Mat Lock
Cleveland Hughes, welcome back to The Unleashing Potential Podcast. It’s a pleasure to have you back and looking forward to diving into talking about the healing MIT’s intention intentional boxing training system. How you doing?
Cleveland Hughes
I’m doing great. And it’s really great to be back. Thank you for having me.
Mat Lock
Absolutely. No, we don’t need to pretend here that we’re This is a different day or anything at all. We recorded the first. Okay, cool. Yeah, that’s me. Occasionally, I get a guest from a disco, or do you want to move so the backgrounds different or change my dogs like that. We’re just trying to make the episode length. consumable, let’s say digestible. But But for those who haven’t listened to the the first interview that we had with Cleveland, I would certainly encourage you to do so when we talk about Yeah, but uh, your backstory, and also then how you got into boxing and what boxing has done for you and for your life. And what we’re going to do in this episode is talk about how you’re paying that forward and trying to share the same experience and have positive impact in other people’s lives through something you’ve created called the healing it’s intentional boxing training system. So with that said, what is that what intentional boxing, let’s talk about that. First, what intentional boxing, I love that phrase, by the way, talk well,
Cleveland Hughes
you know, we just, we just focused the intention on the therapeutic effects of boxing. That that’s, that’s basically what it is. Because that the thing that I started, you know, I’ve recently become a full time boxing coach, I lived in California before. And when I moved to Chicago area, I said that I’m not going to just do like the normal, like functional fitness training anymore. I want to be like, I want to be full time passion work, I want to work full time as a boxing as a boxing coach. And when there was a mindset shift that had to happen for myself, so I asked my clients or, you know, the people that were coming to give me money to do boxing training with, ask them why they were coming to see me. And 95% of them were said or said something like, oh, man, you know, I was in a domestic violence relationship with not wanting to take my power back, or, you know, you know, everyone in my family is alcoholics, I just want to, I want to make, you know, I want to make something better of myself. Some people straight up said, You know, I do this for therapy, it’s cheaper than the shrink. And so that’s where the intention came from. This is what this is the intention that people were going into the sport for, and they needed to release, stress, anxiety, depression, you know, then build their confidence and such. So, you know, I had to come up with it, I had to come up with it with a recipe to give them what they wanted.
Mat Lock
I love I love that you took that on board and created something whether you know, there’s a CrossFit athletes from Australia is again, very successful. Can’t Porter and his company is called sweat therapy. And advocate around, are you okay? Which then in Australia is a suicide prevention, suicide awareness, organization, and, you know, kind of being very open about his challenges with mental health. Throughout his life. He’s a huge advocate for that, which we appreciate him for. And that, yeah, but the fact that he called his company, sweat therapy is perfect, because I think there’s so many of us, regardless of which our chosen sport is, or what form of training is. I think, for many of us, it really is some form of therapy at the end of the day. And, of course, you know, the physiological realities of the endorphins and all of that good stuff. For sure. I mean, that’s, we know that we understand that. But yeah, the mental health benefits of it. In addition to that, yeah, I see. super powerful, so. So you created healing, it’s the healing mitts system, which again, very clever name, love it, because they were talking about boxing mitt. So I haven’t created that. But what are the sort of core components of it? So if I was coming to you today and say, I’m really interested to go through this with you. And once you’ve dug into my why, and really understood helped me understand what my real motivation is. What does the healing root system actually look like?
Cleveland Hughes
Well, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s based off four principles, and the principles are the things that I thought were what made boxing training therapeutic. And it’s a mixture of different things. And all of the components are important. So if I were, you know, if I had a new person in the gym, we would start with the first principle. And the first principle is what we call the art of relaxed intensity. And what tends to happen is, is when people come to me, for the most part, they’re, they’re dealing with some sort of depression, anxiety or stress, and it shows up in their ability to relax, you know, I mean, so trying to put somebody into a boxing stance, you will note, like, what I noticed a lot is my clients, they have like, almost like a nervous energy about them, you know, and they kind of move themselves all over the place, and they kind of shake and they bounce around, and they add a bunch of extra movements that shouldn’t be there. And so I coached them on how to, like, put their heels on the ground, you know, be in the moment and just stand there. And I tell my clients do nothing to absolutely nothing, until you’re doing something doing like, that’s it, stand there with your hands up, do nothing else. And when it’s time for us to do the next part, once you once you’re able to, to get past this principle, then we’ll start working on something else instead. And so basically, that’s that’s the way I would go and go through the principles. And we go through all four principles and every training session, not saying that everyone is able to master them in a training session, it takes lots of time. And even that, even at the point of mastery, you should still continue to practice.
Mat Lock
Yeah, no, absolutely. And again, just to be sorry, just to be really clear, the four principles are.
Cleveland Hughes
The first one is the order, relax intensity. The second one is active concentration. The third one is champions breath. And the fourth one is technical focus.
Mat Lock
Sure,
Cleveland Hughes
And each one has a in some of them overlap. But the idea is, is that if you can do one of these things, it’s going to make improvements in your life inside and out the gym. If you can learn to use all four of these tools, you’ll be like, like a, like a jet, you know, like, you’ll have all the mind tricks that you need, and all the tools that you need to bring yourself to a point where you can make make sound decisions in stressful situations.
Mat Lock
Absolutely. So the first art of relaxed intensity was what you just talked through, right? So then active concentration.
Cleveland Hughes
Yes, active concentration is about using your instincts. Right, sorry, about using your concentration versus using your instincts. So in a situation, you know, in a self defense situation, instinctually, we might do something that’s not necessarily like a trained response, you know, you need to have the correct tools to defend yourself in, in, in a self defense situation or in a boxing situation. So what I teach is I teach people to not just have a, a random reaction more, so to have a more trained response to different kinds of situations, basically. And that’s and and like I said, these, these are the principles that I think really help people in their everyday lives. And this one is really great for relationships. If you’re reacting to someone else’s energy, blindly, you you might, you might ruin a relationship that way. But if you have a train response, like you have a train response to boxing situation, you’re probably gonna come out of there, come out of this situation, a whole lot better off than you did. And if you just kind of reacted and just let whatever come out of your mouth.
Mat Lock
Yeah, sure. So I guess not only at home, but at work as well, in any interview at
Cleveland Hughes
home, any work and human interaction. And I think that it’s really important to our mental health, that we find healthy ways to interact with other humans. And it’s actually it’s actually a part of us to, you know, to be connected to other people and it makes us feel really, really good about ourselves and our lives when we have good connections with other people.
Mat Lock
Absolutely, you know, one of the observations that I have, I’m not alone, I’m sure but nonetheless, I’ll speak for me One of the things I make is I, you know, when we train at this, and when we say we go and train each morning, and it’s definitely got a community feel to it, you know, there’s a, there’s a group of us that are regulars, I’d say we’re friends, we don’t necessarily socialize a lot outside of that environment. But it’s a real close knit sort of community feel, you know, there’s a connection. And, you know, we sweat together, we suffer together, we smile together. And that really does forge and form some incredible bonds. Which, when I then think back in a business setting or business environment, it’s very hard to reproduce that same depth of relationship, the same depth of the bonds that are formed when you when you train together, again, you sweat together, you separate together, you smile together. The special happens in that environment. And I think it stems from a sense of vulnerability, because none of us are looking our best when we’re in that environment. Yes, it’s mostly the case, I can certainly speak for me where I’m certainly not the best athlete in the gym at that moment. So I’m not lifting the highest weights. I don’t have the best technique. I don’t anything. In fact, there’s a vulnerability with that, and I’m comfortable with it. No problem. But I want Yeah, I think that’s a key component of why in a sporting environment or fitness environment, we can create those relationships and that culture at the end of the day, but where it’s much harder to do at side of that setting, and it’s the same people, right, when we go to work when we leave the gym, which are we going to work with the same people, that something I think we often behave differently. In a business set. Yeah. Well, I think the more we can it’s true. And it sounds like you’re certainly making it the active concentration. Choose to respond, not react, I just read on your web page. And it’s right there, isn’t it? But imagine in a work environment if we chose to respond and not react? How much better that that moment would be that relationship would be and ultimately, that’s can lead to culture change, can’t it?
Cleveland Hughes
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if, if everybody was mindful, that would really change the way everything happens. It will probably be the single most powerful thing that ever happened to humanity, if everyone became mindful.
Mat Lock
It would change change societies as we know them for sure it would. So the third step is the the champions breath. And you say control your breathing, control your fight. So yeah, took us I know that sounds logical, but talk us through it, because I suspect there’s more depth to that. Yeah,
Cleveland Hughes
I mean, you know, the nerve, the nervous system is kind of, you know, it’s controlled by all these automatic mechanisms. And we don’t seem to have very much control over the automatic mechanisms except for the breath. If you fall asleep at night, you don’t have to think about your breathing, correct? Sure, the aren’t the autonomic nervous systems going to take care of you. But in stressful situations, we have a tendency to shallow breathe shallow, like, we don’t take as deep breaths, our breaths actually gets shorter when you know, our heart rate increases, our muscles tighten. And you know, when we’re no longer relax, even if it can be a phone call, it can be somebody honking the horn at you on, you know, on the highway. You know, it can be a stressful situation, it can be anything, but that our nervous system responds, and then our breath changes. But the coolest thing about champions breath is it’s just more mindfulness, it’s mindful breathing. And if you can slow your breath rate down, and take deep diaphragmatic breaths, you can change the whole, you can change your whole brain chemistry around what’s what’s happening in front of you. And you can, like I said, you can make more sound decisions and in a boxing situation, you know, somebody is hitting you, and they’re, you know, and you know, they’re really strong and they are you starting to breathe really fast, and you don’t want to fatigue. So you have to take those slow, deep breaths to get yourself back focus so you can stay in the fight. And why can’t you? Why can’t that translate to your everyday life when something isn’t going your way and you feel that because you can feel that tightness in your chest. And you can you can feel your heart rate starting going up, you can feel yourself to begin to sweat. Why not tap in to the most powerful thing that we have our breath, take a deep diaphragmatic breath and champions breath is a breath rate lower six, six s per minute or lower, which would be about 10 second breaths. And in Yeah, it’ll bring you it’ll bring your feed right back underneath you
Mat Lock
Love that. It’s funny you mentioned 10 seconds. What I was thinking whilst you were saying that was I remember technique my, my father was a dental surgeons retired now but 6 million years ago when he qualified as a dental surgeon, sorry, dad, if you’re listening, he, they taught they used, they taught him the therapy as part of the dental college training. They don’t do that anymore, which is sad. And he’s used it many, many he did use it many times. Over the course of your 6 million years, a dental surgeon but remember, he used it once with me as a relaxation technique. And it was 10 seconds, the way he after a little after a little bit of training with me and a couple of sessions of hypnotizing me, if I want if I can see myself getting wound up now, even there, and he didn’t really implant it for this. But all I do is I close my eyes, take a deep breath, breathing through the nose, and I hold that you can attend in my mind. And then quickly exhale, seven seconds, and then quickly exhale. And it’s amazing how relaxed you can get as you exhale, long exhale. So the whole body relax. And as you say, yeah, underneath your feet on you feel your feet on the ground, or you feel yourself sitting on the chair, whatever it is. That’s interesting that Yeah, you also are working with that 10 second guideline, I guess. But I can certainly relate to me if anyone’s listening. Who thinks this is all a bit woowoo treehugger nonsense, give it a go. Give it a go. Yeah, breathe in through, take a long deep breath through your nose. Hold it can’t attend an exhale through your mouth quite quickly. And yeah, I mean, obviously, you’re saying do that for a minute, or at least the cycle of 60 minutes, so but even just once for the naysayers who may be listening to this or watching that. Very good for them, they’re the force that we have a technical focus, talk us through technical focus.
Cleveland Hughes
Okay, and so this one is is is basically what you would get if you go to any boxing gym, any boxing gym that has good coaches, they will teach you boxing technique. And what is very, very important, what’s what’s really apparent is that, there’s a lot of things that you need to do, when throwing a punch, you need to breathe out, you need to have your knees bent, and you need to have your hands up, you have to have your core engaged, you have the elbows and need to be close together, your your hands need to be, you know, above your chin, your eye, you need to be looking up at someone, there’s there’s a, there’s a long list a list too long for anybody to wrap their mind around, right. And so what happens is, if you’re trying to do all those things at once you have no choice, but to be in the moment, it is not possible for you to throw a proper boxing, punch in boxing properly, while thinking about what you need to accomplish at another time. Sure, so that’s where that’s where it all comes together. And that’s why it’s the last principle because we’re gonna have, I need you to do all four of these principles. You know what I mean? And I need you to do them simultaneously. And now there’s no other option, but for you to be in the moment and just live and be here and just breathe, and enjoy this moment.
Mat Lock
They’re fantastic. And I’m guessing you’re seeing some awesome results with client of yours who are going through or part of the healing rich community.
Cleveland Hughes
Yes, yes. It is so interesting to me, the kinds of people that I’m helping, and at first it started off, you know, like, I was working with people that was stressed and anxious. And now I’m working with women, some women, I have a few women clients that are expecting children. And they, they really find a huge benefit in the breathing techniques, because they’re getting ready to give birth to a child. And a lot of that is you know, pain management and control on your breathing. And so, you know, they’re seeing benefit and they’re excited, you know, and they think that they’re going to be able to make these these things, they’re going to be able to apply these things when they’re giving birth to a child and I’m just and I’m just ecstatic. You know, it’s helping people in ways that I didn’t even imagine you know, which is nice. So I’m visualizing them learning how to punch their partner best in that moment when like you did this to me bam.
Mat Lock
Interesting having having had you take us through it all and certainly in the previous chat that we had. The fact that it’s it’s a much more relaxed and sounds almost hypnotic state that you have to be in to be boxing or training well in that environment and you talk About relaxed intensity, you talk about, you know, active concentration, which is mindfulness really focusing on that. And yes, the champions breath. And really what you’re doing is you’re talking about changing state. Right, all of this is changing your state. And then, of course, the technical focus, so I can understand much better now, had you said originally at the beginning of the conversation are, you know, we’ve got some pregnant women who are signing up and getting benefit from it, I would perhaps have, is that the right environment? For someone who’s pregnant? Question. So I appreciate that you’ve come on to help share, I guess, a different perspective to help people understand more about what it’s actually about. And in particular, healing knits, of course, with what how you’re applying what you’ve learned, and your experiences and trying to, I guess, pay that forward? For others who just need or want, yeah, to enjoy the same benefits that you’ve had and continue to get from it, which is amazing. Again, conscious of time, Cleveland. Is there anything more about healing myths that you’d like to share with us that I’ve neglected? Or have we pretty much covered off? what it’s all about? Other than? How can people find out more about it if they want to?
Cleveland Hughes
Yeah, um, yeah, we covered it all. It’s, it’s, it’s really what you said, it’s about managing state. And like I said before, the better you get at managing your state, the better your life is going to be. So and that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing is because I want to help people have better lives, you know, because I don’t know what the life expectancy is in Australia. But you know, in here in the United States, it’s like 7076 years for men, and I think 80 years for women. And you know, that’s your best case scenario. So while you’re here, why not be in control and have have the best life that you possibly can. And that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. I’m passionate about life, and I just want to help more people.
Mat Lock
Well, I certainly appreciate you and I appreciate what you’re doing. As I appreciate you coming on to share your journey and expertise on the podcast. If people want to reach out and connect with you, or find out more about what you’re doing, where would they go.
Cleveland Hughes
Just go over to Instagram and follow me at Cleveland H dot fitness like the city in Ohio, Cleveland, H dot fitness. And then if you want to learn more about the program, and you want to see what it is that I’m doing, just go to WWW dot healing, MIT’s dot org.
Mat Lock
Fantastic. And of course, we’ll put those links in the show notes for sure. And I’d also like to thank you for being one of the planet’s good people. And I’m glad that you have found a vehicle that’s helped you, improve yourself, improve your situation. And now people would improve other people’s lives. So on behalf of everyone involved, thank you very much. And I’ve really enjoyed chatting with you leaving. That’s really a pleasure. Thank you so much. I’m really happy to be here. Until next time, you take care
