Tony Robbins, Mochi, and Bizarre Sports
Meet Anthony Jay Robbins, born Anthony J. Mahavoric. You may or may know him by name, but you almost surely know who this is. He is the most famous motivational speaker of all time. But you probably have no idea just how successful he has become just by being energetic, encouraging, and apparently wise by many accounts.
Tony had a rough early life — his dad walked out when he was unable to provide for the family, and Tony ran out when he mom chased him out with a knife at age 17. That’s when he attended a Jim Rohn seminar, which got him interested in what ended up being his true calling. He did not attend college, and started out scraping by as a janitor. Soon, he got a job as a salesman for Rohn.
Eventually he acquired a few new “skills” — neurolinguistic programming, Ericksonian hypnosis, firewalking (this is the guy that got Oprah to walk on fire), board breaking, and more. These came together as a cocktail for success in the self-help industry. For those wondering, neurolinguistic programming aka NLP is the idea that we can look at the things we do well or that other people do well and pay close attention to details of how and why there is success, then extend those ideas to other areas of life an become good at other things. That makes it sound more legitimate as it is, as it has been consistently tagged as broscience. Tony believes that through NLP, “anyone can become successful at almost anything.”
Just how successful is Tony? He sells 15 million books a year, and people will pay thousands to attend his seminars. Add this to the 31 companies he’s invested in, which range across industries such as “ asteroid mining, credit cards, hospitality, nutritional supplements, private equity, sports teams, 3-D printed prosthetics, and… wealth management,” and you could say he’s doing alright. Here are some of his most famous clients:
- Oprah Winfrey
- Bill Clinton
- George H.W. Bush
- Serena Williams
- Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post)
- Peter Guber (Mandalay Bay)
- Princess Diana
- Hugh Jackman
- Leonardo DiCaprio
- Nelson Mandela
- Mother Teresa
- Mike Tyson
- Diane Sawyer
- Andre Agassi
- The San Antonio Spurs
- The Los Angeles Lakers
- Von Miller
- Metallica
And surely many more. This is a very large man, both figuratively and literally. He has a pituitary tumor that made him grow from 5'1" as a high school sophomore to 6'7" as an adult.
Tony hates fear and has literally gotten people to jump off of a bridge just because he did. He starts every day with a plunge into a small, cold tub and gets ready for his talks by jumping up and down vigorously on a small trampoline. Here’s his Ted Talk, which is approaching 20 million views.
I tried to imagine this massive man jumping up and down on a trampoline. I can only imagine that it would look like a combination of mochi pounding an olympic trampolining.
Tony would bounce with the intensity of these Japanese mochi makers…
(inb4 “3 poundings per second” joke)
…and the power of an Olympic trampoline athlete. If you haven’t seen Olympic trampoline before, you’re in for a treat. From wiki:
“ A routine must always start and finish on feet. In addition to the 10 contacts with the bed in a routine, competitors must start their routine within 60 seconds after presenting to the judges. They are also permitted up to one “out bounce”, a straight jump to control their height at the end of a routine, before sticking the landing. The trampolinist must stop completely — this means that the bed must stop moving as well — and they have to hold still for a count of 3 seconds before moving.”
This stuff is amazing (and incredibly dangerous), but some people have taken a more creative, less structure approach to acrobatics:
This seems like something that you would be likely to find on:
Thankfully, we hae r/theocho, a subreddit dedicated to bizarre sports such as Sumo suit electric longboard jousting, dirt bike rock climbing, horse vs. motorcycle racing, Fierljeppen, Human Curling, and many more. Enjoy.
