On art and sport

I’ve been trying hard to write short pieces for years ever since I entered the ‘content creation’ game as a university professor 8 years ago.

Becoming active on social media wasn’t an option when my university was thrust into an international free speech scandal. I’d been following the madness on campuses in the US and UK throughout 2015-2017 and knew I needed to stand up and fight for my beliefs. This was now at my doorstep.

But a funny thing happened. The more I leaned into that high stakes political world the more I felt myself gravitating back towards my love of creativity and artistic expression.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, I basically lost my career as a professor, this before the vac mandates all but confirmed I couldn’t stay an academic inside academia.

I began sharing my love of sports. I’d been teaching university classes on sport history, philosophy, sociology, and psychology for years and had begun forming my own ideas on their nature, meaning, and purpose.

I didn’t know what to do other than write. So with the inspiration from Mark Baker (@guruanaerobic on X) I wrote a massive book on my academic knowledge attempting to spread a message.

• Sports are religious.

• Athletes are artists.

• Training teaches true self knowledge.

• Athleticism is the fountain of freedom.

That led to me to the world of consulting and coaching. For the past 4 years I’ve developed into a thought leader in a small niche community on social media.

I’ve coached dozens of individuals and athletes to find personal transcendence through playing sports and training with their hearts. Once opened up to the truth of their training, we dive deep into the mind and untangle the messy thoughts patterns that place internal limits on our potential.

Entering my fifth year my mission is clear. Continue to show the world the artistic magic of sports and training to help individuals tap into their spirits and live a life towards a freedom they only dreamed about.

But I can accomplish that by doing the same old thing myself. So I’m growing by pushing myself out of my comfort zone.

I want to write a lot more here, but not the same long deep dive articles that define my last few years of publishing. I’ll still crank out one of those a week.

But hold me to this team, I want to begin a new chapter together. More stream of consciousness posts that aren’t long but still are deep. Fun shares on my training and how it makes me a better coach, husband, father, and teammate. Client wins and team adventures. Comments on the sports world at large. Whatever I want that relates a sense of sport and art.

To prove it, this is the first article I’ve ever written just in my phone, typing with my thumbs. Sitting in the bathroom floor in the dark of a hotel room about to run beach miles at sunrise while my family sleeps, leaning into love and the desire to share. It’s a new day.

For too long I resisted way to lower the barrier to writing, after all is been trained to write dense, sources, and meticulously argued academic articles for 15 years.

I’m finally going all in on true creativity. I’m excited to share how sports and training are the drivers behind this.

And I’ll share later, instead of falling down another rabbit hole.

Go all in on the heart team.

That’s what sport and art looks like to me.

Happy training 🙏