that same level of like, you’re just. able to inform better because you are Leveling up your baseline.

Master Victor: [00:09:00] absolutely. The,

that limit, not only cognitively, but physically has increased. So you’re able to kind of squeeze more out of your time and maximize that four hours that you are working in a day, essentially. And, you know, you kind of mentioned the improved concentration and focus that you’ve seen where, you know, there has been new stressors introduced into the workday and you know, your, your training and being confronted with.

These different new stressors as well in, in our training, you know, through doing burpees, these massive amounts of kicks, pushups, squats, the very intense

Richard Matthews: rub my shoulders because yesterday was all

Master Victor: you know, that learning how to, yes, you know, and like that, that essentially gets

you to

like, calm down in those states where it’s, you know, some people might be out of breath completely, where now you’ve learned to essentially establish, a [00:10:00] lower baseline of, you know, keeping that heart rate lower, breathing better.

And, you know, how would you say that like your concentration and focus has increased? Outside of the dojang.

Richard Matthews: so that’s been a that’s been a really interesting

transition for me is is the Your ability to shift focus as I think is where I have noticed the biggest benefit and and i’m not sure exactly what has caused that I have theories but the the ability to go from a sales call to a podcast recording to an interview with a new staff member to, you know, a a, a call with a client who’s upset about something and like, those are all very different, like interactions that we, you know, that I have, and there’ll be like one after the other, back to back to back and be able to shift from, from one area to the next is, it’s a, it’s a whole different, like set of focus that you have to like bring to the table. And there is a marked improvement that I have seen in [00:11:00] myself to just be able to, to switch gears, and it was something that I started noticing probably two or three months into the training where I’m like, man, I’m finding that I don’t need nearly as much like decompression time between changing gears, if that makes sense, you know, where, where, and I do, I do try to always have like a 15, A 15 minute like, decompression time from one type of meeting to another.

So I have the time to like shift to those things, but I’ve noticed that I don’t. I don’t. really need it anymore. It’s good to have, and it’s good to have the habits and the practice of having like decompression time But, I can, I can shift gears almost immediately. And that’s where I saw the biggest shift was that ability to just like, okay, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

And then importantly, being able to turn it off at the end of the day. So I can go hang out with my friend, my family, and we can go adventure, and we can go play and we can go cook dinner and we can play games and stuff. be able to just shut work off. Whereas I, I know if I go back over the last couple of years, one of the things I struggled with a lot was end of the workday is over, [00:12:00] but my mind is still just tied up in all the things that are happening at work.

and I can’t, takes me, like, it used to take me a couple of hours to get out of that. and now I can just shut it off and immediately shift gears. And like I said, I don’t even know why that would be, like, what, what in the training causes that, but that’s the biggest shift that I’ve noticed.

Master Victor: Yeah. And the

way that I look at it, at least he’s, you know, through, through the training, you’re, you’re causing the mind to really

focus on what you’re doing. You know, when you’re doing. that front kick, that roundhouse kick, you’re taking all of that chatter out of your mind and you’re, you’re forcing it to focus on a specific movement. And that brings presence and immediacy to the moment, right? So you’re, you’re essentially taking in more information, what’s going on now, And you’re able to be here more present. And what at least I’ve experienced, and I feel like you have as well as, you know, that applies to other things that we do where, you know, we’re able to absorb more information and.[00:13:00]

Really be able to navigate these different moments more accurately, more present rather than being, you know, in our heads worrying about the chatter that’s going on. It becomes more of a A flow rather than kind of like a struggle. And that immediacy, I guess, translates to concentration and focus where, you know, you’re, you’re not worrying about what you’re thinking about.

You’re not worrying about what’s going to happen. You’re here in the moment, taking care of what needs to be done.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, yeah.

Master Victor: pretty accurate?

Richard Matthews: It does. It’s that, uh, performance state.

You’re, you’re able to take yourself into and out of the performance

state really quickly. I think some people might also call it, like, the flow state or something like that. There’s, I think there’s different names for it, but the idea is that you’re just, you know, in your areas of expertise, you’re able to just, like drop into them and perform really, really well. and so It’s like you’re, you’re, with the training that we do, we do train four days a week, that we’re, you know, I’m building all those pathways in your brain to like, just to be good at it. and anyways, that’s, [00:14:00] that’s been very helpful.

Master Victor:

And uh, something you mentioned earlier was, you know, with this

the sudden growth in the business there, there’s stress that comes with it, you know, negative and positive, but. You know, through my personal martial arts training, I’ve noticed that the days I train, especially, I feel a lot less stressed out. I create a channel to exert any kind of stagnant energy I’ve built up in my body, any emotions get kind of essentially channeled into the training. You know, every kick I do, I become about the kick, and it releases the stagnation that’s, you know, Stale energy that I’ve built up and it creates a funnel for that stress.

Do you say, would you say that, you know, you felt that as well, where, you know, doing the training has helped you kind of release any of that stress that you’ve been experiencing.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, so, I, probably look at it a little bit.

Opposite [00:15:00] where I’m like, I don’t necessarily look at it as a, like, this is where I’m going to go and release my stress. And I realized that like the way I look at it, I’m like, I’m going, I look forward to the training because I know like I need it kind of thing. And the stress gets released to those kinds of things. and it does happen. I know like the days when we don’t train, I know we do our, like our rest days by the time like Monday rolls around, I’m like, man, I need to. Get out and do these things again. I’ve started to realize that there’s a, there’s a portion of the training where you’re like, when you really push yourself hard physically, it helps. you know, like my, my job is not a physically demanding job, right? Yeah, you know, to, to, we’re, we’re keyboard warriors, right? We are working on a, in a digital business doing audio and video stuff. And like we, we click buttons on a keyboard and make lights happen on a screen, right? Like we’re not digging trenches or doing battles or any of those kinds of things.

It’s a very. you know, for lack of a better word, it’s a sedentary type type business. And so like, while there’s a lot of activity and there’s a [00:16:00] lot of stress there you know, again, both positive and negative, it’s all very stationary and very like, to your point, it’s, it’s almost like, a stagnant kind of, kind of stuff.

So it’s all, it’s all up in your head. And so getting to. to. move and push yourself beyond your limits. Like we adventure all the time. We regularly do things like windsurfing and hiking and all that kind of stuff. But that’s a it’s a, when it happens kind of thing, but to have the training and be a thing that you’re doing on a regular basis, We do it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

It’s become a part of like, I don’t even know what you’d call it. It’s like a health, a health benefit of, of just. It gets you moving and it gets everything moved and cleared out and you just feel better and you feel like you’re ready to show up for the day and you’re and we’ve, we’ve done a couple of different things like as we, you know, cause we both travel, the time has changed a little bit, you know, from, you know, morning or afternoon or in the evening and whenever we do the training and I’ve noticed like, for me, the best time seems to be like in the morning.

If I start my day off that way and it’s like, I’m like a clear slate and like you’re a clear mind and a clear body and you’re [00:17:00] just, You can just show up and crush it. But even when we do midday or the evening, it’s the same kind of thing. And the, the benefits sort of like last for a good long time. And I know, you know, we take a break here and there for holidays, something like that. I’m like, man, you, you miss it. And you miss the miss the showing up, which is. which is. weird. Cause when I first started and it was like, you get to the end of the training thing and you’re laying on the ground, puffing, huffing and puffing going like, what am I doing to myself? But you get to the point where like you, you start to see the benefits of it and you’re like, I, I need more of that. and I still like in my head, you tell us that sometimes you do like five hours of training and I’m like, that still seems very intense to me, but I can see how you would get there because of the benefits you see from it.

You’re like, nope, this, this. Makes everything else better.

Master Victor: exactly. And you know, I feel like you and Zachary are to the point where, you know, you could do an hour and a half or two hour training very easily at the, the way you guys are training now. And, you know, my own personal experience in that, when I was teaching in Clinton, [00:18:00] Maryland, I was running a school.

And before I would go in to actually teach, you know, I’d have to teach 50 kids per class and the days I would actually exercise before going in, my co workers would be like, Hey, Oh, I can see you worked out today. I’d become in like a lot more cheerful, more energy versus the day, you know, where maybe I had to do paperwork or I was busy and I wasn’t able to get to the gym.

Like they could see that difference. And. You know, the, the more you do it. the more, like You said,

you want to do it. You start to correlate that benefit to the exercise and it becomes something that, you know, really benefits you outside of just the training you carry with you throughout the whole day.

And, you know, that kind of brings us into like, improving the productivity, the resilience, you know, go ahead.

Richard Matthews: I have, I have something like a metaphor for people. If you’ve ever heard of, you know, I’m sure people have heard of things that are like an acquired taste, like [00:19:00] coffee is an acquired taste or beer is an acquired taste and what’s interesting about things that are acquired tastes, so to speak, is your body actually develops, like it, it responds to it responds to things. And so like, one of the things I found really interesting is like broccoli, for instance, if you don’t like the flavor of broccoli, like. if you continue to eat broccoli, your body will start to recognize the, the, all the nutritional benefits it’s getting from eating the broccoli. And it’ll start to adjust the way that you interpret the flavor of broccoli and to like it more and more and more.

And so like, if you’ve talked to nutritionists, or dietitians about this kind of thing, they’ll say like, if you eat more of the things that are good for you, your body will start to recognize the nutritional benefits and then start making it seem better to you. And so the more you. eat something that maybe you don’t like, you’ll start to acquire the taste.

And what I’ve noticed is like the training is the same kind of thing. We’re like, when you first do it, your body’s like, why are you doing this to me? This is not pleasant. I don’t like it. But as you start to get all the benefits from it, But you start to get the mental benefits and the sleep [00:20:00] benefits and the health

benefits and like the, just a lot of the things that we’re going to talk about through This through this show, you start to let your body

starts to

like change the way that you feel about the training, where instead of being like Oh, we’re going to train today and it’s going to be painful and whatnot. You’re, you’re like, I’m really looking forward to it. And then you get to the point where you’re like, not only do you look forward to it, you’re like, I need this. Like I have to do more of this.

Master Victor: Yes,

absolutely. And, you know, I’ve experienced kind of the opposite in a sense where you know, I started eating those good foods and I felt that effect. And then what’s also happened is the foods that weren’t good for me, like let’s say fried foods. I’ve started to, you know, get a smell of that. And I don’t want to eat that because my brain has correlated that to being not good for me.

So where, you know, the more Good things you do, you start to kind of wean off the bad things and it becomes kind of a, a funnel for all, all the goodness in a sense. Yeah. And, you know, through our training, you know, the, the more you [00:21:00] get into it. The harder it’s been getting, we’ve been introducing more intense exercises, more difficult kicks, getting deeper into the calisthenics. And in a sense, we’re kind of increasing the productivity of our training. Your body’s becoming more efficient at doing these things. Would you say that has also transitioned into your everyday life where you felt more productive when you are working and through the difficult situations of your workday, you’ve been, since essentially more resilient through those difficult moments.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. And so I know I mentioned earlier, like one of our, my things is like, you know, I only work in my, my workday is four hours a day, four days a week. And which is kind of a, a crazy thing. I’m going to be, I’m being invaded by my ferret. He thinks you should come and join our, this is Hercules and put him down over there. But during the the workday it’s, it’s really. It’s really interesting. Not a lot of people, especially in the business world, we put in a lot of [00:22:00] time and we use time as a way to, to, like, put a bandaid over like poor processes or poor, you know, poor execution of, of things. And I started putting in a limit on like how much time I actually wanted to put into work, which, When you do that, when you say like, Hey, I’m only going to put in four hours of work today. And you keep the same goal of, I want to grow my company. Then the only lever you have to pull is your execution. Right? Because you’re like, I can’t just add more time to my day. Otherwise, I’m spending all my time working and not any of the time doing the things that like I actually want to do, which is like, you know, I mentioned earlier windsurf with my kids or they’re going through art classes right now.

And I take art classes with them and we play board games And we travel, we adventure, all that kind of stuff. Like I want to have that time with my family outside of work, but I still want to grow my company. And so if you know, like we mentioned earlier, we eight and a half X our company in 2023. And I was pretty stringent, like, I only worked four hours a day, four days a week doing that. And so, the only way to continue to grow [00:23:00] at that level and to take on all the stressors and to say yes to as many things as we did was that execution lever. Right? And so that ability to show up and execute when you’re When you are working and then so there’s, there’s two parts to that execution. One is actually doing the work and then the other one is deciding what work you should do. And that’s part of that cognitive function thing where you’re like, okay, what are the things that I’m going to do that are actually move the needle and There is, I have, my business was, was flatline for years, right? And when I say flatline, I was like, you know, up and down between like 60 to a hundred K a year or whatever, depending on where that, you know, where we were at, what we were doing.

and my time, my time in the business would go up and down from like four hours a day to six, maybe eight hours a day, that kind of thing. But this year I really focused on, Restricting that amount of time and being really intentional about what we’re saying yes to and those kind of things and we started working and doing the the work with the martial arts the martial arts stuff and realizing that like It was, It helped a lot with [00:24:00] both making sure that when I show up, I’m executing. And then when I’m deciding what to execute on, that I’m executing it on things that are actually moving the needle. And I can’t, I can’t tell you, it’s like martial arts is the reason I made better decisions. But I can tell you that looking back over the last year, we made a lot of really good decisions and we made a lot of, you know, we made a lot of mistakes too, but. but.

dealing with all those kinds of things, making it all happen, maybe three days out of, the last year that I put more than four hours a day into my business. and those were like when I went to go speak at some events and, you know, like have a weekend of things that you have to go and speak for three or four days.

But like the rest the rest of the time, I’m like, you know, I, my, my workday is 11 to four. and, you know, I take a time out for lunch and do our workouts and whatnot. And, you know, my decompression time is in there. It’s about four hours. And the uh, about four hours of actual, like, work time and the, the martial arts training has helped with that.

And I don’t know, I said, I don’t know why that is. I know you’ve talked a little bit about it’s like, cause you’re, you just, you have to focus when you’re doing the motions and you’re focusing on [00:25:00] one of the things you tell us all the time is like, it’s, it’s Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes, permanent.

And so you’re always looking at how do I make this next one better than the last one? And that sort of mentality of like everything that we come into, the decisions that we make, it’s like how do I make a better decision today than I made yesterday? How do I show up better for my team? Today than I did yesterday.

How do I respond better to the comments in our group chats on this kind of thing? How do I how do I do a better job on this sales sales presentation? I’ve done the last one right and I’m doing like 20 sales presentations a week So like I get that opportunity a lot to like, okay How do I make this one better than the last one? and so like when you’re constantly doing that, over the course of a year, it has a tremendous impact So I don’t I know that’s like a long meandering way to answer that question. But short answer. Yes

Master Victor: Yeah. I mean, and

the scientific approach, you know, I would say, you know, correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation. And, you know, you yourself have a very good work ethic and you’ve been doing this and kind of refined your own skills. But on top of that, the, [00:26:00] martial arts, the way of thinking, the, all these benefits that we’re talking about, it’s, Kind of compound into creating a more efficient funnel that then, you know, releases kind of this latent unlocked potential.

That’s the way that at least I’d like to look at it where, you know, you’re already doing these things. You just become better at doing them because it reinforces the brain patterns that are already there. You know, through meditation, there’s studies where. The more you focus on one thing, the more you bring your awareness to the moment, it starts to rewire your brain.

So you reinforce the good pathways of thinking and you essentially erode the negative ones, you know, creating more efficiency, allowing you to be more present. And those have these very big effects in our life, especially when our health, right? So. You know, in doing martial arts where, [00:27:00] you know, increasing our heart rate, we’re becoming more efficient at transferring, the oxygen into a blood system where, you know, increasing our metabolic rate we’re doing in all of these health benefits, you know, personally, I haven’t really gotten sick over the last, I think, eight years, other than like three times.

You know, it becomes very aware. And when I do, I get a heal really fast. For example, I, you know, Partly ripped my tendon on my knee I, know it was maybe five weeks ago. I could barely bend my knee and now I can almost do a full class again. And you know, that comes from training so much in my body. It’s used to healing and sending bloods.

You know, have you yourself felt these health benefits and kind of resilience to. Getting sick and these kind of different situations I’m referring to.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, so a couple of things I’ve noticed I don’t get sick as often. Not that I got sick a [00:28:00] lot before, but when I do get sick and it goes faster, like you get, get, over them quickly or it’s not even that you get over more quickly. It’s that they just don’t hit as hard, right?

It’s like, like, you know, you get hit with the flu, you know, a couple of years ago and it’s like, you know, you want to punch, you’re knocked out, you’re laying on the ground, but like, I just got taken out by the flu and like, I, I did get, I got the seasonal flu that came through this last winter and it definitely came and like, I felt it and I was like, I could tell that I was sick, but it didn’t Like stop me.

Like I didn’t, I didn’t even feel the need to like lay down in bed. I was just like, I was like, Oh, there’s the inconvenience of my nose is stuffier than I want it to be. We’re like, I’ve been also getting taken out by it. So it’s like, it’s like, they just don’t hit as hard because you’re. more resilient than you were before. And then, like, on the same token, I’ve noticed, like, when I get injured, and I’m, I’m super prone to injuring myself, usually, like, cutting myself on whatever I’m working on, or, you know, whatever. My, my wife teases me about it. She’s like, she’s like, you know, the project hasn’t been done well if you haven’t bled and cussed about it.

You know, if you accomplished bleeding and cussing, it probably was done well. [00:29:00] And so, like, I’m constantly injuring myself. And I know One of the speaking events I went to, one of the guys that, I’ve become friends with at one of the events I go to regularly, we had a rope climb contest and we climbed up to the top and of, you know, one of those big, tall rope things.

And it was like, you know, just all shoulder hand over hand, not even use your feet kind of thing, climb up to the top of it. And at the top I slipped and like ripped the tip of my finger off this one here and like the whole tip of it was just gone, bleeding everywhere. It was great. and, and I still had to like go back down the rope well with my finger, like half, half off and.

I remember thinking, I was like, wow, that’s going to take forever to heal. and, and it was completely healed over in like three days. Right. And like not even a couple of weeks ago, I cut my finger. I didn’t remember where it was. I might even like see the scar on it somewhere, but I cut my finger on something and I was looking at it.

And I was like, oh, that’s going to take a while to heal. It was gone in a day and a half. it was just healed and I’m like, wow, it’s the healing factor. If it almost feels, you feel a little bit like Wolverine, not quite like Wolverine, cause you still have, you know, days or sometimes weeks depending on how bad you injured it.

But it’s the kind of things that I know from experience used two or three times as long to heal. They’re just healing [00:30:00] faster. And I think part of that is because, you know, we’re regularly tearing our muscles down and building it back up. So your body’s just like, it’s just in that mode. And so it’s like, I’m already fixing things.

Might as well fix that cut that you keep giving yourself over here or whatever. and. so it,

Master Victor: Oh, here’s another

one.

Richard Matthews: up the healing processes. Yeah. It’s like, you know, any time you start a new process, you have to, like, go through the onboarding. Like, you have to spin that thing up, and it, like, your body is just in that mode.

You’ve already spun up the healing processes, because you’re always working out and always doing these things. So your body’s, like, always in that mode. So, it’s just shortening the time from, like, I’ve injured myself to it’s healed.

Master Victor: Yeah. And,

you know, we can sometimes attribute this to not only increased blood flow,

but the more you heal. So your body’s producing more white blood cells, more T cells, and it’s able to get those things to the areas that need it, and it has more abundancy of it now, you know, they need to do a lot more studies of it, but.

This has kind of been a thing where, you know, athletes, people who exercise more, they [00:31:00] have this reduced healing time because they need to essentially heal their bodies more often. So they become better at it. Just like anything we do, the more we do it, the better we are at it. And the more we do it, the better we are at it.

And, you know, segues into, you know, especially recently we were kind of getting into some complex kicks combinations where we’re put, we were learning how to put different kicks together. And, you know, when you first do it, it becomes confusing. Like your brain stops like, Oh, I’m not used to doing this. And, you know, I’ve seen you and you both get very efficient at doing some of these kicking combinations where you don’t have to think as hard, your body’s reacting to it. Better. And you can almost essentially think faster and you don’t get tripped up as much. Have you experienced, you know, essentially like faster thought process, or it’s kind of getting back into that cognitive function, but in a sense where we’re talking about [00:32:00] processing speed, just as in, you know, how new computers are able to process things faster. Have you experienced. Essentially being able to think faster, deal with situations faster since, you know, starting your training.

Richard Matthews: So the way I look at

this, and it’s something that I

actually teach in the business world pretty regularly, is this idea that between stimulus and response, there’s choice, right? and in our classes, the stimulus is you’re saying, do these combinations in this way. And then our responses, we have to then go do those.

And so, when you first start any process, anything that you’re getting good at, the amount of time between stimulus and response is a lot of like decisions that you have to make. And and so it’s, It’s a it’s, it’s the process of mastery and the process of mastery is always, here’s the stimulus, whatever the decisions that I need to make. And then you have the response, what you actually do. And, and so the process of mastery is always, it’s always like, let’s spread those apart and then master each of those individual decisions. And then you can compress the amount of time between stimulus and response. [00:33:00] And so like, that’s what we do all the time. And that’s what something we teach regularly in the business world. But one of the things that’s interesting is like. Just like anything else, it’s a brain pathway that if you practice it regularly, your body gets better at it, your brain gets better at it, everything, you get, you just get better at that process of mastering a thing. And, so, you’re giving us these complex, or more complex combinations, and I know, like, you show us some of the, the demonstrations, like, where we’re gonna get to in a couple of years, and I’m like, man, that still seems impossible, but, I know the stuff that we’re doing now, is more difficult than the stuff we were doing a few months ago, and, We go through that same process where it’s like the first couple of times you do it, you’re like, Oh, that’s complicated.

And so like, we’ll do the same, the same like set of things. You’ll have us rep through it like three times. And like the first time we’ll stumble through it. And the second time we’ll do pretty good at it. And by the time we get to the third one, we’re like, Oh, we’ve got that down. And now we can do that combination. right. And then we can, you know, we go do like a fourth round. It’s like, it’s pretty clean. And, you know, if we go back six months ago. You know, by the time we get to our fourth rep through it, we’re still struggling with it. And [00:34:00] so what you’re seeing, what you’re seeing is you’re seeing that shrinking of time for the, that mastery thing.

And what you’ll, what I’ve noticed is that the more that we practice that muscle of mastering a new skill or a new set of skills it just shows up everywhere else. And so when you’re working on new things or you’re dealing with new

Master Victor: Yes.

Richard Matthews: you’re the same brain pathways are used. Right? It’s because if stimulus comes in, you have the decisions that you make and then the response you have to them.

And since you’re, we’re regularly working on that set of brain pathways, you see that you get better at all of it, where it’s, you’re much, it’s, it’s a faster ability to take the stimulus, make the decisions that you know you need to make and respond to them. And so, You’re essentially being able to, to take the training of mastery that you’re teaching in martial arts and then apply that same mastery training in other places and you don’t even have to like think about it, right?

I don’t have to think, Oh, I’m going to apply the training from martial arts into this other thing. It’s not a thing that it just happens because you’re using the same brain pathways that [00:35:00] you just get faster and you get better at mastering other skills because you’re putting the time and effort into mastering this one set of skills and mastery translates.

Master Victor: Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. And

you know, the, the martial arts is you’re essentially learning how to learn and, you know, especially at a young age when kids learn how to do martial arts, they’re learning how to learn everything else and then that gets applied, they, they go. They learn fire spinning, martial arts, art, and they learn faster because they take those pathways, just like you’re saying, and they’re able to apply to anything that you do, they see it, and then they can more easily reproduce it with their own bodies, with their own minds, no matter what it, is, let’s say it’s math, art.

English, you know, it it teaches you essentially how to take information.

And without thinking about it. process

it and then do it [00:36:00] So it reduces the amount of time it takes you to learn something. And, you know, I, I, I personally attribute it to. Well, I’ve learned to do all the things I, I do, you know, I blow glass, I do martial arts, I’m a computer scientist, I do a whole bunch of more things, and each one of those, it has taken me less and less time to essentially refine it because I learned martial arts at a

young age, and I’ve been able to take that

knowledge, the way of learning and apply It It’s essentially the science of it and you know, you’ll see a lot of cultures, especially in Asia, where they teach martial arts to, to kids, you know, you go to China, you have a lot of Kung Fu, you go to Korea, everyone’s learning Taekwondo. And those kids are at a very young age, learning how.

To learn, and I think it’s a very important thing that maybe, you know, in the future, we can integrate into our culture [00:37:00] here in the U. S. Where, you know, we’re teaching kids these very important tools of how you learn, which, you know, today is kind of taken for granted. Yeah.

Richard Matthews: I know. One of the

things that’s been really fascinating is we’re doing this

Master Victor: through, through martial arts, we

Richard Matthews: We might be talking over each other just a little bit, but I was gonna say my, my son is training with, training with us. Right. So it’s, it’s, you know, you’re teaching, you’re teaching the class, and it’s my son and I, and I’ve noticed the same things with my son, with, particularly with, with, the learning how to learn aspects of the martial arts. is I’ve. you know, because my wife and I, we homeschool, and so we get to see a lot of, a lot of what they’re doing and how they’re learning it, and over the course of the same last year my son has picked up a lot of, skills that are really advanced, especially for a kid his age, and so He’s, he’s, learned to write novels.

And so he’s, he’s on his second novel that him and his friend are co writing together and he learned how to train AI boss to like specifically talk in the language that they created for for their [00:38:00] novels, he’s learned how to, how to do like art design using one of the, AI art creation tools. He’s going through an art class that he just started yesterday.

And like, I looked at his, you know, he’s, he’s, really into birds of prey. And so he’s, he’s always trying to draw. Peregrine falcons. and he’s, you know, they look like child’s drawings and they have forever. And then like yesterday he goes through one 40 minute class and it’s like, it’s a 25 hour class that he’s going through on birds of prey.

And he goes through the first hour, but he shows me the bird that he’s drawn. and I’m like it looks like It looks really good. Like, it looks like the bird of prey that he was trying to draw. And I’m like, it’s like he, it’s like his art skills went forward six years in 25 minutes. and, and it just blows me away how quickly he’s able to pick things up and he’s learning to cook and he’s learning to fire spin.

You’ve seen him do that. You’re teaching him some of the bo staff fire spinning. He’s learning to windsurf. He picked up windsurfing and like half the amount of time it took me to do it. And so it’s like, And he’s like, at 14 years old, he’s got to the point now, and he’s starting to recognize it too, where he’d be like, he’s like, Dad, I can pick [00:39:00] up skills really, really fast.

He’s like, if I want it, I can just go and get it. And that, I think, it’s like a, it’s like a superpower that we’re giving him. But he can just grab skills and pick them up. And that all goes right back to that whole, like that faster thought process.

Master Victor: exactly. And like

the further we get into it, the more reinforced that skill becomes where, you know, you get to this point in learning martial arts, where the moves become so precise. And you’re forcing your brain to focus on these little tiny details. And that reinforces, you know, paying attention to the small details you would normally essentially not think about when you’re watching a demonstration, for example, watching somebody draw and you, you, you see how they go about it and then you can more easily reproduce it.

And that’s amazing that he’s able to already. Essentially apply that elsewhere. That’s beautiful. [00:40:00] Yeah.

​

Master Victor: And this kind of goes into to transition to the next topic here. You know, martial arts, it really physically exerts you and By the time you’re done training, usually we’re [00:41:00] exhausted and, you know, sometimes not all the times, but it, causes you to exert energy. You feel drained. You Usually have to eat afterwards, get some protein, hydrate yourself. And then at the end of the day, when you lie down for bed, especially on training days, I personally sleep like a rock. I pass out. I go to sleep like a little baby where before when, you know, I wasn’t training, you know, I would sometimes stay up till like two, three in the morning, you know, looking at my phone and not be able to go to sleep where, you know, on the days that I really push myself, I’ll go to bed and.

Within like five minutes. I’m out. I don’t know if you’ve experienced this where the quality and the speed at which you go to sleep has increased.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. So, my wife could probably actually tell you all about this if you, if you asked her about it, but, if you go back to the last four or five years, one of the things that I. I have been trying to figure out was how do I fix my sleep? And it’s not that I had [00:42:00] a bad time sleeping. Like I would sleep, I could always sleep like eight hours if I wanted to, but it would take me hours sometimes to fall asleep. it almost felt like I had insomnia or like I go to bed at nine or 10 o’clock. And then it was like three o’clock in the morning before I actually fell asleep. Cause I couldn’t get my mind to shut off. And, and I would always be like thinking through all these things and like over the last year, you know, I’ve tried everything from like, you know, CBDs to like different, you know, different things that would, you know, would impact that I’ve tried some like different supplements to help, help with, sleeping and none of it ever really had any impact.

Sometimes you see a little bit of impact here or there, but you know, it does have an impact working out regularly. It has a really big impact.

And now, like, I, you know, we put our kids to bed at like eight 39 o’clock time at that time of night. And like. I know, like, if my wife and I want to hang out and, like, watch a TV show or do something together after the kids are going to bed, I have to like, I feel like put extra thought and effort into that.

Cause I’m like, I’m tired. I want to go to bed and I’ll lay down and then I fall asleep and I sleep all night. And you know, it’s, it’s definitely a it’s got, it’s a result of doing, of doing the training where your body is, [00:43:00] is you’ve, you’ve used it, you’ve used your body and it knows, and it needs the sleep, so it just.

Falls asleep and it’s the same kind of thing as you start to as you start to to build that that falling asleep process Even on days that you don’t train. I still am able to fall asleep better fall asleep faster And now I like I probably haven’t seen 1 or 2 a. m. Laying in bed in Probably six to nine months because I sleep every day and like, I, you know, generally it takes me, you know, 10 to 10 to 20 minutes to fall asleep where for 35 years before that, that wasn’t the case, right.

It would take me hours to fall asleep. And so, it was a big, it’s a big shift for me. And then same kind of thing, you know, I, on the other side, waking up in the morning, you, cause I’m sleeping better. I wake up more fresh to get more energy, have more of everything available to you because you’re sleeping better.

Peace.

Master Victor: And you know, some, something that a lot of people don’t think about is. Also the, the [00:44:00] breathwork and meditation that for me is also really helpful when I can’t sleep. I’ll meditate right before I go to bed and that helps me get into more relaxed and a calm state. If I really can’t go to bed, let’s say I had an emotional day.

I’ll do some breathwork and the breathwork is really good at essentially channeling, releasing any of that stagnant emotion that you built up. And I know we’ve been doing not as frequently, but we definitely do some meditation and breathwork in class. But, you know, for everyone listening out there, you know, if you don’t, if you’re not able to get that exercise in, you know, maybe meditate before you go to sleep, maybe do some breath work before you go to sleep and that helps get your mind in that kind of state, more relaxed state, gets that chatter going.

Away rather than having your brain constantly think. And that really helps you go to sleep a little bit faster. And that’s something a lot of people don’t consider where they just go to sleep. They just finished watching a TV show or they’re on their phone. And next thing you know, [00:45:00] they, they go to sleep and their brain is still, you know. On that scrolling dopamine fix and you’re, you’re essentially, you bring that into your sleep. So you have more chaotic sleep and all those things that aren’t necessarily good. So, you know, the, the exercise gets you tired, physically tired, and oftentimes mentally as well. But the, the meditation and breath work really do the mind and the emotions as well.

So you can do a combination of those to really help the

sleep

Richard Matthews: So it’s like, if you, if you look at it, the the couple of things that I noticed, like, you know, we talked earlier about being able to switch gears better, like that improved cognitive function and focus you know, you can switch gears more easily. So like bedtime on your body, you can just switch into bedtime mode. And so you can move more quickly into, into, like

Master Victor: switch. Yeah.

Richard Matthews: you switch, so like. you switch faster and you’re like. Boom. I’m here. And then like the breathwork and the meditation, and I probably don’t use this as often as I can. But one of the things I have noticed when I when I do remember to do these because we’re still I’m still learning all of this stuff from you [00:46:00] is like one of the things that you do in the meditations is you have us like pay attention to everything in your body.

And you realize like when you’re sitting there when you’re not paying attention, how much of your body you’ve got tense, like you’ve got your abs tense, you got your arms tense, you got different muscles that are just like tense because you’re holding stuff there and you don’t even realize that it’s just the way your body is.

And when you start to pay attention, you’re like, you start at your feet, you move up and you just sort of like relax all the muscles all the way through your body. And it’s one of the things that like I’ve learned through the meditation stuff with you is like how to actually like pay attention to everything in your body and to relax everything.

And, and so like, that’s really useful for falling asleep, but it’s also useful for a couple other things too. Like before you get on a sales call, before you get up on stage or any of the other things, whereas like I know how to. Breathe and I know how to relax all the things that I’ve got tense and like one of the things I noticed was like, you know, we regularly like we hold our abs really tight.

Our whole core like it’ll be really tight. You’re like, Oh, I can just relax all of that and relax your arms and relax your head and just like when as soon as you do that, as soon as you do that, like meditation and you do the, and it doesn’t [00:47:00] even have to be like long, take a couple of seconds to just like scan your body and just relax everything.

Yeah. Or, and then to like breathe. And like, one of the things I noticed is like, if you’re holding all your tension especially like your core, you’re only breathing like halfway. Right, because you’ve got all your abs tight, you’re not using your diaphragm, any of those kind of things. And she’s like, you relax everything in a couple of seconds of meditation, and then you start a couple of deep breaths.

And it just changes everything, changes your ability to like move into different states, or you know, we’ve been talking about sleep, move into sleep, that kind of stuff. But that same moving into a different state, the meditation and the breath work helps with any time you need to do a state change. and so, that’s, it’s been really useful.

Master Victor: Absolutely.

And you know, it’s really

underplayed, I think, for a lot of people where, you know, just taking like three big deep breaths in the middle of the day when you’re stressed out, like you think it wouldn’t do anything, but it changes what you’re focusing on. And we, we oftentimes will hold A lot of [00:48:00] tension in different parts of our body, and they usually relate to either something emotional or trauma that we’ve been through, and we can subconsciously hold a lot of tension, and especially if you’ve had an injury, like, for example, I’ve injured my right shoulder, and sometimes I’ll catch myself with my right shoulder kind of inching up here, and I have to consciously bring that down, and The more we are aware of releasing that tension, the less body pains we’re going to have, where you’re going to experience kind of.

A better relaxed state rather than, you know, having the shoulder pain all the time or having this hip pain all the time, you’ll be able to relax and deal with the healing part of it a lot easier. And you know, that’s something that I feel like is not as considered, you know,

breathing, being aware of the body and then releasing that tension and how all of that plays together.

That’s a really good point. [00:49:00] And,

Richard Matthews: would’ve, I would’ve

Master Victor: you

Richard Matthews: I would be remiss

if I didn’t bring this up with the breathwork. The breathwork has been probably one of the biggest game changers for me. And I’d like I never would have, like, if we go back before training and you’re like, you’re going to learn breath work and I, you know, like you mentioned that was part of your, your core training philosophies is you’re like, you teach martial arts as like the skeleton framework and you teach calisthenics and breath work and yoga and a few other things that you teach. and I, was like, breath work was one of those things I was like, sure, whatever. Like, like breath work is a thing that’s not going to, it’s not going to be useful for, for anything. I know how to breathe, right? Everybody knows how to breathe. and then you actually start learning how to breathe and then. and realize that like, wow, I’ve been breathing wrong.

My whole life is one thing you start to realize that like everything that you’re doing, if you learn to just like to actually breathe. And one of the things like you, you’ve taught me is like, you breathe from the bottom up, right? Like you breathe from your diaphragm up into your chest. And it’s one of those things that like, you like, I know people are going to listen to this podcast episode and [00:50:00] hear me say that and be like. How is that valuable? I, you know, I promise you it’s one of those things. Everything that I do, if I just, you know, before I get on a sales call, before I get on with my staff, any of those things, when you, you, you like all the way through class, it’s like, don’t forget to breathe. Don’t forget to breathe.

Remember, focus on your breathing, focus on your breathing. And, you know, that’s when we’re, we’re operating at like, Super high levels, right? When you’re operating, when you’re your heart rates, 170, you’re really pushing yourself. Focus on your breathing. And so if you take that same lesson and you start applying into all the other areas of your life, you know, you’re cooking food, you’re playing with your kids, you’re showing up for your meetings, you’re getting on stage and you breathe. It sets everything else like Right. Like you can focus better. Everything in your body operates better. You can that whole cognitive function, like all the things that we’ve talked about stress reduction, improved cognitive function, the health benefits, the faster thought processing. It’s like you have to breathe.

If you don’t breathe, none of those things happen. And so, like the breath work has been it’s been a game changer and I never would have admitted that to [00:51:00] you or even known that before we started this training,

Master Victor: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, you’re talking about the, the breathing in the high performance zone.

Like I really found the importance of that because I’ve through my early years, I didn’t use to breathe very well. I’ve actually, fainted from not breathing all the exercise and, you know, I’ve hit my VO two max and not breathe very when I’ve gone and puked.

We kind of spoke that, the last episode we recorded, I think with, with free bird and. You know, these things of not breathing well, you can literally suffocate yourself and you’re not getting oxygen to your brain and then you can’t think so, you know, it’s so underplayed where, you know, when you do breathe well, you get oxygen into your body, you alkalinize your blood and you release a lot of the tension, you bring the awareness to the moment.

And a lot of people don’t connect those two. They’re

like, Oh, breath

work. Oh, it’s it’s [00:52:00] whatever. It’s so powerful when you do it correctly. And then if you learn to integrate it, not only in your relaxed moments, but especially, especially during those high interval trainings and it can let you go longer, it can let you break your limits and establish a new. You know, maximum for yourself where you’re before you would have been on the ground passed out.

Richard Matthews: where it triggered, that’s where it, where it triggered for me. Cause it was probably three months into

the training. We were still in Florida and it was like the middle of summer and it’s like 95 degrees out of super hot. And I remember like, you know, we’re doing these exercises and your heart rate’s getting up into the one seventies kind of thing, which is, you know, it’s high, it’s a lot of effort that you’re putting in. And I remember. I remember something clicked because you kept saying, focus on your breathing, focus on your breathing. And I was like, I don’t understand what he’s saying. Like, I am breathing. Like, that seems like like, I don’t know why you’re why you’re telling me that. And then it finally clicked one day, but I was like, [00:53:00] and I don’t I don’t know how to describe it until you’ve been through it. there is a point where is if you can just put all of your, all of your attention. on the breathing, then your body just does all the other things for you, right? It’s, you know, the closest analogous I can come up to is like, you know, when you’re ever you’re driving and, you know, you, you’re, you stop paying attention to your driving and then you’re just like, you show up at home and you’re like, Oh, how did I get here, right? Because it’s all an automatic is that the focus on the breathing is a mechanic by which you can put your body into that automatic state. Right, where you can start letting it go into, let it just do what it does. and, you know, one of my favorite movies is The Last Samurai. And I know they have the sword fighting scene where he’s getting his, his rear end head into him by the couple of kids with the swords with the wooden swords.

And, you know, the one of the master swordsmen is like too many minds, too many minds. He’s like, he’s trying to tell him to focus less on his thinking. And so. That’s where, like, for me, what you have been saying over and over again is [00:54:00] focus on your breathing, focus on your breathing, is to not focus on the action that you’re doing, because you know how to do the actions.

You’ve been training these things. Focus instead on your breathing and let your body just do what it does. and that’s how you get into that mastery state. And then what I’ve noticed since we’ve started doing that is that as soon as you start doing that, Your heart rate starts to drop while you’re doing high intensity exercise.

And now, like, you know, when I actually focus on my breathing, right, I can keep my heart rate under 150, whereas before it would have been a 1 71 75 because I’m

focusing on the breathing and your body will just do what it does, right? Cause you’re not, you’re not focused on all of those

things. Your body will just operate at peak, peak efficiency.

And it’s like, your mind is getting in the way of doing those things. And so like. It’s really important in the high intensity training, but it’s also, I’ve noticed you can do the same thing in every other area where you have to perform. I said, whether that’s cooking or it’s playing with your kids or if it’s windsurfing or speaking on stage or the things that like I do regularly, the sales calls or meeting with your team, same thing focus on the breathing.

You know how to do [00:55:00] what you need to do. It’s just going to happen, right? That’s for that whole, that mastery thing. You, especially with skills that you’ve mastered, like if you’ll just not focus on them, you can operate at peak efficiency in those areas. And for me, breathing was one of those big, those big ones.

Master Victor: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you’re, you’re speaking about lowering that heart rate and being able to increase the endurance during these really intense exercises, you know, It sounds like you’ve essentially increased your energy levels in a sense, or the, the ability to tap into latent energy. Have you experienced any increase in your energy levels outside of the, you know, the training where, you

know, in your everyday life?

Richard Matthews: So I I, I tease my, my wife. I say, there’s more of me to love.

So I actually, I sent you probably, I think I sent you a couple, like last month, I did, I did all of like my body measurements and whatnot. And, and, you know, I’ve, I added like three inches to my chest over the last year [00:56:00] and like, you know, three quarters of an inch, like all of my my limbs, my thighs and my calves and my arms, my forearms, like I’ve actually been able to build muscle for the first time in my whole life.

And a lot of it comes from the training and and so like, there’s actually. More of me and so like that’s a physical representation of that is like there’s actually more right? There’s more muscle. It’s more intense And so but that it’s not just the physical part There’s also the energy part that goes with that With the more the trained muscle the more dense muscle the more you have more energy you have more stamina.

You have more strength and just all the way through there’s just there’s more Richard than there was before, right? And so that goes all the way down to your, your thinking and your, the cognitive building, all the things we’ve talked about before is like,

there’s just there, I can bring more of myself to bear to any situation, right? And and the threshold for the threshold for like, when you find it stressful or when you find it like, [00:57:00] difficult changes, you’ve lowered it because there’s just. there’s just More available. I think in the weight training world, I think they call it this Strength to weight ratio, right? Where a lot of people are focused on things like their, their maximum strength like how much you can lift and like what we’re talking about here is like is is just how much strength you have for who you are for like your person And like, that goes to, it goes to your strength It goes to your energy.

It goes to your focus. It goes to Like every every sort of like aspect of of who you are as a person There you’re just There’s more of you, so you’re increasing that strength to weight ratio, right? Like, I have more energy for for myself, I have more focus available. I have more energy available. And what that essentially does is the the level at which you can perform well is like, it’s lowered, right?

So like, like where things might be, be stressful or it’s like, you know, uh, you know, I’m just like a [00:58:00] basic example. You know, four sales calls during a day is a lot of sales calls, right? Four or five sales calls that are an hour long. Each kind of thing is, it’s, it’s a lot of work mentally. It’s mentally draining.

And, you know, you get to point now, it’s like, you know, you do 8, of those in a row and it would be. It would barely even like register on your energy scale, right? And and I’ve noticed that happen in the training as well. He’s like, one of the questions you asked us is like, how are you feeling? Like after we finished one of the hit things and you know, we go back to early summer of 2023 and I’m like, like, I’m dead, like my arms don’t work, my legs don’t work, and my lungs don’t work anymore and you go to like, you know, this last week, how are you feeling at the end of those, and it’s like, like we could do it again, right, like, like we could, we could do it, we could, you know, that’s what you mentioned earlier, like, you know, you and your son could probably do hour and a half, half long training or two hour long trainings now, whereas like Six months ago, we couldn’t, right.

And that’s just cause there’s just more available. There’s more strength. There’s more fitness. [00:59:00] There’s more energy. There’s more just, there’s more of everything available to you because you have built the baseline.

Master Victor: sounds like we need to turn it up a little bit.

And you know, the kind of also applies for people who are overweight. Like when I started training, I was. Pretty fat. I weighed about 240 pounds. Like I’d been training since a kid and I stopped training essentially when I started playing football and went to college and I came back.

I went back to my original school, started training under my grandmaster And I was pretty big and I wasn’t moving very fast. My endurance level was low. And not only did I get stronger, I was able to train longer. I lost weight, I gained muscle, and I saw all of these physical benefits from my training.

And, you know, even when, when I don’t train, I exercise, I go for a run because. I’ve seen the benefits that it has in my life, [01:00:00] and I want to keep those benefits. I essentially don’t want to go back to my old lifestyle, and it creates kind of like a, a beneficial way of living. It’s just great. do

these things, you’ll get these benefits, so you want to keep doing them.

And like you said, the more you do it, the more you want to increase

doing it, the more you, you associate the benefits to those actions. Yeah.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, it’s, there’s a, there’s a fitness aspect

Too.

And the, the fitness aspect for me is like looking at like, you know, we’re getting to that age in our lives where like my parents and my grandparents are starting to get into their older years and they start dealing with the realities of not having trained their bodies throughout the course of their life and you realize that like, you know, you have, have grandparents or great grandparents or great aunts and uncles that are like struggling with, You know, the seniority of their bodies, right?

Where it’s like, they can’t move the way that they wanted, they used to, and it starts to become frustrating where like, you know, they have to [01:01:00] have helpers come in and help them. And you realize that like, that doesn’t have to be you you. are capable of being strong well into your 80s, 90s, 100s, and, you know, dying of old age kind of thing, and you realize that, like, it’s the kind of thing that, like, if you’re 80, you can’t start this kind of training. But if you’re in your 20s you can. And if you keep up with it, you can keep it through. As you, as you age. And that’s where like my, my fit young forever philosophy is, is like, the reason I want to do this and want to do this work now is because if I do this work now and I just uplevel my, my baseline health up to this point where I like I’m operating at my peak, you can keep that, but if you, if you let yourself just. you know, go off the cliff, so to speak, where you’re not, you’re not doing the work. It just gets harder and harder and harder to get fit as you age. And aging is happening to all of us, whether we like it or not. So, if you want to, to, if you want to stay fit and healthy, you have to put in the effort for it.

And that’s where, like, [01:02:00] my, my thought process is like, I want to, I don’t want to go back to who I was before, because I know if I went back to who I was before, That’s one of those downward trajectories that you just continue to age and you can even get weaker and you get to the point where you’re like, I need people to help me and assist me.

And, you know, like barring some sort of disease or whatever that, that hurts your, your cognitive abilities or whatnot, like you can keep your body physically fit. and I want to, you know, I want to be able to do that. I want to have that kind of fitness throughout my life. And that’s something that you have to, you have to put in the effort.

now

Master Victor: Yes, absolutely. And, you know, that, that lets you do things like, you know, being able to go have fun with your kids and whatever they want to do, especially as they reach adulthood and, you know, go do things with your friends that, you know, maybe other people couldn’t. And I guess this ties into. you know, enhance social skills and teamwork. in in our company, I don’t necessarily think that we directly train this. Now. Sometimes we do train partners [01:03:00] sparring where you have to want to and What I, what I think martial arts does as far as like social interactions is through our breathing through, you know, having stressful training and like you were saying, you, you know, before you go into a sales talk before you do all these things, you, you, you do a little bit of breath work to get yourself in that moment where you’re able to absorb more of what’s going on and you’re able to process it better, you know, have you seen these, Benefits or effects also in your social life and how you deal with friends, how you deal with family and other situations.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, so one of the things that I think is really interesting is a lot of people

Master Victor: Yeah.

Richard Matthews: that having social skills is Related to whether or not you’re introverted or extroverted, right? And it’s like extroverts have social skills and introverts don’t and that’s actually false So the reality is is when you’re with people an introvert can be incredibly [01:04:00] social And then when they’re with people like that people drain them Right.

Like it drains their energy and extroverts when they’re with people, they can also be incredibly social, but when they’re with people, it energizes them. And so like, I’m naturally an introvert and yet I’m a CEO of a company, which means that I’m on sales calls regularly. I’m on team calls regularly.

I’m doing interviews regularly. I’m speaking on stages regularly. So like, I’m always in social situations where I’ve got, you know, or from one to you know, two or 300 people that I’m interacting with on a daily basis. And the the things that I’ve noticed is. It does still drain me, right? So that doesn’t change.

It’s not going to change like your baseline of like, you know, being in these social situations is an energy intensive thing for someone who’s an introvert like myself, but what has changed is the things that we all the things we’ve talked about like you have more energy, you have more focus, you have more abilities, you know, like when something is stressful.

Like, you know, before you go to speak on stage or when you have, like, you know, I go and speak to these events where like, I’ll have a table at the back and after, you know, the event, like they let out for the break or whatever, you’ll have [01:05:00] 30 people come over and want to talk to you about what it is that you’re doing. that’s, those are like, it’s a high stress environment and just your ability to, to breathe and to focus and to channel your energy into that moment, makes it so that like at the end of the day, the same kind of thing, you’re not dead. Right. You’re not dead at the you know, it’s like, you know, the HIT training you get to the end of it was like, you know, six months ago, I’m like this, this this training and I’m tired and I’m, I’m exhausted from the, at the, end of this training. And the same kind of thing in the social situations where like the end of the day, I might’ve been tired

and exhausted and dead. and now, you know, at the same time, I’m like, I could do that again, right? I could go and do a whole nother day of this event, and I would be fine, and so it’s changed changed sort of like the, again, just the amount of Richard there is available to show up at these things, so that’s one aspect of it, and then the other aspect is when you are When you are dealing with the stresses better, you are less likely to, to make poor decisions with your [01:06:00] communication or make poor decisions with how you respond to like negative things that come in.

It’s like like, to fly off the handle or so to speak when you get mad about something going wrong or something like that. you just, you know, You have more of that ability to, I don’t even know how to quite describe it. Like when, you know, one of the things that like we talk about social skills and teamwork is mistakes happen, right?

We’re all human and mistakes happen with our clients. Mistakes happen with our team members, mistakes happen with communication. And then those things might like directly in fact, impact your bottom line or your revenue or your ability to keep a client and things like that. And you realize that like, there’s, there’s aspects of learning how to train and learning how to. How to breathe, learning how to have better energy, learning how to focus better. All of those things have an impact on how you show up in those situations where like before you might have It’s not that it’s going to keep you from getting angry, but it’s how you respond to that and how you actually show up for your team.

And you realize, like, like, Hey, you know, one of our core philosophies that our company is mistakes are stepping stones to [01:07:00] success. And it’s one thing to say, but it’s another thing to deal with mistakes when they happen and actually implement that core value of like, okay, here’s a mistake that was made.

and instead of flying off the handle and getting mad at you and burning a relationship with a good team member, right. Or burning a relationship with a good customer being able to show up and be like okay, where is it that our process failed here and can we enhance our process instead? And, you know, maybe make a better checklist or maybe make a better set of like quality review things so that this mistake either gets caught earlier in the process so it doesn’t reach to the customer or that this this mistake doesn’t happen again in the future at all, which is a much better, more thought out response than why did this happen?

You’re dumb. Like, you know, like there’s, there’s different ways you can handle those things and, doing the, the training, all these things that we’ve talked about have made it so that. It is easier to show up and make good decisions that make your team stronger, that make your, your relationship with your clients stronger, that make your family stronger, because you have the same kind of things happen in [01:08:00] your family with your kids, right?

You know, when they, I’ve got a toddler at home, and I don’t know if you’ve ever raised a toddler before, but they’re they’re like little demons in human body form. and, and I know a couple years ago. A couple of years ago, my littlest one would drive me bonkers to the point where I’m like, you know, sometimes I want to throw her out the window and, you know, the the, the ability to handle those stressors just goes up a lot, where, you know, now I can just sit with her while she screams, right. And sit with her while she’s going through these things. and she’s learning to be human, you know, and that’s like it. like the social skills and the teamwork. It’s not necessarily that, like, you still have to build the social skills. Martial arts isn’t going to make you a social master, but the training is going to make it so that you have the, like the mental capacity to handle those kind of things, and to just show up and be a better version of yourself.

Master Victor: yeah, the, the self control and

you know, that, that’s kind of one of the biggest benefits

that [01:09:00] work has done for me personally, where since I’ve started, especially the meditation that we’ve been doing through Ananda it’s allowed more space in between the emotional response and then action where I feel this emotion coming up. And now there’s, there’s, there’s like a little space in there and it’s gotten bigger where I’m like, Oh, I can breathe, I can look at it, I don’t have to respond, and then I can handle the situation better, rather than having an emotionally compromised response to a situation where it may inflate it, it may make it worse, and that’s not what I want to do.

So, you know, These tools, essentially we’re learning tools and through the meditation, through the breath work and through the baseline of the physical exercise, providing a channel for that stress to then allow you to then handle these situations better where you’re not compromised by the emotion or the chat in your mind.

Cause you know, I’m [01:10:00] not the best in very large group of people. Very sensitive to what’s going on. So when, you know, lately we have been like, let’s say I go to a festival and there’s a lot of stimulation going on. I’m able to breathe. I’m able to calm myself internally, not get compromised, not. You know, get in a state of chaos internally, and it, it makes it so that I can handle any situation with calmness rather than being influenced by it.

And that I think is

one of the most

critical things that we as people can learn because, you know, the only thing we can control is ourselves and we

can only

control what we do, what we say we, and we can’t control other people. So that, that becomes very critical. Absolutely.

Richard Matthews: it’s, it’s the thing we talked about earlier, right? Between stimulus and

Master Victor: that was, that was like the last one.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, as I say, like, one more thing on that is that, you know, we talked earlier about between stimulus and response, there’s your choices that you have and one of the things, because martial [01:11:00] arts, because of what you’re doing is you’re, you’re training that space in between, is that, like, now you have, now you have that space, and you get to choose how much time that space is going to take, right?

And so, like, in a social situation, where, where things might stress you out, or, like, something that happens like that, you have, You have that space in between stimulus and response. And now you can, you can choose, you can choose your choices, right? Choose how you’re gonna respond to those things. and it’s really impactful in the social, social skills area. And then what, what’s interesting is just like anything else, right? We’re training to do those those kicks better and like, to do the combinations better and all that stuff like that’s that same skill set. Whereas like you’re like now, now that you have that space between the choices, you get to. You get to start thinking, like, how do I want to respond in this situation, right? How do I want to respond when a client comes to me with a problem or when a staff member comes in with a mistake? How do I want to have these responses happen? And you have this space to make those choices. And once you’ve really decided how you want to make, to have those choices happen, then you can start [01:12:00] reducing that time again, reducing the amount of space. And then you’re training that you’re training those habits of like, here’s how, you know, when I’m, when I’m at a festival and I’m stressed out now, instead of thinking of, of, I need to breathe and I need to do meditation, it’ll just become automatic.

And so you’re, you’re really, you’re training, you’re training the,

Master Victor: Exactly.

Richard Matthews: the mastery into every one of those areas. And so you’re getting to choose who you want to be and how you want to respond in any situation. And I think that’s, that’s such a. It’s such a big portion of like what the martial arts training sort of gives to you.

It’s giving you that, that skillset of being able to train what happens in between stimulus and response.

Master Victor: Yes. Absolutely. That’s very well

said. Absolutely. Yeah. And that pretty much covers a lot of, you know, how our training influences our everyday life. I mean, it’s, it’s so impactful.

Like a lot of, people don’t think about it. They just see, Oh, [01:13:00] I want to do some fancy kicks and learn some punches and defend myself, but you’re getting so much more.

You’re, you’re learning about yourself, learning how to interact with the world around you and you’re becoming a better human being and spreading that calmness in doing so, is there anything else you’d like to share?

Richard Matthews:

If I was going to share anything else, it would be the, the biggest thing that I would, I would tell someone is hire a coach. And so what I mean by that for myself is I have tried for years to Take control of my own like fitness and my fitness journey. and you know, I I didn’t realize my fitness journey would include all these other benefits that we talked about.

But when I first started, I was like, I could, I could do a lot of this myself. I can work out on my own and I can, I can do. Like I can learn these things and I realized last year, sometime it would have been actually, it’s probably before last year because I had started looking for someone to hire, before you and I managed to hook up. and I was, I was like, I need to find someone to just [01:14:00] who is willing to push me. And so for my for my own, my own like world, I know I had tried already for years and tried different things. And I had hired different people for different things. And I realized that like what I need is I need someone who was going to show up.

with me and push me. And so it’s like some of the benefits I see from that is like one, our training is on my calendar, right? And I don’t put it there. You do. You put it on my calendar and it shows up. I’m like, so my, my coach puts our training time on our calendar and that’s like, that’s As as a busy entrepreneur who is trying to perform and grow a company the way that I’m growing, having someone who is like, Hey, it’s time for our training time.

Here’s and I just have to show up for it. So I don’t have to show up for it. I could not show up. But then like that would impact our relationship negatively, right? If I don’t show up for the things that we’ve agreed to. So like there’s, there’s some social There’s, there’s like built in social pressure to having a coach that you’ve hired to force you to show up.

So there’s like that aspect of it. So [01:15:00] one, it means that I’m actually doing it regularly when I’m doing it myself. You know how easy it is to be like, eh, I don’t want to work out today. Right. I don’t want to show up and do this, especially if you haven’t built the habits and seen all the benefits from it. yet, right?

Cause that takes months to get to all those benefits. It’s really easy to just be like. No, that’s hard. I don’t want to do it. But we have that social benefit of, of I’m paying you. So we have a paying relationship and there’s the social aspect of like, I’ve said I would be here. So if I don’t show up, I’m lowering my integrity, both in your eyes and mine.

Right. And so it has a negative thing there. So it’s actually, it becomes a way for me to make showing up and doing what I know I need to do. An easier decision to say yes to. So there’s that aspect of it. And then there’s the second aspect of it, which I didn’t realize until we started training and that is how much more I am willing to put on the table when you push me and say, you’ve got more, right? Whereas if I was doing it myself, I wouldn’t hold the stretches as long. I wouldn’t put the kicks as high or

as high. I

wouldn’t. Push as much weight on like, I [01:16:00] wouldn’t push myself as far because I don’t like I have my own preconceived notions of what my limits are. and like, and I’ve seen that anyone who’s tried to practice on their own probably sees that themselves as well. And so part of the other

really big benefit to hiring a

coach is you push me. Right? You’re like, you’ve got more in

the tank. You can put that kick higher. You can do another set of of push ups. You can do more than you think you can do because you don’t have the same preconceived notions about my limits that I

do. and so because you’re always finding where my limits are and pushing them just a little bit farther and just a little bit farther, just a little bit farther, That’s part of the reason why we’ve had so much growth and progress in the training. But also seeing all that growth and progress on the other areas of our life is because having a coach is someone

who’s pushing you a little bit

further than you would push

yourself. and it changes your own baseline and it’s not something you can do for yourself. And so if I was going to give anyone a last sort of thought, it’s. someone like Victor to help you push your past your [01:17:00] own limits and pay them and pay them well and get them on your calendar and turn them into something that you just can’t say no to because it’s worth it.

The benefits, all these things that we talked about, it’s worth it.

and in the case of someone like me who’s operating a company like this, impacts my bottom line directly. And so it’s a worthwhile investment in yourself and a worthwhile investment in your business.

Master Victor: that, to kind of add on to that, make sure, you know,

these

There’s all these trainers out there and, you know, someone who’s going to push you well knows what that limit looks like. So they, know, you know,

how you kick your body stands when you’re kicking, what you look like at the limit of your pushup and how much more you can give so that you can do it safely because, you know, You can get hurt by pushing yourself past the limit in the wrong ways. And, you know, through working with you you know, the first few classes, you know, we, we, we did. some exercises just to kind of get a feeling for where you’re at. [01:18:00] And then as I started to see you being able to handle these different situations, I was like, okay, yeah, he can push it a little bit more. And it takes

a certain awareness of being able to see where you’re at. And then seeing, oh, you know, he can, he can go a little bit further. So. Doing pushing that limit safely and and creating a safe environment where you know that you’re being taken care of in a safe way and guided correctly. And I think that’s also really important in in training because there’s a lot

of martial arts teachers and coaches out there.

who don’t do it in a safe way and then people get hurt. And that’s something that I really try to avoid. It is injury and injury prevention because that’s only gonna

make things worse. make things worse. So I just want to highlight that important

fact.

Yeah.

Richard Matthews: I don’t know if you wanted to share

the metrics or

the

Yeah, I was like, I want to do one more shameless plug just for [01:19:00] Victor and for Ferra Academy.

And that’s one of the things

that has really been beneficial to me is that you don’t just Have us do the workouts, right? And the workouts are great. And I love that we’re doing the workouts and what you’re doing. But you’re also, you’re also, it’s obvious to me that you’re continuing your own education in the areas that you are, you are coaching us in.

And you are educating us on things like. how our muscles work and how they connect together and how this exercise fits in here and how the stretching fits in with what we’re doing and how the breath work fits into all this and you have a comprehensive sort of like understanding of the human body and where we’re at and like and and how to modify things for my son who’s a young teenager or or me who you know i’m you know I’m well past puberty, right?

I know, like I have different limits than my 14 year old son does. And the way that you are able to just understand those and help push us at different levels, um, and educate us through, through all of those processes, I’ve learned a lot about my body and how it [01:20:00] works and like, just understanding like my muscles and stuff like that, all the way to the point of like, I had a friend of mine who was like my, I started working out and like, I’m having this problem with my, my back and it hurts really bad now.

And it’s like, and I was like. Have you done any of the antagonist muscle workouts? Um, it’s like, are you just working out the one side? Cause if you don’t work out the antagonist muscles, like you’ll start pulling yourself forward or whatever. And it was like things that I wouldn’t have known until you started teaching me about them.

Um, and so he, he started looking into that himself and he started doing the antagonist workouts for, for the muscles that he was working on. He was like that it, it changed the game. And I was like, it’s, it’s little things like that, that when you find a good trainer. Um, who really understands is really looking at making their craft better.

Um, that’s where, um, I think having someone like you has really changed the game for, for someone like me. And then to your last point, the, uh, the actual stats, um, for our company, our company growth, um, we were did, uh. I’ll pull up the screenshots. I’ll put it, we can put them in the edit for this, this episode, but, uh, January, uh, not January, um, December of [01:21:00] 2022, we did a 5, 000 in revenue for push button podcasts and December, 2023, um, we did 43, 250 in revenue, um, which is about eight, eight and a little less than eight and a half X, uh, revenue year.

Um, and if we include the first week of January. Um, that number is actually, um, it’s, it’s like, it’s a little closer to 50, 000, which is like nine and a half X. So it’s almost, almost a 10X growth in a, in just over a year timeframe. Um, and that 10X growth is like I said, we, you know, correlation, causation kind of thing.

It’s not a hundred percent because of martial arts, but martial arts was one of the things that if I hadn’t done it, if I hadn’t been putting in this effort, I don’t think I would have been able to manage the growth. Right. I don’t think there would have been enough of me available to handle that. Um, and so like one of the other things that I was doing last year is a good friend of mine was like, Hey, if you want to grow your company, you know, he’s added billions of dollars to like the bottom line of companies that he worked with.

So like I listened to him regularly. He [01:22:00] was like, say yes. Um, until it hurts and then he’s like, and then fix the pain. And so like part of that process of growing was just saying Yes.

to a lot of things. And so, um, you know, in I don’t want people who are watching this or to take that the wrong way is like you have to learn how to say no first before you can say Yes.

And I’d gotten to that point. I already knew what to say no to in a business. And so once I learned that, then I was able to start saying yes to more things. And the amount of things you said Yes

to last year was. It was a lot, um, a lot of different things in a lot of different areas and a lot of different things that really helped grow the company.

Um, but I couldn’t have said yes to all of those things if I didn’t have the energy and the cognitive function and the ability to handle myself the way that I would, because I would, I would have run out of steam, right? I would have run out of like energy to do all those kind of things. And like one of the metaphors that I use regularly and like the whole work life balance thing is like people think of work life balance of like, Hey, you have to have.

You know, to even out the scales. And I’ve always hated metaphor because I think it’s more akin to like a rubber band where, you [01:23:00] know, you can stretch the rubber band. Um, and if you want forward momentum, though, if you want momentum, you have to let go of the rubber band. You have to go back to the relaxed state.

That’s how you move forward. And so you have to be able to stretch and release and stretch and release. And when you see that mirrored in the training where you have your training days and you have your rest days, your training days, your rest days, you see that, but also. The amount of work that we put in has really helped grow the amount that we can stretch the rubber band and the length of time that you can keep the rubber band stretched for, right?

So I can operate at peak efficiency and at, like, the top of my game for a much longer period of time. Um, And that was something that. That really impacted our ability to grow as much as we did is is a big ability to hold that that stretched period and to work at a high, high rate for a longer period of time, I wouldn’t have had that ability if it wasn’t for the martial arts.

So, while it’s not the only thing that led to the growth, it’s 1 of the things that enabled us to be able to say yes to

what we said yes to, if that makes [01:24:00] sense.

Master Victor: Yeah, Absolutely. Absolutely. And that rubber band and I love using that for your muscles, you know, if you, don’t use them, you don’t stretch them it becomes crusty and then you can’t even stretch it and it breaks. So, you know the more that

you work it out The longer you can stretch and then like you’re saying, the more you can

use that

and it becomes more flexible. Absolutely very well put.

Yeah. I think that pretty much covers

everything. And if y’all want to you know, look into our training, you can go to farahacademy. com slash you to find out more information, make sure to subscribe, follow the podcast, And we’ll be going in depth into a lot more of the training, like speed flow state and how to improve accuracy in the next few episodes. So make sure to follow along and we’ll see y’all in

the next

episode.

Richard Matthews: Bye.

Thanks for having me here, Victor.

​[01:25:00]