"You built up this mental fortitude" - Demetrious Johnson reveals how an acting coach helped him cope with rough upbringing
ONE flyweight MMA world champion Demetrious Johnson has showed a different side to himself in recent times. After taking a step back from MMA, 'Mighty Mouse' has continued to be active in the combat sports world by creating content.
One of the ways he has done this is through his podcast, MightyCast, where he regularly interviews other martial artists that he can relate to.
The latest episode featuring the former ONE atomweight MMA world champion Angela Lee is by far the most open and honest one to date as both elite martial artists traded stories and teachings about dealing with trauma.
Johnson, who spoke a lot about the difficulties he faced younger in life, spoke about how it was an acting coach that he met who helped him to express himself after years of bottling emotions up:
"Because growing up, I was always punished in certain ways. And you build up this mental fortitude that you never express your feelings. So for me, working on what we're going to do after we are done fighting. I went into acting school and when I started acting school, I had an amazing coach and we're still working together. Mike Ostrosky, he was, 'OK we need you to tap into your emotions.' And he said as an American Society, we get really lazy with words."
Watch the full podcast interview below:
Demetrious Johnson learned how to be better
Life isn't unlike martial arts in terms of self-improvement and trying to be better than the day before, and Demetrious Johnson has never lacked motivation.
Just like when studying kickboxing or jiu-jitsu or another discipline, sometimes it can be hard to learn and progress without being open to change.
'Mighty Mouse' was able to embrace this later on in life to help himself deal with earlier experiences, and that's something that Angela Lee has spoken about a lot in recent times also.
Both of them have learned how to overcome difficult moments even if it took them a long time to reach that stage in their lives.