Episode 909 - State Change Management with Matt Thomas
In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew sit down with past guest Matt Thomas to discuss state change management and how it can be used in many martial arts settings.
State Change Management with Matt Thomas - Episode 909
SUMMARY
In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew are joined by Matt Thomas and they discuss state change management and its application in martial arts. State change management involves identifying and optimizing different states to achieve desired outcomes. They explore the use of breath work to manage states and prime the body for peak performance. Matt demonstrates the Fire Breath technique, which involves hyper ventilation-style breathing to psych up before a match. He also explains the Calm Down breath technique, which focuses on exhaling longer than inhaling to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. These techniques can be used in both training and competition to enhance performance. This conversation explores the connection between the body and mind and the impact of breathwork on performance in chess boxing and other activities. The guest, Matt, shares various breathing techniques for relaxation and peak performance, such as box breathing and the 4-7-8 breath. He explains how breathwork can help control the body's response to stress and improve focus and decision-making. The conversation also delves into the mental shift required in chess boxing and the importance of harmony and triumph in winning. Matt discusses the F.I.G.H.T. acronym for peak performance and the potential applications of breathwork in different situations. Lastly, he shares his efforts to grow the sport of chess boxing and offers resources for those interested in learning more about breathwork and state change management.
TAKEAWAYS
*Breathwork can have a significant impact on performance by controlling the body's response to stress and improving focus and decision-making.
*Different breathing techniques, such as box breathing and the 4-7-8 breath, can be used for relaxation and peak performance in various situations.
*In chess boxing, breathwork helps shift the brain's focus from spontaneous cognition to idea evaluation, improving performance in both chess and boxing.
*Harmony and triumph, rather than just winning, are important aspects of peak performance.
*Breathwork can be applied in different areas of life, such as difficult conversations or important presentations, to achieve desired states and outcomes.
*The sport of chess boxing is growing, and there are opportunities to participate in alternate formats, such as point sparring or non-contact versions.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction and Background
01:15 State Change Management
04:21 Tony Robbins and State Change
06:18 Breathing Techniques for State Change
12:34 Fire Breath Technique
20:05 Using Breath Work in Competition
23:14 The Effects of Breath Work
25:00 Calm Down Breath Technique
27:43 The Connection Between Body and Mind
28:48 Breathing Techniques for Relaxation
29:18 Different Breathing Techniques
31:32 The Benefits of Box Breathing
32:02 Using Breathwork in Boxing
33:23 The Mental Shift in Chess Boxing
34:25 Controlling Breath for Peak Performance
36:23 Breathwork for Different Personalities
38:17 The Importance of Harmony in Winning
39:39 The Impact of Mistakes on Performance
41:05 The F.I.G.H.T. Acronym for Peak Performance
44:17 Applying Breathwork in Various Situations
48:21 The Ripple Effect of Breathwork
50:57 Growing the Sport of Chess Boxing
53:41 Alternate Formats of Chess Boxing
56:20 The Value of Breathwork in Martial Arts
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Jeremy (00:00.982)
Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome. It's another episode of whistlekick martial arts radio And today of course, I'm joined by Andrew but back on the show and in person Matt Thomas what episode was that? Oh gosh, you're gonna make me remember I'm gonna say and I'm gonna look this up But I'm gonna say he was episode Okay, so
Jeremy (00:29.462)
joined again in the flesh by Matt Thomas. We're here in Woburn, Mass. And yes, that is how you say that to those of you outside of New England. You were here presenting at a conference and said, hey, you know, let's reconnect. Let's talk about the heart. Were you right? 892. 892, of course. So you can go back to Matt's interview episode on 892. And you were here talking about state change management at this conference. And that's the...
the subject that we got into a little bit on your interview, but you know, this gives us the opportunity to go a little deeper. We teased it. Yeah. And here we are, delivering. We're back. Yeah. And really this idea of, well, you know what? Forget me talking. You're the guest.
What's state change management? Okay, so throughout the day, even outside of the context of martial arts, throughout the day we go through different states. You feel different first thing in the morning when you wake up versus after you work out. You feel different when you eat good food versus bad food, when you have different kinds of conversations. Maybe you have a falling out with a coworker versus having like a deep heart to heart with a loved one. These all create different
chemicals, different feelings in the body.
And being aware of those can help you optimize the outcome of those. So what state change management helps you do is identify and optimize for whatever the priority is. Priority could be, hey, going into this difficult conversation with a coworker, I want to be very patient. I want to be very present. I want to be very empathetic. I don't want to be abrasive. I don't want to scare them.
Jeremy (02:18.976)
an important conversation and naturally you might have a higher heart rate, you might have a little adrenaline in your system, you might be firing up parts of your brain that are more fight, flight or freeze, you can prime your brain and by extension your delivery in order to be more like what you needed to be in order for a successful outcome. So in that kind of context, if I'm trying to calm down, be a little bit more present, be able to connect with someone, I would want to lower my heart rate.
right? Signaled to my central nervous system it's okay to exit fight or flight and be really calm and empathetic and present when I'm in that kind of conversation. Now when we take that out of our day-to-day life and into the context of martial arts because we're on a martial arts podcast, the same kind of thing exists in all martial arts but especially in chest boxing.
because when you're doing chess boxing, and if you aren't familiar, board game chess, sitting down, low heart rate, moving pieces. Hopefully low heart rate. Hopefully low heart rate, exactly, exactly. You know, good little tease there. And then, you know, boxing, you need to be hyper present. You're thinking about action, present tense right now. Shots that can come, shots I can throw back.
You know those are two very different parts of your brain that you need to fire up
Jeremy (03:49.674)
Yeah, my knowledge of state and not that he refers to it as state change management, Tony Robbins talks a lot about state. Yep, sure. And it's, as I heard him talk about that, it's something that I've played with in my life. He would talk about it as trying to get into state. And it was fascinating as I've kind of navigated some of the Tony Robbins stuff, how dramatically different the same experience is from different states. Do you know what he travels with and what he does right before he goes on stage?
He has a mini trampoline that he doesn't go anywhere without. And he has it right backstage, right before he walks out. He does a breath that we're gonna do today called Kabbalabati from yoga. It's very similar to a Wim Hof style breath or type of ventilations. He will bounce on the trampoline and do Wim Hof style breathing right before he walks out. That's like some potential nervous system. That's a very similar breath to what I do before I walk out for a boxing round. Because you're ready to fight.
Cool. You do any you ever done anything like that? No, I take yourself up before a competition or anything No, but I mean I'm familiar with what you're talking about But I was not aware that Tony Robbins did it though. It does not necessarily surprise me Because this concept of state change management like you mentioned just in your day-to-day life whether you're having to go in and have a difficult conversation with someone or Psych other people up
Those things aren't necessarily martial arts, but there's stuff that we have all the time. Tony Robinson's not a martial artist, but actually he might be. If he is, yes. He's trained, I've tried. I've tried. I'm not done trying, but I've tried. To get Tony Robinson on the show? Yeah, totally, yeah. Okay, so, but it doesn't surprise me that he would know these techniques and use them in his life, in his speaking. I feel that. That's cool. Yeah, so his training and how he started coaching is an NLP, Neuro Linguistic.
programming. So essentially what you do when you perform NLP on someone else or even yourself is you're recognizing patterns, you're keeping the good ones and you're breaking the bad ones in order to prime for whatever kind of performance that you want to have. And so it's very similar that kind of work that he does for people's lives no matter the you know type of activity they want to do. It's very similar to what we do in chest boxing.
Jeremy (06:18.016)
and what martial artists can do when they're trying to prime for peak performance. And it's funny, last night after the conference, there's a gym in Boston called Redline, and they were helping out at that conference. They told me that they were having 20 fights last night. And I was like, well, you know, I don't have plans tonight. Like, I wanna come watch some fights. Like, we're in Boston, we'll see what these guys got.
And they said they needed a commentator. So I was like, okay, you know, it's boxing. I can talk about boxing. So I ended up going and I get on the mic and talking about some of the fights and the fighters and I share chest boxing. And there were a few Sensei Seth fans that were in the gym that remember the chest boxing episode which is how we initially connected. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um.
And one of them came up after and said, hey listen, I'm an MMA fighter, I'm amateur, I have pro aspirations, and I've already seen benefits from implementing the breath work that you shared with Seth and with you guys, just for priming, not just for competition, but also for training. And the benefit here is like, I don't just do this breath right before I compete, I do this breath every single time
of boxing related activity or chest related activity. I think that's the important thing to understand here is like just like you know the guy that throws a thousand kicks once or one kick a thousand times it is all about the repetition and tying a certain activity that you're doing to whatever activity comes after it that you want peak performance in. There's the P and then LP. Exactly. Yep. You've got to do it over and over and over again so it becomes
automatic informed repetition. Yeah. So do you guys want to learn? I do. Yeah. These breaths. Okay. So, um, the first thing we're going to do is talk about what a good breath is. So a lot of people, their normal breaths are, are like a 20 to 30% um, like shadow of what it should be. And so a lot of people, when they breathe, they'll be breathing into their shoulders, their shoulders
Jeremy (08:38.18)
Maybe their chest is expanding a little bit, but there's very little belly breathing going on. So their diaphragm isn't moving up and down. And they also aren't filling up their lungs from the bottom, which helps move around your organs and helps with digestion. And I've struggled with digestive issues my entire life. When I started breathing like this, everything started getting just smoother, easier. Laughing, you know what I mean?
I'm acknowledging your delicate description. Yeah, it's easier to poop. I wasn't going to go there, but it is natural. Which is funny because you're the first person to... I normally, yeah. Everybody poops, it's true. Hopefully. Yeah, well, yeah. Anyway. So what we're going to do... That's why I'm glad we got you on the show. We're going to learn a good breath, okay? So I want you to put your middle fingers together and then put it right on your belly button, your navel, okay?
Spread out your fingers nice and wide. And you should feel the bottom of your rib cage with your thumbs. You should feel right about your belt line with your pinkies. Yep. Okay? So what we're gonna do is just try to make your hands rise and separate and fall and come back together. Okay? So we're inhaling through our nose, making our stomach rise.
exhaling, feeling our stomach contract, exhale through the nose too, air coming back out. Yeah, as long as you aren't congested, you do both of these through the nose. It's not a big deal if you're, if you need to do it through the mouth. The reason why nose breathing is a little better is it helps signal to the body that air with oxygen is coming in and you're able to make more efficient use of the oxygen that's coming in.
So something that happens, just keep doing this breath, keep getting used to it, we're going to use it in a second. But something that, you know, if you take like supplements in the morning and your body doesn't need the vitamins and the supplements, you just pee it out? Same thing happens with oxygen. So if you have, when you breathe in, you're breathing in three gases. You're breathing in nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and oxygen.
Jeremy (10:46.21)
Your body makes use of the oxygen is kind of like fuel Your body in order to use the oxygen your body needs carbon dioxide It kind of works like a yin and yang like a if there's a carbon dioxide deficit that helps use more of the oxygen that you're bringing in And then nitrogen is the last one so as your breathing you really want to focus a Lot of people think of breathing is like oh I need to take like a lot of air in In order to have oxygen in my bloodstream. You actually want to be focusing on the
You want to be pushing a lot of air out. A lot of people aren't exhaling to empty because it feels a little uncomfortable when you're starting to get used to it. But I want you to start inhaling all the way up to full lung capacity. Feeling full and then exhaling all the way down to empty lung capacity. And just hold briefly at the bottom. Feel what that's like. And then start this back to my breath again. Inhaling all the way up.
Jeremy (11:53.826)
and you feel that natural contraction when you're trying to get the last bit of air out, we're gonna use that contraction in our first breath. So you can release your hands, you just rest them on your thighs here, and roll your shoulders up towards your ears, down your back, that opens up your chest, gives yourself a little bit more space to breathe.
This first one that we're doing is called Fire Breath, it's Kabbalabati. It's a... We're gonna breathe fire? We're gonna breathe fire. Sweet. Yeah. So sorry about all your equipment here. It's about to get torched. Thank you for playing along on the terrible jokes. I appreciate it. Yes, I am. I'm gonna edit some flames in. Or it could just be, you know, breakfast of garlic.
Yeah. A bowl of garlic and milk. Garlic puffs. Onions. Okay. So, this breath has been in practice for thousands of years. Mostly in the East through yoga. But it's been popularized in the West. This guy named Wim Hof uses it to endure cold temperatures, hold his breath a long time.
Free divers use it to stay down underwater for a long time, be able to get deeper. Another guy we've tried to get on the show. Oh, free diving? No, we're trying to get Wim off. Oh, Wim, okay, gotcha. Yeah, he'd be great. Yep. So, I hate to say it, and if Wim eventually comes on the show and sees this, I'm sorry, but he totally ripped off his breath.
Right, so he adapted it and made it his own and popularized it and built a certification around it. But this has been practiced long before WIM. And we're gonna use it through the context of martial arts to psych up right before, let's say a first round. Right, you have your warmup.
Jeremy (13:34.698)
Um, but usually after a warmup, there's a walk out, there's a walk out song, the opponent's walking out, they have their walk out song. There's rules. There's a touch of gloves. What I do is right before the bell's about to ring, I get repetitions of this breath. I'm in my corner looking at my opponent and I'm doing this hyper ventilation style breathing. So what it's going to look like. I want to pick up my stomach here because it's kind of hard to see with black. Um, so I'm going to breathe all the way up to full. I'm going to have a little bit of a Buddha belly here when I do
I'm going to breathe all the way down to empty. There's the spectrum of my breath again. And I'm going to fill up to about halfway.
And then I'm going to do abdominal compressions to push about 20% of my breath out. At the same time that I'm doing this abdominal compression, I'm feeling like a forced exhale. That's creating that carbon dioxide deficiency that makes the natural inhale that follows the exhale. The oxygen is coming in. My body's more able to use that. So it's getting oxygen into my bloodstream, up to my brain. I'm getting hyper present. And I'm starting to engage the part of my brain that's really good at fighting called the amygdala.
That's the center of our fear response. It's the fight, flight or freeze part of our brain. It's the caveman part of our brain that kept us alive back in the day. That's hyper present. That's thinking about action and being alive and surviving right now. Okay, so it's going to look like this. I'm going to demonstrate that we'll do it together. So I'm filling up. Going all the way to empty. Filling up halfway. Now I need 10 compressions.
Jeremy (15:19.95)
Okay. So we're going to start with a beginner style breath. No, no. You'll get a little snot. It's natural. It's fine. Just wipe your nose. Whatever. If you want to breathe out your nose and you don't want some snot coming out, do that. Um, we're going to get a lot of new ASMR listeners. There aren't a lot of firsts on this show. Boogers. We have not had a show. Here we are. We're almost wrapping up.
nine years of recording i don't think we've had boogers on this show not asking for it i just wanted to throw that out there suggested title for this episode nine years without boogers
It's not rocket. We've had worse times. Okay. So we, we are going to do a very beginner version of this first. I think you guys can, can do a, maybe an intermediate or more advanced one after. But the beginner one is like, if you've never done breath work, um, and especially if you tend to get like lightheaded or, or whatever, but you still want to start to practice this. This is a version of Kabbalah Bhatti that was popularized by Gary.
Brekka
Jeremy (16:38.79)
two years ago, met Dana White and could just see that he was super unhealthy. Said, hey, let me run some tests. Let me make some recommendations. They help. Let me coach you back to good health. And if you look at Dana White now, that was Gary Braca. Gary Braca essentially saved Dana White's life. He had like three years left because he had this metabolic syndrome that's really hard to spot.
of his specialty. And so anyway, enough about Gary Brekup, but this is his first step into... You're acknowledging people that have contributed to this. Yeah, I think it's a really good way to teach the beginner breath. I didn't start out this way, but I can see how if you've never done this kind of thing, this is a really good first step. Okay, sure. So we're going to do three rounds of five of those hyperphenylations.
Okay, so just follow me hands on hands on thighs shoulders back try to relax those shoulders away from the ear Take the tongue away from the roof of your mouth relax your jaw Bodies relax right now take a big inhale through the nose all the way up to full lung capacity Full exhale all the way empty We'll come up to halfway and begin five exhales
Jeremy (18:00.518)
way up, all the way down, halfway.
Jeremy (18:11.285)
All the way up. All the way down. Halfway. Last five.
Jeremy (18:22.158)
All the way up, all the way down. Hold it empty for as long as you can. And scan your body. So things you might be noticing in your body right now, maybe a little bit of a head rush, maybe some tingles or a temperature change down your fingertips, maybe some snot on your upper lip.
and just get your general body feel to what I mean by that is like is there a little bit more energy flow does it feel like there's more blood flow feel a little bit more present a little bit more focused that was just five breaths. I feel fired up. I felt it in my hands actually yeah. Yeah. Yep. So.
Five breaths, pretty safe. Like, you know, don't, don't sue me. But you go too far with this. There's some risks. So proceed with caution. Like you could get lightheaded, you could pass out. We're not doctors. No, this is, this is where I haven't done the Wim Hof stuff, but I've heard people talk about training it, getting better at it, progressing with it. This is what you're talking about is adding breaths.
This is starting with a jab and a step and then building up to like a multi punch combination. Makes sense. Right, so this is the jab. This is your first step and starting to build up to where this can actually be really useful. Three, you know, three rounds of five breaths in the morning, boom, I'm a little bit more awake. Maybe you, you know, maybe it feels like the first sip of coffee.
But, but yeah, we now we'll shift context to how I use it. So in between a chess and a boxing round, there's one minute, okay? In one minute, I go for three rounds of 36 breaths for 108 total breaths.
Jeremy (20:05.062)
Okay, so we just did 15. Still, you know, maybe that took about 30 seconds with that big breath in between. You know, we're taking that almost 10xing it. So you're really quick. Very quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, demonstrate a little bit if you want. Yeah.
So I'll do the same thing. Let's say, okay, boom, bell rings. Chest is over, they pause the game, pause the timer. They're starting to move the board out of the ring. That bell ringing is my Pavlov's dog moment, right? That's my trigger. My training kicks in. I've done this thousands of times. You immediately go into it. Correct. So, okay. I stand up, I take a big inhale.
I start walking over my corner, my corner manager starts putting on my gloves, I begin my three rounds of 36 breaths. So, sss, sss.
Jeremy (21:13.206)
second round. Okay. So, you know, I'm doing this as my corner man is taking care of the necessary action of getting my gloves. Right. I hadn't even thought of that, but that makes so much sense. Yep. Right. Yep. So, No, I'm good. Yep. I got my fingers. So,
So we've all sweat and bled and snotted on each other and training at some point. Everybody poops. Everyone has snot. You know, we're accepting our human, unifying materials here. So by the end of these 108 breaths.
I am in the same state as every time I sparred in preparation for that match. I'm in the same state as when I won a world championship doing chest boxing. I'm in the same state as when I've been the most present, most effective, my peak performance. I'm tapping back into that same stream of consciousness, that same river of peak performance that I've been priming for the whole time I've been competing. So you, you know, we're talking right now.
specifically that one minute you have between rounds. But you're doing this on a regular, on a daily basis when you're sparring too, like getting yourself there so that when you're in the match.
your brain is used to it. Yes. It's like flipping a switch. You know exactly where you're going to in using this. Yes, and it becomes subconscious. So in training, it needs to be conscious and intentional. When I'm in competition, I wanna limit as much conscious thought as I can so that my subconscious is taken over. And I can use more of my bandwidth to problem solve, recognize patterns.
Jeremy (23:04.418)
Make sense? Yeah, totally make sense. So, can you describe what you... how it feels?
Jeremy (23:14.078)
If it's different, both in training and in competition, you know, you run through this 108 breaths, you know, you mentioned you might feel a little tingly, you might feel a little lightheaded, you might feel energized. How do you feel? Infigurated. Yeah. Yeah, present, ready to perform. Even now, like my body thinks I'm about to fight. Really? And I'm past my like active competition days. So now I'll use that breath, like in the morning,
does with part of a morning routine. When I was competing, I needed to deprive myself of that breath anytime that I wasn't about to fight. Otherwise I would be kind of tricking my body into thinking I'm about to go fight. That makes sense, but it was not something I would have thought of. Right. So, so like you don't want to dull the effect of the breath.
by doing it in contexts that you aren't about to do whatever you want to tie it to, right? You're tying these together like a one-two punch, right? And every time I throw a one, I'm throwing a two. Every time I do this breath, I'm about to compete. It's like coffee every day, you know, doesn't have quite the same effect, but you know, if you're not a caffeine drinker and you have a cup of coffee, woo! Exactly, yep. And now it's shifting more into like a coffee cup and a cup of coffee in the morning for me.
I'm not trying to optimize to go win another world championship. I'm trying to optimize to feel really good in the morning and maybe not rely on coffee as much. Nice. Cool. So now that we're a little bit psyched up, we're going to learn the opposite side of the spectrum of breath. So calm down. Okay? So after boxing around, bell rings, same Pavlov dog kind of movement. Here's my trigger.
As soon as that bell rings, make my way to the corner. I take my first sharp inhale, take as much air in as I can, up to full lung capacity. And I'm the most tired right then. It's the end of the round. I was just boxing for three minutes, right? So my worst breath is gonna be that first breath. My goal is every breath after that is gonna get better. Now what does better mean? Better means a longer exhale. Every single breath I take from that first bell and that first breath is gonna get longer and longer and longer, slower and slower.
Jeremy (25:31.798)
You're not talking a lot about the chemistry on this, but my understanding of how the body works, the longer the breath is, the deeper it's putting you into a...
parasympathetic state. Yes, so you're calming down your parasympathetic nervous system. And in the context of chess boxing, your amygdala, what you use, what fires up when you fight, it's keeping you alive, it sucks at playing chess. Right? It's the caveman part of your brain. Yeah, it might as well be wearing boxing gloves. Yeah. And chess is called the king's game. You don't want to be a caveman playing a king's game. Right? You want to be using the part of your brain that's really good at
executive function, decision making, pattern recognition, visualization, strategic thought, not just thinking about action in the present, thinking about reaction in the future. So we're talking about state change management. We're going from a present state, amygdala centered kind of activity, to a future state, prefrontal cortex focused. The part of the brain you use for chess. Correct. So the simplest way to start doing this is exhale longer than you inhale.
you got to do you don't have to count number of breaths you don't have to count you know length of inhale length of exhale I think you should that's kind of the next step is like I try to keep my inhale four seconds or shorter and then I try to keep my exhale five seconds or longer because you're coming out you're breathing hard you're breathing heavy and that first breath is just I'm trying to get some semblance of control so I can reverse the time.
or whatever, I try to shift from a mouth breathing to a nose breathing. So
Jeremy (27:22.718)
And I think we probably all had this happen at some point, whether we've been in a sparring match or whether we've gone on a long bike ride and you need to calm down, we've all instinctually gone from mouth breathing to nose breathing. There's something pretty primal. Yeah, and that makes sense. Well understood about it.
But it happened when it happens naturally and subconsciously, it happens a lot later than if you're training. I need to do this sooner. I don't know. Like I, I'm, I live in Georgia. Georgia is a pretty warm place. I've been up in the Northeast a lot lately, like New York last weekend, Boston this weekend. It's cold. So one thing I started playing with is my body feel when I'm cold, my shoulders are up, my chest is test, my abs are test.
Right? I'm here and I'm breathing a lot shorter. And I tried, okay, let me pretend I'm warm and relax my body. Immediately. I got warmer. Temperature outside didn't change, but I was more relaxed. And even though the temperature was cold, my body was acting as if it was warm. And I felt more comfortable.
And the same thing works when you do cold plunges. You don't wanna be, oh, this is terrible. You wanna be breathing slow, easy, calm breaths.
long, deep breaths. Okay. So, the special forces use a version of this yogic breath called samavrithi, called box breathing. Oh yeah. So box breathing is four equal counts, four second inhale, four second hold, four second exhale, four second hold with empty. Now that empty hold, especially if you're beginning in breath work, it's uncomfortable. And I recommend just cutting it out. Just make that more of an exhale, just slow down your exhale a little bit longer instead of that four second hold.
Jeremy (29:18.456)
here is a four seven eight breath. It's another popular breath. I had a virtual wellness business that did this for companies like in a workforce. We would do this breath instead of the empty hold just because you're sitting in an office. You might not have ever done this kind of thing before. So instead four second inhale, seven second hold, eight second exhale. Really calming, good for
Jeremy (29:48.336)
right before you go into a stressful conversation right after a stressful conversation is really good breath. So Let's try that one. Yeah, take a four second inhale Do a seven second hold do an eight second exhale. Okay, okay So we'll do the same baseline breath explore the spectrum of your lungs big inhale all the way up Exhale all the way down
Jeremy (31:32.194)
definitely more relaxed for sure. I've done a lot of box breathing. It's one of my go-to is if I'm feeling eh, eh. That worked way better. Way better for me. Especially as you talked about that, that hold without air. It can add stress. Yeah, that's the thing. Because I have to hold with empty for four seconds. I'm thinking about trying to make it to four. I'm putting stress on my brain and then by extension, my central nervous system.
have to do this focused on exactly yeah so that's why I said just try to exhale long inhale sharp inhale I dig it that's really cool I'm gonna try switching that in and see what that does yeah good stuff maybe it'll last as long as you can so and is that what you're doing when you come out of a boxing round you're not counting you're just I'm gonna go as long as I can
That's how I coach beginners do it. So when I'm teaching the beginning of state change management for chest boxers, exhale longer than inhale, don't worry about the count, start to close your eyes and visualize the board. Because the other thing that's going on here is you're starting to shift your brain's bandwidth from your amygdala or your prefrontal cortex, but you also want to shift your temporal spatial part of your brain, what understands time and space. When you're fighting, time and space is very different. You're moving around a 3D environment and you're throwing
you're dodging and you're doing a much more dynamic kind of brain exercise that your body has to keep up with. The temporal spatial part of chess is very two dimensional. You're still in a 3D space but the way that you're thinking about it is almost like that overhead digital version of chess. You're seeing 64 squares, you're seeing pattern recognition and you're starting to consider a lot more...
headspace, future tense, action and reaction. You're thinking about candidate moves, what responses to those candidate moves would be. And you're starting to take your brain from what's called a spontaneous cognition state where there's ideation going on, to starting to hone that in to idea evaluation. So once you center in on an idea, you're taking it from a right brain
Jeremy (33:53.868)
creative kind of part of your brain of like what's possible to this is possible and I need to find out how viable it is and I'm drilling deep on one idea so I need to focus and that's just a completely different thing than how your brain and your body works when you box. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah. Okay. So that breath helps you start to take all of this like focus that energy from your whole body and bring it right up here.
So as you get really good with this, you're just kind of...
shift in from one to the next, you have a tremendous amount of control, I would imagine, as you become experienced with these breathing techniques. Yes, and understanding the neuroscience here and where your brain is lighting up when you do different activities, I noticed a big difference when I was anecdotally doing this and it was still a hypothesis versus studying the neuroscience of it and understanding, okay, not only am
helps bring my bandwidth to where it needs to be. But also I can kind of put my internal focus on that part of my brain. And even if it's placebo, it feels like it helps. And that's another important thing, is like everyone's biochemistry is different. You might be wired as a more anxious person and doing a Kabbala Bhati breath,
won't have nearly as much effect on you as someone who's more tranquil by nature.
Jeremy (35:32.298)
Right? So, so, you know, going into a pitch, if you're generally more like introverted, less charismatic, uh, more, more like even keel kind of person, doing a Kabbalah Bhakti breath before you go, like try to make that sale is going to be a lot more beneficial for you. And someone who's already really high, strong, probably over-prepared, over-analyzed, they might even before a pitch, they might even do a downer breath, even though they need to perform that'll help them bring them back to
of like the equilibrium and peak performance. That's describing me. That's absolutely me. I'm generally running so hot that if I take that additional adrenaline from that environment, I'm talking too fast. And I'm the exact opposite. Yeah. Which is one of the reasons why we work really well together because I am generally.
Very little phases you. Yeah. Yep. So it's not a one size fits all. And you two are a perfect example of that, right? So once you learn this spectrum of breath, and once you figure out what tools are in your tool bro, here's a box breath, here's a four, seven, eight, here's long exhale breathing, here's Kabbalah Bhati. Once you figure out what that is, then just like practicing with different punches, different kicks, in certain situations, you know when to apply them, right?
It's not a one size fits all. It's a, there's a time and place for everything. And you can start to diagnose and apply what you've already practiced to that moment. This is what you're talking about. Feels like an additional component that a high level coach might bring in. Maybe this is happening, right? Like I don't engage with coaches who are coaching professional combat sports, but I would imagine if I had.
you know, a top tier boxer or an MMA fighter or kick boxer or somebody that if I'm coaching them from the outside, I might be guiding them on breath as well as here's what you need to adjust in the next round. Here's some water. Yeah. And regardless of whether they're a chest boxer, right? They're even if they're, I can see benefit to, I mean, let's face it, I see benefit to this type of breathing, whether you're involved in any pugilist sport whatsoever. But like, I agree. Like even if you're just an MMA guy and you mentioned you had something that
Jeremy (37:50.732)
is using this breathing in their own matches, but they're not going in playing chess. I can see you bringing this in with some of the teams that you work with. Absolutely. Yep, yep, I absolutely could see some benefit to this. If I have students involved in, that are going into a, in this case, a band competition, but they're always very high strung, I could see this breathing being able to help them. For sure.
And breath is really just the key to a bigger lock and door. Right? Your breath will signal to your body what state you're in. And even if you're not currently in that state, if you start doing the breath that's associated with that state usually, you can kind of take a shortcut to getting into that state more quickly. And the applicability here in chest boxing and any martial art is if I'm able to do that even five to 10 seconds faster than my opponent,
at the beginning of a round, think about the domino effect of momentum that exists at the beginning of a round. They're always trying to catch up.
Right. If I land that big shot before they do, in the first 5 to 10 seconds, before they've transitioned, Everything else is left. The rest of the round is hell for them. Yeah. Right? Yep. Because they're trying to come back from something. Or on the board, if you can make your first move that much better. Even if they become better breath-wise, they're working from a deficient position. Any chess player will tell you, when they make one blunder, it's very rare that's an isolated incident. One blunder, they tend to happen in fun ways.
So you make a mistake it triggers a fear response you feel threatened to the part of your brain that you want to use when you play chess. Boom now you're shifting back to your amygdala. Oh no I made a mistake oh no they're gonna see it.
Jeremy (39:39.266)
this a lot with my drumming students where they're they'll often go in front of a judge to compete and it's just them there's a judge sitting at a table and they've got a score sheet and the drummer will come in front of the judge and start to play and it's very common that if you make a mistake which happens
they, that mistake causes them to make lots of more mistakes. And so I talk about, you have to learn how to just move on, right? And you can still win and have made a mistake because other people can make mistakes and not be able to recover from it. And so it's that same sort of concept that I'm seeing here. Like you make a mistake in chess. If your brain is now focused on that mistake rather than the rest of the game. That's it. What's happening is you're getting out of flow state. You're you're w when you're.
your best when you're in peak performance you're in flow and that is a hyper present uh subconscious state that your brain is not focused on the past focus on the present focus on what you're doing wrong focus on what you're doing right it's just doing yeah and my talk this weekend was called winning the fight for peak performance uh fight is an acronym f is flow and there's five p's associated with each one of these letters but
If the goal is flow state, what you need to do to get to flow state is to prime for that. So eyes ignite.
Like you don't just boom have a fire that's roaring. You need to spark it. In order for the spark to find something, you need kindling. The practice, the leading up to the point where it's time to spark. All those sparring rounds doing Kabbalabati, that's putting twigs on a little pyramid to get ready to spark it. That makes sense. Yeah. I can go through the rest of the acronyms if you want.
Jeremy (41:32.266)
Yeah, please. Fight, ignite. Yeah. So, flow, sorry. Fight is flow, ignite. Yep. So, so flow, ignite. In order to know what you're priming for, you need a priority. You need a goal. So what is the goal? In the context of chest boxing? Let's say I'm winning on the board. Okay. Bell rings, we're going into boxing. Because I know I'm winning on the board.
I don't need to knock out my opponent. You just need to get back to the board. You're going to play a little more conservatively. I'm going to use my cardio and my footwork to stay away from him. I'm going to try to make him use his energy to try to knock me out because he knows he's behind on the board. I'm going to make him more tired and even worse on the board next round. I just want to survive. Now I know my goal. Now I know what to prime for. Right? I don't need to take risks. I don't need to take a big shot that could open me up.
So got my goal, H is harmony.
Okay, so you think about winning a fight, very rarely do you think about peace or harmony. And I'm not talking about winning a fight against someone else, the fight is against yourself. If your body's working against yourself, like we just talked about, you're trying to play chess in your amygdala, you're a caveman playing a king's game, you're in harmony. You're coordinating all of your biological tools to be harmonic and to win.
T is the win for him. And triumph has almost nothing to do with outcome, having the hand raise at the end. Triumph comes long before that. It is the feeling of peak performance. It is the feeling of even if I lose, it wasn't because I could have done better. If I lose when I did my best, there's no regret there. Yeah, I've had that feeling a few times. Me too. In competition you step off the floor and it's...
Jeremy (43:27.482)
I know I gave that everything I had, give me another thousand rolls of the die, it's not going to be any better. It's almost a good feeling, even with loss, it's a good feeling of like, that was everything I had, that person was better than me and deserves to be won. You learn the most from that. Right? It's like a, it's a benefit. It's another step towards success.
when it's that kind of tea. So there's the fight. Is that your acronym? That's awesome. Thanks. I like that. Which letter was the hardest? I think harmony. Yeah. Good, convincing people that harmony is important in winning a fight seems counterintuitive. But I think anybody who's spent time in combatives, it makes sense. I agree. Yeah.
Jeremy (44:17.274)
So what do we do with all of this? Right? I mean we're talking about this in terms of mostly competition and we've alluded to some you know some morning stuff, some lifestyle stuff, but you've worked with plenty of people who are not chess boxers and you've worked with people who aren't professional athletes and really don't have aspirations to be that. So other than a morning coffee substitute
What do we tell the audience? Think about triggers and responses, action and reaction. So when you identify a priority, when you have a goal that you know is important that you want to peak performance, that's when you start to work backwards from how to prime for it, right? So let's say, okay, I need to have a very important, difficult discussion with a loved one.
What kind of state do I want to be in for that? Do I want to be hyped up? Do I want to be calm? And once you identify where on that spectrum you want to be state-wise, you can apply your training to achieve that state. To put your body in that place. I know my biochemistry. I know that I tend to be more anxious or I tend to be more calm. So in order to get to that state that I think I need to be in, here's how I'm gonna prepare for it.
Here's the breath I'm gonna do. Here's how I'm gonna visualize it. I definitely recommend once breathing becomes a little bit more subconscious, to add the closed eyes visualization to it. And not everyone's brain works this way. Not everyone can see the like visual pictures of them going through the range of motion for a punch combination. Yeah, I know my girlfriend's an artist. Nice. My girlfriend's an artist and she has like a color
Kind of brain and she doesn't have an internal voice. There's not words happening in her head there are colors and moods and pictures and I Can't relate to that like that's not just my brain works. I have a voice in my head all the time If I don't keep it in check that is Saying things directing me
Jeremy (46:37.89)
just much more like verbal. And so when I close my eyes, it takes a lot of effort for me to use words to help paint the picture of what I wanna do. So the visualization part was a much harder.
effort for me to nail when I was starting a Thai breathwork to visualization. But, you know, close your eyes, visualize, okay, I want this conversation to go super well with my loved one. The types of words and feelings that I want to come out of this are union, peace, love. I'm starting to like associate the breath that I'll be doing to prepare and the breath I'll be doing during it with these words that have
have past associations with it that I can start to weave together and tie together. So, you know, it might seem like it's a little overkill and I don't recommend doing this for like every single thing in your life, right? Because then you're just always... You're going to drive yourself nuts. Exactly, right? I think you start with the most important things. That pitch, that fight, that conversation.
and you start practicing these breaths as much as you can. Tie it to another routine. Hey, every time I work out, when I'm resting, I'm not just huffing and puffing, scrolling Instagram and sipping water. Now, my phone's away and I'm practicing one of the breaths that helps calm me down. And there's gonna be a cascading effect from that, I would imagine, just as we were talking about, you make a good or a bad move on the board, you start bringing this into your life, it's...
going to impact other things, you know, the stuff after the breath, it's going to, later in the day. Correct. Yeah. The ripple effect or the domino effect of this is, you know, I can just say from personal experience, it's completely changed my life. Um, because most people, I won't say most people, there's a subset of people that have never taken a conscious breath.
Jeremy (48:48.698)
Yeah, if it's not most, it is many. Yeah. I would probably say majority. So even just that shift, the first thing we did, take your first conscious breath right now. That's big. It's the first step. Now you've got some stuff that people want to go deeper, right? I do, yeah. So first...
Since sensei Seth been investing a lot more in YouTube and state change management content will be coming to YouTube if you're interested in this kind of thing At moving with Matt is all my handle for every single social media outlet. So whatever you use It's the same thing moving with Matt not only has one T
And then in addition to that, fighting flow is a fitness concept where not only are we doing like basic bodyweight calisthenics and martial art movements combined with yoga. So it's, it's getting the body, you know, more open, flexible, mobile, coordinated, balanced. But we do have a side of it that is breath. So you guys have seen the avatar of the last Arab vendor, the new one. Any of them. Oh, yeah.
earth, water, air, and fire. That's how we program our workouts. So, fire, think about what fire would be. A lot of cardio, a lot of moving shadow boxing, squats, burpees, that kind of thing. Earth is like strength, stability, you're sitting in horse stance, doing that kind of thing. Water is a little bit more like yogic, vinyasa, spine's bending six directions, you're getting twists, you're making sure your body's resilient. And then air is
is a little bit of balance work, but a lot of breath work. And that's the one that is harder for people to wrap their head around, but if you've listened to this whole episode so far, you'll get it. It's important. Just like throwing a punch as a rep, taking a breath. Yeah, and you're doing a lot now to continue to grow the chest boxing.
Jeremy (50:57.502)
around and making that larger. Can you talk a little bit about that? Cause I think this fits into that well. That's why you were out here this weekend, right? Yeah, exactly. As much as you love us, you didn't come out here just to see us. Added bonus. I mean, this is great. I mean, you did, the conference was the bonus. Yes. Yeah, so, chess boxing is becoming more of the focus of my career.
Um, because we're sport that's 20 years old. We've recently had a lot of media attention and this wave of momentum that I feel really called to ride that radar wave momentum and use my skillset to help this sport grow. Um, I've been promoting fights for 12 years and, uh, and they've been white collar charity boxing events, but I have production chops and the ability to, um, train, commentate all these.
that are needed to grow chest boxing in the United States. So I started an organization called United Chest Boxing. We have a broadcasting relationship with Fight TV. So all chest boxing will now be on Fight TV. If you're a Fight TV subscriber, starting probably April, May, you'll see chest boxing starting to pop up. And then weekly trainings are starting all over the country. We have ones in New York, Atlanta, and because of this weekend, we have one starting up in Boston.
through So Meta the Conference. So, you know, if you like chess and martial arts, if you have a gym that has space and time on the schedule for a 60 or 90 minute session, we can help you find a chess coach, we can help you with the state change management programming that can be done virtually or through content, and you can start to have a chess boxing weekly at your home gym. So if that's
moving with Matt. Matt at FightinFlow.co is my email. I'll respond to all of it. And we talked about this a little bit before, just because someone might not want to just do the boxing, right? That maybe they don't want to do boxing in their martial arts school. Maybe they want to do chess, points barring, chess kickboxing. You're not opposed to that.
Jeremy (53:14.986)
Not only am I not opposed to that, but we have alternate formats for chest boxing already. So what I competed in is the open format. Any chest level, you can be a grand master, any boxing level, you can over a hundred pro fights, anyone can enter that and compete. Um, but we have something called chest boxing light, which is point sparring. And instead of three minute rounds is two minute rounds. It's still boxing point sparring, but you can adapt that to be kick boxing, whatever.
But that's intended to favor boxers We actually give warnings and deduct points if you hit too hard So it is legitimately point sparring kind of like taekwondo, right? so And boxing is scored as equally as chess So even if you get checkmated on the board if you win the boxing rounds, it's called a draw
Oh, interesting. And then the step before that is non-contact. It's called chest boxing fit, and it's what we did at the conference this weekend. So instead of any kind of punches being landed on each other, what you're doing is you're either working a heavy bag or a coach with mitts for one minute before you play a chest blitz game. Okay, so you're psyching up the central nervous system, moving the brain's bandwidth, you're making that chest game more difficult. And in the case of a draw on the board, you go back to the heavy bag or the coach.
and whoever did better with technique, number of punches, land it, punch. And so winning the match, right? So most of those end on the board. That's a chess leaning format, but it does come to draw. We had one yesterday with two 2100 Elo chess players, which very strong. They got a draw position on the board and they had one more boxing round. So, you know, we had a couple hundred people in the room
the room on who was supporting which one and neither of them had ever boxed before. So the worst technique you've ever seen. Sorry if those two players are watching this but there was so much hype around them trying to land more punches than the other because we had these accelerometers and we had
Jeremy (55:19.458)
punches landed, like metrics up on the board. So you can actually see like the score going up and the cheers happening. It was so much fun. Yeah, I really dig this. I can't wait to see Bill Superfoot Wallace starting to learn chess to do kickboxing. You know what I'm waiting for? Yeah.
computers getting to the point that androids can box. Right? So you can chess and box a robot. Pretty cool. Big move versus Manny Pacquiao.
that takes battle box to another level right? I dig it, I dig it. That's really great. Matt, anything else we want to make sure they know? Just gratitude. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for helping get chest boxing out there. Yeah, it's great stuff. Get open to my hippie woo breathwork kind of stuff. No, it's cool. It might be hippie and it might be woo, but that doesn't mean it's not rooted in science. It doesn't have value. The reason that I think we were both really excited to have you back on
that people in the martial arts are really not talking about. And the, I know from competition, it generally took me after I would do forms. I was 45 minutes to come back to normal from doing one form out in the ring because I was here. And this is exactly what we're talking about. So I've experienced what it's like in the absence of that. And when we talk about martial arts as not just.
for self-defense, but life skills, I mean, martial arts gives us a wonderful opportunity to train this so we can implement it in non-combative ways. So I think it's great. I hope everybody out there really takes this to heart. Well said, totally agree. Awesome, man. Thank you guys. Thank you. Well, hey, go deeper, check out all Matt's stuff. What was it? At Moving With Matt, one T. At Moving With Matt, one T, fight and flow. You got it. Check out chess boxing, do all that stuff.
Jeremy (57:16.772)
And if you do start bringing something like this into your school, we want to hear about it. You can email us, andr at Whistlekick on all of your social media. And that's it for now. Do we want to try and do this with three? I'm not sure that you'll know what it is. So we close our episodes, most of our episodes, with our three-part kind of mantra. Train hard, smile, and have a great day. I guess smile. Okay.
Train hard, smile, and have a great day. That was, I love it. Yay! Awesome. Good stuff. That was great, man. That was fantastic.