You Don’t Rise to the Occasion.
You Fall to Your Training.

On September 21, 2005, JetBlue Flight 292 took off from Burbank, California, headed for New York.

Shortly after takeoff, the crew discovered they had a problem. The nose landing gear was stuck sideways.

Not slightly crooked.

The wheels were turned roughly ninety degrees.

They could not just continue across the country and hope everything worked itself out. So the plane stayed in the air, burning fuel and preparing for an emergency landing at LAX.

The crew flew a low pass over Long Beach so the condition of the gear could be visually confirmed.

Then they waited.

Circling.

Burning down the fuel.

Preparing.

There were more than 140 people aboard.

The moment arrived. The plane touched down on the rear landing gear. The pilot kept the nose up as long as he could.

Eventually the nose came down.

The sideways tires hit the runway.

Smoke.

Sparks.

The wheels grinding themselves apart.

And the airplane stayed under control.

It came to a stop.

Everybody got off.

Everybody went home.

I saw that video again recently, and one thought kept running through my mind.

Thank God those pilots trained for shitty situations.

Because when that airplane touched down, that was not the time to figure out what kind of person you wanted to be.

That was not the time to become calm.

That was not the time to learn emergency procedures.

That was not the time to develop judgment under pressure.

The bill had already come due.

All they had left was whatever they had trained.

You Do Not Suddenly Become Better Under Pressure

There is an idea I have always liked.

You do not rise to the occasion. You fall to your training.

Or maybe more accurately, you fall to your habits.

To your repetitions.

To whatever you have practiced so many times that it is available when your brain no longer has the luxury of sitting around thinking about it.

People like imagining that when the big moment comes, they will somehow become the hero version of themselves.

• When the emergency comes, I will be calm.
• When somebody attacks me, I will know what to do.
• When the business gets difficult, I will make the smart decision.
• When the relationship gets strained, I will communicate beautifully.
• When life puts me under pressure, I will rise to the occasion.

Maybe.

But I would not bet on it.

Pressure does not usually create capability. Pressure reveals capability.

And sometimes it reveals the lack of it.

Artur Could Not Break My Grips

I had a much smaller reminder of this at open mat on Sunday.

I was rolling with my buddy Artur.​

Artur used to train at Roger Gracie’s in London. He is a brown belt. He has trained all over the world.

He is also a big, strong guy.

Businessman.

Entrepreneur.

Personal trainer.

Very fit.

And I am not a big, strong guy.

I am a little guy.

I have these tiny wrists. My wrists are so small I joke that I could probably still be able to stick them through a chain-link fence like I did when I was a kid to get the ball that went over the fence.

We were training gi because Artur prefers gi over no-gi, which works fine for me because I like having something to grab.

At one point I got him into my closed guard.

I had my grips.

And he was having a hell of a time breaking them.

He finally had to start digging his elbows into my thighs to get my guard open because he could not easily get rid of the grips.

Later he was laughing about it.

Something like:

“Man, your grips are tough.”

I have to admit, for a little guy, that feels pretty good coming from a big brown belt.

But here is the thing.

I did not develop those grips doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

I have only been doing BJJ for a relatively short time.

I trained those grips for thirty-five years.

I just did not know I was training them.

Pull Wire for Thirty-Five Years

I spent thirty-five years as an electrician.

And electricians pull wire.

A lot of wire.

People who have never done the work probably do not understand how physical some of it can be.

You might have to shove a fish tape one hundred or two hundred feet through a conduit.

And sometimes that conduit has a lot of bends.

The NEC rule I worked under was no more than 360 degrees of bend between pull points, which sounds generous until you are the guy actually trying to get the fish tape through.

And when you have got a long run with a lot of bends, that fish tape does not glide through like you are feeding a piece of spaghetti into a straw.

You shove.

And shove.

And shove.

Your hand is wrapped around this thing and you are trying to drive it another few inches into the conduit.

Then, once you finally get it through, you attach the wire.

Now you have to pull the damn thing back.

Through every one of those bends.

For a couple hundred feet.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Year after year.

Job after job.

For thirty-five years.

You develop hands.

You develop forearms.

You develop a grip.

Apparently, I developed one hell of a grip.

Which is especially funny because of those tiny wrists.

Nothing about looking at me screams this guy has crushing grip strength.

But thirty-five years of pulling wire does not care what my wrists look like.

The reps are still there.

Years later, I am on a BJJ mat with a much larger brown belt trying to peel my hands apart and thinking:

Where the hell did this come from?

It came from training.

Training I did not even realize was training.

You Are Training All the Time

That is the part I find interesting.

We tend to think of training as something formal.

• You go to the gym.
• You take a class.
• You practice a skill.
• You drill an emergency procedure.
• You attend a seminar.

But we are training all the time.

Every time you respond to pressure, you are training.

Every time you avoid a difficult conversation, you are training.

Every time you have the difficult conversation anyway, you are training.

Every time you immediately reach for your phone because you are bored, you are training.

Every time you stay with a problem for another twenty minutes instead of quitting, you are training.

Every time you lose your temper, you are training.

Every time you feel yourself getting angry and learn to slow down before reacting, you are training.

Every time you make an excuse, you are training.

Every time you take responsibility, you are training.

You may not call it training.

Your nervous system does not care what you call it.

You are laying down reps.

Some of this we choose.

I choose to train martial arts. I choose to show up on the mat and put myself in bad positions on purpose.

Pilots train for emergencies. That is deliberate preparation, the kind you schedule and repeat and evaluate.

But a lot of it just accumulates.

Nobody wakes up and says, “I think I will train myself to become the guy who cannot handle a difficult conversation.”

Nobody decides, “From now on, every time I get frustrated, I am going to practice losing my temper so it becomes automatic.”

Nobody sets out to train themselves into being less capable under pressure.

But the reps do not care whether you meant to put them in the bank.

They go in regardless.

Every time you respond a certain way, you make it more likely you will respond that way again.

You are building the person who will meet your next emergency — whether you meant to or not.

And eventually life is going to ask you to perform.

The Emergency Is Not the Time to Prepare

That is what makes that JetBlue landing so powerful to me.

We see the dramatic moment.

The plane.

The runway.

The smoke.

The sparks.

The nose gear grinding itself apart.

But the dramatic landing was not the beginning of the story.

Long before that afternoon came years of professional training, procedures, checklists, normal flying, and preparation for things going wrong.

Repetition.

Repetition.

Repetition.

Most of it probably boring.

Until one day it is not boring anymore.

One day there is a plane full of passengers and crew behind you and the nose wheels are pointing sideways.

Now the boring reps matter.

That is how training usually works.

You pay the price before you know whether you will ever need what you are buying.

Why I Train Martial Arts

This is one of the reasons I have trained martial arts for so much of my life.

I do not train because I am walking around Los Angeles hoping somebody attacks me.

Quite the opposite.

I would be perfectly happy never needing any of it outside the gym.

But I do not want the worst day of my life to also be the first day I practice dealing with the situation.

That is a terrible plan.

So you train.

You get grabbed.

You get put in bad positions.

You get tired.

You get frustrated.

You have somebody heavier than you sitting on top of you.

You have somebody trying to choke you.

And you practice not panicking.

At first, you panic.

I panicked a lot when I first started BJJ, almost every day for over a year.

Then maybe you panic a little less.

Eventually you start recognizing things.

I have seen this before.

That is one of the greatest gifts training can give you.

Not invincibility.

Familiarity.

Something bad is happening.

But it is not completely new.

You have been here before.

Maybe only in practice.

But you have been here.

Training Does Not Guarantee Success

I do not want to oversell this.

Training does not mean nothing bad will happen.

Pilots train and accidents still happen.

Martial artists train and still lose fights.

Electricians know their trade and still make mistakes.

Business owners prepare and businesses still fail.

You can do everything right and still get an outcome you did not want.

Training is not magic.

It does not guarantee success.

It improves what you bring to the moment.

And when circumstances get ugly, that is a pretty damn important advantage.

You do not control the sideways landing gear.

You control whether you have prepared for emergencies.

You do not control whether Artur is bigger and stronger than you.

You control what you have practiced on the mat and what decades of physical work have built into you.

You do not control everything life throws at you.

You do have some control over the person who will meet it.

What Are You Training Right Now?

That is the question I have been thinking about.

Because we are all training for something whether we mean to or not.

Some training is deliberate.

Some is not.

The wire pulling was accidental training.

I did not intend it.

I was just doing my job, year after year.

But it built something real into my hands, my forearms, my grip — and thirty-five years later, a big brown belt found out about it.

The martial arts, the deliberate practice on the mat, is training I chose.

Both are there for me when I need them.

Both count.

Life is funny that way.

You do not always know what you are building.

But you are building something.

And other forms of training deserve more intention.

Ask yourself:

• How do I respond when I am afraid?
• How do I behave when I am tired?
• What happens when someone challenges me?
• Can I stay calm when something goes wrong?
• Can I listen when I would rather defend myself?
• Can I keep working when the solution is not obvious?
• Can I make a decision without needing perfect information?
• Can I perform when there is pressure?

Those are not questions to answer when the emergency arrives.

By then you are taking the test.

Build the Person Before You Need Him

Maybe that is the real lesson.

We spend a lot of time preparing for outcomes.

Make more money.

Get promoted.

Earn the belt.

Build the business.

Reach the goal.

But perhaps the better preparation is building the person who will eventually have to deal with whatever happens.

Because someday something will go wrong.

The landing gear will be sideways.

Maybe not literally.

Hopefully not literally.

But life has plenty of sideways landing gear.

The plan breaks.

Somebody gets sick.

The market changes.

A relationship gets strained.

You lose something you thought was secure.

Someone stronger gets you into a bad position.

And at that moment, you probably are not going to magically become someone else.

You are going to reach for whatever you have practiced.

Whatever you have repeated.

Whatever you have built.

So train before you need it.

Practice calm when the stakes are low.

Practice courage when the risk is manageable.

Practice having difficult conversations before the relationship is on fire.

Practice solving problems.

Practice taking responsibility.

Practice being uncomfortable.

Practice getting back up.

Put yourself under enough useful pressure that pressure itself stops feeling completely foreign.

Because you probably will not rise to the occasion.

You will fall to your training.

Make sure there is something there to catch you.

⚔ The Dojo Drill

Today’s training:

The Cold Water Drill

Take a cold shower for 30 seconds.

Train discomfort tolerance.

📚 Leader’s Library

​The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef​

Why?

Galef draws a useful distinction between two ways of approaching the world:

• The soldier defends a position
• The scout tries to understand the terrain
• The soldier asks how to win
• The scout asks what is actually true

We need both.

There are moments when you have to commit, act, endure, and hold the line.

But there are also moments when strength means becoming curious enough to discover that your map is wrong.

P.S. Know a martial arts gym owner who’s stressed about money or student numbers?

Do them a favor: send them to The Leader's Dōjō, my website where I help owners get more students and keep them longer with simple systems.

One forward from you could change their gym: The Leader's Dōjō​

Chuck