Mark Bell's Power Project - How to Improve Your Conditioning for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu - BJJ Strength Coach Joshua Settlage || MBPP Ep. 960

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

In episode 960, Joshua Settlage, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how to improve your strength and conditioning for jiu jitsu. Follow Josh on IG: https://www.instagram.com/joshuasettlage/   New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://drinkag1.com/powerproject Receive a year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 & 5 Travel Packs!   ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   ➢ https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off Mind Bullet!   ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box   ➢ Better Fed Beef: https://betterfedbeef.com/pages/powerproject   ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM   ➢ https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!   ➢ https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori!   ➢ https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep!   ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to recieve 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panal or any custom panel!   ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

I'm not really built to, you know, get better at conditioning or I'm not really built to go for long distances. I hear people say that, built for it. Yeah, when they say that, it's always like, oh, I'm conveniently built to not do this thing that would make me better. Conditioning and zone two cardio and a lot of that stuff outside the mat is getting really popular. There's no rowing workout. There's no running workout. There's no stadium and hill runs that you could do that perfectly matches how you feel when doing jujitsu. What do you think are some safe ways for someone to do some conditioning? What are your thoughts when you hear people talk about weight cutting when it comes to jujitsu and jujitsu competition? 90% of the time, my answer is just don't do it. Weight cutting does

nothing to help improve your performance. And there's a lot of things that you can do to cut weight if you need to, but it should be on an as-needed basis. For anyone listening that's interested in starting jujitsu or maybe you just started jujitsu and you are feeling a little bit overwhelmed, is just to focus on like one controllable variable at a time and then just give your best effort with everything else outside of that. Pepperidge family, welcome to the podcast. We are 900 plus episodes deep, bringing tons of different experts in fitness, health, nutrition, and business. And we thank you all for your support.

And we're also glad to be bringing these individuals to you. Now, if you've enjoyed this podcast and it's brought benefits to your life, we'd really appreciate it if you left a five-star review on Spotify or Apple, as that helps the podcast grow and thrive, and we can continue bringing you amazing content. Thank you for your support and enjoy the episode. Has it been a year already, Josh? It's been a year. Dude. 365 days. I checked this morning. That's crazy. July 5th every year. Yep. Why did we pick July 5th? I don't know. Is it just the first time you ever? Well, last year I had said that on July 5th was when I officially got hired at Slingshot in 2018.

I think you had texted me or something and said like, welcome to the team. And I was like, who's this? I don't know. I can never say. Team time though. This is smelly. I was like, all right, I guess I got the job. So that was on

july 5th 2018 and then every july basically since then something significant has happened so then last year we decided okay every july 5th we'll do a podcast yeah it's on the calendar like and you just it's repeating every year so yeah for all eternity what's you uh you're always like into something you always got something going on you're always like into something. You always got something going on. You're always learning. Uh, what's your like reading or watching or cause we share videos back and forth here and there. Like what are you into right now? Uh, coincidentally, uh, go super brain. Andy Triana tagged us in a video this morning and I've been studying a lot of his stuff recently after he was on the podcast with you guys and, and Jake, it was, it really blew my mind and really shook me up in a great way. And so I had, uh, purchased a consultation call from him shortly after that

podcast came out. And so I've just been trying to look at all this stuff that he's been talking about. Um, when I talked with him, he had suggested a couple of different ways of beginning to learn some of that information. And I think a lot of times people will look at a podcast with someone who's so insanely intelligent, like Andy or like yourselves and they'll, I wouldn't put us in that category. It's okay to leave him by himself. Okay. So maybe, maybe just Andy. Um, but they'll look at some of those people who have all this information and they'll just think of like questions that only have one answer. Like, is creatine good for me?

Should I do this? Should I do that? And instead, I think people could get so much more value if they ask those people, what were the ways you acquired that information and how would you suggest I acquire that information in a faster time that you did so you could take this example uh like jujitsu uh we trained with cassio warnock he's been a black belt for i think over 20 years at this point world champ i could just ask him like cassio what do i do in this one position right here and i'm sure he has an amazing answer for

me and could help me out but a better question would be how did you learn to stop people from passing your guard what were the principles of your guard that you really focused on to not let anybody get passed what were the principles you focused on when passing someone's guard if you're in top position and what do you do when he says I never even thought about it you're pretty you're pretty screwed. Sometimes the best do that to you and you're like god damn There was one time where I this was when I was uh, a white belt and I was rolling with tyler bray He's been on the podcast before For those of you who don't know tyler bray. He's a pro bodybuilder

And a jujitsu black belt and he has spina bifida So he doesn't have any use of his legs And we were rolling right in front of casio's chair And so I knew casio was watching and and Tyler tapped me with the same move probably three or four times in a row. And so I just looked up at Casio. I was like, Casio, what should I do? And before I could even finish the question, he's like, there's nothing you could have

done. Just deal with it and move on. You're out, son. Yep. You're off the team. I dig it. Any books you're checking out lately? Yeah. I'm rereading The Ox the oxygen advantage by Patrick McEwen. I'm also revisiting, uh, Joel

Jameson's book, ultimate MMA conditioning. He was on the podcast a year ago, maybe a little less than a year ago. Um, but kind of along that lines of subjects I'm diving into would be diving more into conditioning. I was telling a friend of mine that I feel like I have a really solid base of strength knowledge and kind of the different theories around developing strength, especially for athletics, but conditioning, not as much. It's a very rudimentary base of information. And sometimes, and maybe you guys have felt this way too, you have intuitions on how you should train, but you can't really explain to someone asking why you're doing what you're doing. And so if someone were to ask like, hey, why are you doing 15 seconds really, really hard on the echo bike or a fan bike and then resting for 45 seconds?

It's like, well, I knew that when I took this course in college and read this thing, these were the work to rest ratios they recommended. And I can't really explain it beyond that. And so sometimes when I run into those issues, I'll go back and think like, okay, what books should I be reading to have a better understanding of that particular question? And then in pursuit of that, you know, you learn new things, or maybe you change your perspective a little bit on something, and then you can make advancements going forward and then ultimately be training a little bit better, be able to help more people out and go from there. I think it's cool that the books that you're diving into are training oriented. I know that you dive into other books as well, but I find that to be fascinating because I think that sometimes when people think of reading, they kind of only think of certain types of books.

Like maybe somebody is thinking of like self-help, you know, personal development type stuff. And those things are great to read. But if you read the thing you're truly interested in, it will help with personal development a ton anyway. Yeah, absolutely. I try to alternate between like three different types of books so one will be just strictly training it could be a textbook it could be um something like the oxygen advantage it could be something like a uh even like jack and tan the book you wrote um it could be something like that and then it'll be a personal development book so a book by ed mylett or napoleon hill or

something along those lines and then the third one would be something just for fun. So like a comic book or Dune or something like that. So that way there's kind of like a fresh rotation. So once I spend a lot of time reading about training, it's like I'm not really sure if I'm at capacity to download a whole bunch of more training information. It would be personal development information. Then once I kind of get used to that, I'll be like, all right, let's really change it up and learn about space and space worms. And then we'll change it up again and go back to training and go from there. How have you ended up adjusting some of the ways that you do handle the conditioning of yourself and your athletes?

What are some concepts that you try to keep in mind? Some things that really shook up my perspective on conditioning was the nasal breathing that everyone listening to this podcast has probably heard you guys talk about a thousand times over. But that was really big and really opened my eyes to, OK, it's one thing to like go for a run or do intervals on a rower or do intervals on a bike. And it's another thing to do jujitsu. But breathing is kind of the common denominator and all of those things. And breathing is a common denominator in basically every activity that we do.

And so learning about nasal breathing really opened my eyes up to how conditioning can be improved. And I've spent a lot of time, you know, thinking about only focusing on nasal breathing and haven't really focused on some of the other ways that breathing could be done, especially with conditioning. I think you had sent me something from Patrick, not Patrick McKeown, Brian McKenzie about being very deliberate with how many inhales you're taking in and then actually exhaling out of your mouth and how there is a,

oh, there we go. So yeah, there's, that's like a good example of stuff I've been doing for a long time now is just doing all conditioning, focusing on nasal breathing. But I think there also is something to, at least for me to learn more about, especially when it comes to breathing out of your mouth to unload some of that CO2. Sometimes it could be a little limiting to try to blow CO2 only out of your nostrils when you could do it out of your mouth. Again, there's a time and place for that. And so that's really what I've been trying to focus on learning more of is, okay, is there a way that we can train conditioning to teach athletes? This is how you know when you need to focus on nasal breathing. This is when you need to do a couple of really hard exhales out of your mouth to try to offload some of that CO2 and then get

back to nasal breathing. And so those are some of that CO2 and then get back to nasal breathing. And so those are some of the ideas that I've been playing around with and hopefully we'll be able to have enough of an understanding to where I think you had mentioned Brian McKenzie does this, where he calls out commands as a coach and whether it's in a game or in a fight or in a match, someone could say like, Hey, like give me two hard exhales out of the mouth and then get back to nasal breathing and be able to help athletes that way it's really hard to calm down once you get your heart rate elevated pretty high um something that happens with running and

one of the reasons why they encourage runners to do a lot of their training um in this kind of i guess you'd say like steady state zone two cardio, which would be approximately 180 minus your age. There's other ways of figuring it out, but basically you're keeping your heart rate relatively modest. And as you get in better condition, obviously the heart rate, the heart rate can go up or I'm sorry, the intensity at which you're running and the speed at which you're running can go up but your heart rate is still going to remain low what i've noticed on certain runs is that once once i get my if i start doing like a heart rate of like 150 i could still do the nasal breathing stuff but then it gets to be like pretty challenging and then once i kind of open my mouth and once i get do

like kind of a normal breathing in the nose out the mouth it's really hard for me to get back even if I slow way down even if I slow way down and I was always kind of confused by that but some people kind of told me that once you start using like the type 2 muscle fibers the fast twitch muscle fibers that it's just it's hard for the body to go back once you kind of went into those more explosive muscles, it can really be a real drain on the system. And so it has an overall like hit on you. You kind of just think about if you did like four hill sprints, you know,

it has a little bit of a cost if you were trying to go on a half hour run after doing even just four hill sprints, not a lot, you know, it's not a crazy amount, but four hill sprints at like 80% is probably going to lead to your heart rate being exponentially, just a little bit higher during the entire run. Even if you tried to calm yourself down, even if you gave yourself 10 minutes to try to chill, your heart rate probably still be elevated. Interesting. So it's tough. Yeah. What you've been doing with running has been super helpful in this process because you're someone that has come from such a huge strength background. And then to see the transformation that you've had and being able to develop your conditioning kind of takes out all the excuses for everybody else that doesn't really want to work on their conditioning. It's like, look, Mark squatted over a thousand pounds, benched over 800 pounds and ran a marathon.

So everybody that says like, oh, I'm not really built to, uh, you know, get better at conditioning or I'm not really built to go for long distances. People say that built for it. I'm like, I don't know. And when they say that,

I'm built for it. When they say that, it's always like, Oh, I'm conveniently built to not do this thing. That would make me better. I dig that. Yeah.

Oh, what's your take on, cause something I hear often around the mats for getting mat cardio is to just get on the mats. But you're doing a bunch of stuff off the mat, and it seems like it's working. So what's your take on that statement? I think I'm 100% in line with that. The vast majority of your jiu-jitsu conditioning should just be jiu-jitsu training. majority of your jujitsu conditioning should just be jujitsu training. Um, I think there's like a trend now where conditioning and zone two cardio and a lot of that stuff outside the mat is getting

really popular. And so the messaging is kind of shifting to like, you can't just roll and expect your conditioning to get better. And it's like, well, that's, that's true. But at the same time, if you're taking time off of jujitsu to focus on your conditioning off the mat, I mean, if that's what you want to do, that's fine, but you can really build a huge base of conditioning by just rolling more often. And whether we want to consider that actually improving your conditioning or just improving your efficiency on the mat to save your energy over time, I think that's important to differentiate those two. If you did a VO2 max test and you only did jujitsu and then tested your VO2 max test,

say three months later, maybe it would improve a little bit, probably not a lot. But if you just looked at how fatigued you would get the first time you took the test versus how fatigued you would get in jujitsu the second time you took the test, you'd probably see some huge improvements a lot of that comes from technical efficiencies a lot of that comes from just knowing uh from a tactics perspective okay when do i need to push hard in the scramble to get position or when can i just hang back and and chill for a little bit and then make a big push for to establish another position so with conditioning and jujitsu just rolling is great and your base of conditioning should just be just rolling because there's nothing that's going to perfectly replicate the physical demands of jujitsu except for

jujitsu there's no rowing workout there's no running workout there's no stadium hill or stadium and hill runs that you could do that perfectly matches how you feel when doing jujitsu so the majority of your time should be in jujitsu and then sprinkle in conditioning pieces outside of jujitsu based on what your weaknesses are if you can sprint really hard just one time in a scramble and then you're completely gassed after that okay use that as information to determine maybe i should work on some repeat sprint ability stuff outside of jiu-jitsu if you can roll for a really long period of time but you just feel like your strength is gone you don't really have much uh to give in those later training rounds okay maybe

work on building up your base of general physical preparedness that way your base of fitness as a whole is better so that way you're better able to use strength in later training rounds and for longer durations of time when you're actually uh like training to try to bring your fitness up or you're trying to get stronger the nice thing about going into a gym environment is all the controllable variables and then so you could look at you could say ah you know going to class is like a little bit uncontrollable. You know, I guess you can figure out who you can go against and stuff like that. And so you can control some of it. But trying to mimic it is probably not a great idea.

You know, trying to bring like a 200 pound like, you know, dummy to the to the track or something and trying to like load it on your back and run around with or something. The cost of that, like that still might be good exercise. Sign me up. It might be a good exercise, but the cost of it is going to be too much. It's going to make you sore and just definitely. It's just you're getting into like things that are probably unnecessary. So it's like just do your sport and then also, you know, hit the gym. Why not hit the gym?

Why not do a little bit of both? Because going on like an assault bike or something like that, the variables are so controlled. You can determine how hard or how fast you want to sprint. You can look at the Watts on there and you say, all right, well, you know, I don't, I don't feel like I got crazy energy today. I'm just going to bump it up to like 500 Watts each time and try to hold that for like a 10 second count. And then you can get whatever prescribed rest. Whereas like if we're rolling together and you're trying to blow me up, you're dictating the pace and I'm just getting, I have no control over how much rest we get, you know? Yeah, absolutely. You brought up a great point earlier. And I think kind of circle back to your question, Andrew.

I think the concept of using rolling as your primary form of conditioning is great for beginners. And then as you gain experience over time, it's probably not the case, mainly because we see black belts that if we had to guess their fitness level, we'd guess that their fitness level is pretty trash, but they could roll for 90 minutes straight and not get tired. And that's a lot of that has a lot to do with their efficiency. It has a lot to do with their skill. And so for beginners, you know, it's like spend time in the gym, building your conditioning and get a lot of mat time, like get a lot of experience on the mat. And then if you're a black belt and you've been training for a decade, it's like, well, how tired are you really going to get

training jujitsu? Maybe not that tired. Okay. Maybe you need a lot of extra conditioning in not that tired okay maybe you need a lot of extra conditioning in the gym or maybe you need a lot of extra conditioning just off the mat something that's going to take you out of your comfort zone something that's actually going to make you work pretty hard because in jujitsu your efficiency is so on point and your technique is so clean you don't really get tired as often as compared to a white belt or a blue belt that thinks every match is the finals of the biggest tournament ever yeah or i mean it is going to be harder for that black belt too but like those those individuals if they can make sure that they can work with people that are pushing them yeah because you know as you get older maybe you don't want to train with those types of people but if you are trying to improve if you can work with people that push you your conditioning will

still get end up getting pushed but it yeah you'll definitely have to hit that later if you're not working on that currently does does anything change because i'm just thinking you know like wrestlers their condition conditioning seems to always be through the roof um and i i really got first like um first front row seating of this when i started doing takedowns you know i i do what's considered i i've been calling like old man jiu-jitsu we're like all right you want to roll cool slap hands and we sit down you know so nobody's really standing up but for competition i had to gain that experience and so i hired a coach and we did a lot of stand-up and you know he's laughing because we're only going for like 15 minutes and he's just like dude ever since i

was like five years old, we went 45 minutes. He's like, so, you know, we got to build this up. And so I'm just curious. I don't know if this is much of like a white belt question, but like, is there a difference there in regards to like grappling jujitsu conditioning versus like stand up game? Like, is there anything different that you can do to help propel that conditioning? One hundred percent. And that's a great question. And I've thought about this a lot. And I think a lot of

that, those differences has to do with the rules of the sport. There's not a whole lot of rules in jujitsu around stalling. And so if you're tired, you always have an opportunity to just like hold someone in a certain position until you're ready to move again. And wrestling, they are so against stalling that if there's a period of time where there's no action they immediately start calling stalling warning stalling rolling stalling stalling warning and then they'll dock you a point and not only are they highly against stalling but the matches are shorter and so just everything about the way the rules are constructed for wrestling is all about action and is all about

pushing a pace as hard as you can for six or seven minutes depending on whether you're competing in high school or whether you're competing in college or internationally so i think a lot of the conditioning just has been a byproduct of the way the game is played compared to jujitsu but also trying to do everything standing on the feet and having someone hang on your head constantly and like you know sprawling up and down up and down up and down that is a way more exhausting activity as opposed to laying on your back and just having to move your legs and just make sure no one gets past your hip line you can relax a lot in that position so i think it's a combination of both like the sport itself has created an amazing way of training to develop some insane conditioning.

The rules have done that as well. Just the activity of wrestling being a sport that's really based on two people starting in the standing position. And the goal is to control the other person in a way that is impossible for them to escape. Jiu-jitsu is a little bit different. You don't necessarily need to control and hold that person down. You just need to submit them. And you could submit them off your back. You can submit them from top position. You could submit them where you're in the middle of a scramble and kind of jump on their neck and grab something. And then as you're falling down, they tap. So the rules,

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Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. What do you think are some safe ways for someone to do some conditioning? Because maybe for some people, maybe going out on a run is like maybe not. Maybe it's not the first place to start. Maybe you got to take your time getting into getting into that yeah that's a great question because for those who don't know mark has been asking me to go on a run with him for probably the last 12 months and i only did it maybe a month or two ago but i knew he was asking and i when you first asked me i don't think i was in any position to be running i'd been working on my conditioning on the concept two rower on the fan bike in the

gym which is the one uh has the arms and pedals that you could use at the same time. But as far as like doing stuff where I'm putting a lot of impact on my ankles and knees in that way, I hadn't really been doing much. And so I knew that, okay, if I want to run, even if it's just like a pretty chill 30 minute run, I should probably get my feet, my knees and my ankles set up, uh, to be able to handle that. And so if you're in a position similar to what I was in, where you're not necessarily in good enough shape to just be slamming these 3045 minute runs, you can still do a lot of great conditioning on some of these other pieces of equipment like a concept to rower, a fan bike, a skier. And what's great about those is that all three of those machines are concentric

only movements. So there's no eccentric loading, there's no impact forces, there's no deceleration that you have to do when you're doing those things. On the rower, you can just get a big pull and then kind of chill as you feed the chain back into the machine. When you're using the fan bike, you're just kind of cycling and pushing forward. You don't necessarily are like dropping every step on your ankles and knees every time. And so you could do a lot of conditioning and get a lot of volume with some of those machines. And your body's probably going to be able to bounce back and recover pretty quickly. While you're doing that, if you want to eventually run, which I think is, you know, if you want to run, that's great. You definitely don't have to.

But implementing some form of foot training, something to strengthen up your ankles, your knees, and then even look at your running technique, something that you showed me a lot of when we were running together, I wasn't even really thinking about my running technique, but you had taught me some things about like not trying to overstride certain things with even your shoulders and how you set your back position to make sure that things are moving efficiently and in good position. So I'm sure a lot of this stuff is on YouTube, but just taking some time to say like,

okay, if I want to run and use running as a form of conditioning for my jujitsu, probably should work up to that. There's things I can do in the meantime. And then go on YouTube, watch some videos on how to run more efficiently, watch mark's videos on how to run efficiently and go from there yeah running is a big skill like i think um it's it's a great thing to use for conditioning but the amount of time it takes to actually build the skill like build the technique of running

it's like if you can put in that time to invest in and you'll get a You'll reap a lot of rewards in the long run But it is much easier to go on an echo bike or a rower because the amount of time it takes to learn how to do that effectively and then to really be able to push yourself like Push your intensity on that effectively. It's gonna be Like a fifth of the time. Absolutely. Yeah I mean we've all been there before where we've sprinted before we were in good enough shape to sprint and we pull our hamstring you're not going to pull your hamstring on a rower you're not going to pull your hamstring on the fan bike you could really like go as hard as you possibly

can and you're probably not going to mess yourself up which is pretty huge because if training off the mat is all designed to assist and improve our performance on the mat anything that we do that begins to have a negative impact on what we what we can do at jiu-jitsu we need to double check and make sure like is this really benefiting me if i do these sprints and i pull my hamstring because i'm not ready yet what what am i doing am i trying to get better at pushing at a high intensity for like 10 seconds do i need to sprint probably not at this point if my hamstrings aren't in good enough shape to handle that but i can sprint on an echo bike i can sprint on a rower i can sprint on a skierg it's kind of similar to the conversation you and

jimmy and i had about olympic weightlifting olympic weightlifting movements the snatch and clean and jerk are awesome they look sick they post all these slow motion videos on instagram and they look dope you know watching dimitri klokov snatch all these crazy weights is like man i kind of kind of want to do that but the time it takes to learn how to do that and then build strength just in that movement is going to take a really really long time and there's all these great alternatives like kettlebell stuff um alex canelis's uh landmine university stuff where you can get similar benefits and begin reaping those benefits in a fraction of the time i will say though and this is just this is just a personal goal because mark has mentioned this before that it would probably be good for me to do more running i think you know because i do a lot of conditioning on the

echo bike and i'll use the rower but i do think if I built a better capacity to run, that that would have overall, even though it'd be a little bit more fatiguing and it would take me a longer time to become extremely proficient at where it wouldn't fatigue me as much. I think that would have a long term carry over into something like jujitsu as far as like the standing aspect of it and the conditioning aspect of it. Because like on the rower you're seated on the skier you know you're you're kind of like this but it's like running is a type of cardio that gets everything moving together there's jogging there's running and then there's sprinting and then if you can get yourself to the point where you can sprint 70 80 fairly proficiently you can train that and it doesn't fatigue you. Like you have to get good if it's not to fatigue you. I think that that is a long-term skill that has much more benefit,

just as the thought, then the echo bike, the skier and those types of pieces of equipment. What do you guys think about that? I agree with that 100%. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Kelly Strett talked to you about this.

If there's something if you're like trying to be the best in your sport at a specific skill but in pursuit of that skill takes away from just other things that you should just be able to do as a human you may not be able to reach your highest potential so i and this is what i think you had told me about kelly had looked at your hips and stuff and basically said, like, if you can't move in this position, I know you're not required to in a powerlifting meet to move your hips this way, but being able to move your hips a little bit better

can help you squat a little bit more, even though that's not the demands of your sport. And even though the demands of jujitsu don't require us to be able to sprint at 80, 90% for 10 seconds, you'd run out of bounds. And that's not part of the sport. Like, where are they?

Where's he going? Yeah, I gotta go. But if you're physically capable of doing that essential activity as just part of being a human, that can help build a bigger base for you to perform better in your sport, even though it's not necessarily a demand of your sport. So I agree with that. I think that's awesome. I think some of it is like capacity driven,

you know, having an overcapacity. You think of- Running out of balance. Jeez. You think of like football players that get that cowboy collar, that tackle from behind where they're, and some guys have had both their knees blow out from

that some guys have hurt their back their neck their knees all kinds of stuff just off that one uh way that people uh used to tackle people they just don't allow it anymore because it's just dangerous but it still kind of happens here and there and the guys that it happens to the guys that are that have an overacity for a particular type of movement, they're not going to get hurt that way. And the same way with jiu-jitsu, sometimes somebody going for certain moves might hyperextend or it might dislocate a knee or something crazy on one person, and for some reason another person could roll right over on that leg

and not feel anything, maybe just because of something they worked on, maybe a genetic component, but they have the mobility there that's allowing them not to get hurt. Yeah, absolutely. I think, is it Chad Akes or Chad Ikes? He's a great example of this. He fell with a bunch of weight. And maybe, Andrew, you can pull up the video.

This guy, he was in a powerlifting meet. I don't know how much weight, but it was a ton of weight. And he missed the lift and fell. I think it was like 1,100 pounds or something. It was crazy. And he fell in this insane knees over toes squat position and got up and walked away. And to my understanding, he wasn't too messed up after that. He just had some bruising because he got stretched way backwards.

And he just had some bruising, but he wasn't even in pain. Like, someone had to tell him, like, oh, you got some, like, that's discoloration right there. He's like, oh, really? But he didn't notice anything. I mean, this guy, you know, he was doing, like, splits and all kinds of stuff. He was very, very mobile. So it makes sense that he was able to get past that.

It's actually kind of interesting, like, oh like um oh yeah we get a shot of it here this is a like a apf senior nationals this was actually the same contest that was filmed for bigger stronger faster that's an enormous man and but look at oh yeah the weight was on him for a bit there and he got yeah like extended backwards extended backwards. That must've been, must've been brutal. It's, it is interesting that running is such a huge foundation for something like boxing, you know, like seems like boxers are like skipping rope, right. Doing sit-ups, pushups, some body weight exercises. And then they're, so much of their training seems like, uh, they call it road work.

You know, you're supposed to do a certain amount of road work every week. I think they kind of want a standard thing for boxers. They want them to be able to run like 12 or, I'm sorry, two miles in like around 12 minutes, which is flying, which is hard. But someone like Floyd Mayweather, I mean, that's what he would go out and just like run. So it's interesting. I guess the sports are very different.

In boxing, you're not getting tangled up nearly as much as you would in a grappling sport. But for wrestling, it's very common. When you were a high school wrestler, I'm sure your coach had you guys run often, right? Yeah, we ran quite a bit. In my opinion, I felt like we ran too much. I think I had this i had

this thought when i was a wrestling athlete and then my perspective changed a little bit when i was a wrestling coach and i thought like as a wrestling athlete like i don't know why like we're running so much and then as a coach i realized oh i get it you need to get all the kids out of the wrestling room for just like 10 minutes to just like make mayhem. It is absolute chaos. And so I definitely understand the need for the coach to be like, go hit that run, run to the Roseville Fountains and back and come back in 20 minutes and give me some peace and quiet. So, yeah, we ran a lot from wrestling. And the other thing is with wrestling being so intensive and the wrestling room is always packed.

And when people need to cut weight, sometimes wrestling or drilling wrestling is a great way to kind of kickstart that weight cut process. But other times, if someone's battling an injury, being in a completely depleted state, cutting weight and wrestling as a way to continue to lose weight may not be the safest thing. If you have a tournament the next day or two days later. And so oftentimes wrestlers will use running as a way to, okay, this I'm going to work on cutting weight, but I'm not necessarily going to get my neck cranked on further or get my

knee twisted further. I can get in this physical activity, drop the weight a little bit and hopefully be ready to go when competition shows up i wonder why swimming's not utilized a little bit more i am is like incredible but that's a skill set too like i can't swim for shit yeah that's i kind of think like that's what would make it so great for conditioning is because we all kind of suck at swimming you know we're so inefficient if yeah sucks. So therefore, we'd get a great workout just even if we could make it down and back a couple of times. You know, I'm curious about this since we were just kind of talking about weight cutting. You know, a lot of jujitsu guys and girls, they want to reach a certain weight class, right?

Because maybe they're 190, but they feel strong. They feel like they're stronger when they're competing against people that are 170. But I'm just curious, what are your thoughts when you hear people talk about weight cutting when it comes to jujitsu and jujitsu competition? 90% of the time, my answer is just don't do it. Weight cutting does nothing to help improve your performance. It's just a negative variable that you have to overcome when you compete. And some people get really, really, really good at overcoming that negative variable and other people, not so much. When someone's competing for the first time, and I think you have given this similar advice for

people doing their first powerlifting meet, but don't worry about cutting weight in your first powerlifting meet. Don't worry about cutting weight in your first jujitsu competition. It's just an unnecessary variable that you have to manage for your first competition. And I would go as far to say, don't cut weight at all unless you're competing for a huge bag or a major world title. Because outside of that, it's not really going to do much for you. You're not making a whole bunch of money competing and then sucking down weight and competing at 170.

If you're 190, you're not going to make any more money if you win that division. All you're going to do is be going in in a depleted state. And then unless you're going to suck at what you're doing anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. You're still new. It's going to take a while.

Exactly. Yeah. So don't worry about trying to beat everybody up in the 170 pound weight class. Yeah. And then the other thing would be if you're more experienced and you're competing for a major world title that is pretty weight cutting could be beneficial not from a performance standpoint but just a matchup standpoint there may be people in a heavier weight class that you know like it's going to be really really tough if i'm matched up with this particular guy in the first round shoot shoot, I may be fully hydrated, but fully

hydrated or not, that guy is going to smoke me pretty bad. I may be more competitive in this lower weight class. So maybe there's something that I can do to cut weight to get down in that lower weight class to heighten my chances of being more competitive, you know, for this competition. And Seamus too jacked. He can't even lose weight to get into the lower weight class. You just have to like lose a bunch of muscle mass pretty much or get shorter or something yeah yeah I really can't do that but yeah it's really it really hasn't made much sense because most people when I talk to them about their weight cut like where do you feel stronger it's like

well I'm 190 like why are you cutting to 170 because they're a little bit smaller but do you feel strong at 170 no so then why are you doing this stuff you're like you're gonna be a little bit smaller too yeah they're a little weaker in that weight class you're gonna be a little weaker too it doesn't it doesn't do anything to help in my opinion and i think because of how uh just for how long weight cutting has been a part of all of these sports has been a part of boxing been a part of mma been a part of wrestling for juiu-jitsu athletes it's just accepted like oh i have to cut weight and and you know i think we can all agree like you don't necessarily have to and there's a lot of things that you can do to cut weight if you need to but it should be on

an as needed basis not just as common practice for every single time you compete and with guys that are competing you know multiple times throughout the year, doing a lot of competitions back to back to back. Every single time that you have to cut weight for the next competition, you're exponentially decreasing your performance. You should really only be like doing a major weight cut once or twice a year. If you're doing it every other weekend for six months straight, that's going to be pretty rough on your bro. Yeah. You know, and it's funny that you see it in powerlifting. You see people like wanting to cut weight because powerlifting, the fastest way to get

strong, everybody knows the fastest way to get strong is to actually gain weight. Yeah. I mean, with very minimal training and just gaining body weight, whatever kind of body weight it would be, you can gain a little bit of strength in some of the lifts. So it's always been real interesting to me. I'm like, this guy, you know, he's doing his first contest, and in the next 12 weeks he wants to lose like 12 pounds or wants to try to lose 12 pounds just to get himself in line to lose 8 pounds

the day before to do like a water cut. And you're like, man, that's a lot. You're talking about 20 pounds. And you're like, man, that's a lot of, you're talking about 20 pounds. And you're like, oh yeah, but the contest is three months away. It's like, you're going to continue to lose weight as you're trying to lift more weight. This doesn't make any sense.

In jujitsu, I think something that would be really challenging would be if you started and you didn't have hardly any capacities. Like if you started and you didn't really have a lifting background, you found out that your conditioning is pretty poor and maybe you have some body fat to lose.

Like maybe having this extra weight on you is just a goal. You just want to lose weight, look better, feel better. And so that would probably make it feel like you're really behind and you go to class and you're getting all this different information. One guy is like, oh, man, you should probably only come in like once a week because you're not really conditioned for this yet. And you just got your ass kicked the first couple of classes. And you're like, yeah, that might be. And then somebody else tells you like, man, you just got to commit.

Got to come in here four times a week. Hey, you lifting, you know, are you doing like your cardio is not great. You know, you're really bad at this. You're like, Oh my, I'm, I'm so bad at everything. And then you probably go out and try to like conquer the world. You're like, all right, settle gate, set a salt bike. Andrew told me to work on my sweeps. And then you got all these different things. You got these, like a list of 25 things that you need to try to figure out on top of that, get stronger and learn great techniques. So it's when somebody first gets in, they're probably like, oh my God, I just suck at everything.

And maybe it makes people quit or maybe it makes people just maybe not want to stick with it. Yeah. I, unfortunately I've seen a lot of that. It's been great that post 2020 and everything that happened during that time, there's been like a huge influx of new people coming to jujitsu. In nogi classes, no one wears a belt. And so at least for myself, I try to always ask like, how long have you been training? Just to get an idea of, okay, do I need to dial things back or do I need to dial things up depending on who I'm rolling with? And over the last couple of weeks, almost every single person has been like, oh, it's my first week. Like I just started coming yesterday. This is my second class. And that's awesome. The sad part about that is that probably only 50% of those people actually

stick around for a couple months. And I think it does have a lot to do with the enormous tidal wave of information and suggestions and everything else that they should be doing that people are telling them to do, that it can be almost a little discouraging for them to stick with it because it may seem a little overwhelming to do all of those things like, oh, I got to, okay, keep my arms and elbows connected to my ribs. Oh, but I also have to work on my conditioning. Oh, I also need to stretch and all these other things. And so I would say for anyone listening that's interested in starting jujitsu, or maybe you just started jujitsu and you are feeling a little bit overwhelmed is just to focus on like one controllable variable at a time, and then just give your best effort with everything else outside of that. So maybe that's like, Hey, I'm my conditioning really sucks. I'm going to

work on that a little bit. So maybe all you're focusing on is just working up to being able to do all the sparring rounds. You don't have to win all the sparring rounds. You don't even need to perform well in any of the sparring rounds, but just actually do them. And so maybe one week you do three out of the six sparring rounds and you say like, okay, my goal for this week, if I go to three classes this week, I'm going to do three sparring rounds and all of those classes. And then you go the next week and say, okay, one day I'm going to try to do four in a row without taking a break. If I want to take the last two off, I can, but I'm just going to try to get to four in a row and slowly build up that capacity. And then you can look at the next variable. Okay.

I'm really tight. I can't do many of these guard positions. I don't know how these people are being able to turn upside down and move their legs this way. And I feel like my back is going to explode every time I'm on bottom position. So maybe I should just take one step at a time. I'm going to do 10 minutes. I'm going to find a smooth Panther mobility routine to do before jujitsu. And I go three times a week, which means I'm going to do three smooth Panther routines this week. And then the next week, maybe I do it on a day I don't go to jujitsu. So find one variable, break it down to the smallest manageable step that you can take and go step by step, one at a time.

Gratum ferociter, is that the quote? Yeah, step by step ferociously. Yeah, step by step ferociously. You take that with each variable over time, you're going to get crazy good. You're going to get in crazy good shape. You might not be a world champ, but you'll make an insane amount of progress rounds okay now you're doing uh three times six 18 sparring sessions a week had to think pretty hard on that one you're doing 18 sparring sessions a week and then you're like man i'm feeling pretty good i'm recovering well my conditioning is going great i actually feel like i can add a fourth day of physical activity maybe i'll just go to the gym

and start building on top of that foundation. And over time, you'll have a huge foundation. And like the OG Louis Simmons says, the pyramid is only as tall as its base. So you build up a huge foundation. You're going to have a higher peak that you can achieve. I want you guys to imagine that you're wearing a cast on your hand and you're going through your whole day with this cast hand. Well, because your fingers don't move, your hand will start to become stiff, weak,

and that'll work its way up your arm. That's the same thing that happens when you wear these damn shoes. Okay? Sorry to curse, but it's frustrating. Because these shoes that have a narrow toe box, although they look nice in their Nikes, narrow toe box so your toes can't move. They're not flat, so your foot is in this weird thing

and it's not getting stronger. And they're not flexible, so they can't move. They're not flat. So your foot is in this weird thing and it's not getting stronger and they're not flexible. So they don't move. And your foot just moves like this all day, which means your feet are getting weaker. That's why we partner with Vivo Barefoot Shoes. They have a bunch of shoes for the gym and casual shoes. But the thing about these shoes is that they are wide, they are flat and they are flexible. So your foot can do what it needs to do and it can get stronger over time that's going to allow you to be a better stronger athlete andrew how can they get them yes that's over at vivo barefoot.com slash power project when you guys get there you'll see a code across the top make sure you use that code for 15 off your entire order again vivo barefoot.com

slash power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes throw these away watch the watch the camera actually andrew i have a question for you man how long you've been rolling now uh so since november i don't do math the way that josh just did very fast so i'm not sure yeah eight months um do you feel that things have like started to really click and i'm curious about this because you had no prior grappling experience no none uh click in what aspect just like jujitsu makes a bit more sense when you watch it oh yeah it absolutely can actually do it yeah like even when you and i are talking about a certain uh you know like we've been talking about collar sleeve i can now

see that in your previous roles and then like like kind of like hey at this time stamp you did that and like oh i did you know like so stuff like that is starting to make sense um during roles it's no longer like oh what was that one thing like ah too late it's sort of like oh i i go this way instead of thinking i'm supposed to go that way or is this the opportunity where I can turtle and then roll out of this position? It's, it's no longer that it's like I go, I went for it and I got it. Cool. I got out of the bad spot. So yeah, I guess, yeah, it is clicking. Of course, when I go against like upper belts and people that are just better than me,

it clicks for them a little bit faster, you know, like they see it before I see it or they react to it before I can. But at least I'm going like the right direction. Whereas before it was like, I'm going to go this way, see what happens. Now it's like, well, okay, that was dumb. Like, and I know it too, like, cause I still will make mistakes, but I'll be like, that was, I know I did that one wrong. Like that's on me, you know, not that, not taking anything away from anybody else. But I know when I make a mistake now.

How did you, how did your frequency build up until this point at eight months? Where did you start and where is it now? I want to say initially it was like two times a week. And then, you know, I still did, let's see, two, three more of like uh of lifting in the gym and then eventually went to to three and then i couldn't keep up with the lifting because i started like looking like a zombie when i'd get here because it was just a little bit well there is a lot too much for me you know it wasn't just a little bit um and little by little dude like the it was like lifting here jiu-jitsu here and then it kind of just like whoop, it went the opposite way really fast.

Pre comp, I was I switched it from three days a week to four days a week with like a lifting session just on Saturday. And then now I kind of kept the four days a week. And the last two weeks have been at least five days plus like an extra something on Saturday. So it's, yeah, it is progressed pretty fast to where my body can handle it. Now granted, like it's, uh, I don't even know what today is, but I'm pretty tired. You know, I am pretty beat up from the last week to this week. I keep saying, Oh, I'm going to get some rest. I'm going to get some sleep. And I look up and I'm like, Oh, cool. It's past 10 again. And I'm going to wake up pretty early. You know, the, uh, the Morpheus app is telling me that, you know, I'm not fully recovered, but it's like, you know, Hey, we got to go train,

you know, like that's not, that's almost, it's, it's basically like a, uh, a non-negotiable at this point, you know? So it feels that good for me, uh, to be be tired but still be able to go and learn and do pretty good for my level so yeah it's been my body's acclimating pretty good right now at this pace gotcha yeah so eight months to get to five days a week and of those five days three are open mat plus an extra class dang yeah and then the other two have went from just like kind of like whatever open mat to like actual positional and situationals which have been i don't know to me they're almost like a burnout set because like you can kind of go all out and not get hurt because you're already in the position you can work really hard get a ton of work in but you're not like doing takedowns

you're not really getting hurt you're not going against the spazzy white belt or something you know like you're just getting solid uh efficient work in that in that situational and then it's like boop three minutes is over next next partner and you just keep going and going so that that's been huge that's freaking awesome man i love that you mentioned positional sparring. You know, after listening to the Giancarlo episode. Oh, yeah. Giancarlo Badoni, 88 KG, ADCC champ from 2022. He had talked a lot about positional sparring.

And it is like exactly what you said, like a burnout set. Like depending on who your partner is and how you guys stack up skill wise, you could use positional sparring as a way to like just drill the same technique over and over and over and get really good at that or you could use it as okay this is like a two minute round or a three minute round and we're gonna you know dogfight for this one position and then reset and hit it again reset and hit it again so that's awesome that you've built up that work capacity and that you're able to handle all the positional sparring all the open mats all the live training that's freaking great yeah and that's the other thing too so like when i would go to open mat uh let's say i get two rounds in you know two yeah two matches or whatever two live rolls in and i'd have to take one round off just to like calm down and

then i can go again and then depending how i felt after that i I might go again. Now I've made it like a point to just try not to take any rounds off, period. And then just keep going from there. Like to the point where it's like, fuck, okay, I'm pretty tired. Class is about to start. Then, you know, the timer will get reset and somebody will be like, hey, I got one more. I said I wasn't going to take any rounds off. And so like I go again. And so like that's been like huge because when I first started, I just remember like,

dude, I think I'm going to throw up. Like this is tough. This is really hard. So now I'm not saying that like I'm getting the best of anybody, but I'm not saying I can't because I'm tired. I might say I can't because, you know, maybe I do feel banged up or whatever it may be, but I'm not allowing myself to say no because I'm gassed out you know I'm like no let's just keep working uh I'll get into a position

where I can take a breath and then I'll keep working but I'm not gonna just be like no I can't you know like that's been like really nice that is so awesome do you remember what that was like for you and Seema feeling like the empowerment of knowing like I'm not gonna get tired doing six rounds I may like get smoked really bad for six rounds, but I'm at least not going to get tired. I get punked. Cause I'm out of breath. Yeah,

man. Yeah, no, it's, it's, I don't, I, what Andrew's feeling right now,

I don't necessarily, like, I can't remember that, but you know, it, when you get things handled as far as like, you understand it well enough where you're not, you don't feel like a fish out of water. You're not like constantly helpless.

You know what I mean? Because there's a lot of times in the beginning where literally feel helpless because you have no tools to deal with deal with what somebody is doing. Yeah. It just takes a while. It takes a while to get there. I think it's important that people have the ability to kind of zoom out from whatever it is that they're working on that's new. Because if you can zoom out and kind of think, get a little drone shot of what it is that you're doing, you can say, I'm not really that good at this. But you're not really that good at this for right now.

You know, what will six months look like? What will eight months look like? You know, what will six months look like? Will eight months look like? Even if you just do something once a week. I think Nsema sent us a message a while back. There was a guy, I'm sure there's many stories like this, but I think the guy got his black belt in jujitsu and he was only able to go once a week. And he just went once a week forever.

I don't know how long it took him to get there, but he just went one time per week. I think Smokey, I think, is going to jujitsu right now like once a week so it's like whatever you can manage but maybe for one person maybe once a week then allows them to build some conditioning and kind of work on some other things or or maybe even for you andrew you find like if i just if i just fucking relax and take a day off you know if i if i if i go for if I commit to four times a week, three slash four times a week and then getting better sleep, I'm not saying that I know for sure that that'll make you better,

but it might. It's hard to have the discipline sometimes on those days off to still get yourself to bed at the right time and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I do trust me. You were in the back of my head this morning because I woke up pretty damn early. I woke up at like three 30. Cause I had to go to the bathroom,

but it was one of those things where I got up and then I looked at the clock and I'm like, ah, like, do I just stay up or do I go to the bathroom and try to like sleep for like, you know, whatever, half an hour. I'm like, dude, I'm really tired. So I went back to sleep and then alarm went off. Uh, I sno snoozed i turned it off and then i closed my eyes and i woke up like 45 minutes later so now it's like shit like i'm missing open mat right now i'm like okay do i part of being a champion is knowing when not or when to say no yeah and i'm like nah fuck that let's go so i ended up going and i had a really good day but you know still i i know that like my body is telling me like you need to calm down but when things start clicking like and sema showing me some collar sleeve guard stuff that

i'm really pumped about because i'm able to kind of suppress some dudes that are they normally would just walk right through my guard and if i can put up at least a challenge for them to be like oh i have to actually try now like that feels to like, I don't want to, I don't want to lose connection with that. And, but I know that like, you know, over the weekend, I'm going to be doing some other stuff outside of the mats that, uh, I'll probably feel rejuvenated come Monday and just want to get in there like a bat out of hell. That's awesome, man. Yeah. Let me ask you something, Josh. I know that you work with a lot of like super driven athletes um and one thing when you work with those types of individuals is they want to push through discomfort and there's an importance to pushing

through discomfort but there's sometimes and i've seen this happen to a lot of guys that we know um you know you keep pushing pushing pushing that you like there's just this thing that you haven't been dealing with because you thought your knee was okay and then boom it rips there's this thing in your back that you just haven't been dealing with but you just continue training to and then now you have a hernia like how do you help athletes to consider and think about their long-term goals even though they need to keep working fucking hard in the process. Yeah, that's a great question. And that's a huge problem with jujitsu as a whole, mainly because I think jujitsu is new enough to where it's getting really popular. And you have all these driven people that want to compete and do really well. But it's not established enough like the NFL or like the NBA where there's so much research to show like, hey, playing all these games means that you need to take some

time off and rest, you know, getting slammed by a 260 pound guy on the football field means you need to recover. Jiu Jitsu doesn't really have that much evidence or data yet to like show these athletes. Like you got to take a chill pill every once in a while. That's right. People talk about going every day. Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah exactly um so one thing that i i try to teach a lot of the athletes that i work with is the vip method uh which is something that i'm sure someone else has come up with something similar so i can't say it's mine unless i reference it twice then then it's yours it's it's your boys uh you said it on wax so it counts that's right yeah it's on wax uh so the the VIP method just stands for vision, intention, and purpose.

And so vision is basically like setting a goal but taking it a step further. Everybody has the same goal. When you competed in your last tournament, everybody had the same goal of winning the tournament. So having a goal on its own isn't enough. You have to have a more clear and refined vision on what you actually want to do, what your game plan looks like, how you're going to show up to the competition, what are the things need to work on to put you in the best position to win and fulfill that vision. Everybody kind of understands that we all watch

these motivational videos and get fired up. But people tend to miss is understanding their intention and the purpose. And so if you can clearly identify the intentions that you have for each training session, that will help keep you aligned. And some of those practices are going to help you stay in the sport longer, as well as help you make greater progress over time. So for one athlete, say they've been ignoring a particular knee injury for a long time, it's their knee hasn't completely blown apart. But they've gotten it popped multiple times in competition over the last couple years. And they just haven't really done anything about it yet. I'll ask them what their vision is. And they say like, I want to be an ADCC champ, or even if it's a

white belt saying like, I just want to win my first competition. I've competed three times and I just want to win a competition. That's great. All right, let's focus on your vision. Now let's talk about intentions. What are the intentions? And this is kind of where I would come in and help them clearly identify the intentions of each training session. This training session here, the intention is to improve your skills, not roll hard. If you're rolling hard, you're kind of at for this one session, you're kind of taken away from the benefit of improving your skills. The intention for this session is to simulate competition. So you need to be ready just like you would be for a competition that means your sleep needs to be on point your hydration

needs to be on point you need to show up to the gym early and get a really good warm-up don't just roll in off the street you wouldn't do that at a tournament so don't do it for your sparring sessions so make sure that your intentions are in line for each session and that's kind of where i come in to help them understand like look if your goal or your vision is to win this competition, you have to be in good enough shape to actually get there. So we need to reorganize your intentions for some of these training sessions. And then the last part P would be purpose. I don't think every athlete necessarily needs to be a PhD in sport physiology or a sport psychologist, but they should have some general understanding of the purpose that all of the training sessions and all the things that they're doing

do to contribute to their overall performance. Um, I forget his name, but, uh, the super smart guy that used to write for elite FTS, uh, James Smith, James Smith, he wrote the thinker. That's right. He wrote an article basically saying like, we should just get rid of all strength coaches. Like there's no point in having a strength coach. And the main intent of that article and correct me if I'm wrong, was basically to have a coach that kind of knows everything and is adequate in the knowledge of not just strength and conditioning, but also their performance on the field, not just strength and conditioning and mobility and flexibility, but also their athletes performances on the mat. And I think to kind of turn that into, uh, put that on the athletes, the athlete themselves should have a base understanding of, okay, why am I doing conditioning this way on the bike?

Oh yeah. It's because I messed my knee up and I can't run on it right now. Why do I keep, why does that keep happening? Oh, cause I hardly sleep. Okay. Let me make sure I understand the purpose of sleeping and doing these exercises to get my knee on point. Why are we doing, um, I'm not a super explosive jujitsu player, but why am I doing explosive work? Oh, well, every time someone creates a scramble, I lose the scramble and I lose matches. Okay. This is the purpose of why we're doing this. So if you work through the VIP method, understand your vision, you have clear intentions for each training session. Then you also understand the purpose that those training sessions have as far as your overall development. I think that'll help a lot of athletes who kind of get stuck in that cycle of, I just want to go hard all the time because if I'm not going hard,

then I must not be working hard enough and I'm going to fail because I'm not, you know, feeling like I just died at the end of every training session. Yeah, it's tough. I think people, they want to feel like they're working hard, you know? So when they, when someone thinks of something like, oh, I'm going to add this, they don't ever think about subtraction, but you have to probably subtract somewhere. Yeah. I mean,

you just have to, if you're going to do, you're going to do more jujitsu classes. You need more food. You need more sleep. Like you just need, there's, there's just going to lose weight,

dwindle down to nothing and just not have energy. It's like over time. It's maybe not going to work out great. I do agree. You do need to push. And I do agree that like over time, it's maybe not going to work out great. I do agree. You do need to push. And I do agree that like there is something to be said about like running on fumes every once in a while. And kind of just being able to get yourself through that from like a mental standpoint. Maybe you teach yourself.

You can push a lot harder than you ever thought. And that's cool. That's a really good thing to know. But once you kind of get past that, probably might be a good idea to dial something back somewhere. Yeah, absolutely. How do you manage it for yourself? Because I know you like to get up really early, but you don't wake up super early every single day, right? It's weekends a little different. You've got different protocols for different days, right? Yep. Yeah, I used to wake up super early between 2 and 3 a.m. all throughout college. It was just seven days a week.

Didn't matter what was going on. Didn't matter what time I went to bed. That's just when I'm waking up. That's when roll call happens. And that worked well while I was in college because of just how crazy everything was, balancing all these different jobs, going to school full time, all this stuff.

But now that I'm past that, I recognized probably six months, six to 12 full time, all this stuff. But now that I'm past that, I recognized probably six months, six to 12 months ago that I'm not really in that stage of life anymore. I have, I'm thankfully in a position where I have full control over my schedule. I have full control almost over everything that I want to do. I don't have like, I could wake up at seven. I could wake up at seven if I wanted to. If the day's halfway over, sure. Yeah, why not? Body's like, nah, we can't wake up at seven and waste half the day.

Like, come on, man. But I just realized like, okay, if I really want to maximize my potential as a human being in every aspect, whether that's mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically, then I need to be taking care of myself a little bit better. And I'm not a full-time college student working three different jobs anymore. So I don't really need to get up between 2 and 3 a.m. seven days a week. I love lifting early in the morning. I love training early in the morning. So on the days that I train, I will get up at 2.15 or 2.30.

And then because I've done that, I know like, okay, I'm going to train and I'm going to push myself really really hard and this kind of like is the mental game that I play with myself if I push myself hard enough in the gym and jiu-jitsu then I know that the best thing for me is going to get eight to nine hours of sleep the following night and I think the mistake I made when I was in college was that I didn't feel like I was ever pushing myself hard enough I could have always been doing more so I didn't need as much recovery because I wasn't I felt that I didn't feel like I was ever pushing myself hard enough. I could have always been doing more. So I didn't need as much recovery because I wasn't, I felt like I wasn't pushing myself as hard. But maybe you couldn't, right? Exactly. You weren't recovered. Yeah. It's

like what came first, the chicken or the egg? Could I not push myself because I was sleeping four or five hours a night, 365 days out of the year? Or could I not push myself because I was sleeping four to five hours a night, 365 days out of the year. How did you break that mindset then? Or that thought? I talked with my therapist a lot. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

He was, he was a big help on that. What did he say? Yeah. He's like, dude, you're jacked. Yeah. You're already there, bro. And when did you start therapy or getting therapy? I initially started when I was in elementary school and then had a lot of therapy sessions in middle school.

That kind of took a break last half of high school and then really got back into it probably a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago. Okay. But what I talked to him about and what's great of having that particular therapist is that he had known me as a kid. He worked with my parents for years. And so he had basically said said like, you don't have to worry about being successful. Like look at everything that you have in your life right now, everything that's, that you've experienced up until this point. Um, you had mentioned this before with John Cena to be successful, you must first be a success. And he basically told me the

same thing. Like, you don't need to worry about being successful. Like, trust me, dog, you'll be just fine. You will be successful. You'll be able to achieve the things that you want to achieve. But if you keep this way of living up, you're probably not going to be prepared for those things. When they come, they may happen much later than you would like,

or you may ruin a lot of other things in your life along the way. So maybe if there's 10 important things in your life, you may have crushed it in one domain running this way, but the other nine are probably going to get torn up pretty bad. You could achieve, you know, all 10 of those things, maybe at different points in your life, but you're at least going to be able to have all 10 instead of burning yourself into the ground and only achieving one right away. So you've gotten your labs done, whether it's six months ago or a year ago, and you want to know where things are at, but you don't want to get a full panel again.

That's why I've partnered with Merrick Health owned by Derek from More Plates, More Dates, and we have something called the Check It Panel. This is an affordable panel with 55 different labs that allow you to see all those different biomarkers. And you can get this channel every month or every two months, whatever frequency you like, but it will give you all the specific labs that you want to know so that you can make sure that you're moving in the right direction for your specific hormones. Andrew, how can they get their hands on it? Yes, that's over at MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject.

And at checkout, enter promo code PowerProject to save 10% off the PowerProject panel, the checkup panel, or any individual lab that you select. Again, that's at Merrickhealth.com slash powerproject, promo code powerproject at checkout, links in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. You have a good amount of guys at this point now that you're coaching and training, and a good amount of those guys are winning tournaments and doing really well, which is exciting to see.

Yes, sir. So how do you handle some of that comp training? Do you break it down in phases and like weeks and that sort of thing? Like, how does that run? Yeah, that's something that I talk a lot about on my website, the Strength Matrix. Basically, at least from my perspective, I think there's a huge issue in the jujitsu community that it's great that all these athletes are competing. It's great that they're training really hard hard but there's a lot of misinformation and confusion around how to train optimally to be in the best position to actually win and it doesn't mean that we need to do all these super fancy you know

complicated things during training but just understanding this is how we prepare a training camp training camp is not about getting in shape for competition. You need to be in shape when training camp starts. So plan out your year of knowing that, okay, it's like Christmas time. I'm in pretty out of shape. I haven't been training jujitsu as often, but I want to compete in June. I should probably work up to, you know, from January to March, getting in shape. So that way, when training camp starts, I feel freaking awesome. And I could spend all eight to 12 weeks in training camp, training hard, recovering even harder, and being a really good spot to win that competition in June. And so I work with a lot of athletes, just helping them better understand how they can

structure their training. So that way they can get better results in competition. And a lot of times, get better results in competition. And a lot of times you could really like become an amazing athlete if you just dialed in some what we the four of us feel like are simple things like dialing your sleep, dialing your nutrition, understand that you can't go hard in the paint seven days out of the week and expect to sustain that over a long period of time. So maybe at the beginning of training camp, you only go hard, like really, really hard comp simulation training sessions twice a week. And you separate those by about, you know, 48 to 72 hours. As you get closer and closer to competition, maybe you do that three or three to four times a week. But if you do that, then we also need to make sure everything else we do has an equal balance. So we dial back how intense we're going in the gym because it's not about how

much you do it's about what you do and can recover from that actually leads to progress and so that's basically what i've been working on a lot over the last year and a half is educating these jujitsu athletes to look at their year of competition a little bit differently instead of just trying to compete every single weekend or every other weekend for as long as you know you want to actually have some forethought into okay this competition is a warm-up comp this competition is a qualifier so this we kind of do need to be peaked for this competition this competition over here it's not really a warm-up competition it probably will be some tough guys in those brackets but the main

goal is the world championships in june or the main goal is ADCC trials in whatever month you're competing in since ADCC trials tend to bounce around. So, so yeah, that's what we've been working on helping them better structure their training, have a better idea of how they can establish a solid preseason, a comp season, an off season, and go from there. How do you teach or communicate like kind of how to lift? You know, if someone's totally new to lifting and they've been doing jujitsu for a little bit and they just, they want

to strength train and they hire you, like how do you, is it, um, you send pictures, videos, uh, how do you get the point across on kind of how to do some of the exercises and stuff? I just point them to you. I just link a lot. Honestly, all the YouTube links. There you go. Yeah. So here's how you squat. Yep. Yeah. So I've filmed a lot of tutorials myself now and put them on my website. But when I first got started, I would just honestly point them all back to you. So everything about like in a squat, we open up our taint and, you know, go from there. When, you know, we're benching, we reach our chest towards the bar and pinch our back and things like that. and pinch our back and things like that.

And so over time, I've collected a lot of those cues that I learned from you, learned from other people like Matt Wenning, Ed Cohn, Stan, or Stan Efferding. We're on first-name basis now, so it'd be like that. But normally I try to, I have eight exercises that I try to have all grappling athletes start with or at least variations of those exercises. So that would be a Zurcher box squat. That would be a sumo deadlift. That would be a floor press, a Z press. Those are the, uh, in the bent over row. Those are the barbell exercises. But wait, before you go to the other exercises, why do you choose the cheater deadlift? I mean, we have to ask that question. I love it, but why? You and me know, bro, it's, uh, you can deadlift way more if you do it that way

that's the only reason why no I'm just kidding I think the conventional deadlift is great I think the trap bar deadlift is great but there aren't very many positions in jujitsu where your feet are going to be that close together all the time a lot of times your feet are outside your hips

or they're staggered in some way you don't necessarily need to do a whole bunch of crazy staggered deadlifts and things like that. But at least testing your top end strength with your feet spread apart, I think, is a great idea and a good indicator of how strong you're getting in some of those positions that you may find yourself in on the mat. The other thing, too, is that the sumo deadlift, when you're doing it correctly, tends to put a lot less strain on the lower back than other forms of deadlifting. The trap bar deadlift does that too, but again, your feet are together. So you have a give and take there. The other thing that I love about the sumo deadlift is that it's a huge mobility test. If you really struggle on the sumo deadlift, that's an easy way for us to look at your mobility and your hips and see like, you can't really open up your taint that far. You can't really externally rotate your hips that far.

So maybe we should work on this. If you're doing only trap bar deadlifts or only conventional deadlifts, the mobility requirement really isn't there. And that may be something that we miss when addressing, you know, the current mobility of an athlete. And what were some of the other exercises you're going to talk about the body weight exercises we use are the pull-up the dip and the nordic curl which basically kind of covers those main movements some sort of push some sort of pull and then uh the nordic curl is like body weight strength with your lower body the nordic curl is super tough i mean we all know how hard it can be. So we often use variations of Nordic Curls

or find a good variation that works with them. We just filmed an amazing Nordic Curl tutorial a couple of weeks ago, which you guys, you can check out on Nseema's YouTube channel. So that may look like a Nordic Curl, a partial range of motion Nordic Curl or a band assisted. Yeah, there you go.

A band assisted Nordic Curl, like what Nseam is doing right here and then uh with pull-ups and dips we often use that as an indicator to help with body weight strength so if a jiu-jitsu athlete can do i think every jiu-jitsu athlete regardless of what weight class they are as a male athlete should be able to do 10 pull-ups if you can't do 10 pull-ups as a male jiu-jitsu athlete that's a a problem. Why are you shaming them, Josh? Hey, I'm just saying, bro, they got to get their pull-up game up. Work on it. Yeah,

exactly. So at a minimum, male jiu-jitsu athletes should be able to do 10 pull-ups, 10 dips, regardless of what weight class. If you're able to do more than 20 pull-ups, you probably don't really need to work on them as much anymore. I'm not sure how much doing 20 to,

or yeah, 20 to 25 pull-ups is gonna make you a better jujitsu athlete, but at least you've developed a lot of strength in that movement. You have the same thing for dips. If you can do 10 dips, that's a great start. Over 30, if you're doing a lot more than 30 dips, probably don't need to keep working on dips

once you can do more than 30 in a single set. And so we use those main movements as indicators of, okay, how prepared and how physically fit is this athlete? And then we build the rest of their training off of that. So maybe they really struggle with something like a Z-press. Their trunk strength and their hamstring mobility is awful and they could hardly do a barbell Z-press. All right, let's do a dumbbell Z-press, have them work into regularly doing barbell Z-presses, kind of take that same approach with all the other exercises and go from there. That's a tough exercise. That's where you're sitting down on your butt and you're trying to press the weight up overhead, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's freaking hard. It's brutal. How was, was it Biggs University?gs university oh yeah what was that like that was that was freaking sick um so i went to biggs university at stan efridean's house in march which was awesome um i'd met stan several times just through you guys but uh at this point or going into it i don't think he like really remembered me. He's just like, what's up bigs. So he definitely didn't know where he calls us all bigs. Okay.

Okay. Um, but yeah, he hosted a seminar at his house, him and Ben Pollock, who's also been on the podcast a couple of times. Um, and it was awesome. It was like everything that I would have wanted, which was like a deep dive into how to get stronger, how to build more muscle, deep dive in nutrition. They even talked about PEDs there, which was pretty

interesting. And so, it was just a really awesome event and something that I felt very blessed to be able to learn from Stan. Is it like a Tupperware party type thing? They tell you about steroids and then they open up a chest and they're like, oh, here we got Dianabol, we got testosterone. It was a big meathead thing.

Get samples, so that way you're just hooked, and you've got to get more. Yeah. And Josh, you don't have to pay for any of these if you sell some to Andrew. I don't know what you're talking about with that. I will not disclose. But I did sign up under you, so we're good to go. Okay, all right. I'll get my commission hopefully this week.

It's not a pyramid. But yeah, that event was freaking awesome. And I felt like for me, you know, going out and learning from some of the best guys in the world on these subjects, like Stan Efferty and Ben Pollock was really beneficial for me. And it was pretty dope. They know a lot about, I mean, Stan especially has worked with a lot of athletes. I don't know if people know that, but he's worked with, he's worked with sprinters over the years.

He works with Bones Jones. I mean, it doesn't get any higher up the totem pole than that, you know? So he's worked with a lot of athletes outside of just powerlifting. That was actually super fascinating because at the time that the event was held, it was, I think two or three weeks before Bones fought Cyril Ghosn. And so I had a lot of questions about like what he was doing with John and all that stuff. And it was so fascinating. Like when you're working with someone who is already the best ever, it's hard to, most people don't think that someone like that could get any better. And it takes someone like Stan people don't think that someone like that could get

any better. And it takes someone like Stan, who's that skill and has that much experience and that much knowledge and how the body works, but also how to communicate with a high caliber athlete, like John Jones and help them get a little bit better. I think that is, I think helping someone go from, you know, level zero to level five is awesome. That's like, it's great getting people started. But having enough knowledge and experience to take someone from level 95 to 100 is a whole different ballgame. And that was pretty impressive. It's hard to get athletes confidence.

It's hard to get, you know, them to really trust in what you're saying because they're probably going to be like, I'm going to sprint this treadmill or i'm going to you know do this like no that's not what i used to do i got along great you know without doing any of this i'm going to try that and get hurt i don't think so so it's like takes a long time to be able to build up that trust with athletes i think he had talked about that a lot about how as he's worked with a lot of high level guys that is a kind of a common conversation he's had. Like, they'll think like, why do I, you're telling me to walk 10 minutes? Like, I don't think you want to know, like I run, you know, two, three miles, you know, at a time or, uh, yeah, two, three miles at a time. No problem. So why do I need to walk for 10 minutes? Is this

really going to help? And what's great about Stan and, and his book, the vertical diet is that he just has all the resources and all the evidence and all the data to back it up. I don't necessarily think that every single coach or every single athlete needs to only do stuff that's scientifically proven. Because I think a lot of times, a lot of those, a lot of the studies and stuff are a little outdated. Things that you had been doing for years that led to a lot of your success are just now coming out to be like hey you should probably try that so if you only work on the current data that's available today you might be behind a little bit but at least when you're building rapport with an athlete and helping them uh begin to trust you and the things that you're prescribing for them having as much of a basis of information that Stan has and a bunch

of resources to be able to back it up, I think definitely helps. So what's, I mean, you have a huge knowledge base and you have a lot, you know, you have a really good track record. So the proof is in the pudding, but you're still learning. So what's pushing you to continue to keep learning and, you know, reaching, cause like, I know it wasn't free, you know, it was expensive to go out there to hang out with Stan Efferding. What's motivating and driving you to still continue to learn today? I still feel like I'm at level 20 or like level 15. If there's like a, if there's a hundred levels, you know, I still feel like I'm close to the bottom and I want to be, you know, work my way up as high as possible. I think working here for as long as I did was probably the biggest,

the biggest wake up call for that. I'm not saying that when I first started working here, I thought I knew everything, but I thought I knew way more than what I actually did. And then every single week you have new people coming in to do the podcast, new people coming in, even if they don't do the podcast, just to lift. And they may not be some big name person, but the way they lift and the way they move, the way they explain things, just watching some person come in that I've never met before. They don't have a huge Instagram following, but the way they described squatting

to somebody completely blew my mind and made me realize like, oh, I have a lot to learn. I have a long way to go. And, uh, I'd mentioned this earlier that, you know, I read Dune earlier this year in that book, it's kind of a tangent, but in that book, there's like a huge theme of expanding, uh, knowledge and expanding the capacity of your brain. Cause in that book, they outlawed all computers. And so if you have no computers, you just have to learn as much as possible. And reading that book, I was thinking like, that's actually pretty dope. Like what if we didn't have any computers and we were just all forced to learn and acquire as much information as possible, not just acquire it. So that way we can repeat it, but fully understand it. Cause we don't have a computer to confirm our thoughts on certain things or the internet to like, Oh, I think this might be a good idea, but I don't really know.

But I'll just see what Mark says. I'll just see what Encima says. What did Andrew say? Like, eh, good enough for Andrew, good enough for me. So that's kind of like what's been pushing me a lot to try to learn all of these things is just I feel like I'm way back at level 20 and I'm trying to get to level 100 and just gobble up as much information as I can. I think when we're young, it's easy to be a follower. You know,

it's easy to like, Oh, Louie Simmons. You know, that sounds, sounds good. I'm going to try it. And you try it and it works. And so you follow that and you talk to other people about it and you communicate with them and you try different methods and it's easy just to follow. But I think the older that you get, you're like, I still need to be a student. I still need to learn. I can't just foolishly follow people. Yeah. I need to, I need to say, oh, that seems like a pretty good idea. Let me play around with that for a minute or let me research it a little bit more and then see how it works. And then also not say anything for a while.

Let me just kind of like mess with this for like three months or a year. Okay. It works really well. And then it worked well for a bunch of other people. Now for like three months or a year. Okay. It works really well. And then it worked well for a bunch of other people. Now maybe I'll share it out. Yeah. You, to be honest, Mark,

you put me on game to like a lot of stuff way earlier than when it became popular. And I was pretty surprised. Like when I first got to know you, your track record of like, Hey, you should think about that. And I thought like this thing tape in my mouth, that's weird bro i don't know i don't really know about that

and sure enough three to six months later nasal breathing this is like the best way you could you know be breathing and all this stuff and uh you remind me a lot of tim ferris tim ferris has a pretty well-known track record though right yeah oh though, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, big time. But Tim Ferriss has a great track record of catching the wave of something way before it really crashes to the rest of the community. And I'd heard him say a quote that said, and I don't remember where he got this from,

but he basically said that the future is here, it's just not available to everybody yet. And I think for Mark, you're doing an amazing job of bringing the future to everybody else through the podcast. And it's definitely helped me just learning from you and the different videos you send me and every video that comes in at like some of the go to stuff or some of the landmine stuff you sent me way back then. I thought like, that is really freaking weird. I don't understand this spinal engine thing. But then three to six months later, they come on the podcast and like a boom, it clicks.

And I think like I have to start using some of these exercises with my athletes or I have to try these things for myself and then make progress from there. Thank you for that. I appreciate that. Yeah. Got anything else, Andrew?

No, I guess that's it. That's just, I mean, again, the progression from intern to being, I mean, again, the, the, the progression from intern to being, you know, who we are today as just, it's always just one of the coolest things. And I get to brag about like seeing it kind of all happen basically in front of our eyes to like where you are now. It's just, like I said, dude, you're one of the coolest people I've ever known. And I'm just like proud of everything you've ever done. And I want to make sure I get that on air because I think I do it enough,

but I just want to make sure that you knew it again, that I am proud of you and I'm just grateful that you are one of my best friends, man. Thank you. I appreciate that. I feel like so blessed to know all three of you guys. And I think like anytime I feel, or anytime I feel like discouraged or begin to doubt like where the trajectory of my life is going I think like dang like I met Nsema and then he got me connected

here with Mark and then I met Mark and then I met Andrew and then Andrew and I started working on these projects together and then Nsema helped me with thing. And then Mark put me on game to this. And I think like so much of everything that I'm doing today has been a huge blessing at largely in part because of the relationship I have with you guys. So thank you very much for that. I think it's really cool what you're mentioning a little bit off air. We've talked about it briefly here, but I want to make sure we talk about a little bit more. You're trying to put a system in place to be able to help people that are grapplers,

athletes. I'm sure you'll probably get into other athletes, but mainly grapplers for now, I guess, where they do have a good understanding of this longer term plan, where they do have a good understanding of how to incorporate strength training, because it does seem to be massively important, not just for jujitsu or grappling, but also just for people's health in general. Yeah, absolutely. I'm currently working on a course right now. I'm not sure when this episode will air, but probably come out within a month after this episode airs. But the course is basically taking all the information about training and all the information about not just like the nuts and bolts of strength and conditioning of how to squat and how to, you know, how long you should be doing conditioning for but really thinking and taking that drone shot view

that you mentioned taking a step back and looking at training as a whole okay how does this training fit into this entire year for my jiu-jitsu career and sema just competed at the biggest competition of his life recently and i know and sema well enough to know that he didn't just think like, put it on the calendar and I'll just show up. There was a lot of thought and a lot of intention that went into all of those training sessions. There was a lot of thinking that went involved of like, okay, how does this competition, how does all the stuff I'm doing leading up to this big competition, how do these things all work together? It's that way I can be in the best possible position to perform your absolute best, which I thought was freaking awesome. And so this

course is going to focus on a lot of those things. There's four steps and there's kind of four things that you have to work through. First one would be to clarify your vision. You know, look at your kind of like the VIP method, which I talked about earlier, look at your vision, intention and purpose. Then the next thing would be to select the right training program, which is basically just making sure that the stuff you do in the gym is going to contribute to the goals that you have. And then the third step would be to optimize your training and recovery. There's a lot in that step that a lot of jujitsu athletes just completely miss. They think that it's good enough just to do the work on the mat or in the gym, and that's going to get them to the dance to be mat or in the gym, and that's going to get them

to the dance to be the best in the world. And that's not the case, you can do that stuff and make progress for sure. But you really need to optimize every single aspect of that if you want to make the greatest amount of progress possible and be the best athlete you can be. And then the fourth step would be to just compete or test yourself, assess your performance, and then repeat the process over again. And if you run through that four step process over and over and over, if you start as a white belt, by the time you get to a black belt, you'll be so dialed in and you'll be so on point with understanding how your body feels when you compete, what you need as a, as an individual athlete to feel and perform your best, that you'll really surprise yourself with how well you can

perform and the peaks of performance that you could reach. What's important to you being somebody that's helping other people? Like what, like do you, it's probably important for you to stay on point and for you to have your goals and for you to stay lean and all these different things, right? Yeah. I'm, as far as my own training goes, my goals are just to like be as jacked as possible and train jujitsu and have fun like i was telling my boy zach recently he was asking me like do you ever like want do you want any more

lifting prs i was like honestly i don't think so like i think like not that i it'd be cool if i hit an all-time deadlift pr or bench pr but i don't really care that much about those like i just want to be jacked and feel great, like feel as best as I could possibly be, train jujitsu and get better at jujitsu and then dump the rest of my energy and resources into serving these athletes. Like I freaking love that. I love coaching.

I love being able to take the gifts that I feel like God has blessed me with and the knowledge that I've been able to acquire and help athletes. That's like the coolest thing. So I'm just trying to get jacked in and do jujitsu a lot. I love it. I think there's, you know, new PRs though on the horizon for everybody if they're, if

you're creative, you know, so as a guy, as somebody that, you know, you're maybe you're maybe you're not into powerlifting anymore. So maybe a one rep max on a deadlift just isn't as much of a thing but maybe occasionally you load up a trap bar deadlift and go for something on that or maybe you try to find a new way to move on something uh you might recognize that when you get put in certain positions in jiu-jitsu that you're stiff or tight or you see somebody and sema does this a lot you see something on like instagram you see someone do like a back bridge or something you're like hmm i'm gonna hurt I'm going to hurt.

I'm not going to hurt myself, but let me see if I can start to build a capacity for some of that. So I think, I think a lot of times when somebody shifts from like one sport to another, or when they move away from powerlifting, they think, Oh, my best stuff is sort of behind me, but there's still so much, you know, even if you just start to run and you just say, you know, I want to run, uh, two miles in under 20 minutes, it's like, well, that's a really good start, you know? And that's a, you can get PRs on that, especially because we mentioned earlier, like if you're not very good at something or not really proficient at something, it's easier to get better at it. It won't cost you as much. Yeah. You bring up a

great point. I should have clarified. I'm currently in my own training pulling from Mark in an old video you did where you said, if you want to hit a PR every time you train, just do something you've never done before every time you train. And I'm not necessarily doing something completely new every time. Seven reps on the preacher curl machine. Boom. Hey, I did work up to a six rep max bench press, which I've never done before. So that's a big old PR.

I love it. But yeah, I think taking that approach and just like detaching myself, at least kind of over the last six to 12 months, detaching myself from like, you know, these are the exercises. These are my numbers. This is my iron cred. And just detaching myself from those a little bit and being like, well, I don't really need to. Those three exercises only squat, bench, deadlift. Maybe I don't hit another lifetime PR there,

but maybe one of those Steinborn presses where you're bending and pressing like that. Like if I could do that, that'd be a huge PR, even though it's not the big three that I was obsessed with for so long. You're a young guy. What's it like being around younger people still? Because you still are working with with high school athletes, right? Not as much high school athletes. But the high school athletes I used to work with, I still work with them.

So they're all in college or have graduated college at this point. But it is really interesting. Even just a couple year difference, right, can make a big difference, right? Yeah. I don't mean to sound like I'm some old head but it really does keep me young like a lot of the the terminology and like what's happening is um it's just good to be connected to the youth that way and i think you find yourself tucking your joggers into your socks yeah that well that was an og wrestling thing that was that came from wrestling way back in the day um but yeah being around younger, I think it really helps me feel like, in some ways,

it helps me feel like, all right, I got to stay ahead. Look, I can't let these cats get ahead. And in other ways, it makes me really look at things differently and think like, wow, I never really thought of it that way. I don't know what it's like to experience high school in the way that you did, where you did 50% of your high school online in front of the computer. But that type of experience makes me look at things a little bit differently. It makes me look at online education differently. So when I'm building this course, how do I make it a little bit different? So that way,

it's more engaging for someone that maybe had that experience. So yeah, it keeps me young and keeps me on my toes. Awesome. Where can people find you to get more information, your website, all that stuff? You can find me at Joshua Settledge everywhere. And you can also check out my website, www.thestrengthmatrix.com. If you guys want a free four week strength program, you go to either of those places, Instagram or the strengthmatrix.com. You can download a free four week strength program. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later.