161: Rocio Cortez: Performance Over Aesthetics and Why It's Never Too Late to Start

About this episode

Rocio Cortez had never played a sport. She'd never been in a weight room. At 27 she walked into a jujitsu gym, and three and a half years later she's training wrestling, striking, MMA and Muay Thai, and she's competed at Apex twice. The number that matters in this conversation is not the 275-pound deadlift she pulled at a bodyweight of 119. It's three and a half years. That's how long it took to build the body she has now, and she never once trained for it directly. She trained to get faster, to jump higher, to get stronger. The body followed. Tara and Rocio get honest about what that stretch actually felt like: the days she took progress photos and hated them, the clothes that stopped fitting, the body dysmorphia that showed up right as she was making her best gains. In this episode: • Why the people you train around change what you believe is possible for you • How to build a circle when you're the shy one in the corner • Grieving friendships that fade when your lifestyle changes, and why the real ones modify the hangout instead • Starting at 27, and how Rocio stopped mourning the years she didn't train • What actually makes you an athlete, and why Tara says you don't have to