Barbell Shrugged - 140- From Miss United States to Mixed Martial Arts w/ Whitney Miller

Episode Date: September 3, 2014

This week on Barbell Shrugged we have the pleasure of chatting with Whitney Miller, “Miss United States” beauty pageant contestant turned MMA Fighter.    That’s quite a transition, but then again it’s pretty obvious that Whitney is a highly motivated individual. She decided to give Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and boxing a try simply because it was, “The hardest thing I could do.” That’s an extraordinary, uncommon attitude for sure.    If nothing else, Whitney understands better than most that progress comes for those who are willing to push past their current limits and perceived boundaries. You have to get well outside of your comfort zone in order to really improve, even if that means training and sparring against men. You can check out this pic of her applying a rear-naked choke to Joe Rogan. She also tossed an arm triangle on Michael Bledsoe during the filming of this episode, which might have been the first time he’s been choked since his BJJ blue belt ceremony back in 2008. No, this is not a lady you want to mess with. She will make you go unconscious!    Whitney does a lot of training in order to pick up all of these new grappling skills, but she also spends plenty of time in the gym. Barbells have always been in the rotation, even during her pageant days. She preferred feeling powerful and strong. In her words, “I’m never going to be tiny and skinny with big boob’s. So, I’m just going to go out there and be completely who I am.” It’s hard to argue with that strategy for any competition. Whitney also has fun with alternative, functional training methods such asIndian Clubs and steel maces, mostly because these implements are incredibly effective at training the grip. All aspiring fighters should take note. The stronger the grip, the more likely you are to win a fight, any fight. Raise heavy barbells, and swing big clubs. You’ll be very glad you did.    Whitney is doing exactly what she wants to do, which is awesome. That’s a message that sounds familiar.Travis Mash would be proud. But that said, living a life where you do what you want…what you value…is tough. When Whitney told her friends and family that she’d rather fight than compete in pageants, she received a surprisingly large amount of resistance in return. Her Mom couldn’t stop crying, and she said her Father would hardly speak to her. For them the proper, sensible thing to do would be to get a routine 9 to 5 job, or maybe take advantage of the good looks and land a gig in front of a camera at the local news station. Anything but getting punched in the face, right?    For most that’s enough, but for Whitney being happy and feeling fulfilled means going out and doing the unexpected, painful, scary, awkward thing, the most difficult thing. As she says, “This is where you feel most alive. Far, far outside of your comfort zone.” I guess we can all do a better job of challenging ourselves, eh? Maybe we could stand to be uncomfortable a little more often.   You can check out more from Whitney on YouTube, including an awesome little feature on her transition from pageants to fighting. Also, make sure to follow her on Instagram and Facebook. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Whitney, best of luck with your training. We look forward to seeing you make your debut in the ring soon.    Cheers, Chris Moore

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interview Whitney Miller, Miss United States 2012, on a journey to earn her jiu-jitsu black belt. Hey, this is Rich Froning, you're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Signs of a long weekend. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged, I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson and our stand-in host, Connor Moore. Yo. Here for Chris Moore. They're not brothers. Well, in some respects, maybe. In spirit. In spirit.

We were fat kids together, so we share a bond. Fat brothers for life. Oh, yeah. You and Chris. We're down here at Paleo FX Convention down in Austin, Texas. And we swooped up Whitney Miller. Hey, what's going on? You went from Miss... Miss United States.

Miss United States to MMA fighter. Yeah, that's right. Well, I haven't had my first MMA fight yet. I have. But you're training, obviously. I am training. I've had jiu-jitsu fights. But the main, big, main event is going to be

in less than a year. You choking anybody unconscious yet? Not unconscious, no. But I do love choking people. That's my favorite. It's one of my favorites. I kind of like being choked now. Yeah, it's my move.

So what made you decide to go from Miss USA to try to train for MMA? Just because it was totally off the wall and nobody understood it. They didn't know what the hell I was thinking. And so I wanted to challenge myself physically and mentally and emotionally. And I came up with the hardest thing I could possibly do. Yeah. And my boyfriend, Aubrey, has, you know, On It Labs. And we bring in fighters from there.

And I saw that they were doing kickboxing. So I would hop in with them and then realize there's jujitsu. And I wanted to get my ground game going first just in case I get taken down. If any ladies are listening to this right now, you haven't tried jujitsu. In my experience, any woman or man really for that matter, but any woman that tries jujitsu fucking loves it. Oh, yeah. Loves it.

Well, yeah. Sometimes. I'm the type of person that I hate it a lot of the time. Oh, yeah? But I go back every single day, so I guess I actually love it. And the thing is, a lot of women tend to drop out because you walk into a gym and you're surrounded by a bunch of random sweaty guys and you're like uh hi i'm gonna come roll around with y'all in very compromised positions sometimes

yeah as a guy like and a new girl comes in it's kind of like i i usually try to avoid women be honest like well i don't really roll much anymore but back in the day when i did jujitsu a girl would come in i'd be like staying away from that because I got uncomfortable too it's like hey uh you're in my guard how's it going it's like I'm a single guy you're a good looking lady you're in my guard you know that's uh you know I don't know maybe I was just not thinking about jujitsu when I was wrestling a girl that's funny I haven't had any awkward things happen to me yet, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

You and Aubrey don't wrestle? Oh, no, no, no. Which way are you talking about? We do roll together, though. It gets a little irritating. I think we both get frustrated because now we're at that point to where I'm starting to catch him in different moves,

and I'm getting the technique down down so he has to use his strength in some of the positions. So it sounds like you're a better technician. Is that what you're saying? Well, I'm just training more. I'm training a lot more than he is. He's too busy? Yeah. Oh, okay.

So then I practice and practice. I'm like, come on, babe, let's roll. So I was told you were also a surfer. Yeah. I grew up in Corpus Christi Texas so I grew up surfing there and then I moved to Austin and was on the lake all the time so I started teaching wakeboarding and then became a professional wake surfer behind the boat tell us tell us what a wake surfer is um well it's basically they have these boats that are made for wake surfing and wakeboarding and you just put tons of weight in the back and you can basically just surf right behind

the boat, maybe five, six feet behind the boat without a rope and you're just cruising. It's an indefinite surf. You just keep, you just keep going. That actually sounds really cool. It just creates an enormous artificial wave that you can just surf just like you would see people surfing in the ocean, but it's behind a boat in a lake. Right. I've seen people do that behind cargo ships.

Wake surfing. Wake surfing? Yeah. I've seen people like get out in the ocean, like way out there and there's a cargo ship or something and they're catching that wake. That's wild. They do that here a lot in Galveston and Corpus. Really?

It's like tanker surfing. I didn't know it was that popular. I forget where I saw that. I saw that on like some surfing documentary at some point. Yeah. So the Texas waves are pretty huge, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, just huge swells all the time.

They're so awesome and clean and perfect. Yeah, right. They're like the worst waves you could possibly even imagine. It's like muddy water just kind of washing up around. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like brown, and you have to watch out for red tide when all the fish are like belly up, and you're sneezing and coughing. It's pretty disgusting.

You're not making this appealing. I know, I know, but it's really not. But they do say that if you can surf in Texas, then you can surf anywhere because Texas is like a washing machine and so if you can learn to catch those waves and you go somewhere

where the sets are perfect and it's not choppy and it's like meant for surfing, then you're good to go. So you were here at Paleo FX and you had a talk? I did. I was a speaker. What was that all about? It was just about pushing your limits and living outside of your comfort zone because it's kind of what I'm doing, going from Miss United States into MMA. And yeah, just pushing yourself as far as you possibly can all the time. Because I guess I could have hung my hat up

on being Miss United States and patting myself on the back and saying, good job. But I wanted to see where I could go from there and really inspire people to continue whatever they have going on and pushing themselves. It's been a constant theme of your whole life. You're always trying to find that next thing that's slightly outside of your comfort zone that you can attack and accomplish and

conquer, if you will. And then you're always trying to find that next thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's important because a lot of us just become so comfortable and complacent with what we have and why step out of your comfort zone if it's comfortable. But that's where you fully live. That's where you feel everything that you should feel is when you step across those barricades. And yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing. I know when they do studies on satisfaction and fulfillment,

it's not when you actually accomplish something that you feel the best. It's the moment right before you accomplish it when you think, holy shit, I think I'm actually gonna to do it. Not when you actually get there and you realize I did it right before. And so constantly chasing something and having it just out of reach is actually the fulfilling part, which I don't think a lot of people notice. Yeah. I've never actually thought about that, but I think that's very true because once you accomplish it you already did it and that's just a part of you and so i could see how you know becoming excited about just having it right outside of your reach i mean i guess they always say you want something you can't have right so maybe it has something to

do with it actually speaking of that they actually say the same thing with fear fear is is the worst right before something happens once it happens usually it's not so bad like like your MMA fight you might be really nervous right before it but once it's ding and you start walking towards each other you're probably not feeling fear anymore you're probably nervous anymore now you're comfortable because you're you're doing what you practiced doing that you've been preparing for and now you're in a normal situation you're not like wondering what's going to happen anymore you're just there in it yeah yeah your mind can't really take over because once you hear the bell ring or once you're in a jiu-jitsu match or whatever it is you have to you have to just put your work into it so what's the most intense thing you've done um in jiu-jitsu just in anything

sounds like you might go after big things oh man i don't know out of anything or off of a building or anything yeah i've gone skydiving but that was when i was 16 so i'm 24 now but you did that and you're like yeah next thing yeah i really want to go shark diving really bad and and i would be down to do the whole cage thing but i'm talking like put me in the water with some great whites let's do this they do they do a thing down in belize where they take you down this big hole which is basically this big hole you can dive down like maybe 100 feet. And you're in a place with a bunch of sharks.

That's so awesome. And then they just like chum it up. They chum it? Okay, that's getting a little crazy. And then the sharks just sit there and watch them eat. Well, how do you know they're not just going to come bite your head off? I guess you don't know that.

I guess that's the point, right? I mean, diving with sharks is super cool. I've dove with like lemon sharks and black tip sharks, but sharks, excuse me, they're only like maybe six feet long, something like that, which is plenty big, but like not great whites. How big do great whites get? Like 15 feet? I am talking about-

Bigger? Bigger? They're just monsters. They're monsters. They're just water monsters. They're gorgeous. That's what I'm talking about, great whites. I don't think you can respect them until you're in the water with one and you're like, that's

a creature that's been around for a long ass time. I got the on it great white t-shirt. Those are cool, right? Yeah. Yeah. Got to wear it still.

We had the opportunity to go do that in Australia recently, but we ran out of time. It was like, it was like five hours away. Something like that. It was like extra thousand dollars.

We had like a day left and we were like, we might be able to like get there, do it and get back like just in time to go to the airport. And then we're like,

fuck now we'll do it next time. Yeah. Yeah. You got to do it. Yeah. So Australia, and I think you do it in South Africa too. in time to go to the airport and then we're like fuck now we'll do it next time yeah yeah you gotta do it yeah so australia and i think you do it in south africa too yeah south africa yeah that's the big one i think some groups try to like discourage that like like because they think that might be linked to like more shark attacks uh i could see that like yeah you're like training them to like shark to come eat around people. And now surfers get attacked and then they get mad about that. So I've heard that being a problem. If I was a surfer, which you are, right? And you're a surfer that likes to dive around sharks.

So does that mean you're like totally comfortable when you're out surfing? You're not worried about shark attacks? Well, I think in Texas it's not a very common thing. It's not all sharks in Texas lakes, right? That's where all the shark attacks happen. You got mean, it's not a very common thing. It's not all sharks in Texas lakes, right? Well, yeah. That's where all the shark attacks happen. You gotta watch out for those.

I'd imagine you surfed somewhere besides Texas. Yeah. No, I had an incident in Costa Rica. I went and traveled in Costa Rica for a month and they have,

in Tamarindo, and they have a river mouth that comes out right on the beach and lots of bull sharks hang out there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, those will get you. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Aren't they lots of bull sharks hang out there. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Well, those will get you. Oh, yeah. Aren't they very aggressive, bull sharks? Mm-hmm. Yeah, and so we went out surfing and the water was... I heard that. No, they are though.

They're one of the most likely to get attacked by. Yeah, exactly. But we went out and the water was like real murky and it smelled just horrible. And that was the first time I'd ever experienced anything like that that so I was a little iffy about going out there and they say that bull sharks bump you before they bite or attack or anything and um so I'm paddling out there pretty close to the river mouth and it just doesn't feel right like you can just feel the energy like there's there's definitely sharks around there um and i i'm paddling and i feel my board like shift backwards like i didn't hear something hit it or anything but everything just kind of moved back

and i'm like that doesn't feel good oh my god just like pull all four limbs on the board like like paddling with my just my fingertips i'm out of here i had something uh similar happened to me when i was like i was a kid and uh we were vacationing in cocoa beach florida which actually has like four florida decent waves my brother and i would surf there and so we had these rental boards and we're out there and we were it's like the last day we were on vacation and we're going out to the beach and someone goes i wouldn't go out there right now because we were walking out and there was like just jellyfish just washing up like so like there was a lot of like sea life coming to shore for some reason it was friday the 13th by

the way and we were watching jaws the night before we were watching jaws the night before it was friday the 13th i looked down the beach supposedly there had been a shark attack that day and there was like a fire truck down there. They were like, I want to go out there because of the jellyfish and the shark. I'm like, fuck, it's the last day of vacation. And, you know, I wasn't going to let my brother go out there without me because then that would make me a pussy. So not because I care for him.

But I went out there and my board got bumped. I didn't know that. I think it's funny you bring that up because I brought back that memory. But I went out there and my board got bumped. Oh. I didn't know that, though. I think it's funny you bring that up because I brought back that memory. I'm out there and my board got, I was out there and it goes, boom. I go, I pulled all limbs on the board. I looked at my brother, did the wave thing. We got to go.

And then the next wave that came, I was just like on my knees. Yeah. Rode that one in and I called it a day right there. Oh, yeah. That's what I did. I'm out. I'm done. I'm going to go drink a beer on the beach and just call it a day. I don't need to hang out with those guys.

Yikes. So what's your favorite choke? Favorite choke? Yeah. The arm triangle choke. Yeah? Mm-hmm. Why's that?

I don't know. I'm just really good at it. You just land it a lot? And the rear naked. I got the rear naked quite often. And then now, for some reason, I just keep seeing people's hands so I can just pop it over and then... Will you arm triangle mic real quick so everyone can see what this is?

It should be easy to do. Arm triangle mic real quick. Take your headphones off. All right. This is an arm triangle for all you non-MMA fans. I have to let her put her hands on me? You can do it standing. It's really easy.

It's pretty gross, dude. Here we go. On this way. So, like, if your arm's here, It's really easy. It's pretty gross, dude. Here we go, on this way. So, like, if your arm's here, I'll pop it. Walk him through it, Doug. And I go around here. So, he's basically doing a rear naked choke with an arm in. So, see, she has her elbow around Mike's neck with one arm up. And with this extra arm in there, it makes it tight enough where she can cut off all of his air supply, blood supply.

Do you want to actually choke him? I mean, do you want to feel it? You definitely should choke him out on camera. Yeah. CTP agrees. He agrees. Let's do it. All right. I've actually choke him? I mean, do you want to feel it? You definitely should choke him out on camera. Yeah. CTP agrees. He agrees. Let's do it. All right.

I've been choked unconscious. No, do it. I don't want to choke you unconscious. No, no, no. Don't choke me unconscious. Here, CTP. Try to give CTP the play-by-play. That little arm sneaks underneath that neck.

I think she can do it. You got to use your lats like this. Here we go. Squeeze. Got to get Mike's face. Oh, he's turning purple. He's turning purple. He tapped out. Woo. Squeeze. Gotta get Mike's face. Oh, he's turning purple. He's turning purple. He tapped out.

Woo. Yeah. Got a little dark there. It did. My hand started going. Oh, my God. So, wouldn't it be weird? So, she's legit.

She's legit. We confirmed it. She applied a very tight choke there. Yeah. And I've been choked unconscious with a gi before. Oh, the gi chokes are brutal yeah and there's a video of it if you uh youtube matraca blue belt it was a uh it was a ceremony for belt promotion and i felt like my head was gonna pop off and then i woke up yeah i was like

shit i was running in my sleep i was knocked out and I was doing this. Like a dog or something? Yeah, more like a cockroach. I was on my back. You were spasming. Your leg was kicking like this. The owner of the gym was like, oh, fuck. What did we just do? So what's your prediction for your first fight?

You going to land one of those? Go to decision? My first MMA fight is not going to decision. No? What's the prediction? It's either a tko or a choke yeah yep good taking people down and ground and pounding or or standing i would prefer to take her down depending on like what her game is but i've seen a lot of the amateur girls that i've seen fight they have no standing game and i'm gonna go to like a fight camp i am preparing myself for this i'm not gonna play games and go in there and pretend like I know

what I'm doing. I'm going in there prepared to kick some ass. Well, you're surrounded by a bunch of people who know what they're doing. I mean, you know, the best, you have the best connections. I would be terrified to fight you for that reason. I mean, the resources you have passing through, like if from a, from a CrossFitter perspective, that's like great games athletes every week, just kind of coming to hang out and teaching you what the best way to do things is. And you just got the best fighters just kind of hanging out at your, uh, at your gym and just rolling around. Yeah. We just had, um, a TJ Dillashaw who's actually fighting for the title fight in Vegas next, next month. And he taught me some pretty good wrestling takedowns. So that was awesome.

Not even fair. We need to pull some mats out and just see all of this. There you go. You can demo on me all day. I don't care. All right. Does Aubrey have you using the maces and the clubs and all the stuff that he put us through the other day? Yeah, I use those all the time.

I mean, they're perfect because it helps with my grip too. My forearms were pumped when we were doing that workout with him. Oh, yeah. If you don't know, MMA, especially wrestling, is a very grip-intensive sport. Oh, sure. So the stronger your grip, usually that's a pretty good indicator of how good of a fighter you're going to be. And jiu-jitsu, too. You know, being able to grab their wrist or the gi or behind their neck, whatever it is.

I just like being able to grab someone and know that they're not going to get my hand off. Like there's just no way. I've been grabbed by like wrestlers before who were, you know, they've wrestled their whole life and I'm in like a jujitsu match with them. They grab my wrist. I'm like, oh fuck, I'm not getting away from this guy. Next thing I know, I see the ceiling and I'm'm down. Yeah, and I'm slammed on the ground.

But yeah, I do. I love the mace. That's probably my favorite. Oh, yeah? Just because it really works all the stabilizer muscles. And just my shoulder girdle's good for clenching and holding people down. So that's probably my fave. Yeah, I like it too.

The other day, we were doing a bunch of different swings with it and a bunch of like like shovel scoops and stuff and today today and yesterday like like my low back like on my sides and my obliques on my sides like all my torso area that never really gets like a lot of direct attention like that is really super sore yep and i haven't been doing much kickboxing or wrestling lately so so especially right now because like if you're doing a lot of kickboxing wrestling like punching where you're doing lots like twists and stuff then you get a lot of work there but uh in crossfit or just weightlifting in general it's all kind of very straightforward straight backwards not a lot of rotational work or like side to side work so so i'm pretty lit up from that from the other day yeah yeah i bet

and side to side rotational work is i mean you have to do that for jujitsu and mma because you're constantly in awkward positions and trying to twerking. Yeah. Yeah. Twerking, not twerking. I said twerking, twerking, always twerking it. Let's take a break.

Yeah. Let's take a break real quick. When we come back, uh, I want to talk about, Oh yeah. I want to talk about, uh,

motivation. Yeah. Inspiration, motivation, all that stuff. This is Andrea Ager and you're listening to barbell shrug for the video version go to barbell shrug.com barbell shrug is brought to you by you to learn more about how you can support the show go to barbell shrug.com and sign up for the newsletter and we're

back with whitney miller and uh yeah so you came here to speak about motivation specifically. And, you know, I think the world needs more people to talk about motivation because most people live a pretty humdrum life. You know, they wake up at the same time, which you're supposed to from, I learned that earlier about sleep. No, but you know, people wake up and they, they do the same thing every day. You know, they go to their nine to five job. They, they just kind of, everything's very ritualized, not a lot of progress. Maybe just kind of like very, very small steps, not aggressively pursuing

anything. Yeah. I think more people probably need to hear about, uh, other people doing really cool things. Yeah. Um, well I think it's just because they're comfortable in their life, you know? And so when I went from, when I just made the announcement that I was going to go into MMA after Miss United States, I got a lot of resistance from people and I still do. I mean, my parents thought I was crazy. My mom was bawling. My dad didn't even want to talk to me and still they think it's ridiculous. Yeah.

And so I still deal with people like, why don't you just, you know, you could go work on the local news and you could do this and do an eight, nine to five job. And I'm thinking like, what are you thinking? Why would I want to do that? You know, and I guess they're thinking, why the hell would you want to get into a cage with somebody else? But it is about just pushing yourself and finding out what you're truly made of. Because when you, like I said earlier, when you do bust out of the little box that society says you have to be in, you're going to deal with resistance. But at the same time, you're going to feel so alive that it doesn't matter.

Yeah. I think that's where all the cool stories come from. Yeah. Is when you get out of your comfort zone. How many cool stories happened when you're in your comfort zone you don't go to a party and talk about that time you're in your comfort zone you talk about that time you took a risk and it paid off or you got messed up yeah yeah exactly the stories about like failure end up being just as entertaining yeah well i mean in jujitsu they say there's only there's only

winning and learning. There's no failing. So even if you don't have your... My coach never told me that. Maybe they just tell me that because I'm like, damn it! I hate this. I hate losing. They made that up for you. I know, right?

You're not failing, Whitney. You're not failing. But they do say, like, if you don't, if your hand doesn't get raised, and it's not that big of a deal because if you've rolled before, been in a tournament before, you know that you learn what you did wrong or what they did right or how you can improve or, you know, you just can look back at the match and become a better fighter.

Yeah, competition is going to point out the holes in your game way better than any training scenario. Oh, yeah, yeah. Exactly. You can be great on the mat at training, you know, in training, but as soon as you get into competition, when it pushes you outside of your comfort zone, because you have people watching

and you don't know who your opponent is. Yeah. Do you do any jujitsu now? Like, competitions? Or are you just, is your, okay. Yeah, I've had three tournaments, and I've meddled in all of them and this last tournament was really hard

because this girl was, she was a wrestler, I think. We had expected her to take me down and so she was trying to take me down, take me down. She was going for hip toss. She was going for hip toss, hip toss and I kept defending it and then I don't know, something clicked and I was able to take her down.

And I reversed her and she posted her arm out and all my weight came on top of her. Oh, no. I heard this loud pop in my ear and she was screaming bloody murder. And I looked down and her arm was just

completely the opposite way than it should be. So I get up and I was out. I was out. I was out. I acted like I had just broken my arm. I was so freaked out. I was so freaked out. Because I felt bad, you know?

I just hurt her. And I don't know. And now everyone's probably terrified of you. Like, oh, just don't fight that chick. She'll break your arm. Right. I know I go back to the gym that next week. They're like, oh, I saw your video.

You're breaking that girl's arm. I. I know I go back to the gym that next week. They're like, oh, I saw your video. You're breaking that girl's arm. I'm like, yeah. You need to at least act excited about it. So you freak out, psych out, psych out your opponents. We'll see.

Yeah. Now I feel like I got that out of the way. So I'm not going to be as totally freaked out if it happens again. It's like, oh, do you do at all?

Is it just no? I do know. I do no gi and gi. Okay. So I do both. Which one are you better at? Probably no gi because I've done that longer. But I'm actually really liking the gi now because there's all kinds of different sneaky little tricks that you can do.

So I go back and forth. One second real quick. For somebody who doesn't know, what the hell is a gi? Besides clarified butter. It's the martial arts pajamas people wear. Oh, okay. It's like a white karate suit looking thing yeah very nice yeah it's usually like a it's heavier than you think it's going to be like when you see it you're like oh it looks like a karate thing and when you like put one on it's a pretty thick canvas canvas very tough material makes a lot

of sense all right yeah and you can like use it choke people, and you can grab onto their gi to pull them down. It's practically a rope around your neck. Yeah, exactly. Just add a component to make things a little bit more spicy. I like it. It does. Everyone stare at Mike and make him uncomfortable. Is it working?

I think he loves it. You get most uncomfortable by her. He's soaking it up over there. Yeah. I feel good. So earlier you said that you won Miss USA. Miss United States, yeah. Miss United States.

In 2012. And what kind of competition was that? It's a beauty pageant. Beauty pageant? Yeah. So I went as, I won Miss Texas and then went to Miss United States and won that too. So basically you get judged. You have an interview, one-on-one interview

with the judges, and then you compete in swimsuit on stage, evening gown. And then if you make the top five, you have an onstage question. What's the prep like for that? Like training, nutrition, like I'm sure there's prep for like how you're going to answer the questions and stuff like that, I would imagine. Oh yeah. I mean, you have an interview coach, a walking coach, all kinds of, I mean, they come up with everything. And, um, but for me, I've always had a really muscular body. I mean, Connor was my trainer in college. What? Texas State? And so I always, a lot of my coaches told me that I kind of needed to chill out on like the weightlifting and everything. But that just wasn't really my style.

So I kept with it. And it hurt me in a few pageants. But I was like, screw you guys. Like I have to be tiny and skinny with big boobs. Like I'm never going to have that. Sorry. That sucks. They're like trying to fit you into a certain mold.

Yeah. So that's why, though, I did Miss Texas this past time because it was one week in advance. And I borrowed my dress shoes. Everything was like, I'm just going to go in there and be completely who I am. And if they don't like it, we'll so be it. And it stood out. And that's what I was saying. How'd that go? It was awesome. I mean, I won. I won that and I won the swimsuit. So I did pretty well. Yeah. One thing that really trips me out being around, because whenever I was training you back in

the day and the girl I was dating at the time was a pageant girl. I think we remember that, right? Yes. Yeah, she was good. But it's how competitive that was. Connor's like, I date hot chicks. Very few things to be proud of, but that's one of them. So anyways, I wouldn't watch that and being around that is how competitive that was

and I thought it was kind of silly for a while and I'm like these people are just this is dumb as shit then I go and watch them like these girls are not fucking around no like they're doing the the catty shit that goes on backstage blew my mind like you were talking about getting dresses stepped on and like oh no oh yeah

oh man that's the thing is that it's all buried underneath the surface, you know, and everybody's looking at each other like, claws are out, you know?

Oh, just fake niceness. And like, you have to, I mean, Is there a reality show about this yet? I mean,

there should be. Yeah, sounds like it. But the thing is like, I feel like if it was on a reality show, the pageant girl would just put on

their pretty pageant smile. I'm like, oh no, don't do anything. You know? I think they didn't catch him in a moment. Probably. Because it is very stressful. That's for damn sure.

I've never had anything sketchy happen to me. I did have a girl step on my dress on stage. But backstage, I've never had anything really go on. You didn't have the skills yet to triangle choke her. Right. But you did eat M&M's in front of them, right? Or Skittles, maybe? I definitely ate's in front of them, right? Or Skittles maybe? I definitely ate food in front of them. Yeah, bad.

They were like starving themselves and you're like eating food. Whatever. I ate an entire large... You psyched them out right there. You just fucked them all up. They're like, what the hell? Yeah. But I ate an entire large pizza the night before. Oh my god. I did.

The night before I went off to finals. I wouldn't even do that if I had a pageant. Oh, it was so good. I can only imagine. And the satisfaction of their faces is probably the best part of all of it. Oh yeah. Yeah. Just sitting there eating it. Like we have finals the next day. No big deal. So you're training MMA now. Do you follow any type of diet? I mean, we're at Paleo FX. I know. I don't really follow any type of diet. Just making sure I do get enough protein and calories is important for me because I am training so much. What does that mean? And I like to

focus on earth-grown nutrients. So anything from the earth, I'm down with. And like grass-fed beef and bison and all that kind of good stuff. How much protein are you getting a day? I don't know. I eat protein with every meal.

Oh, okay. So you're eating it every meal. Yep. Okay. Some type of animal protein. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

And we go hunting. We like to hunt. And so we eat all of our meat and it's very lean. So I love that stuff. What type of animals are you hunting? Deer. Deer? Deer.

We're in Texas. Man, you're more man than I am. I don't hunt at all. I feel bad. I don't hunt at all either. You feel bad for the animal or you feel bad that you don't hunt? It's more of a time thing. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't mind shooting things. Yeah. Well, I mean, as long as you use the entire animal, that's the thing. I mean, I posted a photo of me with my deer that I shot and people freaked out. Like, calm down. Like, I'm using every single piece of this animal and I'm feeding myself for like a year and a half.

And you're just going to go down to the supermarket and have no idea where your meat came from. So don't come to me saying I'm cruel to animals. Yeah, those people freak out about hunting. And it's like, dude, you're eating a cow that came from the store that lived in a food lot. And this deer was just chilling, having a good time. This lived a whole life, just like out in the woods, kicking it. And then I shot it, which was cool, I guess, but whatever. Now I'm going to eat this thing for a year. It dies instantly. You know what I mean? Instead of going through this torturous life. Yeah. Boom. Over. Food. Food. Tickets.

Hi, Christmas. So you were her coach during Miss USA stuff? I think it was like right before. It was probably like, no, it was before Miss Texas sometime. It was right when I got in college. We started whenever you were doing the Texas Ski Ranch bikini show. Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Yeah. That was early on. I won that, too. Yeah, you killed it. Everybody thought it was awesome. That was a good time. We had a good time. Connie's taking all the credit. No, I wasn't.

Dude, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I wouldn't say coach. I wasn't a coach then. I was a personal trainer. I was getting paid $15 an hour to train college students. But the funny thing about when I met Whitney, though. Did you just walk people from machine to machine back then? No, dude.

I did real stuff. I didn't have any client retention because I made them work though. Did you just walk people from machine to machine back then? No, dude. I did real stuff. I didn't have any client retention because I made them work out. They hated it. Yeah, he did. I remember the rowing machine. Yeah. That's when I discovered the rower. Yeah.

It's great. It's good stuff. But the thing about it was most of our clients at the time were students, right? So I could find anyone on Facebook. So I get on Facebook the day I was supposed to meet you. And I look up Whitney Miller, Texas State and your profile didn't pop up, but this like, for whatever reason, I'd had just a string of like really unathletic, like nerds essentially. And I was having, that's what I was getting. Right. And it was such a low, low cost that anyone would try it out. So we had zero

retention. And I looked this girl up and I'm like, man, this is going to be a miserable experience. This girl was like, I don't know. I mean, I don't want to judge anyone, but she just didn't seem like she was into it. So I'm sitting here, and this girl passed me on the shoulder. I turn around expecting to see just this chick that was way overweight and didn't want to train, and it was Whitney. I was like, hey, what's up? Hi. Are you Connor?

I was like, yes, I am. Yes, I am. She goes, I'm Whitney. I was like, thank God. I've never been so happy to be conned. That's awesome. I'm glad I came to work today. I don't think you've told me that story before.

I don't think I did either. But people do say they have issues finding me on Facebook. Yeah. I don't know. But it was a good surprise. Yeah. We had a good time. That was fun.

Hell yeah. And then Texas State was nothing but a bunch of fun. Yeah. Bobcats are crazy animals. So as a person who's always trying to push yourself to the next level, you've got to have a good time. That was fun. Hell yeah. And then Texas State was nothing but a bunch of fun. Yeah. Bobcats are crazy animals. So as a person who's always trying to push yourself to the next level, you got to have a bucket list. Like things you're looking to do in the future that you're super excited about. You just haven't gotten to them yet.

Like what are some things that you're looking to do over like the next five years that you're super excited about? Well, definitely just adventurous stuff. You know, like we were talking about shark diving. I have to do that eventually. I would like to climb some sort of crazy mountain would be mount whitney i know that's not that crazy but i i do have to go do that just to do it um and my mma fight which is what i'm focusing on now and then whatever comes after that you know i'm interested to see where i take myself after that you you know?

And I don't really know exactly. I have to wait until I get there or when I get close and figure it out. Find that one thing that's just out of my reach. You think you're going to do an MMA fight and then just be like, okay, I did it. Now I'm just going to go on to something else? Or are you going to try and stick with it and make a mini career out of fighting MMA? I don't know if I'm going to make it a full career because it is something that takes over your life completely. I mean, you live and breathe

fighting. But it's definitely something that I want to knock off my bucket list. Am I going to compete once or fight once and say I never will do it again? Probably not because knowing me, I'm like, win or lose, I got to get back in there. You know, they say it's addicting. So I can see myself. Yeah, if you win, you're going to be like,

I want to go win again. If you lose, you're like, I don't want to stop on a loss right i gotta keep going so i'm sure i'll have like two or three fights don't listen mom or dad seems like just a curiosity driven life like in two years there's no telling what the hell you're gonna be doing yeah that's a cool place to be you know i really think it's gonna be good yeah looking forward to just life in general kick ass yeah did you have any girls there in your pageant like totally screw up the questions I really think it's going to be good. Yeah. I'm looking forward to just life in general. Kick ass. Yeah. Did you have any girls there in your pageant like totally screw up the questions like the bloopers you see on YouTube where they're like, what's the number one thing in the world

right now that you could put all your effort into to fix that would make the world a better place? And they're just like, they have nothing to say and they're just embarrassed in front of thousands of people. Yeah. I think a couple of girls kind of did that when I competed, but we can't really hear what they're saying. But they came back just in tears. Like, I don't know what I was doing.

I've seen some some pretty bad ones, but I don't mind talking in front of people. So it's OK for me. I got a little nervous on my question at Miss United States and I don't think I did very well. I did well enough obviously but it's nerve wracking up there. You don't know what they're going to ask you and everybody's just staring at you. Yeah. Judging you. Yeah. I feel like I'd be

terrible at that. Yeah. I would be. What'd they ask you? Whitney? What'd they ask you on stage? Oh they, I got a pretty easy question actually. They asked me if I become Miss United States, what would be my, how would I promote the pageant or something like that? I don't know. It was worded.

They like to word it. How would you market us better? We're out of ideas. Please tell us. Help. We just fired our marketing guy. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to beat the hell out of other girls for the good of the beauty pageants.

Yeah. I did make that announcement on my final walk. We have like a final walk here last night as Miss United States. And it's a very like emotional, like, thank you for this. And thank you, family. And I love you. So people were shocked when you said that. Oh, man.

It was like the very end. And I said, you know, what's next for me is you don't hear Miss United States entering an MMA fight. And then I like flexed to the crowd. And half of the crowd, one the crowd and half of the crowd, one of them, or half the crowd, some of them were like army guys. Yeah.

Talking about. The other half looked like I just came and like slapped their grandmother right in front of their face. Like this bitch is crazy. Or they're thinking this bitch is going to get her ass kicked. Yeah. Hey, even better. Whatever.

You guys watch and we'll see. Maybe I will. Do you know who you're fighting already? I don't. I don't. Mm-mm. After it happens, you have to send us the link to the YouTube video of you kicking someone's ass.

Yeah. You guys will just have to come back. Hang out. Yeah. We should probably just come back for the fight. Is it going to be here in town? Yeah. Yeah.

We'll have it here in Austin. I like Austin. We'll come watch Austin, so I've got no problem coming back to this town. Yeah, it's a pretty good spot. It's cool again. Don't move here, unless you're Mike or Doug. Yeah, they have those shirts. And CTP.

Houston is nice. Don't move to Austin or whatever they say. They don't want any more people here. Nah. Not really. You said the other day, Connor, they didn't build roads. Hop any more people here. Nah. Not really. You said yesterday, Connor, they didn't build roads. Yeah. Hoping people wouldn't show up. I was listening to the mayor

of Austin, I think it was, talking on the radio, saying they took this approach in the 80s that they saw the trend of people moving to Austin and drove. And they're like, well, if we just don't build any more roads or infrastructure, if we don't build it, they won't come. And that didn't work, so now we're like, fuck. So now we're just sitting in a parking lot everywhere we go. It's like this is the fastest growing city in America and you don't want to build another

highway or you don't want like a subway or a train or something. Let's make it a little easier on people. It seems to be growing no matter what, huh? Yeah. Something's good here. All right, let's wrap this up. What do you want to promote? Where can we find you? You can find me. Since you're so hard to find on huh? Yeah. Something's good here. All right, let's wrap this up. What do you want to promote? Where can we find you?

You can find me. Since you're so hard to find on Facebook. Yeah, well, you can find me on Facebook. My handle is Miss2Jits, M-I-S-S, the number two, and then J-I-T-S, so like Miss United States 2 Jiu Jitsu. And we have a YouTube series going on kind of about my transformation from beauty pageant winner, beauty queen or whatever, to MMA badass.

Nice. But you get to see like the ups and downs. You'll see my training. You'll see me training with a lot of the UFC fighters and some fun stuff with Jason Ellis, the professional skateboarder out in L.A. I rolled with him on one of the episodes. I know Jason. I saw you choking Joe Rogan the other day on Instagram. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I trained with Joe, Joe Rogan not too long ago. So that was really cool. But you'll get to see me totally break down and cry and bitch and whine, but then you'll see like

the good parts. So I really wanted to be real and raw in what I'm actually going through. So that's on YouTube. Is that kind of like documentary style? Yeah, documentary style. Oh, yeah. YouTube, Miss Two Jits. Twitter, Miss Two Jits.

Facebook, Miss Two Jits. It's all Miss Two Jits. Onnit.com slash... Onnit.com slash Whitney or Miss Two Jits. They'll take you to the same page. Nice.

Yeah. Thanks for joining us. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. This was awesome. Yeah. Make sure to go to barbellstroke.com send for the newsletter thanks see ya