Stoicism is Martial Arts for the Mind

I have trained martial arts for years, but my real love is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It has changed how I relate to my body, my sense of who I am, and the world around me. More than anything, it taught me how to learn.

That is what got me thinking about the overlap with Stoicism. In this one I make the case that you absorb Stoic ideas far faster when you treat the philosophy like a martial art you drill, rather than a theory you read.

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome back to the Stoic Handbook Podcast. I'm John Brooks. Before we get into today's discussion, which is the comparison between martial arts and stoic philosophy, I just want to give you a very quick pointer. If you are interested, if you are interested in going really deep with Stoic philosophy, like really making it a part of who you are, and working alongside me and a small select group of other very dedicated, passionate, aspiring Stoics, I'm creating something very special, very unique that I will be revealing more about later. But for now, if you're interested, if this appeals to you, if the idea of spending ten weeks, if the idea of spending ten weeks working very closely with me in this customized group setting where we go very deep into all aspects of your life, stoic philosophy, and just completely upgrade the operating system from which we're living, reply to this email with yes. If you've already done that, I will be getting back to you soon. This is going to be unlike anything I've done before, and the group has to be relatively small. So if you are interested, just reply with yes, and I will get back to you with more information to see if this would be aligned with where you're at right now. In today's podcast, I want to talk about martial arts, okay? So Marcus Aurelius said that the art of living is more like wrestling than dancing. And why would he say such a thing? Well, not a lot of people know this, but Marcus Aurelius was trained in martial arts in a in a style that actually mimics modern MMA pretty well. There were various kinds of strangleholes and striking techniques in wrestling, and it is said that he he enjoyed it and was pretty competent at it. I'm passionate about all martial arts, but I'm particularly fascinated by and I'm studying deeply the art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which is which is for those who don't know about it, it's it's grappling with the intention of submitting the opponent. Okay? So when you look at two people engaging with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, it can often look like not much is happening, and that's because if there are two opposing forces that are equal in force, then there's no movement, right? Like an arm wrestle. Like an arm wrestle really looks exciting, but if you're the one doing it, it's exhausting. But jujitsu can kind of be like that. There's this battle for various advantageous positions, there are different pins that have and different striking potential, and then there are just so many various types of submissions from arm locks to shoulder locks to strangle holes to leg locks and knee bars and so on and so forth. The reason I really love jujitsu is because it teaches you how to learn, right? Because if I were to just read a book on Brazilian jujitsu, I would read it and think, oh, I'm learning something useful about jujitsu. And then I would go into the practice room and spar someone who is trying their best to beat me. And then that's where the knowledge that I've acquired is tested. So I've got to see if the knowledge that I've gotten from a book will work against a trained opponent who has spent countless hours on the mat practicing and who is resisting fully. And the chances of me reading a book and then applying it against someone who's been training years is next to zero. And so the feedback that you get is that reading a book and then applying it against a skilled opponent who is resisting is not the right way to learn. Okay? And we know this because professional boxers and professional MMA athletes, they don't just read books in preparation for training camp. It sounds preposterous to even suggest that. So let's look at how they train, right? So, look, typically, a professional fighter will have a training camp, a camp that lasts, say, three months. And during this three-month period, they will train with more intensity, they'll want to get their conditioning or cardiovascular system to what's called fight ready or fight conditioning. You know, there's a general type of all-round fit athletic person, and then there's the next level of fitness, which means that you are probably the fittest that you've ever been in your entire life because you're gonna go multiple rounds in a dangerous situation, you just can't take a risk of going in there with seven out of ten fitness. So there's this intense push to maximize cardio gains, then there's the analyzing of the opponent, looking at their strengths and weaknesses, and then creating a game plan to help you beat that opponent on the night, and then it's just a lot and a lot of physical drilling, right? So the the way you learn martial arts is someone demonstrates a move, you then go and practice that move very slowly with a training partner, and you make a lot of mistakes, and then maybe the instructor will come back and correct this and correct that, and then you tweak it, and then you do it again, and maybe you do it 20 times, and then your opponent will add a little bit more resistance, and then they'll add a little bit more resistance, and then you go and practice it in sparring, but you're not gonna be able to put it off on a black belt, right? There's no way you can do that. So you practice the move on someone you're a higher level than. So you practice the move on someone you're a higher level than, and you put it off a couple of times, right? You pull it off against resistance, but not a lot of skill. And then you try practicing it on someone who's a higher belt and you fail, and you fail, until eventually you pull it off once. And this this process, this long process, is how you learn, right? And there's no equivalent for this in Stoicism. There is no equivalent for this in Stoicism. I can't tell you the amount of individuals that I've met that can tell you about the history of Stoicism, can quote Marcus Aurelius all day long, but you can just tell that it's no different from a student of boxing or a student of MMA. You know that if they were to be put into the arena against serious adversity, they might struggle simply because they've never truly practiced this the art of Stoicism. And Stoicism is something that needs to be practiced. It is not something that should be just read. It is a martial art of the mind. We know, historically, that the Stoics themselves practiced Stoicism. We know that Seneca slept on the floor and went out practicing poverty. Okay, we know that there were many social exercises that Marcus Aurelius did. Stoicism is meant to be practiced and drilled and trained. And I'm really interested myself in what would a stoicism fight camp look like? That is something that has fascinated me, and that is something that I'm really going deep on right now, and really trying to think about that and applying everything that I know from my background in martial arts and my background in stoicism and the 10 plus years that I've been practicing it and tweaking it and teaching it to others, what would that look like? And that's the thing that's interesting me right now. But something that you can take away, and I've talked about this in another episode, is whenever you learn something, imagine, as Marcus Aurelia said, that life is more like wrestling and life is going to give you resistance and is going to know what you're gonna try and do and try and thwart your attempts to succeed. If that's the case, how do you practice the insights that you learn? If you get an insight today, a revolutionary insight about your life or about how to navigate a problem, do you just go, hmm, insight? Cool, I'm gonna just go do that, or should you approach it the way that a martial artist would approach it? Insight is the basic move. How can I practice this on a smaller level, gain a little bit of competence in it, get a small win, build up my confidence, and work my way up to the point, even black belt resistance level from life, I'm ready for. And that I think is what stoicism is all about. Stoicism is preparation for the worst days of your life, for the worst events of your life. Ultimately, that's what it is, and and and and those days are coming. Those days are unexpected. And if we're not prepared for them, this is this is no trivial matter. If a bunch of events come too quickly that are negative, it could knock you off to the point that you never recover from it. And and we've seen this, you know, we do know people that might have been fired from a job and lost their partner, and maybe their dog died, like three things happen in succession, and they're just never the same again. 20 years later, never the same again. All of their momentum just gets smashed, and they could have been at their all-time peak before that. We need to protect ourselves in that way. We need to be ready for the opponent to take the analogy that life could be, you know, there's gonna be a big end boss at some point. There might be many bosses, and if we're not training for that properly on a day-to-day basis, then not only are we gonna be able to appreciate life as it is now and maximize the joy and the compassion and the gratitude that there is on on offer, but we're going to be too vulnerable when the storm comes. In my own life, there have been some serious setbacks and tragedies and major obstacles that I've had to deal with, and I will go into more detail in future discussions, but but I'm very familiar with this. And for me, stoicism was always it wasn't just like a nice thing to study as a hobby. It was more of a I need help. And then I would read some words from Epictetus and that, and I could see that help was there. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Stoic Handbook Podcast. I hope it's just got you thinking a little bit about the relationship between martial arts and stoicism. And I'm gonna be talking more about this because it's a it's a big hobby horse of mine, but if you're interested in going deep into a serious trading camp stoic experience, then just reply to this email with with yes. And if that doesn't appeal to you, that's totally fine. I will be continuing to put out the best content that I can and break down ancient stoic wisdom. But talk to you soon.