Barbell Shrugged - Episode 11 - Gracie Jui-Jitsu black belt Alex Meadows

Episode Date: May 16, 2012

The Barbell Shrugged crew is joined by Gracie Jui-Jitsu black belt Alex Meadows to discuss strength and conditioning for Mixed Martial Arts and more!

I hate you. Hey, let's roll. You love us. Now are we rolling? James, I was watching the Lucas podcast today and I noticed that you didn't get enough close-ups of me.

Yeah, well, you know what? You just have to deal with that. Get his man pouch on camera. Hang on. Man pouch? Get his man pouch on camera. Whoa. Hang on. Man pouch. Man pouch.

Are we going yet? No. Yeah, we are. We're rolling. Rolling. How do we know we're rolling? Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe.

I'm with Doug Larson and Chris Moore, your host. Hi. Our guest today, Alex Meadows. I thought you forgot his name for a second. You looked at me like, what's his name? Alex Meadows, world champion, jiu-jitsujitsu fighter slash player whatever people call it and uh you've won worlds and pan ams pan ams so nogi twice nogi twice so run through like the what you've won the last few years because it's pretty impressive list and i can't remember all of it because i have a short attention span. The most significant titles was the Pan Ams and Worlds.

They're run by IBJJF. It's called the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation. So they organize the world tournaments that has the most credibility nowadays. They're run in the U.S. The Pan Ams Nogi is in New York City. And the Worlds is in Long Beach, California. And they have them every year. So that's where – it's the title that every grappler want to win,

is the Pan Ams and Worlds. It's an amateur sport, but it gives credibility for the professional who teaches, who wants to live the sport itself. And you also received your black belt this past year from Marcelo Garcia. Yeah, it was a great honor. Marcelo is a great reference in the sport. Some people consider him the best pound-per-pound grappler that has ever existed.

And it was the first time. That's saying something, isn't it? Shit. That's a big deal. That's funny. You've got to be a world champion, then you get a shot at a black belt. Is that how it worked? It depends.

Every black belt has different criteria. That's extraordinary. I met Marcelo a few years ago, and I wanted to be under his wing. So he said, oh, you're going to have to work hard because I measure my accomplishments with my rewards. He's been a black belt for nine years and only after nine years of black belt you're allowed to award black belts so after nine years he received his third degree as a black belt and me and a guy named josh watskin who's a chess player he's also his uh his student at his gym and also his business partner at his gym that's a good combination

of things master chess player then black belt jiu-jitsu practitioner shit definitely they develop a revolutionary website called mg in action which uh it's a based of uh i i never knew that before uh i always like to play chess but never professionally of course uh i know there's like now i know there's like uh websites that teach chess or teach techniques so he based off of those websites to uh teach jujitsu techniques through video through uh keywords that you can search. So they break down the game, I imagine, same way as they break down chess. And then it's a very effective

tool for you to learn from the best. One thing I noticed, there's thousands of videos on that site. They're all fantastic. I've looked through it. They always update. You get sites of techniques. I mean sites. You get videos of techniques. You also sites. You get videos of techniques. You also get to see videos of Marcelo rolling,

which it's something that before that, since YouTube started, you always look, oh, man, there's a new video of Marcelo rolling. It's rare. It's rare. You got to check it out. So I guess they figured out it's a product that could sell, and then you can make a living with the art of jiu-jitsu reaching unlimited people it's big in japan it's big in france it's big in the u.s and everybody can access and uh you get to know marcelo better

and get to have access to his techniques through this website mg inaction.com. Very good. I've noticed I did jiu-jitsu for a little bit, not so much anymore. But I did feel like when I was learning jiu-jitsu that it was a lot like playing chess. It's like you do a move and another guy does a move back, and it's just, it escalates, and it's a thinking man's game. I like to relate to chess. The only difference when you move chess, on chess, when you make a move, you got to wait for the other guy to move. Imagine if you, for those there who understand chess,

if you could move pieces and your opponent can move pieces at the same time, you don't have to wait for him to move. It's like a rapid fire game of chess. Exactly, exactly. We're also getting choked out and joints bent the opposite way. High pressure game of chess.

What's the chess playing? What do they do? Boxing also? It's like they do chess for like a certain period of time and then they box around and then they go back and they play chess for like a minute.

I don't know if I've seen that. It's like a real sport. I've heard of this. In Russia, maybe? Just kidding. I haven't played a game other than like Angry Birds in like two years.

It shows how cultured I am. I haven't played a game other than Angry Birds in two years. It shows how cultured I am. I don't know. What about being down in Brazil? You just mentioned a second ago that it's popular all over the world. It's Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, so obviously it's very popular in Brazil. You grew up in Brazil, so how did you get your start? I'm assuming that you started doing Jiu-Jitsu while you were living in Brazil. Yes.

In the early 90s, there was a big rivalry between jiu-jitsu and the luta livre which is back then nowadays a lot of people practice no gi jiu-jitsu is without the kimonos without the the white suits without the pajamas just kidding uh like the big the big white martial arts suits with the belts yes that people see back in the early 90s, it was more traditional. You do jiu-jitsu, you train with the gi. If you don't train with the gi but you grapple, you're from another style called luta livre. Nowadays, I think with the evolution of MMA, everybody likes to practice no-gi jiu-jitsu and gi jiu-jitsu. Does that make sense?

Yeah. no gi jiu-jitsu and gi jiu-jitsu does that make sense yeah so uh early 90s jiu-jitsu is still kind of like shy growth is not so popular but then the sport is starting to grow uh back then mma is called vale tudo uh there's not a lot of footage there's no youtube there's no access to videos there's only a few events that has happened and then there's uh legends about what happened so in the early 90s there was this uh rivalry between jiu-jitsu and luta livre that they decided to square away they picked their best fighters to face each other and it was broadcast in national television that made it really it was the first time it was uh brazil has a one big uh national television

that reached the whole country and they had certain rules that they were supposed to follow but when you're in the ring and you start to with so much on the line and so much ego at stake yes that shit goes out the window pretty fast it gets it's a it's a reality it's a it's a radical sport and uh i mean later they adapt the rules to what's real first i remember saying oh you can't slap you can't punch with your hand closed they were only supposed to uh hit each other with the open hand that didn't go through they were like oh they did i mean it didn't happen like that like oh he's not doing it right no they just started punching each other so the jujitsu guys were they wearing gis for this no no okay they knew better they trained gi they trained gi but then when they got in the ring they

when they got in the ring the rules uh the rules you could wear a gi if you wanted but they knew better uh unless you uh you're gonna use the gi for a certain submission or a certain control. Hoist Grace, you wore it for a while against guys. I was going to say, for the benefit of the people at home listening in, I guess wearing the gi becomes a liability because it can be used against you. It's sort of a weapon for the other. Exactly. If you yourself aren't wearing a gi, then the other guy will struggle to get a hold of you,

your big sweaty ass. Exactly. Perfect. Yeah. a gi then the other guy will struggle to get a hold of you your big sweaty ass exactly perfect yeah there i i feel and uh there's more disadvantages from wearing the gi than advantages there could be a certain advantage there could be certain moves that you could use the gi maybe uh grab the sleeve to use for a chokehold but the opponent could use the gi as well to hold you or to sweep you or to practice the same moves you are trying to practice on him. And then he's all sweaty because he doesn't have a gi and slippery.

Yeah. So, like a fish. Even modern day, there's a lot of MMA fighters that still train with the gi and they feel like there's advantages there. Even though they don't fight with a gi on in the ring. Like, why would they do that? The gi, for a person who practices jiu-jitsu, who practices, the gi is a tool for you to refine your technique. You get stuck in positions that you have to deal with. It's not as slippery.

When you do no-gi jiu-jitsu, it can be very slippery. Anti-jiu-jitsu is a lot easier than jiu-jitsu itself. It's easier to not engage and just defend but not really attack and not really go for a submission, which is the ultimate goal in jiu-jitsu is win by submission. So the gi is a tool for you to refine the technique. If you can submit somebody using the gi, then it helps your no-gi game because you get stuck on specific positions that you have to work through. You're not going to slip yourself out.

You need to use the leverage principles. You need to use the technique itself to get through with your objective, with your game, which is the ultimate purpose of submit. Make the guy tap out and the game's over. So for the people in the audience that don't know the history behind the UFC kind of blowing up in America, originally, Hoyce Gracie came over to the U.S. This might be a loose version of how this happened,

but he came to the U.S. and he more or less challenged everyone in the United States to a fight. And he thought that his martial art was the superior martial art and Brazilian jiu-jitsu was better than taekwondo and karate and kung fu and all these other traditional martial arts. And so he came in and nobody really knew Jiu Jitsu since you know he was the only one that that came in with it because his family kind of pioneered that style of martial art is he the one that took all the early titles and you have to yes he won like he kicked everybody's ass for a long time back then it was a battle of styles

yeah yeah you had what you mastered one thing yes you you just sort of see who would win like like some discovery channel show where they they throw out the computer animations of who who wins a grizzly bear or a great white shark exactly but then as the sport evolved everybody practiced everything because it's important to know submission holes but you can be knocked out so it's important to keep your distance from knocking out or maybe you you want to develop that uh that uh skill of knocking people out i think he was the first guys i saw who got beat up like punched repeatedly and knocked down for like multiple rounds like this guy he got his ass beat he fought dan seven and he took a beating for like 15 minutes straight.

And then Dan finally gets winded, and he chokes him out. I remember I was probably like maybe not 14, 15. The guy with the mustache? Yeah, big wrestler guy. I was like maybe 14, 15 years old, and I was watching. I went and rented UFC 3 or something like that from Blockbuster. And Dan Severn is just pounding this little guy in a gi, and he's on top of him the whole time. But he couldn't finish him.

No, he couldn't finish him because, I mean, Hoyce knew how to, like, defend on the ground. And then all of a sudden, Dan Severn taps out. What was Dan trying to do, just get on top of him? Yeah, he was on top of him. All of a sudden, he tapped out. And I had never seen jiu-jitsu before in my life. Yes.

I go – Hoist got him with a triangle choke. Yeah. And I remember seeing that and going, what happened? Yes. Like I had no idea. And it was like I wanted to learn jiu-jitsu after I saw that. I was like – Then you realize this is a brilliant, badass strategy to give this guy a few moments of overconfidence

where he's punching and punching and he thinks he's beating your ass and you take the pain all knowing that he will fatigue and he will become overconfident and he will let a limb hang out in space too long and you strike and it was all over. That's kind of like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu started

Helio Gracie, Hoy's father was known for being like uh physically challenged he had uh i forgot what he had as a not tuberculosis uh he wasn't he wasn't strong and his brother taught judo yeah and he observed uh he observed how he taught his techniques and he adapted to his reality. I'm not strong, but I can use leverage. It's just how I position my body to control the position and to build leverage, and then execute choke holds, joint locks, and finish the fight.

I might not get it on five seconds but i'm willing to hold it for like half an hour and then when you are not as mentally tough to realize what's going on i'm gonna catch it and capitalize and then finish the fight and that's all that matters who won it's elio gracie yeah that's how he would prove that jiu-jitsu is effective by being a smaller guy not strong, but with a lot of mental toughness and a lot of endurance and a refined technique. It was such a clear way of demonstrating what was the best fighting style at the time. Yes.

Like, no matter what your physical form was, you could go up against a sumo wrestler who's 500 pounds. When he tires out, you ankle lock him or something, and he's done. As long as you get him to tap out, the fight is is over and that's what jiu-jitsu that's why you practice every day with jiu-jitsu is getting your opponent to tap out uh through chokes through uh joint locks arm locks uh leg locks ankle locks and for the listener none of this shit is fun to have done to you yes it is we do it every night you're gonna fight with somebody put you in arm bar or any of these chokes and you want to play the tough guy move and hang on you should rethink that it's not as bad as getting punched in the face i'll tell you that i don't know actually i i probably would disagree if if it was a street fight and you're not tapping out they're not just stopping like

at practice someone hypersens my arm and i go oh tap tap and they let it go but in the street fight they're gonna break my arm does that happen in brazil where i mean getting punched in the face is one thing but your arm snapped in half in brazil if i if i talk shit to you in a bar and i push you in front of your girlfriend and i threaten you are you gonna take me out and just fucking wrench my elbow out of socket does that happen that kind of situation uh well i i guess uh i mean fighting is universal conflicts are universal it depends uh they say statistically 90 of all altercations end up on the ground if there's time to it if if a bar fight happens you might not have time or you might not want to go to the ground if the guy has friends that are gonna break a bottle on your head while you're on top of the guy beating him up.

That's a good tip. Yes. That happened to me one time. So, I mean. Exactly. We get bar fights in our free time on the weekends. Roadhouse style. We'll have a bar fight episode one day.

We'll just tell bar fight stories. James has never had a bar fight before? Not yet. I've never had either. You guys, we've got to break you guys in at some point. I don't know how. He's going to the bar, find a group of unsavory characters. Say, hey, you know, shut up, you fucking stupid face.

That's what they do. I used to get in bar fights because your girlfriend is sloppy looking see I'm not as big of an asshole as I used to be

and I don't have the ego I used to have so that's probably why I ended up in bar fights back in the day and it's just not going to happen anymore

so we've got to come out with a really clever way to get James and Chris in a bar fight we've got to get you back in the military somehow you're a shoddy example really clever way to get James and Chris in a bar fight. We had to get you back in the military somehow. You're a shotty example.

All right, so Hoyes Gracie came to the United States, and no one else knew jiu-jitsu, and being a smaller, maybe 165-pound fighter, something like that. Yes, 180, he's kind of tall. Okay, so he's a tall, thin person. He's not a very strong looking athlete and being the only person that knew jiu-jitsu and having good technique you know he could take them out but then

once everyone else realized hey this guy's onto something he's got some some good stuff we need to learn that then the athletes started showing up you know the the national caliber wrestlers the you know the boxers and kickboxers started learning how to wrestle and how to grapple, and everyone started to learn everything. He didn't quite have the advantage that he used to have. He's still very good, but once everyone else was clued into his game. Everybody was catching up with his game and learning from it. And that was the purpose.

The Gracie family created the UFC in order to sell the art. They had this project to expose Brazilian jiu-jitsu, back then Gracie jiu-jitsu, to the world. And I think it was a genius idea to build Octagon, the ultimate fighting championship. It was a brilliant idea. And sure as shit worked. Yes.

A few rough years there where they tried to call it barbaric and all this silly bullshit. Like American football is not barbaric and all this silly bullshit. Like American football is not barbaric. I mean, it's American. We love it. It took a while for the public to get educated on what was going on. I think it's cool how everybody in that family, everybody associated with that family, was able to create a little economy out of it and open schools and instruct and spread what is really a super honorable martial art. I mean, it's super detailed, filled with a bunch of awesome people.

I mean, it's a really cool scene. It's a great art. It's a great sport. It's something that helps you with self-defense. It might help you build confidence. It's something where it's an activity kind of like a crossfit you meet your buddies

you work hard you have fun you party after you might kick some ass in the bar you do you do get close to your buddies

because you guys swap sweat every day yes that's the only part you better get you used to getting really close to your

dude friends yes that's how we roll kind of like when you guys that's how we roll kind of like when you guys squat back

hold each other. Yeah. When you're spotting. That's like when I wrestle on Saturday nights. Nothing wrong with a couple of straight dudes wrestling. No, no. We're just practicing our moves. On Saturday nights all by yourself.

As long as there's no eye contact. Just kidding. Actually, one of my favorite jiu-jitsu moments was when you came in just to try it out maybe two years ago I like Andy was arm bar metal run there with doing the the martial arts a little bit yeah that's right I trained for four or five sessions and went off and did the Naga meet at Donald classic yeah yeah you did that was awesome mm you got I did all right, man. I was there.

I remember Chris. Well, I almost had that guy, dude. I almost had that guy. We've got that video. You need to edit that in. Yes. We've got a video of him. It was close on points, I remember.

That was one of the single hardest physical things I've ever done. I'm not experienced enough to relax and use moves. So I basically had to manhandle this giant guy in round one. I just squeezed his head until he quit. The second fight, the guy was actually. How much training did you have back then? I did like two sessions of an hour. Yeah, not much.

And I did the second. I fought the second guy the same way. And that went to overtime. And I finally beat him on points. And then I fought the guy in the third round. I was two 55 at the time. The guy was fighting. He had to be like three 55.

Yeah. He was huge. I was like, son of a bitch. I'm gasping for air. Still. This guy is, is gigantically huge,

you know, pretty sloppy, but he knew what they were too. So I quickly went to the ground with him on top of me. And my only memory of it was just pushing up into just heavy sheets upon sheets of flesh. Just pushing all I can into him, and the flesh moves, but his body doesn't move. So I just struggled. And then finally somehow I got around the back of him.

He got a little tired, and I said, shit, here's my time. Flip off my back, get on the back of him, and I just got around his head. I sort of had my forearm and bicep on the side of his cheek. I just squeezed this guy's head with everything I had for like two minutes. That poor bastard, man. I was like, motherfucker, you're going to quit, man. Afterwards, unfortunately, I still remember Alex telling me, all you have to do is just move.

You just make this little knuckle and you slide. I go, fuck, I could have known that before. It would have been great. I would have had that guy in two seconds. He would have been done. I was there yelling at you, but you were too focused on pushing the flesh. I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't hear anything.

But that was great, man. It's an awesome, awesome sport. There's so much to learn, man. So much to learn. So you ended up with second place, right? Yeah, it was pretty good. On two days training. That's pretty awesome.

That's a big- meet too, man. That was like 10,000 people in that arena. We have a habit in our group of friends of competing in jiu-jitsu with minimal training. Your brother competed with like a week of training. Yeah, he did the same thing. He had like two days training in our living room and then went and did the beginner division at Noggin. He did pretty good. In Atlanta, I think.

Yes. And he won four out of five matches. I mean, when you step onto a mat in front of a lot of people and you've got to fight a guy, you sort of have these visions of maybe a little bit of a gladiator scenario. It's this me versus this guy, and I'm going to beat him or he's going to beat my ass. I mean, this is how it's going to happen.

It's probably going to be a little sloppy or a little aggressive because it's not experienced guys competing. Yeah, it's intense, man. I mean, it's a good challenge to take on. You learn a thing or two about yourself going through that. For sure. John Benz did it too, right? Who else has done it?

John's competed before. He went to the Arnold, didn't he? I don't remember where he competed at. And also to point out that we went to the, I guess, the national championships or whatever. He did go to the Arnold. And the Arnold, I guess, is a really big scene for every sport that shows up there. So this is not just like your local high school gymnasium

where people come in and watch you wrestle, guys. They have those level meets, I guess. But this was a lot of people. And, like, how many mats do you think they're running simultaneously? I mean, it's like eight or something 16 16 now is the Naga is a naga is North American grappling Association is one of the biggest I mentioned before IBJJF International Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Federation they organized the worlds and the Pan Ams NGA organized tournaments all over the US.

Now they organize tournaments also in Europe, Hawaii. That's cool. They're expanding. It's a big tournament. That year that you competed, they combined. They went to the Arnolds. You had a NAGA tournament inside the Arnolds.

It was big. I remember it was crowded with people. Chaotic. Chaotic. I got to the you know the spirit of this podcast which is generally a strength and conditioning podcast uh once once everyone realized that they needed to know Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and they needed to know boxing and they realized that the other sports or the other martial arts rather weren't that effective like karate and Kung Fu weren't getting it done and those guys weren't winning fights and everyone knew for the first time like which martial arts were the most effective and they kind of you know

mismatched the best striking boxing and kickboxing or Muay Thai with grappling and wrestling the takedowns from wrestling, into this mixed martial arts system, it was no longer debated which martial art was the best. And then at that point, it really started to matter who was the best athlete. It started to matter who was fast and who was powerful and who was in shape. There was no magic trickery like, oh, I just didn't know that move. I'd never seen that before. I'd never heard of that before. Everyone knew the same stuff.

And so it really started to matter who was a better athlete. And that's when strength and conditioning really started to penetrate the sport of mixed martial arts. And now everybody has a strength coach. And so nowadays you have to be strong and you have to be powerful. And you can't just go for a long jog anymore and think you're going to be in good enough shape to compete at a high level the sport has evolved to that level is is the it was the national natural evolution of the sport uh i think every i think the ufc is what on number 150 every edition of the ufc lost lost count a long time ago two years ago yeah 146 i think was the last one. UFC, 5032. Cleveland. But after each one, something new.

The UFC, I think, was the ultimate lab for martial arts. Or you think ninjutsu. I remember when a ninja showed up. What is really a ninja? And he didn't last too long. There was a lot of myth. Oh, but a ninja? He's got the death touch

if he could have snuck into the octagon in the dark and maybe with a fucking knife he would have won sure all right i think i think ninjitsu ninjitsu it was came from like they're assassins yeah so they're supposed to be sneaky they're not supposed to fight you like face to face right they snuck in past the samurai guards and shit and went in and killed you and got out of there yeah but when you define the rules okay this is uh as the octagon is them too no weapons no throwing stars just a hand to hand no weird little wooden shoes no smoke bombs maybe with a smoke smoke bomb slap slap slap slap slap i don't have a chance but man. But yeah, the UFC was the ultimate lab. Oh, you think you're art or you think you are the best? Go prove it. I have to say I'm really satisfied with that outcome because your whole life you see all these fucking bullshit, like kung fu movies and stuff.

They're great. They're awesome. But the footage of the old man going through all this meditation, scratching the bark off a tree, and fucking pirouetting and kicking and doing all that crazy-ass stuff. It's nice to know that the guys who still can kick that guy's ass, the guys who work really hard, master the foundations of technique, are open to learning other things. It's the same things that will help you to master

and get good at any sport you take on. So hard work and being open-minded and mastering your skills beat all the mysticism and all that bullshit hands down every time. Or maybe the kung fu could work against somebody who doesn't know how to fight if you're doing more than that guy.

But when you put a lab, okay, no, this is the UFC. This is the octagon. You, that you think you know how to fight so well from Kung Fu, you're going to face a guy who does Judo or Jiu Jitsu. You might have a shot. You might be able to knock him out with your... Spinning cobra back fist

or whatever the fuck you do. Exactly. One inch touch. One inch punch. Whatever. Five finger death punch. Exactly. Now, I'm not taking anything away from Kill Bill. Because that fucking movie is badass. But, that shit doesn't work. Or Bruce Lee. I'm not taking anything away from Kill Bill. Because that fucking movie is badass. But that shit doesn't work. Or Bruce Lee. I'm a big fan of Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee had a good attitude about you accept what is useful and reject what is useless. And if there's something you can assimilate and use, that's probably the spirit of mixed martial arts. I think Bruce Lee would have been doing jiu-jitsu if he just stuck around a little longer. Did you know he could punch out and hold a 130-pound for five minutes did you know that it's true look it up on the internet there's a blog it's all the truth i need i used to love reading those little books about bruce lee he's got a bunch of awesome oh yeah i owned him when i was a kid yeah and all the crazy he was doing, apparently. And that's a fascinating topic, man.

He died way too soon. Yes, I agree. I don't know, what the fuck. But yeah, that's a good idea. Accept what is useful and reject the useless things. And I think that's what MMA evolved to. Nowadays, the top athletes, if you're not training something, you might get caught on something when you go to the UFC.

I mean, the athletes, to Doug's point, are nuts. Is that Jones guy still the reigning badass of the whole thing? Oh, yeah. Yeah, John Jones. He's destroying people. Yeah, he made Rashad Evans look like an infant. Oh, I didn't know the outcome of that fight. What happened now?

He won by decision. Yeah, I mean, John Evans look like an infant. Oh, I didn't know the outcome of that fight. What happened now? He won by decision. Yeah, I mean, John Jones obviously played it safe and just kind of just kept his distance, threw some good licks. Rashad Evans actually threw some kicks, I think, for like the second or third fight ever. He had to. Throw a twist in there. Yeah.

But was it ever really in contest? I mean, not really. He was very excited about everything he did, but it wasn't as effective. That guy, you look at his physical form, like this guy is genetically not like you. He's different. Jon Jones, yeah. Genetically on another level. Definitely.

He has a longer reach. I mean, he's a great wrestler. He can take you down down he's got submissions that work really well for his spinning fist man jesus spinning elbow oh yeah he was throwing elbows when rashad evans was like within punching distance yes which i would come in and then like john jones his his wingspan is just so big so long it's more effective for him to throw an elbow than throw a fist like snoop dog Snoop Dogg arms, but really muscular. Our buddy

Scott was actually watching the fight with us, and Scott's 6'10", and Jon Jones is 6'3", or 6'4", and Jon Jones has a one or two inch longer wingspan than Scott, who's 6'10". This kind of shows you what kind of mutant that guy is. He just has freaky long arms,

so he can get you from a mile away. Anderson Silva's built the same way. You're probably going to start seeing guys that are built that way dominating the sport. Kind of like we talked about swimming and Michael Phelps being built a certain way. Ultimately, the guys who – there's this moment when technique and coaching and work ethic and athleticism and genetic gifts

all come together in a few athletes those are the guys who who clean and jerk 550 plus in the Olympics and and powders who deadlift a thousand pounds

and jiu-jitsu practitioners who can do all these amazing things and master all these thousands of moves it's just

these guys are special guys john jones uh also come from a family of athletes i think his brothers are in the nfl yeah actually i saw him i saw him the other day i think his brother's just about to get drafted or something he's got everything on his advantage i mean the genetic the the also seems to be a pretty good guy i mean seems relatively he seems relatively humble and a nice guy. Yeah. Even that. But before he won the belt, I don't know if you guys remember. It was in New Jersey. It was hours before the fight.

He was meditating on a park. That's right. And he heard somebody scream, oh, thief, thief, thief. You guys remember that? Yeah, I remember seeing that. He caught the thief. I mean, forget it. I'm fighting for the belt in a few hours sure no he caught the thief held the thief until the the cops arrived yeah bad bad timing for that guy yeah the worst luck ever

wow i don't think he beat him up at all he just got to knock him down he just held him on a leg lock to keep his distance before the cops arrived I heard he walked around at like 230 pounds or something I thought it was bigger than that he weighed 229 the day of the fight

he walks around much I think he walks around more like 245 he walks around big 250 maybe Forrest Griffin does the same thing he walks around much. I think he walks around more like 245. He walks around big. 250 maybe. Forrest Griffin does the same thing. He walks around big. I've seen Forrest once in real life. That guy was just a monster.

He's a big person. He's tall, yeah. He looks like a caveman. Alex is unimpressed. He came to our gym once. He took a class with us. He took one of my classes, I'm proud to say. He's a really cool guy. I never got a role with him when he was there

part got a role with him yeah how long you been in jiu-jitsu Alex I started jiu-jitsu 20 years ago was a little before that a little even jiu-jitsu challenge huh coincidentally I got into the scenario a little bit before and thank God I wasn on the winning team. I was very proud of Jiu-Jitsu when they beat the Luta Livre and after that, Jiu-Jitsu started a boom in Rio and with the UFC, I think

the boom went all over Brazil with the popularization of MMA. MMA is fascinating. It's the fastest growing sport. Just a quick story of how how is fascinating i heard then a white say once well if you're in a if you're in a in a court people are playing basketball on one side some people are playing soccer on the other side other people are playing

baseball on the other side and everybody's like sitting there watching if a fight starts everybody drops everything hey let's go watch. Let's go watch the fight. And that's kind of like MMA attracts people, I think. Everybody wants to see what the deal is. It taps into primal indulgences to see a scrap and to see how that's going to play out. That just triggers your deepest parts of your brain into action. You can't not pay attention to that. Yeah, it's fascinating.

And I think the way they developed the rules of the sport with maybe shorter rounds. When the UFC started, a fight, one round could last like 30 minutes. So you'd be like, oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, this is great. Not really, you know. But now I think, no, I'm sure the fighters on their contracts, they win more money if they knock the guy out on the first round.

If they finish the fight quick, they make a high price. It's like having a shot clock. Yeah. Encourage the big swings. And everybody wants to finish the fight fast so they can go home and not have any damage done. So you want to train for that. That's what they say. Train hard, fight easy so

as the sport evolved like you said earlier you don't just go jog and yeah i'm badass i'm good at it i'm gonna win this no you got to really prepare it's a high level athlete against another high level athlete because the sport has reached that level of course the magic goes far beyond training that also probably is the guys probably using pretty advanced recovery methods and nutrition programs probably paying for chefs to cook their meals some of the more successful guys yeah everything's pretty fancy man everything counts it's like a crossfit every second counts right in uh fighting everything your takedown uh skills your boxing skills your jiu-jitsu skills i mean i can be a good jiu-jitsu guy but if I cannot take the guy down and the guy's

a good striker, my game's not going to match his. So I got to be good at that. You've been doing jiu-jitsu for 20 years. When did you start doing, when did you do any kind of strength and conditioning? So you went to the gym and you trained jiu-jitsu. When did you start, like, I mean, even just going to the gym and lifting weights and stuff like that? I mean, when did that start and what did you do? It will be right after we opened the Bartlett location.

Doug Larson was a student of ours. And I heard he was a strength coach for the colorado rockies and i just started working at the gym as a jiu-jitsu coach and taking a little more serious and as the sport was evolving people was oh strength and conditioning is important for jiu-jitsu so you didn't lift weights prior to that at all really i'll do some pull-ups and push-ups lift a little but nothing designed towards my performance i would just it was just out of uh oh that guy does that he does push-ups dips and pull-ups beach muscles no legs yes exactly no legs he runs at the beach so he might

be good but the sport evolved it's not the jog anymore it's not just doing push-ups after class no you got to do a little more than that so uh i got together with doug and uh he explained some basic concepts that i never thought about it before jiu-jitsu is basically push and pull wow i never saw it that way i mean really and that makes a lot of sense so you got to work on big muscle groups of pushing and pulling and then you can apply your technique more effectively Wow again so I get simple before I might be doing a lot of stuff that wasn't as effective you know or lifting weights oh yeah I'm gonna get really resistant I'm gonna be I'm gonna do 30 repetitions of this um well if you want to build strength is less repetition more weight yeah you already get plenty of repetitions doing all the other shit you do i mean you pull on a guy for an hour is probably plenty of pushing

and pulling endurance work yeah but for an hour but if you give one good pull then you don't need to be there for one hour there you go and then you finish faster and you go home force and power and then exactly and then you're a machine because you got the technique and you got the strength and then you work your cardio too and then you start man you start really running with the sport and start really being effective and performing better and then evolving more because you see more of what you can do and And then the sport evolves too with that. When you started doing strength work with Doug, did you see a big jump? Yes. And I think that was pretty close to the time when you started training with Marcelo Garcia, right?

It was close. A little after that, yes, when I started training with Doug, I started writing emails to Marcelo Garcia. And it took a while for him to answer back. And after one year, he came to Memphis for a seminar. The interesting thing about Marcelo, he doesn't lift any weights. But he reached a level that he trains hard, like really hard. I learned from Doug, there's no better exercise than doing the sport itself.

And that's true. But not everybody is as good as Marcelo is to perform, to row hard effectively at the higher level all the time. It takes a while to get there. This makes me think of something. I was reading back through some stuff Glenn Penlay published on some forum about his approach to training. Now he used certain exercises with certain people,

and he gave an example. He was talking about Caleb Williams. Ring a bell? to training now use certain exercise or certain people they gave example he's talking about Caleb Williams the ring a bell he's like a 105 plus weightlifter good young weightlifter I think he's at the training center in Colorado Springs we talked about how this guy wasn't a terribly good presser me could probably press like 175 pounds but he's maybe the I think Glenn describes him as being the best technician he'd ever seen with body position and technique and timing and the weight lifts, weight lifting movements. And that's hugely complicated to do is to be really, really advanced at the clean and jerk and the snatch. These are hard exercises.

As anybody who's tried them, who sucks at them, discovers quickly. but here's a guy who didn't need to work a whole lot of you know assistance work or pressing or push presses or anything like that because he could jump with a bar with perfect form catch it on perfectly locked elbows at the right time and he could jerk 400 pounds it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense when he described how how um donnie shankle has to train the jerk now he does a whole lot of push presses there's a whole lot of heavy rows a whole lot of things to strengthen his back and his arms because he lacks those perfect positions still damn good but because he doesn't quite get there with the best form he needs more of the other things to help him stay at that high level he dies a hell of a lifter, but had to take a harder path to

get there. So it shows you what's right or wrong. Do you have to have one thing to reach a certain level in your sport? No, it depends what the other things you have are as well. That sounds like a very similar vibe. I believe the energy always goes somewhere.

Before I started doing strength and conditioning, I was just training. And I realized there was stuff I wanted to do. My mind was like, my mind was going there. Oh, I wish I could do this, but I don't have the strength. Or I can't move this way or I can't move effectively this way. So my mind was processing. The energy was going somewhere.

I believe like my technique was developing in my mind. And then once I had the strength, oh, that thing that I wanted to do, I can do it. And then Eureka. And then from then on, you can evolve to, how would I say that? To frying bigger fish. Yeah. Before, the stuff that you basically just wanted to do. Well, now I want to do more.

Now I want to move to the next level. And that's the evolution of the sport as well. And you've won absolute division. Yes. At Worlds. At Worlds. No Gi. That means, absolute division means that no weight class.

Yes. Shit. So, what's the biggest guy you had to go against? Heavyweight. Super heavyweight. I fought a super heavyweight. I fought a heavyweight uh super heavyweight i i fought a super heavyweight i fought a heavyweight what's that what's that weight uh the guy might have might have been like uh i got it on video

might have been like uh 250 pounds so you showed up the worlds and your weight is what i mean he's 250 pounds world class grappler jesus so this guy has how much did you win 162 162 100 pounds on you and he's he's a world-class athlete. Yeah. If he's at Worlds, he's one of the best. Yes. Right? And then you beat that guy.

And you attribute some of that to just being stronger and faster. If I didn't have the strength, I couldn't keep up with the pressure that he was putting on me. I mean, and I couldn't apply the moves that i wanted to apply on him i didn't beat him by submission but i had the endurance to uh score points on him to keep attacking him while he was attacking at the same time or i attacked why i made him defend himself from me and uh that's how i that's how i made the score but i had to have the strength and conditioning i have to have the physical and the mental strength to be able to perform. And that came with strength and conditioning, with specific work. It didn't come just by rolling at the gym with bigger guys.

I wasn't at that level. I needed extra work. I needed homework to do with the weights and with the techniques of strength and conditioning. We mentioned earlier you don't like doing a lot of repetition with weights. You see the value in low repetition and a lot of fighters kind of want to punch with dumbbells in their hands for

their strength training. I guess it depends what you're training for. I guess striking. You might want to do punches with low weights to develop speed. With jiu-jitsu, I'm not against doing a lot of repetition, but I want to do what's going to be effective for my game.

I believe, like, low repetition and higher weights is going to be effective to what I want to achieve with the grappling game. So when you come into faction and train, I mean, you're not really doing any high repetition stuff, though. No, never, never. No. Just increasing the weight in a safe pattern. I don't want to get injured. So it's important to have a strength coach to watch the posture,

to somebody that knows you, say, oh, this weight is good for you, and you just build a safe development of your strength and technique. What would you tell a fighter who wanted to just do conditioning or, you know, like CrossFit-style conditioning maybe, but wasn't really interested in lifting weights because they feel like doing the conditioning is more geared toward their sport yeah you feel like they're missing out on a big part definitely uh we watch a lot of fights here in the south you don't see a lot of knockouts and i ask uh another strength coach friend of our friend of ours Chris Adams

I said Chris why there's not a lot of knockouts I know there's a lot of submissions because we train a lot with the guys that win by submission

but why don't they knock people out I said Alex honestly I don't think they have a lot of strength on their right hand I said oh that made me think

maybe they're working the wrong thing maybe they should go to Team Faction and get a program there. Yeah. That might be why there's more knockouts with the heavyweights than there are with the lighter weight classes. Because their head might not be that much bigger, but they hit so much harder. That makes sense, yes.

And then they go down easier. Bigger is going to be stronger most of the time. Sure. And that's why we have weight classes. Bigger people going to be stronger most of the time. Sure. And that's why we have weight classes. Bigger people are stronger. That makes sense, yes. Give your data to prove that, Doug. That was another wow for Alex.

He's like, oh, yeah. Yeah. This stuff's true. How come you didn't think of that? So somehow I've got to make my head bigger. Right? I see where you're going with this. So you can take a punch easier?

Your head could not get any bigger, by the way. What? You got a nugget. Not your physical head. No. The ego is what I'm talking about. Figuratively speaking. I knew that.

I think with striking, part of learning, I mean, I'm more of a jiu-jitsu guy, obviously. But with striking, one of the hard things to learn is learn how to take a punch and still say, oh, I'm okay. And roll with the punches and develop your technique. How can you knock somebody out? You got to have that precision. You got to have that footwork to be on the right position to throw that punch. But you got to throw it hard because the guy doesn't want to be knocked out. And both of the guys are very adrenaline-like.

Guys, I'm from Brazil sometimes. We should have prefaced that at the beginning of the show. He's from Brazil, so he might make some shit up. Sometimes, yeah. Sounds like a word to me. We make up a word almost every single show so you did it this time adrenaline adrenalized adrenaline adrenalized t-shirts do you coach any of the mma athletes uh memphis bjj uh sometimes we got the current coaches there uh nathan pang and jason mc McDonald, but we're there to help every time.

I coach Doug on some of his fights. Which he seems to win a lot of. Yes, all of them. So far, so good. So far, so good. That's right. We're going to jinx him. I know.

You guys say that way too often. That's bullshit. I'm going to get knocked out. Doug's never going to lose. Doug's never going to get knocked out. I'm going to have 50 people there to watch me, and I'm going to get knocked out. Doug's never going to lose. Doug's never going to get knocked out. I'm going to have 50 people there to watch me, and I'm going to get knocked out in five seconds. He just gets more and more popular, and it's going to hit the tipping point.

I think this way. Eventually, someone's going to – you can't win forever. Someone's going to knock you out. Everybody gets got. Is that the way it goes? Everybody catches a punch now and then. Well, as an MMA fighter, you've got to know what your skills are. I know Doug trains Muay Thai, but he trains more Jiu-Jitsu.

And you've got to put yourself in a position where your weapon is. You sharpen your weapons, and then you go to fight, and you use them. If you're a Jiu-Jitsu guy, you don't want to be standing up against the striking guy you're gonna be exposed you got to bring the fight to where your advantage is you might do some striking i understand you might do some striking to close distance and apply your techniques but if you're there it's a gamble and uh it's a big loss if you if you if you if you get knocked out i remember when uh brandon slay came and did a seminar at memphis judo jiu-jitsu a little while back and uh brandon slay was a i

think was in 2000 he was an olympic gold medalist in wrestling and he said that that his coach told him that he needs to spend 75 of his time working on things that he's already really good at yes 20 of his time working on things that he's only kind of good at and only five percent of the time working on things that he's not very good at because even if he's in his case he's a very strong powerful guy great for wrestling and he's not very mobile not very flexible and if he spends a lot of time working on working on stretching whatnot it's not going to matter all it's going to do is make him mediocre at those things but if he can get really strong and even more powerful and truly be world class at the skills he already possesses. Well, then he can really make something of himself, and he did.

Yes, that makes a lot of sense to me. Marcelo Garcia, he's famous for being one of the best guys in the world with the rear naked choke. But he rear naked chokes with his right hand. So he always tries to bring the game to a control position where he can apply his right hand on a choke. He just gave away his secret. He gives away his secret every day on mgineaction.com. Oh, yeah, he's too damn good to care, I guess. But, yeah, you sharpen your weapons.

And I agree with Brandon 100%. That's the realization that I think I had. That's what I did because that jives with a lot of the – like some of the business shit I've come to understand that there's all these things you will probably do well, and there's the shit you could be working on to improve upon, and you could get better at that. But it's much better just to kick absolute tons of ass with your strengths

and just have somebody else do the things you're bad at. I mean, you spend all this time trying to get good at the things you're bad at, but I mean, it sounds like a good, honest heart, you know, American ideal,

improve your weaknesses and be a better man. But I guess that's good. Can most of the time be sort of bullshit. That's absolutely true. You suck at certain things. Do you want, you want to go from sucking to being mediocre? Yeah.

And not developing your shirt? Pay somebody else to do it. There's a reason I didn't make this shirt. It would take me a month, and it would look like shit. But then you would have the satisfaction of having honed your craft towards being able to now make shirts. There's honor in that, bro. Even in other sports like football, you got the wide receivers, you got the line linebackers everybody's good at something not one person don't play all positions you got to find out what you're good at and then you make the team you're not going to be good at everything chances

are you're not good at anything if you say you're good at everything all right same thing unless you're a crossfitter check yourself that's right check yourself or you're a crossfitter. Check yourself. That's right. Check yourself or you're going to fucking wreck yourself, bro. I'm going to ask one quick question. We're going to take a break. So I'll ask you this question and then I'll let you plug what you want to plug, the gyms that you train at, Marcelo Garcia stuff. Someone asked, how popular is BJJ in Brazil? Is it like a national sport and how respected are the fighters?

Nowadays, it's a national sport. I mean, no, national sport would be soccer. But it's a sport that you find all over Brazil. Before, big center was Rio de Janeiro, and that's it. Maybe the Amazon, because the Gracie started on the Amazon. They migrated to Rio. They brought the family and the art to Rio. So it became very popular to Rio.

But nowadays with the globalization, the access to videos everywhere, and the sport is more mature. There's more descendants of the sport. There's more schools that people migrated to teach all over the country. So it's pretty popular in teach all over the country so it's pretty it's pretty popular in uh in brazil all over the second most uh rio de janeiro is the state with the most practitioners as i understand i think the second biggest place will be california and uh that's where the world tournaments are that's where a lot of brazilians migrated to and open schools and there's a lot of practitioners

there yeah i actually got in a taxi cab this weekend in san diego and my taxicab driver was from brazil he had cauliflower ears no no no not a fighter no we we definitely drilled him on why why'd you come to america he said san diego is the best city in the world yeah they say that was his opinion i hear it's uh very similar to rio de jane The weather, the ocean, and there's a lot of Brazilians that live there too. Yeah, we got to go to Rio de Janeiro and see if that's true. Absolutely awesome Mexican food, by the way.

You're going to have Mexican food in Brazil? Asshole, I'm talking about San Diego. I'm talking about going to Brazil. I've already been to San Diego. What's better, Brazilian food or really awesome Mexican food? I've never had Brazilian food. Have you been to Texas or Brazil?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's all just meat, right? Is that what we have the options for? Yeah. Meat, plantains. Meat, chicken, lamb, and the salad bar, which is not salad.

It's like sushi, cold cuts. Can I go to Brazil and get a big pile of meat and some plantains? Not a big pile of meat. They keep bringing you meat. What's the sugar cane liquor I can have with my meat? Cachaça. Cachaça. Yes.

Lucas is a fan of that stuff, I think. Cachaça. All right. So what is it you want to plug Marcel Garcia, Memphis BJJ, and us? Yes, definitely. Team Faction, the home of CrossFit Memphis, best place to get your conditioning. Memphis Judo and Jiu-Jitsu and fitness kickboxing, the best place for martial arts in the Mid-South.

And Marcel Garcia, ourquarter school in New York. Not headquarters. It's where we get the most inspiration for our jiu-jitsu. Okay. Very cool. All right, we're going to take a break. Are you guys going to show us a cool video? Most definitely.

Yeah, most definitely. There's something awesome happening. All right, we'll be back in a minute. All right. All right. Boom. definitely something awesome happening all right we'll be back in a minute there we go dude boom are we ready are we ready to broadcast now are we ready all right welcome back y'all can we get a can we get an on air sign

for our studio no matter where we are stick it up on the air bright red letters we need something like that because sometimes I don't think these guys know that we're recording we at least used to have a clap or something y'all used to give us a signal

now we never know if we're actually being recorded or not that's why we like it that's why you capture all the little fine details we never know if we're actually being recorded or not. That's the way we like it. That's the way you capture all the little funny details. I never know when I need to morph into Podcast Doug and stop all the dirty swearing that I normally do. I thought you were already Podcast Doug. How many Dougs are there? Podcast Doug, Chief Operating Officer Doug,

Ass-Kicking Jiu-Jitsu Practitioner Doug. Action figure line coming up next month. He'll have him in a suit with a briefcase and one with a gi. If I ever have an action figure, that's when I know that I've made it. All right. We're back. Barbell Shrug still have Alex Meadows on the set, what we'll call this thing.

And one of the reasons we kept him around is because we like him. And the other reason is because we're going to talk a little bit about owning a gym and running a gym. And he happens to know a little bit about that also because he's on the, he does the judo, jujitsu, MMA.

Memphis Judo and Jiu-Jitsu. Memphis Judo and Jiu-Jitsu. Don't fuck with this guy. This is the wrongest guy to fuck with in the room. I bet I could outrun you. I'm pretty fast. This guy's determined. Dude, he calls him soccer country.

Yeah. He'll run you down. Oh, maybe not. But so knows pose running technique. I know. I'm not sure I use it but whatever that shit is you've fallen forward doing all you have to do it's gypsy running gypsy you know what we should develop a new running style we'll call it gypsy running that's awfully catchy never trust a gypsy

this past weekend actually i just got back this afternoon this past weekend I went to California I got invited out to talk to some exercise science students at Cal State Fullerton about it's kind of like a career day for college students so I went out there and a lot of these kids they don't know exactly what they want to do like three quarters of them are you know they're like I'm gonna be a PT student I'm gonna go to physical therapy but come to find out there's like three quarters of them or you know they're like i'm gonna be a pt student i'm gonna go to physical therapy but come to find out there's like three students out of like 2000 they got into a pt program oh from from from their program oh shit so they're probably they probably need to have a backup plan at least and uh that's dr galvin andy galvin he put that he put together like a career day for these guys.

You did a Skype for one of the classes. Yeah, I did like a two-hour lecture with his class. Some stuff. I know it. Yep. Pretty awesome. But you talked more about programming, not so much about your career. That's where it went.

I mean, I could have talked a little more career, but it got into a lot of strength stuff. He had another guy out, Dr. Corey Lones, and he works with patenting. Patenting? I can't say it. Patenting? Patenting. Patenting. Inventing new words here.

Things that the university at Wash U, they come up with inventions, and they do a lot of research, and so he's involved in patenting things and selling them and stuff like that, so he kind of fell into that field, which was really interesting, so he got to tell the kids, like, hey, there's more than just being a strength coach or a physical therapist, and that was really interesting. He kind of talked about his path, and then I got to talk about owning a facility and growing it to the point where we're opening up.

We opened a second one, and we're working on our third gym. So that was a lot of fun talking to those kids because in all those kids in their head, they go, all they have is I'm going to be a strength coach or PT. And the strength coaches make this much money, and the PTs make this much money. And that's all they know. They're very, I guess.

And the faculty. They're young. They haven't even considered anything. The faculty don't know anything outside of academia. Because that's all they know, too. It's like, well, you can be a strength coach. You go to PT school. Or you can get into research.

And you can become a professor. Yeah. Why would they know anything otherwise, right? So we went out there and we talked talked i flew out a few days early headed down to san diego because i hate la and uh if i go to california i make sure to go to san diego for a couple days at least and enjoy myself in a beautiful city and uh i enjoyed myself hanging out with some buddies, some old friends, and we had a fun time. That's why my voice is a little raspy.

Sounds like you're going to get into some sort of sodomy story. Just wait and see. Just wait and see. Just keep me talking. We had a fun time. It was good. It was good. So you went out there, and instead of doing your Saturday night wrestling with me You wrestled with some buddy

Is that what happened? But he came first Years ago On Saturday you did? I knew One of my Navy buddies I went and saw I dragged

I dragged the crew with me from L.A., and we all went down to San Diego and had a blast, hung out with a few SEALs, and those guys are a little intense. So it was definitely fun. Yeah. And then we went back to L.A., and then we gave our talks. And we kind of talked about some of the stuff that i went over i kind of i went around the room and i asked you know who wants

to open a gym who wants to own their own business and why and most of the people their reason for wanting to do it is because they just didn't want other people telling them what to do i was like that's a really good because it sucks being told what to do. I was like, that's a really good reason. Because it sucks being told what to do. It's pretty much kind of the premise of why I wanted to open up my own place is because I didn't want people telling me what to do. I thought I could do it better, which is true. It's going to be really hard to go back.

If someday all of our businesses just totally go under and we have to get real jobs, it's going to be really hard to go back. Yeah, and that was kind of the premise of the talk, too, was I don't just own a gym. We've got other stuff going on, so you can become a businessman. And we talked about

Chris and James a little bit, too. These guys were super involved in exercise and CrossFit and stuff like that. The guys you didn't deem appropriate to bring. Oh, it gets expensive. To capture. I don't know, but these guys are worth it, bro.

It's not that it was expensive. We were doing other things. They were doing other things. They're busy, important people. But they got stuff to do. We've got plenty of money. We talked a little bit about how just because you're locked into a degree program and you're really focused on this thing doesn't mean you can't go after your other interests

and develop your skills as a cameraman or podcasting producer or whatever else. Because Doug and I, probably most of our job has nothing to do with coaching. And that was kind of my message while I was there. Yeah, I mean, there's no need to put limitations on yourself. Did you also ask Alex about the gym-owning experience? I don't think you gave him a chance to even answer. Oh, we're just now getting into it. That was the intro.

We're just now breaching the outer layers. Right. I did talk about some of the specifics of why I started a gym. What got you into owning a gym and running a gym? I wanted to be close to what I love doing the most, which is teaching and practicing jiu-jitsu. So I guess once you find out what you have passion for, you just want to be there, and it doesn't look like work. Even though you are doing work, you have to be there on time, you have to be there for your students, but you do it so naturally, it's something you just love to do that it creates a reaction.

People come there to see and to learn from you. So I wanted to keep that going so first I was just teaching just being involved with the sport and with the gym but it got to a point that the gym started growing and I started having more influence in the gym and I wanted to extend that I wanted to branch out I wanted to to reach more people so it was something natural to to happen if you didn't do it to make a million dollars I still chasing that million dollars don't get me wrong but I want to do it with something I love and I believe it can be done you just kind of you got to be real you got to be you

got to be honest with yourself but you just got it and you got to be a hard worker it's not just gonna, but it can be done. And like you said, you have a previous formation. Maybe you studied something else in school. That doesn't hold you back. The study that you did in school, myself, I study economics in Brazil. I have a degree in economics. I used to work with tax consulting. That helped me with the vision of understanding things if

you go through school and you have to put yourself to challenges something as complicated as economics as learning microeconomics macroeconomics all those courses you see man I can do this that I don't like imagine what I can do with what I like and the whole structure of a degree helps you achieve that I think I think a lot of people think that you have to like choose between your passion or making a good living a lot of people are I think under that especially with like gym ownership a lot of people see a lot of gym owners that don't make a lot of money or they're a gym owner that doesn't make a lot of money. I think they feel like that there's just no way to do it. I would disagree personally.

How do you feel about that? I think it's hard to know yourself too soon, too early. So while you don't know yourself, you got to get busy on something. You got to be working on something. To pursue a dream early in life, it might be hard. You might have to learn a lot from your own mistakes. But if you're in school, if you're like, okay, I'm going to do this now. I'm going to study economics. And then you're learning from other people's mistakes. You're learning from cases of stuff that happen or you study something you read the paper and you your vision goes deeper because you've been studying about you studying history you're studying microeconomics you're studying about

why the dollar has its uh its changes that makes you have a longer line of thought and understand things and see things beyond what people who didn't have that education cannot see but even if you do have an education and say business or something like that you're still gonna make a shitload of mistakes yeah of course probably don't get around that no yeah if you think if you think that you can get enough education if your mind is well prepared you made less mistakes because you put yourself through that yeah that's what i believe i'm much more comfortable making mistakes now after having been in business for a couple years than i than i used to be like now now when we do stuff

i don't even care if it fails like it doesn't even like cross my mind like that's totally not gonna work i'm like oh well who cares let's try it out and see what happens yeah and it doesn't really cross my mind that it's a big deal if it fails even. We just, at that point, we'll know it didn't work and we'll try something else. We try something new almost, it seems like almost every two months. It's like we're trying, we're like tweaking something within the business. And then most, I would say more often than not, it doesn't work. Like, oh, well, we'll just change it.

People have that assumption that the rich and successful people who've made all their dreams come true through business or something had some big aha moment. And they tried something and it blew up. And, oh, man, if I could just be like them, if I had that good idea for a business or a product, then I could achieve that. Oh, that would be so great. They don't really realize that those people have. Might take persistence. Might take persistence and hard work and failure and, but you still, you know what you want. So it doesn't matter if you fail, you still pursue

the guy who invented the product, tried desperately for years and years and years to get to that point and made all kinds of silly little bullshit things that were stupid and would never amount to anything. But because he did that, he could take the next steps towards the thing that would, same with a business or anything. But maybe if you read about a guy who made those mistakes, you say, oh, man, that guy did that, so I'm going to go do this. Could be, yeah. A lot of our growth came from reading books of guys who had run gyms already. Exactly. We read that book, and we'll apply what they did may not directly apply to what we do, but we can use that.

Yeah. And that's been a huge driving force for like a lot of the things we've tried to change and tweaks and stuff like that. Definitely. But the habit of being scientific about it, about reading about it. Oh, yeah. That comes from going to school, I believe. You wouldn't have that habit just by. Sure.

Oh, I'm smart. I was born smart. I'm going to know. Don't be a school kids. Stay in school. and it's not just what you learn in school it's people you meet in school that have a vision also is is everything is the whole is the whole environment you put yourself into what what do you guys do over at Memphis BJJ to try to get members in the door like just to get people to come try it out uh which we we try to operate we try to be creative with our budget uh as a martial arts gym we we uh i think it's

important to be creative right now we uh we we believe we have a good website we work with newsletter uh but i think most of our most of our business come from mouth-to-mouth word of mouth I knew something like that was gonna come word of mouth we've been around for almost 10 years and I mean if the product is good is gonna sell I believe that that's something we say in Brazil and if it's selling for 10 years and uh i mean if the product is good it's gonna sell i believe that that's something we say in brazil and uh if it's selling for 10 years something we're doing something that we're doing is right i feel like you've got you guys have got so much momentum you could probably like stop all marketing you'd probably still have people you still have growth yeah i believe so

with the word of mouth i mean if we're still if we're still there being loyal to what we believe, we're there every day training, we're there on the weekends training, that is contagious and it attracts people. People want to go there and be a part of that, and it builds an identity. I think Team Faction has the same kind of culture people get so involved they get it changes their lives so much that they want to be part of it they want to come to the gym and be part of it and they want to bring their friends too because it's something that has done good for them and I think that's the best advertisement of course

if you can reach more people the better because we're in business to evolve to succeed so we want to reach more people but right now it's word of mouth we got a good website newsletter we got some signs that we put on the in Memphis on the some guerrilla marketing

yes a little bit of that too you got a guy in a gi who spins a big sign up no there's a book i saw you guys read it as well about guerrilla marketing and you try to be creative when you have a when you have a when you're not a corporation that you have a designated budget like oh you got a million dollars to spend on uh advertisement no we if we spend one million dollars i mean if we spend money is less, when you're a business owner, I mean, you're really careful with how you spend your money.

If you spend too much, you might not have enough to, to spend with other stuff. It's all your money. So you definitely want to be creative, which means being smart about how you're going to reach people. And that's how we try to be. I know we use on our website, like our focus is trying to get people and that's how we try to be i know we use on our website like our focus is trying to get people to just put their email address on our website and after that we can kind of like start contacting them you guys do that too yeah i believe so yeah we have like a newsletter with the

tons of with the big database of uh email from members, from people who just want to receive information about what we have been doing. I know you guys used to charge. I know we're in the same boat as you guys. Our prices have fluctuated. Actually, our prices have gone up. They've never really gone down. What's y'all's philosophy on how like how much you're gonna charge for membership uh i mean it depends on what activity uh we have different programs there from uh we got the whole do anything like mma

makes martial you can do any class anytime you want. I just want to do fitness kickboxing. Fitness kickboxing is a 45-minute class. It's a group workout that you punch a bag. You work with some light weights. I consider that like you're getting your feet wet in martial arts. Is that right? Yeah. Good research. You're not practicing with an opponent. You're not getting hit. in martial arts. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah.

Good research. You're not practicing with an opponent. You're not getting hit. It's just a little bit. You want just a little contact with martial arts. You want to do a workout. You want it to be martial arts, but you're not really fighting anybody. So that'll be like the basic.

Not basic. No. That'll be just getting your feet wet. If you're going to get all into it, then you do jiu-jitsu, you're part of the wrestling program, you do Muay Thai, you might do boxing as well, and then we have a different price for that guy. So it depends on how much you want to get involved and how much you put yourself into it. Do you guys find yourself, like, busting at the seams or having too many members ever or anything like that? That is a good problem to have lately sometimes yeah we uh sometimes we just expanded our mat

area not too long ago and it was good because some of the classes were getting like not too crowded we we always manage on how to build a class that everybody has enough space to practice but having more space and more time since there's a demand for it yeah that's where in business you just have to hire more coaches you get a lot more people and how does that work i mean i know with us like if we if we start you know we have a lot of growth and we have to hire more coaches we have to make sure we can pay those guys so you know that's kind of where like that's kind of how we figure out where our membership price is going to be. I think it's a natural evolution of our gym is we're forming people.

People that we teach are passionate about it. And, man, I want to work here. I want to be here so much that I'll be willing to work here. So we're naturally having that phenom, so to say, at the gym. So those people that want to be at the gym, we end up offering them a position. Some of them start teaching kids jiu-jitsu. Some of them start teaching fitness kickboxing. And as we evolve, as we have the problem of having to have more classes or having to expand, we find a position for those people.

You don't post a job listing like, hey, we're looking for this coach. No, no, no. We hire from inside. Martial arts, I think, is a unique culture. You can imagine people show up at your door. Hey, I heard there's a job here. I watched UFC.

I watched like the last five of them, bro. Well, the funny thing is I get that. People think they can just, oh, I got personal trainer certification. So personal trainer certification so can i get a job at faction i'm like no you got to be here first yeah it's funny but we'll ask those same people if they want to come train with us for a little while and they're like oh no not really right like you don't even want to work out here and like meet us and hang out with us you don't even know us like why do you want a job here you just you just want some money somehow any way that you can get it yeah get the hell out of here not hired yeah hiring from within really is is the best idea they've already been through your system they know how you work you already know that you can

beat their ass with some tough workouts if they bitch and moan and quit then you don't know how that person in your business yeah yeah that too my thing is more about community like i want to hire from within because they're already they know how we operate there's a culture i mean yeah and they're they're friends with the people already and i think that other members like to see every business every business have a unique way of doing things every even if it's a restaurant I think everybody who runs the place has a way of doing things. And that can get complicated if you have to train somebody from scratch, especially on something unique as martial arts or strength and conditioning or anything.

So that's how we like to hire from. Yeah. I ran into some of these kids this weekend, too. I think a lot of people have the impression, I'll get a degree in exercise science. I'll get my CSCS, and I'll just get a job. Meaningless. But a lot of people who end up with a degree and they go get certified, if they don't have the experience, none of that means nothing so yeah really those things only function to

give you some better way of getting your foot halfway into a cracked door then you got to really bust your balls that's when the work starts yeah so actually for you coming out of an economics degree and helping with with what you say tax planning what do you what was it tax consulting tax planning so with you're doing tax consulting. How do you know when enough is enough and you want to make the leap to trying to own a gym and following your passion? How did you do that? Well, in my case, I moved from Brazil. When I moved from Brazil, Brazil is a country under development.

There was a lot of immigration going on back then. I mean, the United States is the place where you come to pursue a dream. Actually, when I moved at first, I was thinking, honestly, I was thinking about doing an MBA for a better job, to make more money in Brazil. But then when I came to the U.S., it was a realization to me. Here's a country that you can do anything, and as long as you work hard enough, you can achieve. In a third-world country or in a country under development,

not always. It can be challenging because the economy doesn't follow. You might be the best. Not the best, but you might be among the best in something you do, but you don't get enough students because life is hard itself. So coming to America with a dream and the willingness to work hard and pursue the dream, it's going to work. It's going to take time.

It's going to take effort. It's going to take time. It's going to take effort. It's going to take sacrifice. But if it's what you really want, yeah in this country it's going to work. And I'm really happy where I'm at right now. I'm really happy with what I do and I'm still looking forward to evolve in what

I do and develop more. Go America. Would you say you focus more on like coaching or on the business side of things? More on coaching, more on the mat, on the floor. He's already pretty good at business, man. The guy's smart as shit. Yeah, but what does he focus on when you're working?

Where's most of your focus? I guess you just answered it. I'm always – that's one of the things I wanted to become an owner. I want to be involved with the business decisions but with the day-to-day of uh doing the business side of it doing the the the operational business side of it no that that would be the other partner okay i'm more involved with the mat and uh it's too much to do both it's uh in brazil we have a saying, you can't suck sugar cane and whistle at the same time. It translates like that, but you can't do two things at the same time to do well. I like the Hungarian proverb.

I don't know if it's fucking Hungarian or what. If you have one ass, you can't ride two horses. Same thing. That makes sense, yeah. I think I use that a lot at the strength seminar, too. That kind of brings up a point we talked about earlier was finding a business partner that compliments you. I talked about that a little bit this weekend. I refer to Doug quite a bit.

I'm good at this over here. And if I was left to my own devices, things wouldn't go so well. They'd be moderate. And I'd bring Doug in. If he was by himself, he'd probably run a gym okay, but together, it's a lot better. And it sounds like you guys got the same thing going on.

You found somebody who maybe he likes to do the stuff that you don't want to do, and you each have your strengths. Yeah. My partner, David Ferguson, he's been involved in martial arts. He's one of the pioneers of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, along with Joe Gingray here in the Mid-South. He's a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He has competed at the highest level. You guys mentioned Dan Severn earlier?

Yeah. Oh, there you go. He fought Dan Severn in an mma match really yeah that's pretty cool right he's he is involved with the mma scenario yeah uh he's he's very involved with the mma scenario and it's what he loved doing he loved being involved with uh mma he does some fight promoting now too yes very uh he does empire fights which is a great show is a great pro show in the mid south and uh he's really good at it and uh he pursues and that matches well with the uh the competitive gym that we we like to have we like to have our fighters uh performing live and proving that uh we're the best school around. Do you think that because you are an athlete-oriented gym,

that that helps just kind of set you apart from other facilities? I think that gives more legitimacy to what we do because we don't just, I think, once again, the evolution of the sport. Back then, there was myths about ninjutsu. There was like the figure of the fat sensei. This isn't monkey say, monkey do. You go do what I tell you. Nowadays, our school is a school that the instructors, all the instructors compete.

All the instructors are pursuing compete at the highest level. Last year, most of us went to New York City to compete at the Pan Ams. Some of us went to New York City to compete at the Pan Ams. Some of us medaled. And we're really proud to be at where we are, you know, not just doing, not just passionate about teaching and sharing the stuff that we try to apply live on the mats, on competition. So, once again, that gives legitimacy to what we do. We're not just teaching something. Yeah, that might work. But I don't really go there to test it.

Just do what I tell you. No, that is stuff that I use at Pan Ams that help me choke the guy out and win the match so I can do the next match. And once again, being scientific about it. That's something that I think gives more credibility to any business, any activity. We've got about five minutes. We do. And I feel like with Memphis BJJ, you guys, there's like a tipping point where it went from when Doug and I started there, it was in the basement underneath a karate place. So, like, you had to walk through the karate studio. And then you had to walk down.

Like, the first time I was there, I was like, is this real? Like, this is pretty shady. And then you get downstairs and there's, like, sweat dripping from the ceiling. I'll never forget that smell. Yeah. The walls were stained with the smell of sweat yeah it smelled like jujitsu for sure yeah um i remember when i first walked in there like right when i got to memphis i found you guys online and i i saw the sign you know what the sign said did you say just like ring the bell where downstairs because it said like uh said

something martial arts or yeah it didn't look like an mma gym and i looked in i see a couple mirrors and i see some belts on the wall it looks like a karate studio because it was yeah and i walked in and i i was like oh this isn't it it's got to be like behind this or something like that my brother's with me he was like you want us going and look and i'm like when we can see the whole place like it's that's definitely not the place that i found online that's not what i'm looking for and uh because this is going and try and talk to somebody maybe they can tell us where the place is and so i'm like okay so i go inside and uh right about the time i got to the kind of the far side of the room i could hear somebody hitting pads

and someone was kicking tie pads or something i could hear that sound and i was and i kind of like turned i was like oh like i saw these double doors. And I put some of the double doors, and it's dark except for the concrete stairs that led down to the basement, and I smelled that smell. And I could hear people rolling, people hitting pads. And I was like, oh, I found it. This is it right here. I found it. And I walked down, and I was like, okay, this is it.

Hot jits action. And then I got hard sold by Dave. Yeah. Right away. it i walked down then i was like okay this is a hot jits action then i got hard sold by dave yeah right away i guess that that's where the the core of our program was being developed you know we're getting better at teaching we're getting better at training and uh from then on we moved to a bigger facility and now to an even bigger facility. But that's where we were starting. It didn't matter if it was in a basement or a fancy facility. We just had the passion to put the work in and want more and want to compete and win,

not just on the mat as a school as well. We always wanted to be the best school around. I think that's actually a great place to finish this podcast. Good note. it to be the best school around i think that's actually a great place to finish this podcast good note um let's go around and uh well i'll just tell you guys right now you should go to fitter.tv fitr.tv if you're not already there and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter and uh you can subscribe to barbell shrugged on itunes or on youtube and what else follow us on or like us on facebook follow us on twitter please like us on facebook yes uh pretty soon i'm going to have an mma program that i put together um that me and alex have been have been

following lately i basically took all the the training that we have been doing for strength and conditioning for our fighters and our grapplers and I put it together into a simple system that anyone can read through and follow on their own. So there's an e-book and a couple of different workouts that you can follow and then links to videos of all the exercises. And then also I have videos for a three-hour mma seminar that i did here about a year ago all packaged together it's called mma training day and that should

be available to buy in the fitter.tv store here in the in the near future i want to say real quick just because i'm the person who gets to see all the itunes and stuff. And it really is a real treat to see the numbers being as high as it is because editing this stuff and stuff just wouldn't be as fun if no one was watching. So keep listening, folks. Good job, CTP. You got anything, Chris? No, just thechrismoreblog.com.

I'll try to put some up there fresh every week for you. Come on by. Stop in. Say hello. Yeah, and if you're in town and you want to try some martial arts, come out to Memphis Judo and Jiu-Jitsu. the chris more blog dot com up with some up there fresh every week for you come on by a step in c it and if you're in town on tyson martial arts come up to mephist you don't you just do uh... out so i had to look somebody out person for sure for show uh... that's good

uh... That was funny. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you