Coleman Ruiz

If I think about, I'm gonna come back to range.

If I think about myself at 17 or 18,

not my parents, not my coaches, unless I really wanted it, you could not fucking tell me what to do.

You can't tell me what to do now.

Like if I want it, I love the mentoring and the teammateship and the things that get you where you want to go.

But if it's something I don't want to do, I'm not doing it, you know, no matter what.

And so if I think about that in terms of being a dad or manhood is, let's take it back to my kids.

Like I think one of the most important parts of my job

is to release the grip and take the reins off and just barely keep them inside the boundaries of alive.

Because they're going to make all their own decisions anyway, and they have to.

And so I think a big part that I see, and I saw myself a lot for years,

was we overgrip sometimes as men, like we are so afraid of losing control in an already uncontrollable world that we overgrip everything.

And I overgripped everything.

And suddenly when I'm not over gripping stuff,

things are going better.

And when it comes to range, it's okay.

For me, it's okay to have your tough guy moments, your fighter mentality moments.

I would never want to lose that because no matter how much help I get, when I'm out with my family or my wife or my boys, my head is on a fucking swivel.

And if somebody touches them, it's curtains.

And we need to keep that because that is just a part of life.