Think you’re tough? Try Dagestani Basketball
Pair this story with one of the toughest guys I’ve interviewed: Ed Latimore, former heavyweight boxer and author. Listen here.
Heard about this on Joe Rogan’s podcast recently and had to take a look at it. There is apparently something called Dagestani basketball. Now, if you’re like me, I had no idea Dagestan was even a country.
From Wikipedia: “Russia, located in the North Caucasus region. Its capital and largest city is Makhachkala, centrally located on the Caspian Sea coast.” It actually looks gorgeous. Mountains by the sea.
Dagestan is the home of Khabib Nuramagomedov, the undisputed lightweight champion of the UFC. I looked at the list of other notable people and didn’t recognize a single one, although there seems to be multiple UFC fighters and also Jewish/Israeli artists.
Khabib is crazy and last year submitted Conor McGregor it what seemed to my amateur eyes to be a completely one-sided fight that Khabib controlled almost from the beginning. You can see some highlights here. What stands out for me is how good Khabib’s jiu jitsu is. Conor is obviously an unbelievable striker (read: puncher) to the point where he got himself into the ring with Floyd Mayweather for a boxing match, and numerous people and pundits and celebrities all thought that Conor could beat him. The world stayed up late and paid a fortune — I stayed up until 7am to watch here in Tel Aviv! — to watch Conor get smoked. I think we all realized after they shook hands like friends after the fight that we felt like suckers.
But I digress. The point of this post was to talk about Dagestani basketball. Apparently, in Dagestan, they changed the rules a bit and instead of dribbling…you can attack and wrestle with each other! Take a quick look at the video below to see people running around with a basketball on a basketball court, no dribbling, and then for instance at minute 4, watch Khabib choke somebody out, put them in an armbar, and then the game continues with someone running with the ball and taking a layup.
It’s really quite hilarious. This is an intense form of basketball and even some of the tiffs I’ve gotten myself into on the basketball court both in North America and in Israel don’t compare to the threat of the best fighter in the world putting you to sleep at the 3-point line.
But I like this because of the dedication to training. Even in this ridiculous looking sport, Khabib has his eye on the ultimate goal which is his UFC and jiu jitsu training. So it appears everything else revolves around that. Which is a good lesson in focus and commitment to your primary goal.
Let’s call it: Tangential Practice Towards an Ultimate Goal or TPTUG (pronounced “tip-tug”).
I think it would benefit us to see where in our lives we can integrate this type of approach. I want to be a better writer, so writing this random post about Dagestani basketball is a tangential exercise contributing to my goal of becoming a more persuasive and thoughtful communicator. I’m also helping a friend develop and expand his startup idea. It doesn’t pay, but it contributes to my goal of learning how to think about someone else’s business and add value and insight, which is something I hope to do professionally one day as an advisor/investor.
How can you integrate some TPTUG into your daily life? Let me know in the comments.
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