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Has anyone gone through a course like this?

John K said:
I haven't done that course, or any course like it.

I would ask:

Have these men done things that you aspire to?

Are these men people you aspire to be like?

What makes these men people that you should listen to?

What is important to you when it comes to being a man, husband, or father?

What would help you become more successful in whatever business you are in?

What would help you transition into a business you would enjoy or be proud of?

What are these men providing that will help improve any of the aforementioned questions?

How would this be better than alternatives, such as seeking counseling, building friendships with men you admire, hiring a personal trainer, or investing in some sort of businessy thing?

If you are primarily looking for a physical challenge or proving ground, how would this be better than participating in an "extreme" event, such as a long obstacle course race, a marathon, or a GoRuck event, or even compete in an MMA event, that would require a significant amount of time, training, and money to train for and complete?

If you are primarily looking for a way to improve your self as a man, what qualities do you find yourself lacking? How would this improve those? Are these people - who are largely successful former members of the military - modeling the type of man you want to be? What are alternatives that improve those qualities or provide you a better sense of "manliness?"

If you are primarily looking for a way to improve your self as a husband or father, are these men successful husbands and fathers? How can you tell? What do you think are failures or places for improvement for you as a husband or father and how will will this course contribute to improving them?

I want to be clear - I am not asking you to answer these questions on the forum or to me. But these are questions *I* would ask when evaluating whether something like this is worth the money or if it is a form of LARPing* in attempt to make up for not doing "hard core cool guy stuff" when you/I were younger.

*LARP: Live Action Role Play
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Just by answering these questions and acting upon them anyone should be well on your way to be a better man, better father/spouse, busyness man etc.
 
Georgiaoutdoors said:
People are often starved for community and purpose and meaning, so I get the appeal. I didn’t event watch their videos though. But when I saw multiple of their references to “flip the switch” I immediately had doubts.

As an at times modestly competitive athlete in the past and as a psychotherapist who spends his days trying to help people make meaningful changes that last, I can say that there is rarely a switch that can be flipped.

I wonder if with things like this we’re seeing the fallacy of confusing selection criteria for results.
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Having done a good bit of internal work and experienced considerable progress here are some observations:
- the flipping the switch mentality seems to come from the same camp as workout failure
- emotional health is a fragile thing … it requires tenderness, compassion and curiosity
- in fact my wife and kids benefit more from my tenderness and curiously than they do my drill Seargent approach
- I can’t model to them what I don’t experience myself
- part of this has been unlearning many of the “burdens” I’ve taken on as a kid … “boys don’t cry” “just get over it”

Ultimately I’ve coming to realize that just as I might approach gaining strength and endurance via autoregulated training that help my body increase its capacity to avoid the burn … I can take the same approach with my growth as a man, emotional health, etc … progressively increase my capacity to stretch myself out of a place of emotional safety and joy. This can only happen through healthy, safe relationships in my experience.

I think I’ve grown more capacity to do hard emotional things by practicing tenderness and curiosity towards myself than beating myself up. Again, a lot of carry over to strong endurance training per Strong First.
 
There are handful of these former "team guys" that I listen to, some great podcasts out there. Nick Bare, Shawn Ryan, Jocko, Nick Koumalatsos, and a few others I am missing. Very motivational to me as a family man and wannabe entrepreneur.

Now that Googins cat, don't know what to think about him just yet....
 
steve-in-kville said:
There are handful of these former "team guys" that I listen to, some great podcasts out there. Nick Bare, Shawn Ryan, Jocko, Nick Koumalatsos, and a few others I am missing. Very motivational to me as a family man and wannabe entrepreneur.
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Have you tried a mastermind or business coach that has done what you’re aiming to do on the business side?

Same thing on the family side … has helped me to have a group of men that are after the same outcome with their families.
 
I got thinking about this later.... so according to the site, this is for businessmen, executives and what would be otherwise high-income earners. Not for people like me that have a humble warehouse job.

Not to stereotype, but people like that may have never been told "no" as an adult, as they are at the top of the food chain already. So maybe courses like this are designed to break a person down, since they've most likely have always had their own way most of their life.

Could be way wrong, but I think I am closer to right than anything. I welcome comments on this.
 
steve-in-kville said:
I got thinking about this later.... so according to the site, this is for businessmen, executives and what would be otherwise high-income earners. Not for people like me that have a humble warehouse job.

Not to stereotype, but people like that may have never been told "no" as an adult, as they are at the top of the food chain already. So maybe courses like this are designed to break a person down, since they've most likely have always had their own way most of their life.

Could be way wrong, but I think I am closer to right than anything. I welcome comments on this.
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My thinking is that it’s a bit of implicit selection criteria. The men they are likely to attract and how can afford to do a course like this have a high likelihood of already being high achievers and Type-A folks. As such they are more likely to get hyped from something like this and go on to have apparent improvements. When in reality the course may not do much itself, and could actually be detrimental to many people. I don’t know though because I haven’t looked into the course much and am not likely to do so.
 
vladie said:
Having done a good bit of internal work and experienced considerable progress here are some observations:
- the flipping the switch mentality seems to come from the same camp as workout failure
- emotional health is a fragile thing … it requires tenderness, compassion and curiosity
- in fact my wife and kids benefit more from my tenderness and curiously than they do my drill Seargent approach
- I can’t model to them what I don’t experience myself
- part of this has been unlearning many of the “burdens” I’ve taken on as a kid … “boys don’t cry” “just get over it”

Ultimately I’ve coming to realize that just as I might approach gaining strength and endurance via autoregulated training that help my body increase its capacity to avoid the burn … I can take the same approach with my growth as a man, emotional health, etc … progressively increase my capacity to stretch myself out of a place of emotional safety and joy. This can only happen through healthy, safe relationships in my experience.

I think I’ve grown more capacity to do hard emotional things by practicing tenderness and curiosity towards myself than beating myself up. Again, a lot of carry over to strong endurance training per Strong First.
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This is why I appreciate this community. This gives one enough to think about for quite a while if you ask me.
 
Georgiaoutdoors said:
My thinking is that it’s a bit of implicit selection criteria. The men they are likely to attract and how can afford to do a course like this have a high likelihood of already being high achievers and Type-A folks. As such they are more likely to get hyped from something like this and go on to have apparent improvements. When in reality the course may not do much itself, and could actually be detrimental to many people. I don’t know though because I haven’t looked into the course much and am not likely to do so.
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So ... it is kinda of like rich people who hire someone to come in and give them a "boot camp experience" so they can feel like they did something tough?
 
steve-in-kville said:
It's like that meme I see every once and again, where the guy say's he did a "tough mudder" over the weekend, so now he's basically a Navy SEAL.
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Never seen that. I really enjoy OCRs, they're a lot of fun. I never did a GoRuck but I hear a lot of folks really enjoy that sort of thing. Sounds more like a spur ride than I want to be a part of, but I also drink my coffee black, I'm an odd duck.
 
I think there are many arguments against taking a course like this.

I have known many people who has paid a small fortune for courses like this. They have not just magically become very "successful". They have in large part just remained the same. Just some comments about this:

1) There is a trait in people's personality called Conscientiousness. It could to a certain extent be translated to self-discipline. People have this trait in different degrees. Courses like this aims at improving this trait. It is not so easy. Personality is quite persistent for good and for bad.

2) Another personality trait is called neuroticism. It can be translated to your inclination to thinking negatively about things, pessism, enmity and the like. Many courses aims at reducing this trait. From what I have read about the research on this, it is quite difficult. Not completely impossible but it really takes hard work. Some people seem to have achieved it with a lot of meditation and/or therapy.

3) These courses often want to disregard bad luck and good luck. I live in one of the riches country in the world and my mother and father treated be quite well in my childhood. I am also born without any serious illnesses. This makes my life much easier than if I were born in a third-world country and my parents treated me badly. It is not all about how you take, it is also about being at the right place in the right time. Many courses like this do not want to take this into consideration, and if they do only mentions it briefly.

4) I know some people who are quite professionally successful. None of them have taken any coaching or taken courses like this to come where they are today. The people I know who are the most fit have not taken special courses like that. And the people who have the most happy marriages have not taken courses like this.

5) Research versus anecdotes: Most of this courses hates statistics and research papers, and when they like it they are very selective about what kind of research they are referring to. If you have 100 people taking this course. One of these 100 people will during 6 or 12 months experience something very positive and maybe even life-changing events. This is just a result of high numbers. It might not be BECAUSE of this course, but just happen coincidentally. Some people who are training with kettlebells for a long time will become multi-millionaires after they started with kettlebells. That does not mean that training with kettlebells increases your chances of you becoming a multi-millionaire.

In double bind research you would take 100 people in one group who takes the course, and 100 people who do not take the course and then you see which group contains most "successful" people at the end of a certain period. Even then you could not be 100 percent certain about the results.

6) What seem to have some scientific support is that some forms of meditation like transcendental meditation and mindfulness meditation can slightly increase happiness over time. Some research also seem to indicate that therapy might increase your happiness and decrease you neuroticism slightly. I also think doing yoga regularly can slightly increase your happiness, but I have not found that much scientific evidence to support this.
 
3letterslong said:
You have to understand the industry they're in: they're selling expectations, then promising to fulfill those expectations, and if you fail along the way it'll be your fault for not doing what you were supposed to. There's nothing there you can't learn from other sources, but you also have to deal with unnecessary persuasion techniques and ideologies.

If you want to be part of a like-minded group, spend the money. If you want to learn, you can find better sources without the hoopla.
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I was able to do a little research on this. Apparently the MDK is on its last year, with the last course being run this fall. I understand there were too many accusations of it being a scam. $18k to have someone prove your manhood? Lots of eyebrows were raised....
 
steve-in-kville said:
I was able to do a little research on this. Apparently the MDK is on its last year, with the last course being run this fall. I understand there were too many accusations of it being a scam. $18k to have someone prove your manhood? Lots of eyebrows were raised....
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I am not surprised to hear that tbh.
 
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