Building a Tribe
A couple of months ago I got a note from Eve and Jeff at MVMTLab. It went something like this:
“Tyrell, we are inspired by your 2020 Olympic goal. We’ve worked with previous Olympians to help them compete at their best and we know first hand how challenging that journey can be… We would like to be a part of your journey of becoming an Olympian.”
From the first day I worked with Jeff I knew he was very special. The way he approaches systemic movement, performance and the mind-body connection in sport and life is something I’ve only seen in a handful of world class trainers.
I was fortunate enough to sit down with Eve from MVMTLab and tell a little bit of my story…
MVMTLab Featured Profile: Tyrell Mara
Meet Tyrell
Ever feel like your day is too busy to make time to work out, to eat well, to sleep enough, to meditate? Ultimately, you feel like you have no time to chase your passions and goals? Meet Tyrell Mara, one of Dr Jeff’s newest patients. This guy’s schedule is absolutely crazy packed and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He has a full time job, a beautiful wife and daughter (with another on the way), and has the lofty goal of representing Canada at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, throwing Discus. Read on to learn how Tyrell manages to make family, work and an Olympic dream fit into his everyday life. “It’s all about intentional living”, as he puts it… Easier said than done! This guy is an inspiration to us here at MVMTLAB and we’re sure he’ll be to you as well; we’re happy to call him a friend and to be part of his journey to greatness.
Tyrell is only 29 years old and has already accomplished more than most people can expect to in their entire life time. He thrives on setting impossibly hard to achieve goals, and then doing everything in his power to stretch his limits and reach those goals. He lives and breathes unwavering motivation and focus. Or #BeastMode, whatever you want to call it… It’s impressive!!
The Backstory
When he was 10 years old, this White Rock BC boy decided he was one day going to play NCAA Division 1 Basketball. Every decision he then made from that point on -from his choice of high school, to deciding to train instead of partying with friends – led him to obtaining a basketball scholarship to Portland State University, and captaining their team to 2 consecutive NCAA March Madness National championships. Once that goal was reached, he set his sights onto CIS basketball championships and dominated the court on that circuit for 2 more years as captain of Trinity Church University’s team. With a bachelor’s degree and MBA in hand, along with a few North American college-level basketball championship rings, he moved back to Vancouver and got hooked on Crossfit. He trained at Crossfit 604 for over 3 years, was a founding member of their competitive team and killed it in various Crossfit competitions on the Canadian level. About 1.5 years ago, stars aligned and he was put back in touch with his high school discus coach (a sport he had dabbled in part-time, 10 years prior, getting terrific results at the Canadian level without barely any training). This particular coach recognized that Tyrell had an immense innate talent for discus throwing, and had told him that he could make it to the Olympics with the right training and discipline. His childhood basketball dreams now conquered, Tyrell decided to go “all in” with discus. He’s shooting for nothing less than the Olympics. This means going from nothing – basically not having touched a discus in over a decade – to competing with the world’s best athletes in Tokyo.
A Day in the Life
His Olympic Dream training plan was set in motion just over a year ago now, which means that as of today, he’s looking at 4 more years of intensely focused training. He starts his day at 530am with meditation and movement training, then leaves for a jam packed day at 630am. Tyrell works a stressful job as a technology product manager leading engineering teams at a rapidly growing company, trains for weightlifting or discus throwing twice a day, goes to physio and/or chiro treatments a few times a week to keep his body on track and ensure he’s performing at his best. Tyrell carries 2 duffle bags full of snacks and meals to ensure he can fuel himself effectively throughout the entire day. He finally gets home around 830PM to help out around the house and spend a few quality minutes with his wife Tash before bed around 10pm. Rinse & repeat. Every day, for the next 4 years.
Tyrell’s Deeper Passion
On the weekend, any time that isn’t spent training is spent with his wife and daughter. Interspersed with this jam packed schedule are frequent speaking engagements and 1:1 coaching sessions – because, of course, he’s also a great speaker and guide to others… He loves sharing his experiences and knowledge of “always pushing your limits” with others. That’s what Tyrell calls intentional living; it means setting your goals and priorities, planning your day/week/year so that everything that you are doing is bringing you closer to your goals. He has a big whiteboard where along with the daily countdown to Tokyo (hovering around 1,368 days currently) he has his life buckets separated into 3 categories: Family, Work, Olympics. When presented with an opportunity, he weighs the options and potential outcomes, and asks if it will help him get closer to his 3 goal categories. If the answer “HELL YES!!”, he goes ahead. If it isn’t, he doesn’t do it. Plain and simple, right?
All the Little Things
Meditation plays a big part of Tyrell’s daily routine. Over the years, he’s pushed his limits to the breaking point a few too many times, which in a way was good because it allowed him to know how much and how far he can push himself… But breaking points happen when you’re not listening to your mind and body, something that he was determined to change and not have happen again; to reach the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, he can’t allow any setbacks. He started a daily meditation practice a year ago and has slowly increased the amount of time he spends throughout the day in both small bursts and longer dedicated sessions – he strives to spend up to an hour each day in some form of meditation or reflection. He has gained mind & body awareness; it helps him manage his stress levels at work, and greatly improves his physical training. The other part of Tyrell’s morning routine is performing basic movement exercises, given to him by his physio or MVMTLAB’s Dr Jeff Almon. Tyrell understands that training isn’t only lifting heavy weights and practising his discus throwing technique. He makes sure that every single part of his body & mind are in top shape. No stone left unturned, no step skipped. “An Olympic goal is realized in hundreds of thousands of small micro-decisions to do the right thing” .
That’s how you reach greatness.
Tyrell x MVMTLAB
Tyrell started coming to MVMTLAB about a month ago, after we responded to one of his social media posts in which he asked the community for help and support with his Olympic journey. We immediately responded and offered Tyrell “movement training expertise” from Dr Jeff, which peaked Tyrell’s curiosity and so he came in for an initial assessment and meeting with Dr Jeff. He admittedly was a bit skeptical about what MVMTLAB could offer that he wasn’t already getting from his coach and physiotherapist. Throughout his athletic career, he met hundreds of Doctors and sports specialists (he’s hurt himself quite a few times…) but less than a handful of these so called experts actually understood Tyrell’s motivation, needs and goals. Specifically, he had never met a chiropractor with a holistic approach, treating more than just the injury and symptoms at hand, but going deep into the core of his movement patterns, tearing them down to rebuild a better base, ultimately leasing to better performance.
“Within 45 seconds of talking with Jeff, I just knew that he got it; he got me. His understanding of the human body – mainly the role of the brain in muscle inhibition, increasing performance through correct movement patterns and reactive stability, combined with his knowledge of active rehab – is unlike anything I had ever heard before, and I just wanted to learn from him” says Tyrell.
Tyrell is already seeing benefits from Dr Jeff’s month of treatments as well as the in-home active rehab exercises he was prescribed. “I’ve had one of the best strength building off-season’s of my life. The ability to push my body and recover quickly and effectively is key to the building blocks that my discus pursuit will be built on”. Throwing season is just starting, and Dr Jeff is looking forward to going to the field with Tyrell to watch him throw, allowing for further analysis of his movement patterns to ensure the correct muscles along the kinetic chain are engaging, and are firing in the right order. Tyrell is excited to see the progress to come!
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Living Life by a Simple Hypothesis
Sometimes I think we overcomplicate things in life. I find that when I live in tune with the hypothesis below, I am happy, fulfilled and feeling as if I’m doing my best work in the world.
I am at my best when striving towards a pursuit that intrinsically motivates me, is aligned with my values in life and challenges me beyond my comfort zone.
I refer to this state as “The Deep End” of life and I aspire to access this environment for as long and frequently as possible. Why? Because the opportunity it provides me for deep, paradigm shifting learning and growth is unrivalled.
I believe that over the long game of life — years and decades — this learning and growth compounds to create exponential value and results.
So far so good? Hopefully you can think of an experience in your own life where you have experienced the rich learnings from a dive way out of your comfort zone in the Deep End.
There’s one problem I have encountered with the Deep End, it is not actually where we capture our greatest learning and growth.
Let me explain further.
How We Learn: The Present and the Future
I believe our most significant learnings don’t actually arise when we are immersed in the present experience — but instead come long after, when we are intentionally reflecting back on our adventure in the Deep End. In my experience, 90% of my most valuable learning and growth comes through the act of pausing to reflect after the experience itself is over.
Had I not spent the time to intentionally sit down and think, reflect, journal, meditate and mentally deconstruct my experience – that learning and growth would remain trapped in my subconscious and eventually lost.
In a world that increasingly is too distracted, addicted to devices, ego driven, and without foundational framework or guide for living – we are losing sight of the art of learning.
Now let’s take a look at what we’ve learnt from the science.
Learning and The Conscious Brain
Our brain’s are incredible.
They are the reason we are here, standing upright, talking with others, and the dominant species on this planet. The brain has adapted and evolved over millions of years to help us thrive in this world.
Kevin Simlar and Robert Hanson, authors of “The Elephant in the Brain” make an argument that it is in fact this very ability to learn “post-experience” that has differentiated us from all other species on this planet. As we developed this capability hundreds of thousands of years ago to store and analyze past experiences we could update our set of actions to better optimize for survival. More on this shortly.
The facilitator of this capability for conscious thought and decision making is called our pre-frontal cortex (PFC). Whenever you are engaged in active thought — focusing on a new task, considering a set of decisions — this is your PFC at work. Unbeknownst to us, our brains have already done a lot of work in the milliseconds leading up to us forming a conscious thought. The main task is the parsing and prioritizing of millions of raw data points being collected by our brain via the brain stem at any given point in time. Before that conscious thought takes place our brain has already culled and stored 90% of the data it received and formatted the remaining 10% for our conscious processing in the PFC.
Here lies the gap.
When immersed in the present moment, we only have access to the information our brain deems most important to navigate the immediate decisions at hand.
This results in the “surface level” learnings and insights seen in the iceberg visual.
So, what happens to the 90% of information we don’t consciously get access to?
Accessing the Iceberg of our Subconscious
One of the most simple heuristics that has helped me understand how to access the iceberg of wisdom and knowledge hidden within our own subconscious mind is this:
As long as we are mentally preoccupied with an activity in the present, we cannot access our the iceberg of subconscious knowledge.
In other words, whether we are pursuing a goal in the Deep End of life, drowning in thoughts of stress and anxiety, or immediately jumping from one task to the next without pause — we are forgoing the opportunity to learn and grow from the depths of our subconscious.
Sidenote: Dr.Matthew Walker, author of “Why We Sleep” suggests that this also has a significant negative impact on our ability to fall asleep quickly and get deep restful sleep. By foregoing opportunities to pause and reflect throughout the day, our brain’s are forced to begin this activity just as we are laying our head down on the pillow.
Reflection & Inquiry
While we are only just beginning to understand the neuroscience of our brain’s processing of subconscious information, we have intuitively known the art of reflection tens of thousands of years how to access this information. The answer is simple and as a result is often overlooked.
Pause. Be still.
Quiet the mind.
Find Flow.
Rest. Recover.
Reflect. Inquire.
Slowing down, stillness, a quiet mind
A prerequisite to accessing the wisdom of our subconscious is the quieting of our conscious Pre Frontal Cortex powerhouse. This is one of the incredible benefits to breath-work, mindfulness meditation, and frankly any other activity that causes us to detach from our conscious thought — eg, going for a walk where you are simply focused on the awe of Mother Nature that surrounds you.
Non-Performance Flow States
Finding ‘Flow States’, or more specifically the act of being fully immersed and focused on a task that is intrinsically motivating, engaging, challenging and rewarding is another way to stimulate our subconscious processing. Inherently, Flow States are partially subconscious by nature (to access a Flow State you must have practiced the activity enough for our brain to have laid some “unconsciously competent” neural wiring) and don’t need to be performing a sport at an Olympic level. For example the walk described above (walking and general navigation being two of the activities with “unconsciously competent” wiring — can provide the right person with a Flow state). When it comes to using Flow States as a vehicle for subconscious processing I think it’s important to make the distinction between Performance Flow (intentionally using Flow to access a Peak Performance state) and Non-Performance Flow (fully immersed and engaged in an activity without the intention or requirement of Peak Performance).
Sleep
It turns out that REM sleep, occurring in the latter half of a full 7+ hour of sleep night (not to be confused with 7 hours in bed), is where our brains begin making ‘new’ connections between different streams of raw data that have been captured in the previous day. Compromise on sleep and you automatically lose this super hero power.
Reflection & Inquiry
Iceberg metaphor as it relates to conscious and unconscious learnings
There’s something about the iceberg metaphor that is staying on my mind. The most recent thought is the idea that every experience, adventure and journey we go on in life has the potential to represent significant learning and growth. Whether the outcome is good bad or ugly it actually doesn’t matter. As we walk through the experience we have access to the top half of the iceberg, the 10% of conscious learning that comes from the immediacy and present experience of whatever we’re going through. The problem, however is that it takes longer for our subconscious, which is capturing 90 to 95% of the information that we don’t consciously process to make sense of what we’re going through. This bottom half of the iceberg, the 90%, can only be accessed through intentional reflection, inquiry, And self reflection over time. When we choose to raise from one thing to the other, or to avoid the challenging self reflection that may come with failure, negative stories or deep scary vulnerabilities we lose and forfeit the opportunity to capture the 90% of growth and learning that we could otherwise apply to the long-term trajectory of our lives.
Where to from here?
If you want some help establishing your foundation, upon which you are able to jump into the Deep End, I would recommend taking some time completing this free Human Performance Assessment I have developed as part of the Human Performance Project.
Once your direction is set and you are up the High Dive or off into the Deep End, it’s important to build in intentional reflection time at different periods.
I founded The Human Performance Project to equip humans, teams, and groups with the roadmap and tools required to pursue audacious goals, dreams and aspirations in the Deep End of life.
You can learn more about this work here.
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