Scott Sonnon: Born to Fail - Made to Succeed

Win the Battle - Lose the War Fitness: STOP!

Practice something daily better than the day before, and mastery becomes inevitable. Nothing can resist this self-evident law of conditioning. Not even imperfect practice can withstand that maxim, fortunately for me. Swimming upstream from the shallow end of the gene pool, I am no accident. I’m not gifted, advantaged or privileged. I was forged out of tenacious resistance to quitting, and the fortune of brilliant coaching.

I may be a good fighter and a great grappler, but there are those better than me. However, I am a master of intelligent human performance. It’s really what has allowed us to thrive above all other species.

We’re relatively weak for our bodyweight, and small in stature, lack any ostensible weapon advantage (no claws, fangs or horns), lack any protective covering (no scales, plates or even fur). We’re just naked, weak, short and unarmed. Except for our brain: that beautiful paradox which on one hand makes us painfully aware of our short existence, but on the other hand lends rise to our incredible use of tools, both obvious and abstract.

And yet, facing my physical and learning disabilities as a child, I relied upon our greatest gift, our mind, to condition the limitless excellence within us… to both unlock and refine the greatest power on the planet: our capacity for increased sophistication, beyond the snail’s pace trudge of genetic evolution. We evolve at the speed of our imagination…

And I’ve always dreamed BIG. I’ve always been the one who’s annoyed the status quo, the people who believe that I’m too big for my britches, that I think I’m better than they are. They’re right in a way: I think I’m better than myself (my current self). I think I’m bigger than the restrictive definitions I currently hold for myself. And I believe the status quo is the stagnant genetic cesspool of complacent mediocrity.

As I continue to refine with age, I continually rediscover that personal development isn’t a matter of more (of bigger, faster, stronger), but a matter of tighter discipline and deepening practice. The former dreams of our knuckle-dragging ancestry thumping through adversity; where the latter intuits that greater mental agility, more focused emotional control and supple physical grace outmaneuver, out-cycle and out-live any would-be competitors who remain gilded with the ever-obsolete game of “catch-up.”

Fitness is no different. Fitness is the gateway to personal development through physical exercise. This is why I was drawn to martial art; though in recent years facing yet again another facade of confusing fighting as its goal when personal mastery is its intent. Fitness and martial art are in essence absolutely no different: they both serve the goal of increased sophistication through physical exercise.

Yet, as always there are those who seek to dumb-down the lightning speed of our conscious evolution by begging to our Stone age roots: to live primitive, primal and feral. But again… what advantage have we held over predators to our species, but our mind. And through romantic notions of long-lost gladiatorial eras, we regress.

Win the Battle - Lose the War Fitness

If you’re fit to face the next challenge, but then through emotional erosion and mental fatigue cannot recover, you’ve won the battle but lost the war. You should be better prepared than the challenges you’ll face, not merely fit to face them. That requires increased sophistication, not mere increased attributes. Bigger isn’t better, neither faster nor stronger. Only better is better.

That’s why TACFIT® evolved. (Yes, I’m explaining these things because I’m going to ask you to invest in something I believe will dramatically help you. Yes, everything I’ve been explaining has the agenda of an exchange for the experiences I’ve had and the innovations I’ve developed as a result. And yes, I’m a “true believer” who thinks that there is no better service out there anywhere, that my course is the best for you, and know it will save and enrich your life and those of your loved ones.)

Half science, half gut-check, TACFIT® isn’t for everyone. Though it could benefit anyone considering that it’s uniquely scaled in motor complexity to allow even a fitness newbie a rite of passage to upper levels of conditioning, TACFIT® is an exclusive club. Its birth came out of necessity:

• to be space conscious while inexpensively portable,
• to be time efficient with fast recovery,
• to be quantifiably progressive if not intrinsically competitive, and
• to be functionally specific to the needs of security, law enforcement, fire rescue, military and martial arts.

The genesis of TACFIT® derives from my position as the US National Sambo Team Coach, including USA Police Team. That required the following:

• I had to train my athletes from different areas rather than under one roof.
• I needed quantifiable progress to chart my athletes development without actually being present,
• to know that their training resulted in greater tactical efficacy through the skills selected, and
• to know that they were training appropriate to their level of recovery and conditioning.

TACFIT® evolved out of these very specific necessities. And although more and more health clubs are investing in developing TACFIT® wings to their facilities, we remain a rather fringe cadre of functional strength and conditioning specialists.

Yes, specialists. Like one of my “spooky” colleagues used to say, “we’re highly specialized about our addiction to breathing.” We do acknowledge that “general fitness” does not exist, that every exercise and each movement creates a specific adaptation, and that our best hope as professionals is to provide the most efficacious motor development approach that we can.

So, I’m inviting you to a Long-Range fitness approach:one to win enough battles to win the war, and know how to recover rapidly and fully from the inevitable losses we all must endure.

Your participation in the TACFIT® Field Instructor Certification training course will be both physically demanding and mentally challenging. You may even find it emotionally tough because, as with all courses in the Circular Strength Training® System, you must lead from the front in order to receive and maintain your qualifications at RMAX International®.

But you will have an amazingly diverse array of coaches and team leaders present, men and women from all stations and each of the key citadels in the tactical community. We believe that you cannot take someone where you haven’t been or give them something you don’t have, so even if you’re not an active member of the tactical community, you will be able to draw upon the intellectual and experiential capital of our tribe… and be able to lead by physical example through the TACFIT® program array; thus, inspiring even the our most marginal members to greater depths of conditioning mastery.

Click Here to Join Our Team!