We recently connected with Jordan Armijo and have shared our conversation below.
Jordan, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.
I really appreciate this question because this is something I’ve been asked a number of times before. I have learned how to answer it over time but I used to get a bit of imposter syndrome about it because I never truly felt confident until recent years. I could attribute it to a number of things in my life, but the biggest factor was learning how to live a healthy lifestyle overall in the last 4 years. The main component of that was getting heavily into mixed martial arts including jiu jitsu, muy thai, kickboxing, wrestling, etc, and developing a strong passion for physical fitness which included challenging myself to run a 15k race, running 48 miles in less than 48 hours, and entering in some jiu jitsu competitions and placing silver and bronze.
When I was younger I always had a sense of self belief, but I often struggled with accepting that my self belief was justified, and it would turn into questioning and self doubt at times. Skateboarding was the first passion that helped me recognize the importance of learning every day, because you never run out of new things to learn on a skateboard, and that gave me the understanding that life is a constant pursuit of knowledge. Overtime, my confidence started to come from the knowledge that my intrigue with learning new things, was the exact thing that set me apart from most people, because a lot of people get comfortable with whatever they’re good at. I was obsessed with learning the things I was not good at, and it helped me understand people that I previously thought I didn’t have anything in common with.
Jiu jitsu is that same lesson for me ten fold every day, that no matter how much people try to put on a façade to the world, if you train a martial art like this, it will be exposed in a matter of minutes or hours because you can’t fake your way through a fight. Especially in competition, you have to face the unknown when facing a new opponent, and the biggest fight becomes internal when the adrenaline kicks in, and you have to face the shuttering fear of your mind telling you to give up when it gets hard, but if you can overcome that feeling, it’s the biggest win possible.
Every day I test myself in training, and even when I lift weights I remind myself that it is not easy to show up every day and do the difficult things that ultimately make life easier. To anyone out there looking to grow their confidence in life, find something that challenges you to think and feel discomfort (within reason) every day, and eventually the difficult things in life become so much easier to navigate and the brain becomes better at problem solving because of that, which ultimately will make you feel more confident to face whatever comes your way.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I have trouble answering the question of “what I do” because I am a student of life and want to pursue too many different paths, but I suppose the simple answer is that I am a musician, a personal trainer, and a mixed martial artist with the hopes of being a part time teacher in jiu jitsu one day. Most people know me from what I’ve done in Denver with my bands Red Sage, my old band Liberation, and work playing keyboard with Hashtones, Mono Verde, Weege, and other projects. I believe that is how I was recommended to the Voyage series in the first place, and for close to a decade music was my main pursuit and focus, and it still is but now I have other pursuits as well. I recently spent the last year learning how to produce music and mix/master it on my own, and I had the pleasure of mixing and mastering our last two releases “Dangerous” and “Fever” which came out back in September and October of 2023, and they had the best responses of any songs I’ve done so far. “Fever” broke 18,000 plays in a couple days on Pandora and that was a big milestone for me personally. I have two more that should be coming out early 2024 soon enough.
Music aside, when the pandemic hit, I realized I may not always be able to travel and play music, and I was learning mixed martial arts at a gym that also emphasized strength and conditioning and I fell in love with physical fitness. So I dove in headfirst and got my certifications as a nutrition coach and a personal trainer back in 2021 and have been pursuing that as a main career while still recording, writing, and playing live music as it comes.
I train jiu jitsu and muy thai now at Easton’s Lowry location, and couldn’t be happier with the environment there. I would love to be an instructor some day whether that’s at Easton’s or some other gym in the future, that would be the ultimate goal.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
This is tough to answer, but I will do my best! First and foremost, I think learning how to accept life as it comes, has been one of the biggest lessons. When I was younger I was very quick to assign everything a value of negative or positive, and that can become anxiety inducing at times, and very counterproductive. You start looking for a negative or positive in every interaction and you will start to rationalize why you should or shouldn’t do things that would otherwise be benign, and can often times hinder you from taking chances on a good thing. I read a good book in my early twenties called “Be Here Now” By Ram Dass and that mentality of living in the moment, being present, and simply living life with the open mind that it is simply meant to be live and experienced, is what has offered me the most peace in my existence. While it isn’t a constant, it serves as an anchor to come back to anytime I let my mind wander too far astray.
Second thing would have to be learning how important proper nutrition and health is for quality of life and optimal function in day to day interaction. When I first started pursuing music as a career, and was touring more frequently than I do now, I was burning the candle at both ends. I was working two jobs in two restaurants at 14-16 hours a day, with one day off a month if I was lucky, and any time I wasn’t at work, I was obsessed with staying awake to learn more about music and how to write songs. That turned into an obsession with booking shows, promotion, and the constant urge to feel like I was getting closer to success, which then became stress. I was also vegan at the time and not eating enough, nutrient deficient, vitamin b deficient, protein deficient, and drinking too much, not sleeping, and stressed. That spiraled into having seizures a few times in my twenties, at which point I turned my obsession mentality into pursuing health and wellness. When that happened, I started exercising, eating healthier, prioritizing sleep and sunshine, and making time to spend with friends and family.
When I finally prioritized myself before my own wants, my wants became easier to obtain and pursue. You can’t be the best at what you do, if you don’t have the bandwidth, the focus, and the capacity to perform when needed. Ignoring your health in pursuit of what you want, means you run the risk of not being healthy enough to enjoy your wins at the end of it all anyway. Get your gut right, prioritize sleep, drink enough water, get sunlight, make time to be with people who lift you up and challenge you, and do the work to be your best self, the rest will start to fall into place.
The biggest lesson, is as simple as a quote from Jocko Willink, “Discipline equals Freedom.” This was the biggest paradox for me growing up, but in the last 5 years it has been the most important constant. I always thought that if I had to work harder I would be more miserable because it would mean less time having “fun,” but what happened is my idea of fun changed. When I started doing difficult things daily whether lifting weights, running long distances, practicing jiu jitsu, boxing, etc, or learning new genres of music, everything else in life became so much easier to handle and process. I enjoy a good cold plunge in the morning, waking up early to run before the world is awake, and sitting in the sauna a little longer to see if I can, because it helps the brain get stronger to deal with whatever problems arise throughout the day. The best thing we can all do for ourselves is to challenge ourselves, it’ll get you more in tune with your inner self in a way you didn’t know possible. The best way to help others is to first work on our self as well, an these principles go hand in hand with each other. If we want to make the world better, we must first make ourselves better.
Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?
My ideal client whether talking about nutrition, personal training, etc, is someone who knows what they want first and foremost, or at the very least has a direction they know they want to go. One of the hardest things to navigate is someone who wants “help” but doesn’t have a goal or intention to do the work. My favorite quality in a human being is the ability to make a decision and follow through with it. It’s rare this day in age that someone makes a choice to work hard for something and sticks to the plan, so when I find someone like that, it excites and inspires me to want to work with them. Even when I get clients that come to me who claim to not know what they’re looking for, I often find they have very clear ideas of their goals in their mind, but might just be holding back from fully expressing them out of fear of judgement.
Here’s the thing, if you aren’t being honest with yourself, then you are only impeding your own progress, and when it comes to working with a personal trainer like myself, it makes my job way easier if the client can be open and honest about their intentions, and their goals, so that I can start to formulate the optimal gameplan for them.
Regardless, I love a challenge and will never turn a client away unless I know I absolutely cannot provide for their needs, in which case I will always recommend another professional who might have a better capacity to help them
Contact Info:
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/jordanthehuman
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordan.armijo.7
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-armijo-810a2077/overlay/background-image/
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/c/redsage
- Other: Follow Red Sage on Spotify, Apple, Pandora, and anywhere else you find music!
Image Credits
I own the rights to these photos and artwork 🙂
