Fit for Life: It’s Time to “Man Up”

Saturday, July 20, 2019

Matt Espeut, GoLocalWorcester Health +Lifestyle Contributor

Anyone that knows me, knows that I invest a lot of time, money and energy into my own personal development.

There is a saying that your success will NEVER surpass your education and development.

The reason for this is, if I don’t get better, I can’t coach my team to get better and they won’t be able to help my members get better.

As a lone wolf, I can only help so many people change their lives and create a world class experience for my members by giving them the attention they deserve. Therefore, helping my team grow and develop is essential for me to be able to carry out my mission and grow my business to the highest standards of expectations.

With that being said, I just finished 3.5 days of the most intensive leadership and personal growth training of my life. I have never been pushed harder physically, mentally, or emotionally in the 50 years I have been on earth.

It was a pass-fail system, with no grey matter in between. Either I was going to Man Up and take every ounce of punishment these guys dished out, or I was going to play victim, make some crybaby excuse and quit.

Speaking of these “guys” they were some of the baddest mofo’s you could ever meet. The group consisted of a Navy Seal, a Swat Team Sniper, a MMA fighter, a Marine, & the Armenian “Assassin” Bedros himself. This group of men had seen and been through situations not many can imagine, so they were unshakeable and not willing to display an ounce of compassion during the entire 3.5 days. You were either in or you were out.

Why would I do this, let alone pay a large sum of money to do so?

Because it was exactly what I needed.

I needed to be tested to get my mind right and to remove a lot of self-doubt.

I needed honest feedback. The stuff friends and family aren’t willing to or feel the need to give.

I needed to go through tough situations, so that I could overcome and put the daily stress I have in perspective and realize that what I have on a daily basis isn’t that bad.

And this training delivered.

Positive reinforcement isn’t always real.

We need to be told what we are doing wrong and given some tough love in order to improve and grow.

I can’t tell you too much about “The Project” but what I can tell you is that it was precisely structured and every evolution we went through had a purpose and a mission.

One tested our loyalty to team members, one tested our ability to overcome extreme discomfort, many tested our physical stamina, many tested our attention to detail, others tested our ability to give and receive honest feedback, many taught us to make fast decisions and many taught us how to be respectful and helpful to other fellow human beings.

It wasn’t just a beatdown, it was a technique to turn men into modern day knights.

Most men of today are wuss bags.

They don’t have any physical stamina, emotional resiliency, respect for women or the people in their lives, and aren’t loyal to anyone. All categories of men have gotten soft compared to the men of my grandfather’s generation. From soldiers to mobsters, there is a different breed of men on the market today, and “The Project” was designed to help cure that.

Lower standards in the military, stress cards, participation trophies, cry rooms, and lack of tough love are turning today’s society into a bunch of little bitches, and we need more programs with tougher standards to help elevate our standards.

Now don’t get me wrong, real / tough men still exist, but when life gets too easy, people get soft, and being in a tough situation will build back character and develop resiliency which is necessary for success and building self-esteem.

A big takeaway from the physical aspect was that we lack internal motivation and rely on external motivation to get us through tough situations.

It took us 4 tries to get many of our evolutions correct.

We needed fear and punishment (external motivation) to get it together.

“Either do it better or you will be doing “xyz” all night long, was the external motivation.

How that relates to everyday life: (3 F’s) Family, Fitness & Finances

We wait until our bank account gets low before we start hustling.

We wait for our girlfriends / wives to have a foot out the door or get attention from another man before we start being nice to them.

We wait until we’re fat, sucking wind and on medication before we start eating right and training like warriors.

The Takeaway:

Find the internal motivation that’s obviously within us and don’t wait for the punishment before we perform at our highest level.

It’s in us all, but we need to dig deep to bring it out.

We also had a good amount of classroom learning time and one of the big takeaways from that was tapping into our emotional discipline.

What happens is when things are going well, we get complacent, and complacency kills our drive for improvement.

When we stop and take our foot off the pedal things go the other way, and then we become reactive and irrational, and make bad decisions.

The moral of that is to be grateful, but never be satisfied, and stay hungry.

When you are happy, keep doing the things that make you happy, when you are making money, keep doing what is working. Don’t settle or stop and smell the roses.

Keep moving forward at a steady pace.

So that was how I spent last week.

Being put through hell for 75 hours.

But when it was done, we had a great dinner, and I now get to call 14 new men my brothers because we all have a common bond.

We all went through adversity and discomfort to improve and be better men.

Committed to your success

Matt Espeut, GoLocal's Health & Lifestyle Contributor has been a personal trainer and health & fitnesss consultant for over 25 years. He is the owner of Fitness Profiles, a one on one, and small group personal training company, as well as Providence Fit Body Boot Camp, located at 1284 North Main St., on the Providence/Pawtucket line. You can reach Matt at (401) 453-3200; on Facebook at "Matt Espeut", and on Twitter at @MattEspeut. "We’re all in this life together – let’s make it a healthy one.

Enjoy this post? Share it with others.

Email to a friend Permalink

Fit for Life: It’s Time to “Man Up”

Related Articles

Enjoy this post? Share it with others.

Most Popular Articles

Sign Up for the Daily Eblast

Sign Up for the Daily Eblast