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April 6 - April 10, 2023
Medicine ball slam x 12 Lateral band walk x 12 Band upright row x 12 Band face pull x 12 Band core rotation x 12 each side Goliath Shoelaces circuit Medicine ball bucket toss X 10 Medicine ball power punch X 10 Bench press + chain x 5–10 Sprinting sled pushes in the parking lot 2 up and backs
Surround yourself with those who push you to be a better human. Strive to find people you can model yourself after and you can see qualities and characteristics that you want to possess yourself. They show me firsthand that good is the enemy of great.
working in one aspect makes me want to work in all aspects.
“How you do anything is how you do everything.” Sure, it’s a pretty simple statement. But doesn’t it seem odd that “winners” seem to find a way to win at everything they do? They win at life. I think it’s because they put the same amazing energy, effort, and focus into everything they touch … work, training, their craft, mental strength/growth, diet, etc. They never make excuses. Instead, they will push themselves to excel and win.
There is a dangerous tipping point regarding potential … Putting in half-assed effort that you tell yourself is hard work is the wrong side of the pivot. Here, you’ll never change. If you grind hard on the right side of that pivot, consistently over time, then the sky’s the limit. It’s a mindset.
It’s gonna hurt, but I don’t care.
I like to hurt because it’s only then that I know I am sacrificing and pushing past where most would quit. I’ve convinced myself that’s the only advantage I have. The ability to deal with pain. And I’ll lobby that almost all who run 100-mile ultras like I have also have a very high pain threshold. Pain is part of the deal in extreme endurance racing.
All I have … All I can bring to the table … All I can do is to outwork everybody.
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much;If you can fill the unforgiving minuteWith sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! —Excerpt from “If” by Rudyard Kipling
The must-be-nicers never want to think about any of that. A lot of those guys who utter, “Oh, I’d love to be able to do that” really and truly wouldn’t love it. If you put them under that pressure, I guarantee you, they wouldn’t love it at all. They wouldn’t even remotely like it. It’s too much. It’s too hard. For me, success has come at a high, sometimes not-so-nice price. For me, “Must be nice” is the swan song of incompetence. “Must be nice” is the white flag of defeat. There is nothing nice and light and sweet about success. Heavy lies the crown, and it comes with a not-so-nice price.
There’s no substitute for daily dedication to your craft, whatever it may be.
In Atomic Habits, James Clear sums up the difference between amateurs and professionals: “Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way. Professionals know what is important to them and work toward it with purpose; amateurs get pulled off course by the urgencies of life … When a habit is truly important to you, you have to be willing to stick to it in any mood. Professionals take action even when the mood isn’t right. They might not enjoy it, but they find a way to put the reps in.”
What I’ll tell you is this. If you’re not the hardest-working person you know, you’re not working hard enough. An outlier will never allow someone to outwork them.
Sensing pain means you’re sacrificing, and sacrificing sets you up for a big reward. I’ve found that your body will respond to whatever you ask of it. Humans are amazingly capable of so much. Push your limits.
Being in Beast Mode is when it feels like you’re in a superhuman state of being, when in your mind you’re playing at a level above everybody else. Is this reality? Doesn’t matter. If you believe you are, you are. The mindset of a winner is unbeatable.
Emulating exhaustion and manufacturing misery allow me not to lose my head on a hunt. It reminds me that I’ve been here a million times and that I will be fine and that I will make good decisions and that I will do what I’m here to do.
If you want to make it in any field, including the hunting industry, get to work. And do it with a smile, because every day is a gift. Honor that gift.
Know what your weaknesses are and don’t play into them. Concentrate on your strengths.
Your body gives what you ask of it. Don’t ask much and it won’t give you much. Ask a lot and it will give you a lot. I haven’t found my limit yet, but I am trying.
“They don’t make statues of critics.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger said it best: “You have to remember something: Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn.”
“All men are the same except for their belief in their own selves, regardless of what others may think of them.” —Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
“These ‘can’t catch a break’ guys—get them the fuck away from me. I can’t be around those guys. I don’t want to hear that shit. I don’t want to hear that shit. I don’t buy it. ’Cause everybody has bad breaks. I’ve had a shit ton of bad breaks. But you know what I did? I stayed up and I fought through it and I figured out what the fuck I did wrong.
And then I went back. It’s like—I fucked up everything I’ve ever done a hundred times … There’s no other way to do it. And I’ve had a bunch of shitty breaks. Everybody has. But you gotta realize when you have those shitty breaks what that is … And the people that look at those challenges and go, ‘Why do I always have the challenges”—they’re cancer. Those people are dangerous to be around. They will rob you of your enthusiasm. They don’t give you any fuel—they’re the opposite of fuel … All the time you’re complaining, you could be instead hustling. You could be instead chasing your dream. You
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“You can’t make people joyous just by being joyous yourself. Joy has to be generated by oneself: It is or it isn’t. Joy is founded on something too profound to be understood and communicated. To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts.” —Henry Miller, Sexus
Remember, if you live for the praise and acceptance of others, you will conversely die by their criticism. Don’t give them that power.
Imagine if you were blind. Ask yourself how badly you’d like to see. If pushing yourself to your limits could give you sight, would you do it? If there was a cure, would you let anything stand in your way? Would you risk the haters and the critics to see again? Be blind as you chase your goals.
There will always be those who want to see someone who’s motivated fail, because the effort of others reminds the weak of their lack of passion and purpose.
By my honorable conduct as a hunter let me give a good example and teach new hunters principles of honor, so that each new generation can show respect for God, other hunters, and the animals, and enjoy the dignity of the hunt. —Novena prayer to Saint Hubert, patron saint of hunters
The San Carlos $70,000 was divided between the cost of a tag ($40,000), an outfitter’s fee ($18,000), and a tip for the guide ($12,000).
To the vegans who want to clamor on about not eating meat, guess what? Animals died for you to live. If you drive a car, animals were displaced and killed to make room for the roads you drive. Furthermore, the wood to build your dwelling was made from trees that were cut down, killing woodland animals such as bears, large cats, wolves, amphibians, birds, and reptiles. If you’re living in that house, you’re responsible for the lives lost. The wheat field where your bread comes from … animals died during the growth and harvest of that grain. If you’re eating the bread, you’re responsible for
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Humans can’t exist without causing death … life eats life.
“Death by violence, death by cold, death by starvation—they are the normal endings of the stately creatures of the wilderness. The sentimentalists who prattle about the peaceful life of nature do not realize its utter mercilessness.” —Theodore Roosevelt, African Game Trails
If few people ate meat, farmland and habitats would quickly be overrun by too many animals. Too many cattle, for instance, hammer habitats, fields, water sources, and so on, and eventually that would lead to diseased, starving animals and a weakened gene pool. Same goes for hunting. Without hunting, the numbers of wild game would rise above what the habitat (which is shrinking as human encroachment expands) could sustain, and vehicle-animal conflicts would increase. Eventually, starving animals would be wandering around, weakened and diseased, and if not taken down by predators, eaten alive,
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Where does your strength come from? The only way muscles are built is by doing something that breaks them down, then they repair themselves to answer a test and you repeat the process over and over. Bottom line: Your body gives you what you ask of it.
“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” —Jack London
If I think I’m tired, I remember moments when I’m running hundreds of miles in an ultramarathon and I’m getting an hour of sleep or less. That’s when I should be tired. The other times means I’m just being weak.
You learn something every year, every hunt, every day, but you have to sacrifice to keep the education going. So you want to bowhunt? You want to run ultramarathons? That shit doesn’t happen overnight. You have to keep at it every day. You have to keep sacrificing, sacrificing, sacrificing. There’ll be a payoff. But it’s going to take a while. Tomorrow’s never guaranteed. I could have big goals and dreams down the road, but I could be dead tomorrow. So I pretty much take one day at a time. I give the best I can every day.
I get obsessed with things. But as I always say, if you’re not obsessed, you’re going to be mediocre. I don’t care what it is. If you have a healthy, balanced relationship with whatever dream you have, then nobody will ever know your name.
“Listen, you guys aren’t special,” I always told them. “If you give what everybody else gives, you’re not going to stand out. You’re going to have to give more if you want to achieve anything. You have to give more than everybody.”
I’ve learned firsthand, the hard way, that if you’re weak of body and spirit, life is going to be that much harder.
I live every day feeling like if you’re not giving all you got, then you’re not really honoring the gift of life.
Some people never do, and they die without ever really knowing what lay dormant inside of their soul.
“It’s about what we do with opportunities revoked or presented to us that determines how a story ends.”
What’s cool is you don’t need anyone to believe in you. Not even Cam Hanes. You just need to believe in yourself.
“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it—but all that had gone before.”
Without “firsts” there is no progression. As painful as it is sometimes, live, learn, and enjoy the journey. You never know when it’s going to end. That’s why you have to start.
Truth is, each one of us can attain even the loftiest of goals by simply being relentless, every second, every minute, every day. Keep grinding, working, get knocked down, then get back up, let people talk shit and smile, because if you’re focused and driven, no one has the power to stop you.
The journey is the reward.
