Barbell Shrugged - 163- The Mindset You Should Adopt To Be Great In & Out of the Gym w/ UFC Coach Ryan Parsons

Episode Date: February 11, 2015

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interviewed Ryan Parsons, UFC fight coach and manager, and he teaches us how to be successful at anything. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe. I'm standing here with Chris Moore, Doug Larson. We have CTP behind the camera. And we have traveled long and far. About an hour up the road.

So long. To Dana Point to hang out with Ryan Parsons. He has been managing and training fighters. You said that the first MMA fight managed or or trained folks for was in 1998 kind of was the first time i was in the corner of it you're in the corner i didn't know what i was doing there but i was there i don't think nobody in 1998 knew what they were doing there i don't think well even now there's no school you go to you just kind of go figure it out yeah and you were just cornering anybody you're cornering some of the most famous guys

in the world of mma yeah the one thing I was fortunate about is I was surrounded by really talented people who got started early. Isn't that the secret? Sounds familiar. It is, yeah. If you want to learn something, really learn it, go find the very best person in the world and copy what they do. If you copy it over and over again, you put your own spin on it, and then you're off in

a different direction. Yeah, that's your own thing. Before we go any further, make sure to go to barbellshrug.com. Sign up for that newsletter, folks. Ryan, we want to talk a little bit about kind of how you put it all together. We were talking about before the show, you have like this huge wealth of knowledge. You've been around for a long time.

You've been training and managing athletes, what, 16 years now. And then also not just that, but you did chiropracticpractic right i have a degree in chiropractic yeah so that was kind of the beginning of it i wrestled in college with dan henderson how'd that go because i'm not with the same weight class right the same weight class he's much larger yeah he's about 200 pounds yeah you're on're on the same team, though. Yeah. I mix it up in training a little bit, I imagine. Yeah, you know what? I worked out with Dan for years. Never did I land a punch. I never got a takedown.

I'm pathetic. I can't say one positive thing I did the entire years I trained with Dan Anderson. Nothing good came. If you asked him, he'd say, oh, Ron, he's a good guy. He tries hard. Well, you know, he knocked me out once and the worst thing about getting knocked out

by Dan is he followed up and went man I barely hit ya which is the worst thing that you want to hear after you've been you want to hear

man I've never hit anyone like that before I had to really unload on your jaw it's so rock hard the same thing happened to me Doug busted up my nose

and I was like oh my god that was the worst I've ever been hit he goes I didn't hit you very hard. Thanks a lot, bud. A little respect, guys. Come on. Make him feel good. Dust him off a little bit.

You're like, oh man, my hand. You gotta be shaking it out. I think I broke it. You could do that in Iron Chin, man. Never. The chiropractic, so the fighting chiropractic. So I wrestled, when the fighting, chiropractic. So, yeah. So, I wrestled. When they continued, this is like in 1994, 95, 96. I went to chiropractic school.

Heath Sims, who's now the head MMA coach at Evolve MMA, who was a 2000 Olympian. We lived together. Dan lived with us. We would have training camps or Randy would come down. So, as I got my chiropractic degree, they all kept wrestling. Randy fought first in 1997 and then Dan... That's Randy Couture. Yeah, Randy Couture. And then Dan, who is the number one

U.S. wrestler, two-time Olympian, who was making $12,000 a year, in 1998, they said, hey, do you want to fight next week in Brazil? If you win three fights in the night, you get $12,000. Hell yeah. That's a strong incentive. Yeah, it was. So Dan hopped on a flight and went to Brazil, won three fights, the night, you get $12,000. Hell yeah. It's a strong incentive. Yeah, it was.

So Dan hopped on a flight and went to Brazil, won three fights, came back, and that's how his career got started. So I continued to— He had only had wrestling training up to that point. Yeah, Dan had no—no one had any other type of training there because all the training that we do now is stuff that we've developed and taken from other people over this, you know, past 15 years or something. So you talk about putting it all together. It started really not knowing anything.

Yeah. And then I took my chiropractic degree and first started with, with that side of the business. Yeah. You know, I'd wrestled with these guys, but you know, my,

my strength at that point for them, they were all better wrestlers than I was, was chiropractic. So I would do soft tissue work, which kind of after about three, two months in chiropractic practice, I realized there's way more going on than just a bone being out of alignment.

So that led to a study of nutrition. A little more than cracking. Yeah, there's a lot to it, right? So next was nutrition. So when Randy dropped from heavyweight to light heavyweight, I kind of did a whole bunch of diet stuff back then. And then in 2004, I think it was,

Rulon Gardner fought. Rulon was Olympic champion in the Sydney Olympics. It was the most televised event of the Olympic Games. He fought one time in Japan and I trained him with it along with Dan. And then did some management stuff for Rulon and figured out, wow, I love the business side of

this. I'd like to negotiate. I'd like putting it all together. So that's kind of how those two worlds mixed. And with that, there's been fighters who have, in Japan, dancing girls for ring entrances. So we would find the girls, help with the choreography, select music, create branding around athletes. Renaissance, man.

Yeah, it's kind of putting it all together. It's really a producer role with things. Like a choreographer and everything. Well, you know, I worked on a movie a few years ago called Here Comes the Boom. And I didn't know what I did. You know, I'd never seen it until I saw the producer of the movie. And I trained Kevin for that movie. Kevin James?

Kevin James, yeah. And in it, you know, I hired the, found the fighters to be in it, worked with the set designers, did a lot of the fight choreography, so work with stunts, work with Kevin, all these different

elements of it, putting together this one final package which is the fights that ended up in the movies. And I saw the producer work on the movie,

I said, oh my God, that's what I do. I just had never seen anyone. Right, right. Yeah, if you looked at it from the outside.

You know, there was like a label to put on it. Exactly, yeah. You were if you looked at it from the outside. You know, there was like a label to put on it. Exactly, yeah. You were just doing stuff like, oh, that's a producer. I followed my passions is what I did. I was interested in entertainment and sports and health and nutrition and all those things. It didn't make any sense because you can't connect the dots looking forward.

You can only do it going back. So in that process, it kind of of the evolution of me you know i saw it that that time on the movie gone there's someone who does this type of stuff we take works with all these different specialists and puts everything together yeah and really that's what i do now for all the athletes i work with that's what i do i make sure that everything is put together i clear a path so they can go do what they do. Yeah, that's something we've talked about. Doug and I have trained MMA. Doug's actually fought MMA. I'm a good spectator.

I like to watch other people get punched as well. But one of the things we actually draw a lot of similarities between, say, CrossFit and MMA is because in MMA you've got to have a boxing coach, a wrestling coach, Muay Thai, and Jiu-Jitsu. And CrossFit's kind of the same thing. You have weightlifting, gymnastics. You've got to have a boxing coach, a wrestling coach, Muay Thai, and jiu-jitsu. And CrossFit's kind of the same thing. You have weightlifting, gymnastics. You've got a running coach. You try to tie together a lot of different things.

You've got to tie it all together. Competing influences and demands. And it's one of those things. It's like, how do you plan for a fighter? And we run into the same problems with, say, CrossFitters as well. It's like, you've got to make this big plan for a fighter. And then you've got to get those coaches that maybe even talk to each other

or maybe they won't talk to each other. The boxing coach feels like he needs to make the athlete feel like he has to work really hard and then he goes to the wrestling coach an hour later and the wrestling coach wants to beat him in the ground too. And there's this big risk of overtraining. Well, it's not just in CrossFitter MMA, right? It's in life. So if you're a parent with three kids, you know's not just in CrossFit or MMA, right? It's in life.

So if you're a parent with three kids, you know this story. You live it every day, right? So yeah, and that's a concern, especially more along the training side of things. If you do CrossFit every day, the big issue, in my opinion, maybe because I'm 43 now and I'm stiff a lot more than I was at 23. Right. Happens to the best of us. Yeah. Yeah, certainly. But figuring out pacing and for me, pacing is everything. Right. And if you're paced correctly, it's hard to get over-trained. But when you're in the middle of training, if you have a competition coming up or you want to lose weight, you want to do something that, you know, inspires you to go put all this effort into work every day of what you do, you lose sight of the big picture. You have to, to get that involved with things.

So having good coaching around or having someone on the outside going, Hey man, or Hey girl, that's, this isn't working for you right now. That's so important. So if you're working, if you're working with a bunch of guys who kind of pride themselves on being the fucking toughest guys around, and we can talk about toughness here if you want to in a second, I remember you commented on it earlier, but guys that are willing to work very, very hard. They want to be the best in the world. They want to be the best fighter in the world.

They're willing to get beat to shit on a daily basis. How do you as a manager, as a coach, monitor their intensity day to day so they don't push it too much? Because they're probably willing to, but it doesn't mean they should. Yeah. You know, unfortunately, the guys that I work with, and females, it's not just men anymore, working hard is not the issue. So just like you said, it's helping them pull back and realizing that more isn't always more. You can tell that your coaching is not going to do it again, go harder, do more. That's a monkey can do that, right?

But knowing your body, knowing your age, knowing where you are injury-wise, how far from competition, what are your overall goals? These are things that have to be considered every day. And the way that I manage it is i'm there every day you know i if i'm not there then there's a phone call that's made to our mel is our muay thai coach in in san diego or if they lift we do a lot of olympic lifting now cool you know i may i make sure that their olympic lift coach knows hey you know pat cummings is you

know his knees bothering him and he trained real hard today or hey pat was feeling great let's push him a little bit more. So you're the central coach amongst all these other coaches. Yeah. And staying engaged, highly engaged. You say, like, do you think most MMA athletes have that central coach right now? No. And how much of a difference is that making?

Most training, not just MMA training, is terrible. Like, I've been to a whole bunch of MMA teams. Successful guys going, you guys do this? And you're that good? So clearly there's a lot of boats that you can take to they're successful despite themselves yeah but you know what could it be if you really got things dialed in and really gave some thought and consideration to why are you doing it like i know a guy i'm not going to say his name he's fought in the ufc he would come in on sparring day good man i'm doing 10 rounds today and i'd always ask them the same question. How many rounds is your fight?

He went, three. And I would look at him. He'd tell you, I sweat on the mat so I don't bleed in the streets, coach. It's so silly, right? And then unfortunately, he failed the brain test and can't count backwards from 10 to 1. How's he going to keep up with the rounds then?

I don't know. He sorted out. He could finish the third rank and like that was 10 if I say we're gonna run hard for three minutes or run hard for 10 minutes you're gonna start out that run very different right absolutely yeah so you have to know again why are you doing what you're doing the goal is not to go fight 10 rounds and you see that will never will never see that happen right the goal is to go fight three rounds as hard as you can. And your pacing and energy are totally different if you're going to do that. Like I knew this girl,

she was a speed skater on the national team, 21 years old. She came to me cause her neck was bothering her. And you know, she was super muscular and a total mess. I mean, she was sore, her joints hurt,

her knees hurt. And I don't know anything about speed skiing. So I was asking her about her training and she would do these long you know four hour runs and two hour super heavy lifts and track work and all this other stuff i said well how long is a speed skating race that you do she goes the longest one's five minutes i said okay and over the course of a competition how many would you do in a day and she she goes, five. So the most she would do is five, five minute goes in a day. Why are you running for four hours? That's like a marathon.

It made no sense. And here's my theory, and I could be wrong. All the best speed skating coaches come from Korea. A lot of the Asians can be insecure about how we see this in Japanese, and may they overtrain like crazy because they're afraid that they're not strong enough as a Westerner. They're naturally bigger. They make up for it by being super mentally tough and training really, really hard.

So you have a coach who came over here now, maybe with from a career, this is just a theory, right? You train super hard, you came over here, we apply that same mentality to athletes who aren't built like that, who that's not how they should be training. And all of a sudden, you have a host of issues.

She didn't make the Olympics and her career was over. So for me, extending careers, not just so you can, if Pat's here, Pat can compete two more years, it could be a million dollars for him.

But also, if we are smart. And also when he's 45, he's walking still. Well, that's the second part. I have a background in healthcare. I want to make sure that your brain works and you can move on to other things in your life.

Yeah. I mean, it really is possible to train for 20 years, even in something like the UFC. You just mentioned Dan Henderson. He's fighting, like, what, next month or something like that? He's fighting tomorrow. That's pretty extraordinary. 44, the oldest active UFC fighter, 44 years old right now. Randy competed at 47. Yeah.

I've been in the UFC for, like, 20 years. That was incredible. Yeah. So you can do it, and the UFC for like 20 years. That was incredible. Yeah. So you can do it. And I think, you know, my mom's a yoga instructor. She said something really interesting to me. She goes, train today like you're going to be training 20 years from now. Because when you're young, if anyone's super young here and your warmup is like mine, which is you did this a couple times. You're ready to go.

Let's go. Right? Good. That catches up to you. And I know you're 20 you're never going to get old but if it happens

if you're lucky enough the shroud of invincibility falls for assault when you get to your 30s like shit man things are hurting I see that all the time people want to get strong

like today you know they start lifting you know they want to lift more weight they want to put one more plate

on the barbell and they beat themselves up over it and they want to make a 25 pound They want to put one more plate on the barbell. And they beat themselves up over it. And they want to make a 25-pound jump in a single week. And I'm like, you've only got the rest of your life to get strong. Yeah. Like, if you were to just put, like, five pounds on the bar once a month for five years, you'd be breaking world records.

So that obviously isn't what people do. Well, that's our society, right? So down yeah we want it now we want our food fast we want things to happen fast everything has to happen right now but that catches up to you you'll make a lot of progress over the course of a month or two and then everyone will be giving you all this like this constant appreciation and encouragement and they'll make you feel like like feel like you're doing a really good job because you put 30 pounds on your back squat not knowing you're going to be hurt in two weeks. So you're way up and then you're way down for a long time.

Yeah, you overestimate what you can do in a month and underestimate what you can do in a year. Yeah. What do you do with athletes who are in their 20s? They're fighters. These are the most aggressive people on earth right these are the most testosterone filled i mean they're willing to go in a ring with somebody else and just pound it out yeah uh what how do you get them to slow down i mean you talk to them yeah yeah you have to figure out what motivates and inspires somebody everybody's

different but talking to someone goes a long way. And if you help them, especially at a young age, it'd be nice if I had someone to do this for me, right? You educate them to be and go, listen, here's where you are. Here's all your strengths. Here's where I think we can improve upon. This is where I want to take you. This is where I want to go with you together.

And we head in this direction. And along the way, you gently nudge them forward or pull them back. Nothing needs to be that dramatic about it. So psychology is the most important piece. Yeah. If your mental game isn't there, you see it all the time. Someone gets famous in the UFC and they flip out. Getting famous is very difficult.

To maintain any type of success over a long period of time, you have to make sure that your values are in order, that you have control of your emotional state, you learn how to communicate, and you figure out what's important and move in that direction. And the stuff that's holding you down, whether that's people or a certain business, whatever you're doing, is learning how to say no and get rid of that. To be that involved with some of these fighters, does that mean you have to take on less fighters than some other people potentially to give that level of guidance? In my opinion yes. Now in MMA there's these big super camps where you go and there's 80 really

good fighters and there's a lot of benefits to it where you have great workout partners. Hell of an energy in a place like that I imagine. Yeah there is. But the downside is that chances are you're not going to get a lot of attention. So the athletes that I work with they get a ton. They can call me whenever they want. We saw you today. You stayed, I don't know when the session ended but at least 15 20 minutes

just watching these two guys spark carefully making observations being patient watching carefully staying the extra miles being engaged getting all the data you could yeah and i think that you know the the rapport and relationship you build with with that type of um energy that you put in i think it pays off in the long run there it's riskier right because you don't have a whole large stable of fighters if someone gets hurt or leaves or does whatever right it's a lot riskier but you know not really in this in this part in this world for the money i just really enjoy the development of it and and taking someone and really changing the direction of their life so as a a coach with that style, does that mean you have a lot less turnover

than some of the big camps would have where you get fewer guys that would come in just for the eight weeks before their fight, train the last bit of their camp, and then they're out of there? Do you tend to hold on to people for a long time? The athletes I do work with, we work together over a period of years. And for me, that's real important, too, because that coach-athlete or manager-athlete relationship is a dynamic one that's always changing. It's kind of like, well, a relationship with anyone, but it's magnified in this sport. So I think building that relationship and helping them go different directions.

And part of my job, too, is to help them develop relationships with other coaches. It can't all be me, right? It's like maybe in CrossFit. There's no scarcity mindset here. You want them to engage. I do. Get as much feedback as possible. It helps them.

Yeah, I want them to have relationships with other coaches. I want them to train. Everything they need to do to keep things fresh. And my job, again, is to keep the big picture in mind and everything that we're doing is heading in this direction. How many athletes are you managing now? Now I have five. Five.

That's not very many. No, but I train three others. I was thinking it would be at least two or three times that much. No, you know, it kind of comes and goes. I think my ideal number

would probably be eight to ten. Yeah. But it has to be the right person. Yeah, what do you look like in a young buck? You know,

the first thing, I can tell if someone's good by the way they walk in the door. I'm almost never wrong with that. It doesn't mean that they can go all the way, but I know the moment someone walks in and I'll find myself, it could be a whole room of people like you saw today. And I'll find myself just watching one or two people. And I know, okay, there's something, I may not even know what it is. It's like, you know, finding something you have some type of attraction to, it's just this feeling that you get. And then you have to evaluate a whole bunch of other things. With Pat, Pat's a great example.

I knew the moment he walked in the gym, he trained with Lil' Nugger for the first time. I knew he was going to be good, but I didn't know. Wrestlers, a lot of times when you hit them, they don't like it because there's no striking in wrestling. This is Pat Durkin for the audience. Yeah, so at King's MMA, I brought him up there for a sparring day, and there's this guy there who weighs 300 pounds,

and for two minutes is the toughest man on the, he's just flying knees. And he hits Pat with a three-punct combination, ding, ding, ding. Switch kicks, kicks him right in the face, and Patrick spots you, goes, and throws a right hand right down the middle. And Rafael Cordero goes, I give him my stamp. And we don't want to do that a lot because it's really dangerous. The little impact that you can take to your head in training, the better. But you have to figure that out.

If you're going to get in your underwear and go fight in a cage for your lunch money, you better make sure that when you get hit that this is a place you want to be. If you hit me like that, I want to go home. I don't belong in there. You've got to be fully committed to this pursuit. Yeah, and there's a small number of people who can do that. For those of you who aren't fight fans, who don't fully appreciate it,

that walk to the cage is so much. It is so heavy. There's so much going on. And then the moment where the banners come back and you're walking back to your corner and you see your fighter, you've spent years sometimes just standing there across from another really tough guy

with these little gloves on and you have no idea what's going to... Who the hell knows what's going to happen in that situation? Yeah, and everything is on the line

in every fight. It is a level of intensity that's hard to appreciate unless you've been there. Yeah. Especially in the stadium that's probably just loud as shit

and you've got 50,000 people looking at you live plus millions of viewers on TV. Yeah. It's an interesting... But that's why you do it, right?

That rush, and to see when your boys or gals go out and do really well, execute the plan, do their best and all that shit, I mean,

it must be a hell of a rush. It is, yeah. You either leave there as high as you can be or as low as possible. I mean, when you lose a fight, it's, you know,

everyone goes and that's the end of it. In the locker room after a big loss, it is... Yeah. It's like going to a wake. and that's the end of it. In the locker room after a big loss, it is. Yeah. It's like going to a wake. Yeah, it's tough to watch.

You never know what to do. There's nothing to say. When you hang your heart and your soul on it, everything you've got, you put into it. I mean, these guys are living, I guess, getting up at crack of dawn, going to bed late. Their life, everything they do, they are fighters. Well, to me, I have my two favorite type of entertainments

or fighters are fighters and singers. And to me, I have my two favorite type of entertainments or fighters are fighters and singers. And to me, they're very similar because to do it properly, you have to emote. You have to give everything that you have

and you have to put it out there. And the fighters who do that attract lots of fans where they win or lose. You see it like if you watch, I love The Voice. That's my favorite show. But you can see the person

who goes out there when they sing. It's the emotion some real about that you feel it yeah so tell us no holding back you can't no and i think that's why we love you know we love fighters because it's it transcends any type of culture or language it's very basic if you if you're not a fight fan i i would imagine you have some type of visceral reaction to it wherever it's negative or positive, no one's kind of in the middle about it.

If you were in Starbucks and a fight broke out, you would turn away from your latte and look at it instinctually and go, oh shit, and you would not take your eyes off it. Even the fights where a fight broke out in the crowd and everybody looked away from the fight and looked in the crowd at the fight. Even the fighters in the ring are kind of dancing around, they're kind of looking over their shoulder at the fight

in the crowd. You see a fight up there, dude? Who's going to win? Oh around, they're kind of looking over their shoulder at the fight in the crowd. Are you going to fight up there, dude? Who's going to win? Oh, wait, we're fighting. I don't know who said it. They said if there's on one corner a baseball game, another a soccer game, a third one a basketball game,

and the fourth corner there's a fight, where's everyone standing? It's a very natural, instinct-driven type of endeavor, and I think that's why it's so fascinating. It keeps me coming back. I still can't figure it out. I still can't figure the game out. I guess there's no hiding behind any bullshit

in the ring. There's not, no. You learn the real deal pretty fast by somebody. Let's take a break real quick. When we come back, Ryan's going to teach us his secret move for winning any bar fight. Okay, I have that actually. Oh shit. going to teach us his secret move for winning any bar fight. Okay. I have that, actually.

Oh, shit. This is Tim Ferriss, and you are listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter. And we're back with Ryan Parsons. I kind of jokingly said you were going to show us

your secret trick to winning any bar fights. Well, first off, I don't get in bar fights. I've been in two fights my whole life. But I have this friend of mine who's a Krav Maga guy. Little guy. He's a stand-up comedian, too. And he told me, he said, we started talking about fighting because I've been in over 100 street fights.

I said, well, that means you're an asshole. If you've been in more than three fights in I said well that means you're an asshole if you've been in more than three fights in your life that means you're an asshole you started it yeah so what he would

do and he's a little guy and he would do this he would start like this and he would go doink and he would

back like hold your hand up like where your nose would be he would do like this and go just smack your nose if someone smacks your nose would be. He would do like this and go. Just smack your nose? And he goes, if someone smacks your nose and goes, rah, rah.

And he goes, I hit him on the tip of their nose. And he goes, then I would go crazy for 30 seconds and usually throw up after. By then, you're usually getting broken up. And so you can go full bore. 30 seconds. That's what you have to do. That's all you need, really. I don't think I've been in that.

Did you give him the raccoon eyes I heard what was it Henzo Gracie telling a story about why you give guys raccoon eyes

like he got mugged one time or tried to get mugged he took the guy down punched him he falls the guy back a couple

blocks finds him and then goes when you find a guy like that you get him on the ground you gotta beat

him up real good so he doesn't do that cause you gonna go find an old lady and just fucking you give him

raccoon eyes what's that you pop him right in both eyes get the two worst fucking black eyes ever and you fucking hit him real good an old lady and just fucking, you give them raccoon eyes. What's that? You pop them right in both eyes getting the two worst fucking black eyes ever and you fucking hit them

real good and smash them and he never does that shit again. Yeah. I'm not a street fighter. We want to talk about how to taper for, how do you set up

like a training program overall? I mean, when you have so many skills, how do you segment the different skills? How do you integrate them skills, how do you segment the different skills? How do you integrate them all and how do you get that taper

leading up to it? Yeah, I would imagine if you're a CrossFitter, you run into the same problem that a lot of MMA guys do and that there's not enough time in the day

to train enough of everything. Doing too much. You can't do enough cardio. You can't lift enough. You can't stretch enough. You can't do all this stuff. Your body will break down. So in MMA,

it's the same thing. And we have to kind of choose the direction that you're going to go based on your current skill set, where you're at injury-wise, who's your next opponent, when your next opponent is. So now for, say, eight weeks out of a fight camp, I do a written training plan. So on a spreadsheet we have the dates,

every day is written down, times of day, and then we map a schedule out for the eight weeks before we start. And it never works. Planning is essential, but you've got to throw it out. Yeah, because I've never had one play out like we wrote it the whole time. But if you take the time to do that, again, you have an idea of where we are big picture-wise.

We color code weeks based on intensity. So, okay, we're going to start, ease into it, we're going to push, we're going to pull back, we're going to go harder, then we're going to taper and then come fight week ago. I feel like the colors

help the athlete kind of. Yeah, that's a recent thing. You can tell them we're going to back it off, but if it's an all in yellow or red, then they know not to go.

Yeah. It's a little more obvious. And I think it helps them kind of get a sense of what the next eight weeks are going to be like because it's really, really hard. If you have a competition, anything coming up, you start focusing on it, you're thinking about it, your sleep's a little bit different. All these things start to happen.

If you have a plan that goes, okay, hey, we've thought this out. We've thought our technique out. We've thought our game plan out. We've thought our training structure out. Here's what we're going to do. And then that's great for future reference. So if you felt really good in that last fight, you can go, okay, well, this worked. Here's a couple things we need to tweak.

Because everyone, whenever I finish the training camp, I go, damn, I learned this, and I don't know how I ever did this job without it. You pick up these things along the way, and then they get dumped back into the next one. So I really like to break everything down, think everything out, and then not be dumped back into the next one so i really like to break everything down think everything out and then not be married to what it is be flexible enough to go okay here's here's how i think we're gonna go and within this we have lots of leeway and and free time you're documenting the changes so they go okay when i felt awesome we may not stuck with the original plan but we documented those changes so we can stick with that next time

yeah and the nice thing too like i i have a guy competing soon and he got sick a week ago so he missed a day of training but for him it was really nice because he looked down and said hey man listen this is built in we know that you're you're gonna we'll miss a day here you'll get sick this will happen you have to go here it's all built into his schedule and look at this we're fine and you could see he was nice and calm after that because he knew we had thought of all these things and as far as tapering depending on the guy depending on the age depending on how hard the camp was we'll do a taper anywhere from five to ten days older athletes you have to taper more pat for his last fight which was his best performance we did a much longer taper with him and kind of figuring out to pass a guy that will

go go go but more is less with him he does better with that he's 34 34 and he's been wrestling since the beginning of time for him yeah so he's got a big training history exactly kylan kern's a female fighter she just debuted in november she won fire the night but lost lost the fight and she just had a five-month camp. She thought she was going to fight. Her opponent got hurt. And all of a sudden, what we thought was going to be the short period of time turned out to be five months of nonstop training.

Oh, wow. She was also 20. She's 23. So I had to kind of figure out her first fight in the UFC. A lot of firsts with this one, right? Yeah. So I did a bit longer of a taper with her, too, just because she had been going for so long.

And I think more than anything was mentally just kind of over it it like, all right, let's just go get this done. Yeah, when you're going that long, it's hard to stay in the game. Yeah, it's hard to keep that focus. So in a sport where the whole goal of the sport basically is to hurt somebody, how do you keep your fighters from being hurt all the time? Recovery is a big thing. And we actually, I write recovery into their training programs. So you raise up like this is as important as the dose of training stimulus absolutely it's the flip side of the coin

like people never consider the fact if you're not sleeping enough if you're not eating properly if you're not doing all these things and you can't expect yourself over the long period in the short period of time anything can happen right you have a crackhead go win the lottery and get rich but over the long period of time, he's going to lose all that money, right? Yeah. Same thing here. You have to kind of, again, have an understanding of where you are, where you're going, and how to get there. And for me, recovery is big.

And there's probably four or five things that we do. Yeah. What are your top recovery methods you utilize with success? I like soft tissue work. I think that's really good. And we have a couple massage therapists that I know well that work well that will come to our guy's house and look after him. And we communicate well, too. I ask them how they do it, and they give me their feedback.

One thing I love is a Normatec. And if you train hard, you need to go buy a Normatec. The price of them is a quarter what they used to be. They're about $1,500, $1,600. And there's these pneumatic pants that you put on. There's a compressor unit. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I've seen these. So, start squeezing your feet and your calves and your knees. They even make hip ones now, and they make arm ones. And the first time I used them was maybe five years ago. And I went. I wasn't in great shape. I ran for 55 minutes, including stairs. I had squatted that day, which I hadn't squatted in ages.

You must train wreck yourself. Yeah, it was really stupid to do. And I put these Normatec pants on, and I pumped for two hours in front of the TV that night. I woke up the next morning with no legs pain whatsoever. My ass, because the pants came up to here, my butt was really, really sore. Nothing else was. It's all squeezing the tissues back into circulation. Yeah, the lymphatic drainage happens.

Your blood gets back to your heart. It really made me think soreness is maybe nothing more than inflammation problems. What's happening? Is it pumping the blood back? What's the mechanism at work here? When your heart squeezes, that arterial blood is very strong. It's like it just got squeezed out of your heart and it goes through your arteries. When it comes back to your venous return, it's very low pressure. And out of your heart and it goes through your arteries. When it comes back

to your venous return, it's very low pressure. And the way that it gets back is through muscle contraction. That's why movement is so good, right? And the valves in your veins

are one way. So the blood gets pumped up and there's a one-way valve that doesn't let it come back again. So through this action, it just assists

that blood back to your heart. It increases your lymphatic drainage and you feel amazing. It's like squeezing the last bit of toothpaste out of a tube. Kind of like inches it back up to, is it like a,

is it like a beat or is it just squeezing your legs or is it, um, or is it like a rhythmic? No, it's rhythmic. So it starts with your feet and then kind of, then there's five sections. So the feet go first,

then the calf, the feet's let go, the knee comes in, the calf, let's go. You can kind of feel like waves. I'll have you, I'll put you guys in one before you leave oh yeah perfect yeah so i had you know i hadn't been able to run in probably five months i got a new pair of shoes which changed so much for me so that's another thing making sure your gear is up to date you have to be doing that

um and i was doing snatches and and um other in running shoes. So I broke down. I spent $200 on a pair. I saw them out there. Spice whale shoes. Yeah, I'm like, all right, give me the best shoes. Everyone told me I'll have them for 10 years. And all of a sudden, the foot pain's gone. Get a new pair of running shoes, the knee pain's gone.

The Normatec, which I had loaned to a fighter, just came back. I pumped up. Now I feel like a million bucks right now. There you go, man. Yeah, so that's another big thing. If you're there, I think it's Normatec, M-V-P-N-O-R-M-A-T-E-C. I have no affiliation with the company, but it's amazing. And if you're training hard, make that investment.

I promise you it will make a dramatic difference. If you've got a gym owner, you've got five, six, seven athletes, it becomes really like a no-brainer. I know that San Francisco CrossFit, they had a couple hanging out in the lobby. Athletes will train, and they'll stick their legs right in them. Yeah. I didn't know that was what it was called. I didn't pay much attention to it.

Yeah, it's incredible. And then we're big on. How much did one of those run? I think now the price dropped way down. They're like $1,500, $1,600 for a unit in the legs. And then if you want to get the hips or the arms that's a little bit more but if you get a couple buddies that you can share it with or it's a life saver for us. That's a good idea sharing it with some friends.

We can't do camps without those now. So the 10 days or so that you're tapering what's that look like? You don't just stop training all together? No. How does that taper look? The further you go into a fight camp the more narrow the focus gets so at that 10 day point

like what you saw today with Tom Tom's fighting a week from tomorrow in the UFC so now it was timing it was a technical review so he went about 30 minutes a decent pace he was exploding well

nothing hard contact and the goal at that point is two things physical recovery and mental recovery, because you get worn down during a fight camp. So the physical recovery, if you maintain well through a whole fight camp, if you've done appropriately, you've been in cold plunges,

you've got soft tissue work and chiropractic adjustments, you're pumping your legs, you're eating healthy. If you have good training, didn't get injured, then a lot of it's the mental recovery. So you want to make sure that when they go in there they're confident they're feeling good they're happy they're excited to be there and the nice a cool thing that happens during a taper you know the fight week everyone just kind of gets beaten down a little bit and then taper time everyone starts to come up again the mood improves and the hormone it changes it changes totally then by fight night

hopefully if you've done things correctly, by the time that comes, you're just like they're caged, ready to come out and get after it. I know I've been to parties before with kind of casual fans that have never done any martial arts training whatsoever. And they ask me questions like, when people are backstage, are they just like fucking scared out of their minds? And then when they walk around the corner, they put on their mean face

and they walk to the cage? How does that happen for guys in the there's there's a wide range some people who feel nothing but total confidence excited to be there other people who are scared to death like i know a pretty well-known fighter when he fought in pride he'd be in the they pride a lot of times they would have pride was a fight organization in japan sometimes the dressing rooms would just have a curtain between me here You hear someone throwing up back there. So, yeah, people feel – fear is an essential part of it. To think that those guys don't feel fear is not reasonable.

It's a great emotion if you know how to use it. Isn't it the best way actually to view fear? It's not like a barrier saying, no, you don't do this, you're going to get hurt. It's more like this is an intense situation. Be aware and alive as you can you're going into it it's like a stimulating emotion it can be preparation or it can be the opposite of that it can be debilitating so how we come back to emotional mastery at that point how well can you manage your emotional state under the most stressful times because hey listen it's a beautiful day we're hanging out here we don't have to spend any time or energy managing emotions.

But the moment, whether if you're a mother or a father, or if you're going for your first CrossFit competition, whatever it is for you that causes you stress, those are the times that matter. And that's what you have to get really, really good at, is mastering in times of turmoil, how well can you keep things nice and steady you got any advice on how to how to reach that mastery i have no idea

well i think well there's three components to mastering any emotional say the first is you know we you told me hey we're i pulled a chair up they said no we're standing for this podcast because how you stand how you use your body will change your physical state. It's the quickest way to change how you're feeling is to change how you're moving your body. So that's the big one. There's a great TED Talk.

Maybe you could find it and post it. It was on testosterone and posture. This woman, yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was amazing. They said, if you stand in this power position for two minutes, your testosterone increases. So if you think of that.

That's why I walk around my neighborhood like this. Everyone in the trailer park thinks I'm crazy. The first person that ever told me that was Robert Follis at Team Quest, which you started Team Quest, right? I came up with the name at Team Quest, yeah, a long time ago. Yeah, but that's the big thing. So if you're feeling whatever you're feeling, like depression, how to depress people. They're kind of hunched over, things like that. It's like crying.

If you need to stop crying, look up. I learned that once, and I had a chiropractic office. I had a chiropractic office. Yeah, you can't cry looking up. It's possible. Doug, say something mean to me. Call me a fat little girl, and I'll look up and see if I can stop crying. Fancy little bitch.

It works. It works. Well, this woman, I had this office in Australia and I had a glass window that was right on the main street on this town and she steps out of her car,

sprains her ankle, falls down, she's crying. I'm like 26 years old, super intense. And she's got two little kids where she won't stop crying. Her husband's gone.

So I walked out the door, came over, tried, said, look up. And she wouldn't pay attention. I said, look up. And I grabbed her head and I went up and her, she stopped crying like this. It was like someone turned a faucet off. It was fascinating. So it was a great example of how you use your body will change your

emotional state. It'll change everything that's going on. The second one is what you focus on. So if you focus on, oh my God, what's he going to do to me? And I don't know what's going to happen. Or if you focus on, Hey, I'm absolutely prepared. I'm ready for this moment. There's nothing that's going to stop me. That type of focus creates a different emotional state in your body. And the third one's a language that you use and the trio of those three together. So if you're using self-defeating language or if you're using, you know, language that kind of builds you up, that will change things. So if you can learn, if you find yourself getting angry, if you find yourself losing your shit sometimes,

change how you're standing in your body. Open your head up, lift your chest up, take a deep breath in. That alone can often stop that cascade of emotions from continuing, spiraling out of the head. Wow. I've heard people say that the more space you take up, the more confident you are likely to feel. The more kind of shrouded in like this you are versus like, you know, kind of like standing, like taking up a lot of space, the more confident you automatically feel. Like little things like

that. Those little things make all the difference. And the cool thing is, is that it doesn't apply to MMA or CrossFit. It applies to every area of your life, every moment of every day. It applies to being a human. Yeah. So if you learn to mastery these skills here, if you're smart, you'll start applying them in other areas of your life too. If you're a parent or if you're in a relationship or if you have a business, these things can make a big difference in the quality of those relationships and ultimately the quality of your life. Yeah. So I've heard with the UFC versus Pride, Pride was run in a totally different manner than the UFC. Every time I hear people tell stories about being over at Pride,

there are always some wild fucking crazy stories. There's a bunch of Japanese gangsters running it. Yeah. You got any crazy Pride stories? Did you go over there a lot? Like 40 times. Oh, okay. Was that a yes then? It wasn't the craziest shit you saw.

I don't know if there's anything that crazy. It was just the culture of it was very different. I mean, most UFC fights, they like to give you eight or ten weeks to get ready. Pride would routinely call two weeks before a fight. You're going to fight no Garrett in two weeks. You've got to kind of go, okay. And they pay the cash, too. If you turn down the fight, they won't call you back up.

It depends on the guy. Was there a lot of pressure to fight? There's always a lot of pressure to fight. I mean, if you're a fighter, that's the fight, they won't call you back up. It depends on the guy. Was there a lot of pressure to fight? There's always a lot of pressure to fight. If you're a fighter, that's the business. If you were in pride, that's where you wanted to be. They were bigger than UFC at that time. Yeah, they were the biggest organization. They did pay in cash.

We've heard some crazy stories about them. I've heard they just hand blocks of money to people when they win. Dan wanted to turn them over there called the King of Kings in like 2000 and they paid him 200 grand and $100 bills. Wow. Which is like that big. I know.

Her guys just like go and like those like go get in a taxi and go back to their hotel with a big block of money. Yeah, we didn't know what to do with it. We went to a bank

thinking oh, I guess we'll wire it. Or the greatest night at a strip club you ever had. Yeah, right? It was all, everything was cash over there. It was a very different

model of how to do business. Amazing while it lasted. Yeah, if you had the good fortune to attend a pride event, they were spectacular.

I think the biggest one I went to is 75,000 people at the Tokyo Dome. And when fights happen, it's quiet. Like you can, that was the biggest thing.

We corner mostly in Japan where you can have a conversation. Because the audience will only cheer if something good happens. They're in such reverence of what's going on, right? Yeah, they really appreciate what was happening in the fights. But you can have a conversation. I remember,

grab his wrist, posture up. You broke his nose. Hit him again. Go for the nose again. And the fighter can hear you. Yeah, because you're right there. And it's also not in a cage. It was in a ring. Right.

So a ring is more intimate in some ways because there's only a few ropes separating the action from you. But a cage is a better place to have fights for sure. Yeah. When you're down in that cage, you feel like the world around kind of fades out and you just feel like it's just you and that guy in there? You talk about the noise and the intensity

and that cathartic moment when you walk in the ring. Then I imagine, is it like... I'm not the guy to ask that question to. I've never been in there. I know a lot of people will give you a much better answer than I would. I'd love to hear more about it, yeah. What are some other recovery methods? You covered the, I can't remember the name.

Massage. Massage. I think chiropractic can be beneficial. I think a cold plunge is great. I don't know what the research, I think the last time Andy told me the research wasn't good about that. I ignore research I don't like the answers to, so. Andy sounds familiar.

Yeah. You know, I I just like when I right now our pool we have a pool here and the heater's not on so it's like 53 degrees it's right in that

sweet spot of good cold plunge yeah so we go up there and I did one last night had a cold plunge convinced my daughter to jump in up to her neck

talking about mental toughness with it yeah I feel better after jumping in the ocean it's about 60 degrees yeah but I mean that's how I feel but if that's the ocean. It's about 60 degrees. Yeah. But, I mean, that's how I feel.

But if that's actually reducing inflammation or whatever, I guess that's what's being debated. I have no idea. Well, if you think it helps you, maybe it helps you. I mean, you know. Yeah. So those are the big ones. Obviously, nutrition is huge.

Water intake is big. All the basic stuff there. I mean, nutrition, it can be as complicated as you want to make it, but you know what to eat. Come on. You know what's healthy and what's not. You can look for more complicated, nuanced, fancy, novel recovery methods, but if diet, sleep, mental mindset, stress is true,

you got 99.9% of the fight won. You said the most important one that I neglected was sleep. You look at the mountain of research, if you don't sleep properly, you hear about, I sleep three hours a night. Probably not.

We talked with Kirk Parsons, he said, we talked about if you raise your hand and increase your posture, testosterone is affected. He said he could take a male, a healthy male, deprive them of sleep one night, maybe by just an hour or so,

two hours. It wasn't like one stressful night. He said, I could drop your testosterone 30% or more. Just like that, just instantly. When my son son was born, he's three and a half. We had finished filming the movie. Here comes a boom. And the last we're staying in Boston at a hotel that was connected to mass general hospital, which is where he was going to go. So my wife and daughter at the time were there. We did three night shoots. We shot from about six, 7 PM to

7 AM. I did that three nights. Didn't really sleep because I'm in one hotel room. Got home the last night. Two hours later, my wife said, okay, we're ready to have a baby. Oh, man. So, of course, he comes like 14 hours later. By the time he came out,

I hadn't slept in four days, and I was crazy. I mean, I'm not even going to tell you what I was saying and thinking at the time, but I was a legitimate crazy person because I was so sleep-divide. That's how they turn POWs. You want to turn something, deprive them of sleep. You can break anyone very, very quickly. So as far as recovery comes, if you're one of those people who,

let's say you train CrossFit and you compete, and you've got to work a job, and you've got some other social and on top, things catch up to you and you have to make sure that you really got to be honest with yourself and evaluate how much energy you're putting in, how much rest that you're getting. And you have to adjust it, just your training to compensate for that. In some cases, it would be more valuable to skip your workout altogether and just go take a nap. I have guys within the training camps that we plan, I know that I'm going to go,

hey, man, it's Wednesday. Take the day off today. Why not? Let's go light today. Get out of here. Go relax. Go see a movie tonight. And you'll be amazed what that will do for people.

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. It's sometimes hard as the athlete to accept that advice, though. It's like, oh, man. Fight so close. If you're going to be good good then you have to learn how to be coachable and that is a very very difficult skill for some people and some people never get it that's more important than being tough i don't know if it's more important but it's it's it's an essential skill that you

have to go the more coachable you are the more open you are the further you're going to go if you're a guy who knows everything and you're going to do it your way i i've seen it and it never ever i've never seen that work out well maybe the only path for that kind of individual is to go out give it a go because you're going to do it probably and then learn from the mistakes and hopefully pull back in we apply those lessons learn to other people help other people maybe some people just have to make a mistake or two well yeah I mean I think we could go around spend the next

10 days telling stories of all our mistakes right everyone does it but the for me the worst way to learn something

is to figure it out yourself the best way is to find a master at something go to him and do exactly what he or she does yeah

any success I've had in my life is because of that. I found the very best people. I copied what they did. I said what they did. I, so I did with chiropractic. I found it.

For me, when I finished chiropractic school, chiropractic didn't work for me, but I'd found a doctor named Dr. Rache in Scottsdale, California, went in there and said, listen,

he adjusted me. I had never been adjusted like that before. And I said, I said, I need you to teach me what you know and he said no and I refused to leave looked him in the eye said listen I'm not going to leave here until you agree to teach me got a job as a bus boy in a restaurant when I finished chiropractic school spent six months with him and it changed my whole life wow because I found it actually yeah that's the key because I could have spent 10 years trying to figure it out and maybe I would have got there,

maybe not. It's a complete waste of time to figure things out yourself. And obviously the key, I think people get, they don't want to maybe try that. They're scared of like letting go of the good thing they have

and want to go take the chance. And you had, each step along the way, there was no necessarily a reason for you to try the next thing, right? Yeah. Practice going good, let me abandon that

and take a shit job just so I can have an opportunity to learn learn something more but that opens up a whole new realm of opportunity if you're right if you just let go of this other shit that you're holding on to it's very difficult to do but once you do it you go that wasn't that big a deal that's some of the best advice i think it's been dropped on this show i got more of that. We'll save it for next episode. Yeah, for sure. We'll squeeze you every drop. Just all our time. Thanks for joining us.

Is there any, where should people go to find you online? Well, you know, the latest company that I have is called Radius Wraps, which is RadiusWraps, W-R-A-P-S dot com. And it's a hand wrap and glove that we designed for MMA that we tested with Dr. Andy

Galpin. A familiar face. Yes, it reduces a crazy amount of impact force on your hands so if you're out there and you like punching things, you really should be using this. If you get punched, we found that it can actually reduce the amount of head trauma that you take. So go to

RadiusWraps.com, buy some. If you don't like punching things, we have these it can actually reduce the amount of head trauma that you take. So go to Radiostraps.com, buy some. If you don't like punching things, we have these awesome t-shirts. So I got some for everybody. Go there. If not, say hello. If you're a trainer or whatever, you got some cool stories. I love to hear it. You can send me an email.

Ryan at RyanParsons.com. Sweet. Sweet. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. It was a blast, man. Okay, guys. Thanks, Ryan.

Bye.