The Natural

Everyone knows those kids growing up who were the good athletes. The kids the coach called a natural. They could easily go from sport to sport showcasing their ability effortlessly. They didn’t do too many “traditional” workouts of push-ups, sit-ups, or lifting weights, but they always were the leanest and most muscular on the court. They were usually the fastest and most agile of their peers. They never really got hurt while also having the best stamina.

They could also probably eat McDonald’s, go to bed at 1AM, and still play well the next day. It was these kids who were the starters. It was these kid’s parents who never had to get into it with the coaches because coaches would beg them to keep bringing their star child. It’s these kids that are such naturals that success comes to them without much of a sweat.

Cristiano Ronaldo

It was these kids that I cursed growing up. People said oh they just have good genes. They mentioned that their parents were Olympians and everyone nodded in unison. Genetics! In this single word, there is so much that is said. It shifts all responsibility away to something that can’t be affected supposedly, leaving poor performance and failure blameless.

They say genetics can’t be changed, and if you don’t have, you don’t have it. As if that was the end of the story. As if there is nothing you can do to somehow improve your situation. As if it’s over, give up!

Fortunately this is not the case. There is so much you can do to improve the very structure of your body and brain all the way down to your cells, and even the atoms creating your being. You can change anything you set your mind to. They say hard work can achieve anything. This is only true if what your working at follows nature’s principles.

In other words, is your hard work working against nature or with it? Is your hard work actually working? Are you swimming against the tide or are you using the tide to your advantage? Many people work so extremely hard, but end up going nowhere. Why is that? These people are usually working against nature. Their decisions, habits, and environment unknowingly sabotage themselves and their future.

Sergio Ramos

💡 If all of us are born with an essentially similar brain, with more or less the same configuration and potential for mastery, why is it then that in history only a limited number of people seem to truly excel and realize this potential power? Certainly, in a practical sense, this is the most important question for us to answer.

The common explanations for Mozart or Leonardo da Vinci revolve around natural talent and brilliance. How else to account for their uncanny achievements except in terms of something they were born with? But thousands upon thousands of children display exceptional skill and talent in some field, yet relatively few of them ever amount to anything, whereas those who are less brilliant in their youth can often attain much more. Natural talent or a high IQ cannot explain future achievement.

  • Robert Greene, Mastery

The Innerworkings of the Natural

All top athletes of all sports are naturals. They’re not grinders. They are what the mainstream would call talent or gifted (which we know is just a placeholder for what they don’t understand). They are made from a childhood of unstructured free play, not inside playing video games before they go to a personal trainer. They do not specialize early (which leads to injury). Multi-sport athletes are amongst the most durable and robust athletes there are.

These players are made on the court playing the game expressing their creativity within the limitless confines of Football. Being barefoot throughout childhood is a major catalyst for upstream fascial connections to be created. Many kids nowadays who grow up wearing cushioned sneakers end up permanently damaging the function of the foot for life (unless you know how to consciously rebuild this functionality → The Way of the Natural).

Koulibaly revealed that he first started playing football, saying: “All the kids were running around playing football with no shoes, and I was really upset by this, I guess. My mom says that I was begging her to go to the store and buy shoes for everybody, so I could play football with them. But my mother said, “Kalidou, just take your shoes off. Go play like they do.” In the end, I threw off my shoes and went to play barefoot with my cousins — and this is where my football story begins. When we got back to France, I was playing every day in the little park by our house.”

My game is based on improvisation. Often, a forward does not have the time to think too much. You have a second, rarely more, to decide whether to dribble, shoot or pass to the right or left. It is instinct that gives the orders.When I was young, my father used to tell me that it was better to practice playing the ball with bare feet, in order to have complete control over the ball. But in reality, he did not have the money to buy me football boots and clothes. He was heartbroken and wept tears of regret, so that I did not feel that he had failed to meet my needs. When I won the Ballon d’Or, I did not cry with joy… I cried because my father is no longer there.

The Natural Gets Better by Playing

This is how they’re made. Mainstream trainers (non-Naturals) can’t understand this and fight it subconsciously because all their hard work didn’t pay off. Naturals have the elite fascial connections and mitochondrial function molded over an 18 year childhood. This sets them apart. This is what makes them built different. This is the multidimensional reality of the human body most trainers are oblivious to.

You don’t have to teach a lion or a hippo quantum mechanics. They do what they’re supposed to do.
– Dr. Jack Kruse

You don’t have to teach Messi or Neymar how to be fascial-driven. They just are. You don’t have to coach talent. You just let it be and nurture it. Giving it the right environment to grow and prosper. The talent will take care of itself in the most optimal way. This is nature’s ability to self-regulate, self-organize and quantize far better than humans can plan out. This is a key component of working with Nature.

💡 Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can name great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became “geniuses” (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct that parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole

  • Friedrich Nietzsche

The Double-Edged Sword Of the Natural

The Natural vs The Learned

The positives of being the Natural is obvious. You rise to the top of your sport with grace. You have effortless athleticism and seem to have a knack for anything you try. You seem to get better by merely playing your sport and having fun with friends. You don’t worry too much about what you eat and naturally have a pretty good physique. The no pain no gain mindset can actually seem to work because you have such a high level fascial fitness already in place. Anything you try makes you more athletic.

The negative of being the Natural is somewhat of a curse. It manifests towards the end of your career as your youth begins to fade, injuries mount, and you’re not able to move like you once could. Your fascial fitness and talent is capped out towards the end of childhood so whatever you got is what you got. The Natural is unconscious so they’re unable to tap into this ability consciously and keep growing it.

The Natural also never knew what it felt like to not be a Natural so they’re unable to really train others who aren’t naturals themselves. This is why when you ask a Natural about their “secret” or how to become like them, you hear a cliché response about faith and hard work (they don’t know themselves). Even funnier is when a Natural tries to teach a technique or motion of play and you hear “just like this” or another unspecific description.

This is why you always want to learn from someone who suffered and overcame. Someone who went from injured to pain-free. You want to learn from someone who learned it themselves the hard way, not the easy way.

The Natural Is What You Were Always Meant To Be

This process I lay out is really about going back to your roots. Going back to the performance and health you were supposed to have. Effortless athleticism, vivacious health, and long life is your birthright, but you must stand up and take it back from the evil of comfort and modern convenience. You were meant to be the Natural. Your athleticism and creativity was meant to be fostered in childhood not dampened like it is unfortunately these days.

The 4 Stages of Competence

Unfortunately many people are stuck in a cycle of unconscious incompetence. This is when what they don’t know they don’t know affects them. There are things they don’t even know that they’re unaware of holding them back. The Natural is the opposite. They have unconscious competence which can turn to incompetence when the Natural works against Nature and damages what makes them great.

We want to become built different like the Natural and gain unconscious competence so it is effortless on the field and in life. Conscious competence (Ball drills, copying the symptoms of athleticism, etc) is a half-measure and can feel beneficial but often leaves you short-handed in reality. When you’re on the pitch it must be unconscious. It must be in your bones. You must become built different for true transformation.

Wrapping It Up

My tribe explores all the inner workings of working with nature. We study the best of the best across all sports and species to figure out how elite football/soccer performance is achieved. We figure out the things that you see all over social media and TV that are actually wasting your time, money, and most importantly, your future.

I see constantly so many athletes mindlessly destroying any chance of their future success by ignoring nature and her laws. You must learn from the naturals who unknowingly work with nature because they follow their intuition or what feels right. Although, sometimes you must ignore what a natural says because they themselves do not know the greatness that they possess.

You must learn about nature’s principles and then watch the best. You will then see the truth. This is the essence of being entangled. It is to recognize that listening to mainstream advice based upon modern sport science will lead you to fight nature. They will tell you that humans are smarter than nature, and you need to train the nature out of you because the studies say so.

You will learn the shaky foundations from which almost all of sports developments is founded upon. Learning from The Natural is the only way. Learn more about The Way of the Natural Course.