Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 50 - George Lockhart & Dan Leith

Episode Date: May 14, 2018

Today's guests are George Lockhart and Dan Leith. George and Dan are nutrition and weight-cut coaches for the best of the best in combat sports and MMA. They have coached Conor McGregor, Jon Jones, Cody Garbrandt, Max Holloway, Frankie Edgar and Cris Cyborg to name a few. they are the go-to coaches when the elite need to cut weight. Re-watch the live stream here: https://youtu.be/InTuQ3A2DZY ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Still kicking ass. That's where Brian Ortega trains out and teaches there. Does it? Yeah. You're going to find out that I'm the worst MMA fan in the world. I'm like the numbers guy. They'll be like, well, what about so-and-so? I'm like, I don't know.

Is he a fighter? Well, yeah, you're too busy. You're in it. And then that same thing happens in powerlifting. There's so many people. Things are moving so fast. There's so many good lifters right now. I don't know anybody.

Right. I don't know who's who. I don't feel like such a dirt ball yeah i mean um you're like i know who bones jones is right yeah i mean you guys ready to go live yeah yeah go for it going live and we're live and boom yeah as i was saying earlier like uh you know i'd like to just get healthier try to get my resting heart rate down a little bit. Mine's at like 68 or so, something like that. I'd like to get that in like the 50s. So I'm messing around with some different cardiovascular type of training and I've been getting my blood work done.

I've lost a hundred pounds. I want to do some jujitsu. I think, you know, I'm not going to sit around and stretch a lot. I'm just not. Right. I know myself. I know that I'm not going to do it. It's like a lot of the people that hire you guys.

They know that they're not going to take care of their nutrition. Like they just know that they really struggle. And so they're just going to hire you. It's easier for them. And so for me, I'm thinking jujitsu. I'm thinking yoga. I'm thinking like how can I trick myself into getting in positions that I normally wouldn't get into. I always thought through powerlifting, I thought like if I do full range of motion lifts, squats, benches, deadlifts, rows, and shoulder presses and stuff, I thought I'd never lose my range of motion.

But apparently that ain't true. Apparently that ain't true because you tighten yourself up each workout. And the kind of stuff that, you know, we do in here is just anytime you compete, you're taking something to the extreme. Right. No, 100%. Yeah, you're right, too. I think because it's like a whole nother workout. It's a whole nother commitment to really get good flexibility. That's why I never commit myself to it either.

It's like, okay, another hour on top of my workout just stretching. I don't have the patience. When I was young, I would say like, man, that guy's such a fucking pussy. Why doesn't that guy compete when we're trying to do something? But now I get it. It's the people that don't compete that are actually pretty smart. That's not what we really admire and that's not what we really are seeking. We're seeking people to be stronger and more powerful

and we're seeking people going to the edge kind of. But we're also, you know, there's also that other side where it's like, man, if you just don't compete, you probably won't get hurt. Right. You probably won't get jacked up. If you and I are just practicing jujitsu just to simply practice it, yeah, like we might tweak an elbow here and there and you might, so we might go a little too far, but it's as soon as you start to really compete and things start to get heated

is when, you know, someone's going to twist an ankle or someone's going to end up with a pretty serious injury. And that's what happened to me through, you know, through years of lifting. But you know, my MMA experience comes from watching UFC 1 and just being a fan. You know, I'm just a huge fan of it. As I mentioned to you guys before we got on air, I went to the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy. Only trained there for about two months. So I don't have a ton of experience with that. But also as a kid, I did some boxing.

Ended up boxing with Kevin Rooney in the Catskills. And I did do that for about a year. So I know how to throw some punches and stuff like that. But just always been a huge fan of the sport. When I saw that first UFC and you had that giant sumo wrestler get kicked in the face, I was hooked. I was like, what is this? Because as a kid, that's all I ever heard people talk about. Like if this, if this guy in the high school, who's a wrestler fought the captain of the football team, like what would

happen? And everybody would be like, this guy's 240 and this guy's 240. You know, like what would happen if these two, they're both beasts. What would happen if they faced off and people would be like, well, the wrestler would win because he's got more skill. And the other people would be like, well, the football player, he's fucking half crazy. So I don't know who would win. Yeah. No, with MMA, man, it's so funny because if you had somebody go against Michael Jordan in basketball, they'd automatically be like, well, of course, Michael Jordan's going to win. But a lot of guys, as soon as they go into a BJJ studio, they think it's innate.

Like, oh, you know what? I'm bigger than this guy. I can take him out. And then you got this 135 or they're flinging you around think it's innate. Like, oh, you know what? I'm bigger than this guy. I can take him out. And then you got this 135er that's flinging you around like nobody's business. It's a crazy sport. And, you know, like you're talking about that you got injuries, like, from competing at high levels. The funny thing about our sport, you know, it does look violent.

And obviously you can get injured. But I think, speaking for both of us, we get more injured from amateurs and guys like when we used to, you know, when the Marine Corps, we used to train. The white belts will fuck you up. Oh, bro. They'll grab something. Oh, I got a foot and I'm just going to jerk this sucker, you know. So it is a little different.

But yeah, you know, I was never a stretcher myself. But I do warm up now. I think my warm ups are longer than my workouts now. I got to get everything. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. When I go to jujitsu, it's. I got to get everything. 100%. Yeah. When I go to jujitsu, it's like I have to get there at least 30 minutes early to warm-up before the warm-up because I know I'm shit.

I've heard you talk a lot about finances and how it relates back to nutrition. I really like that scenario. But I've also kind of heard you speaking about almost like just kind of being ahead, like, you know, getting yourself ahead. And something like a warm-up is something that can keep you ahead. So if you have, you know, if you work with somebody who's 21 years old and they kick the shit out of everybody they run into, sometimes that conversation of how important the warm-up is is not that easy because maybe they haven't been warming up and maybe they have been successful. How do you get some of these people to buy in? I know that they're, you know, I know that they're paying you and I know that there's a, obviously they want to use your services, but like people sometimes aren't going to be all bought into everything. So how do you get them to kind of buy into everything?

That's one thing I always tell people, like, you know, go to a used car dealership, you know, and you sell something, people walk out with a car. With us, it's a belief. And, you know, with like a lot of the guys, like you said, they're young, you know, their bodies are so proficient where they're at that they can eat a lot of junk and they're like, they're still shredded. They, you know, they don't feel the ill effects, but creating those behavioral, you know, patterns while you're young. So you don't have to try and revert back as you get older. And a lot of guys that I work with, and I told them, like, hey, you know what? As you get older, you're going to start seeing these injuries start to kind of show up. And sure enough, they're like, man, you know, and as guys get older,

they start trying to revert and kind of learn those patterns, you know? So when you say, what do I do? With MMA, I think a lot of times people, they kind of, they're like, you know? So when you say, what do I do with MMA? I think a lot of times people, they kind of, they're like, you know, you're going to, you know, try and prevent injury, kind of prevent this. That's not the way to go about it. Because if somebody was truly worried about getting injured, they would probably not be in MMA in the first place, you know? So we, all I talk about is performance.

Like I can raise your performance, this percentage by doing this, this, and this. You know, so I'll just start talking numbers. And that's the one thing is like numbers never lie. And if they understand that, then they'll buy into it. Yeah. And then also you have a history. You know, it's like, well, I did this with Conor McGregor. I did this with this person. I did this with that person.

And they're going to look at that and say, well, those are seasoned people. Those are veteran people. And they're taking care of their bodies. And they're doing as much stuff as you offer that they possibly can, right? Right, right. And it's been a battle. You know, like when you first start out, it's like, you know, I worked with Brian Stan. It was just because we're in the Marine Corps together. And got him down to 185.

And he's like, hey, man, I got this guy. Would you mind helping him out? And he introduces me to Jon Jones. And I told you, I'm the worst MMA guy in the world. You figure I know everybody. So he introduced me. I'd never even heard of him or anything like that, helped him out with that cut, and then he told somebody,

and then it just kind of trickled down. Now we have 130 UFC fighters. Shit. Yeah, man. I mean, the amount of fighters we work with, it's insane. But we're building an army now. We're doing search and stuff like that so we can ship people out and do it all over the world.

You know what I mean? We got like a guy in London, so we don't have to go out there. So, yeah, it's a lot of fun. And like you said, the more people we work with, the more people. It's kind of like a tip in effect. Yeah. The other thing that's helped significantly with that too is, I mean, fighters come in understanding that we're going to help them make weight,

which is, I mean, regardless of how young you are, cutting weight is never easy. So when you're selling to somebody or talking to a young fighter about their nutrition, which, you know, like you said, they can eat junk and feel great and perform well. But when you say, listen, these things that we're starting to work with you on and improve in your life, they're going to make you healthier. You're going to perform at a higher level, but they're also going to help you make your weight more efficiently and you're going to fight more efficiently. So usually immediately when you say that people listen, it doesn't

matter how old they are, how long they've been in the game. That's something I want to ask you guys right off the bat is should your job be necessary in terms of weight cut who that's a heavy question better answer that one right bro did you you know what i mean i mean you guys you guys you guys are are obviously uh making money but like do you do you feel that maybe things should be different like instead of them uh standing on the harley davidson mat maybe that should be a scale And you weigh your ass before you get in the ring. And let's stop lying about our weight because we really don't weigh that. We weigh 12 pounds more, 15 pounds more, 18 pounds more.

You know, one perspective is like a football game comes down to a guy kicking a field goal. And you're like, fuck this. This is stupid, right? You're like, I don't want to. The kicker who no one ever talks to, he's a nerd. People don't fucking like him. And, and a fight, you know, which is like the most barbaric thing comes down to you in a sense, eating less food, dehydrating yourself and ridding yourself of water.

So that's kind of the question is, you know, is this whole act a little asinine in the first place, or is it just a necessary thing that we're going through with, with the way the rules are? You know, just, you know, looking at every, uh, aspect of fighting, like everybody's trying to get that edge, you know, and you know, a lot of people are like, well, we'll do weigh-ins right before, right before the fight, you know? Well, wrestling has been doing that for years. Um, I went out and worked with ohio state like logan stever this guy was a four-time all-american yeah and uh he would stop drinking

water four days out just sip on water for four days and it was crazy because scientifically he shouldn't have been able to do what he did you know that guy was a champion through and through but he's just a nut oh man we did it but you know we we uh we actually started working with him his coach was like just listen to everything he says and he's like there's no way i can drink this much water and still make weight he actually made weight two days early um but the thing is is everybody's gonna do it there's no stopping it and there's so many different things that people doesn't matter if you have two hours 18 minutes or 24 hours if you, people are gonna try to cheat the system whatever way they can.

Right, and you know, the way I look at it is like, is it necessarily cheating the system? Because if I go out and get a great jiu-jitsu coach, like back in the day, it was like, you're just destroying everybody with jiu-jitsu, are you cheating the system? Or are you just like, man, I went out and I invested in myself.

And these guys are coming out, like the advantage, like we have the biggest cut in history that recorded in California. He lost 18% of his weight. 18%. Holy shit. He went out and knocked out the guy in two minutes and 40 seconds. What athlete is this and what did he weigh? It was Drew Dover.

He weighed 185 pounds on Tuesday and had to weigh 155 by Friday. Yeah. So is that, but is that problematic for you sometimes? Do other people come in and say, I want to do what he did? Right. That's again where we- It depends so much, right? Oh, there's so many, like, and it's a numbers game.

It's a huge number game. Like, you know, you got to look at how much, how much body fat does this individual hold? You know, like fat's hydrophobic, doesn't attach to water. So you get this guy, a lot of people got, you know, they'll see like a chubby guy and they're like, oh, man, that guy's got a lot of weight to cut. And it's like, bro, you can sit that guy in the sauna all day. It ain't going to burn fat. I remember when you and I were talking and we were talking powerlifting. I should kind of say that up front is that I know that you guys have worked with the general public as well and worked with famous actors and actresses and things like that.

But primarily what we'll be talking about on this show are our athletes probably. And so most of the time when I'm asking these guys questions, they're going to probably be answering from an MMA standpoint, unless I more specifically change the subject over to sedentary person or powerlifting. When I was powerlifting, you know, I was weighing like 280 and we were talking about, you know, competing at 275. And I was like, you know, what should I weigh? And he was like, eat up, man. And he'll go for it. And I was like, I text him back, you know, a few days later, I'm like, I'm 285. He's like, you can keep, you know, you can, you can keep going. And, you know, as long as you feel good,

you know, as long as you feel good, as long as you feel strong, then we will be able to, if you want to make the weight cut to 275, you're like, it's not a problem. So with some of these guys that are larger, it's easier for them to lose more weight because it may be a less of a percentage of their overall body weight. And also it really matters the shape of the person. Like if somebody's all muscle, is it harder or easier to pull more weight off of them? It's easier to cut, you know, because muscles, 70% water. So, you know, once you get somebody, you know, like say I start depleting their carbs, like one gram of carbs holds on to three grams of water. So somebody with the amount of muscle mass. Get your pens out, ladies and gentlemen.

Well, you know, the thing is, you know's and that's one of the things that we do you know and you know we talk about the weight cut and it's great you know we got this down to a science and we start talking all nerdy but the most important thing is like we always say like if you miss weight that's 20 of your purse but if you lose a fight because you came in dehydrated you know you didn't feel good that's 50% of your purse. So our rehydration is even more, and that's the most important thing to us. What are your thoughts on hydration testing? I hate to say this, but, like, I've seen guys so dehydrated, like, for wrestling matches, and they pass with flying colors. You know, like, how they do it.

line colors, you know, like how, how they do it. Um, the more I think, uh, you know, um, tests that you put on people, the more loopholes that they're going to try and kind of jump through. A lot of people were talking about, like, we should have double weigh-ins like you weigh in on Friday and then you have to weigh again on Saturday. You know, you can gain a certain amount of weight. What happens is you're limiting the amount that somebody rehydrates. And a lot of people do a double cut you know like these are these are extreme sports like i bet you can tell me stories about powerlifting i mean we were already talking about powerlifting uh back in the day would have like a 48 hour weigh-in bro guys were pulling blood out of their body and all kinds of i mean there was crazy shit going on that's and you know the thing you know 40pound weight cuts. 30, 40-pound weight cuts. I'm dead

serious. Actually, Matt Kroc was like one of the masters of it. He would sit in his car with the heat jacked up, wearing tons and tons of clothes and just kind of sweating it out. He had a wrestling background. He had some of those old school principles.

I don't know if you guys are still using some of that stuff, but that's what he was doing to make weight. Oh, and every aspect of this sport has changed so much. Since UFC 1, like you were talking about, you see the way that these guys, they're finally training like athletes, but in terms of wrestling, wrestlers are the hardest guys to work with because they have very primitive ideas. And it's like, why has everything in terms of technique, training, methodologies, and things like that,

why has everything grown except, like, the weight cut method is, like, stop eating, put a sauna suit on, and, you know, rock and roll. Like, that's, you know, I'll talk to guys. Like, you know, I don't know if you hear about the baths and stuff like that. Like, a lot of people cut with baths now. Yeah, because it's, so what people will do is they used to get into like something hot, right? Or steam room or something like that. And they would kind of sweat it out, right? And the idea behind getting in a bath, it's 100% precipitation, which can help you then further lose more water.

What's the drawback of something like that? Well, the problem with like the baths, one thing is like blood pressure drops drastically. And a lot of guys, they like to work out and do something like right one of our jobs is is not to necessarily dictate everything because there's a lot of coaches you know what i'm saying and we have to work with the coaches um but give them guidelines like hey you can you can work out and do sauna you can do sauna and uh bath but you can't do a workout and bath because we have some the bar receptors in our heart basically in the blood blood, if they drop too much too fast, that's when you get guys that they pass out. And during the cut, you know, we're manipulating the amount of sodium, obviously, that an individual has, which basically, you know, alters the amount of testosterone in my body, but blood pressure drops drastically.

One of the things that we have to do is basically override certain hormones. And doing such, like, is going to get the weight off, like get the water down. But you have to take those precautionary measures, like, okay, this is what you need to do. So if you do a bath, you have to do it the right way. And the way we used to see it, man, is like people would just be like, okay. We'd be like, how hot is that? I don't know.

We just turn it as hot as it would go. And then they get their fighters in there, man. I'm like, holy. And then, like I said, like i said you know we sell that's what we do it's like okay let's break it down in a form that you can imagine if you came into the gym your coach is like start sprinting you'd probably be like well you know like that doesn't make any sense at all so what happens what we do is we'll put them in a bath and we you know we actually take the temperature like that's the craziest thing you're like you don't take temperature but so we actually take the temperature. Like that's the craziest thing. You're like, you don't take temperature, but so we'll take the temperature and it's, it's about one Oh five.

It's a little bit hotter than a sauna. I'm sorry. A jacuzzi. Right. Once they crack, that's basically your body's a, I'm cooling myself off. At that point,

we're able to, depending on how long it takes them to crack, dictates the amount of time and the temperature that we go up to, but it's like warming the body up. You don't want to shock that body. I mean, you're already going through enough as it is. So a little long winded answer, but have you guys ever had to, but it's like warming the body up. You don't want to shock that body. I mean, you're already going through enough as it is. So a little long-winded answer, but. Have you guys ever had to kind of backtrack? I mean, I'm sure there's been some trial and error.

Have you ever had to tell somebody like, Hey man, like, you know, I I'm sorry, but we must have miscalculated a little bit. Like maybe something like that happened in the beginning or, or have you ever said to somebody, Hey, that last weight cut we weren't able to do xyz let's come in with a different plan well with with me i know you know me and him the calculations are never off like well wait a minute like how did how did somebody miss weight right we went in knowing they weren't going to make weight like i 100 know like they are not going to make weight but guess what they weren't going to make weight. Like, I 100% know, like, they are not going to make weight. But guess what? They're either going to do it with me there, being able to pull the plug, or they're going to be doing it with somebody else there.

Like, we've had people, and this is something that kind of, you know, it's a cash money, too, but, like, you'll get, like, a parent calling you up. You know, you got that avid dad that's kind of living vicariously to his son. And, you know, the kid's 13 years old. He's like, you know, I want to cut my son, you know and you're like dude kid's 13 like what are you trying to do you know what i mean um but you sit there and it's like that question is like well if i don't do it in a professional manner he's gonna try and do it you know and there's you know like there's certain signs that we have to watch out for and like um you know, losing feeling in the hands.

There's tons of things that we know like, okay, this isn't safe. And we, you know, we tell the coaches. And there's a lot of times I've had to pull the plug and the coach is like, no, no, no. They think it's like a toughness thing. Like, no, no, just keep them in the bath. It's like, bro, you're going to start pulling water. You're going to get permanent damage.

So in terms of calculations, like we had a board up here. Like you break it down like Barney style and it's it it's not like it's not like a well kind of maybe sort of no it's literally like every single time you guys have it down to a science yeah it kind of goes back to your original question too about whether uh you know weight cutting or what we do is a you know a necessary evil or whatever but i think you know george just really hit on why it is i mean mean, guys are going to do it regardless of whether we're there or not. And we've had to multiple times pull the plug and tell the fighter, absolutely, you need to stop, right? It's getting to a point where it's not safe. Maybe just sometimes advise people just to fight, just to stay, like, I know that they're

trying to have a particular craft in a particular weight class. Do you just sometimes advise them out of it a little bit and say, hey, you know, just let's just weigh less. Absolutely. Like, let's just weigh less. Absolutely. Let's work on this in the quote-unquote off-season, which they probably don't really have much. Yeah, well, guys call all the time or contact George and I all the time about moving down weight classes, moving up weight classes, where they want to fight. And there's been plenty of times I can think of that we've had to go to a fighter or go to a manager and just say, listen, I understand why you want to make that move, but what are you losing by going down?

You know, sometimes it's, you hit a point of diminishing return in a weight cut where you're not going to perform up to your level. In powerlifting, you know, which is a way, way different sport, what you're asked to do on game day is, couldn't be any different probably in some sense. But what we always kind of preach here is you're not going to perform. Like the rebound and everything, like there's a lot of stuff that you can do. But in my opinion, you're not going to perform better by weighing less or by eating less or by taking in less nutrition going into a powerlifting meet. So I'm always just saying, hey, uh, why don't we worry about the weights on the bar and not worry about our weight on the scale so much. And if you want

to be in the two 42 weight class or the two 20 class, uh, have that preparation surrounding, uh, you know, another time and, uh, and work on that. But I see there's so many beginning lifters that are listening to this right now. And they're like, they're writing stuff down for like their weight cut, but they weigh 181 and they're trying to get to 165 and it's their first competition ever. Right. Yeah. I'm like, just, just don't, I mean, that's not a great place for you to work. It's not a great thing to worry about. It's kind of like, you know, in, in the book that I have, you guys, if you get a chance to look at it, you'll see that there's like some fasting in there. But I tell people like, don't start off with fasting. Never start off a diet with a caloric deficit either.

Get used to the food first. I'm not big on calories in, calories out anyway. But I see a lot of people that are like, all right, no carbs. And then they do cardio and they lift weights that day. They get in two training sessions. They're all hyped up. They drink their gallon of water and it ends up being something that's not sustainable. And it's like less and less calories every day. Three days go by. They're like, I'm carb depleted and they carb up. I heard you say something recently where you said, Hey, you know, if you're

not like on a diet pretty hard for about 21 days or so, about three weeks worth, you got no business talking about a cheat meal. Right. No, 100%. Everybody feel, they feel like right off the bat, like, you know, go back to finances. It's like you save money all week and then you go to the bar and you're like, hey, rounds on me that you just basically threw away everything you saved, you know. Making it rain. You got to save, man, you got to save. And, and, um, you know, there's actually a lot of science shows like, you know, we have to always create a stimulus in the body,

you know, like, you know, with, um, with lifting, like, I know it's the most basic thing in the world in terms of like building muscle to you, you know, like, but people think like, if I eat more protein, I'm going to get more muscle. And I'm like, you're giving it the building blocks, but you're not creating the stimulus that it's needed. You know, what's the stimulus? You need to lift heavy weights, you know? So in terms of like hormones, like why, why does your body respond? You know, there's a lot of women that I work with that, um, you know, they have like thyroid issues. They've been eating such low calories and like doing like an intermittent fast basically creates a stimulus and makes the hormones more sensitive. So they're more, you

know, it's, it's a more effective approach, but people, they don't, um, you know, what, what happens is people kind of pick and choose what they want. Like, well, that sounded good. And that, that sounded good. And, you know, I was, I always use the, uh, the expression from my Voltaire said, you don't know the knowledge of an individual by the answer they give you, but by the questions they ask. And, um, a lot of people that they'll be like, is peanut butter good for me?

Is it bad? Is whey protein good or bad? You know, it's like, it's not, is it, is it good? When is it good? And like, what are your goals? What is your lifestyle? You know, so it changes, you know. I think that makes a big difference is like, what exactly is it we're talking about?

So Stan Efferding is a huge fan of yours. He's been stealing, I'll just say. That way you guys can hash it out. Stealing all your concepts now. With a vertical diet, Stan is basically trying to turn people into a metabolic machine where they have,

he's trying to promote that they can eat more so they have more energy as they can lift bigger weights. And in general, it's a diet that's a little performance-based slash, because he was a powerlifter, bodybuilder, a little bit more geared towards just lifting weights, throwing around some iron. But what I share with people is that there's different times where you want to mess around with different things. So, like, I heard in a podcast you mentioning about, like, a sumo wrestler. They'll eat, like, once or twice a day, and they'll just eat as much as they can. Why would they do something like that? Basically, I mean, you know, I always say that, you know, our body's got these negative feedback signals.

And I always tell people, your body doesn't have a brain. And, you know, people, they don't understand what I mean by that. Like, it's on top of my neck but the truth is is that we know that we can go to the store anytime we want we can go buy food we know that body doesn't know that you know so there would be no reason for it to hold on to body fat you know if it knew that there'd be no reason for for it to do that if it if uh if a fighter knew like hey if the body knew like we just got to release this water and then we're gonna go step on a scale, and it's game over. You know, it doesn't know that.

You know, it's like your body is just this amazing survival mechanism. So, like, we go out in the desert, you know, your body starts sweating out. Like, the first thing it wants to do is it wants to cool itself off. That's the first thing it wants to do. That's the first basic stimulus that deheats the stimulus, sweat, and then what happens? Like, oh, crap, now it's not getting water back in. Now what's more important? Is it cooling ourselves off or keeping from getting dehydrated so it makes hormones you

know so everything is based upon like going over these these negative feedback signals you know what i mean right and when it comes to uh you know some of the things that i'm sharing with people i'll say hey there's going to be times where you're going to want to go through periods where you eat more and there's going to be some times where you go through some periods where you're going to want to go through periods where you eat more. And there's going to be some times where you go through some periods where you eat a little less. There's going to be some times where maybe you do add in some cardiovascular training. Maybe there's some points where you kick that stuff out. Maybe there's points where you lift less. Maybe there's points where you focus in on some different things, but it doesn't have to be stagnant. It doesn't have to be one thing all the time. And so I like intermittent fasting, but I don't use it all the time. I use

it every day, all the time. And I, you know, if I'm going to, if somebody hasn't really fasted before, they haven't really messed with it before, you don't have to try an 18 hour fast or a 42 hour fast. Just, just try to fast for 10 hours and see how it feels. Maybe you're not used to that. Right. And a lot of these bodybuilding diets that basically promote you to be able to eat more, which can then in turn promote more energy output. Is that kind of what you guys are promoting in a sense for a lot of these fighters to be able to, because they're training multiple times a day and stuff like that?

Right. I mean, we basic, I mean, like we break it down to the, you know, like I said, Barney style, where you give the body what it needs, what it needs it. So if you're anaerobic, we give the body carbs. If you're aerobic, we give the body more fats. Obviously, we want to fuel the brain, so we'll give fructose and things like that throughout the day. But there are those times that, like you say, that we need to switch things up. The body becomes adaptive to so many things so quickly and we come resistant so many things like i always talk you know like

caffeine you know first time you drink a cup of coffee you're wired next thing you know you're drinking three pots and it's like you're not even feeling anything you know so we always got it it's a lot of time it's it's it's uh understanding what stimulus what what's our goal what stimulus are we trying to create and then um and then basically creating the the right thing to actually you know get that stimulus rocking around um but yeah i mean literally like with guys it's so freaking simple it's just like boom boom repeat you know it's like we use you know i was talking we're talking earlier we use the metabolic equivalent to find the amount of calories that somebody uses during a workout. Now, from that, depending on the workout,

so like if I burn 1,000 calories jogging or I burn 1,000 calories lifting, it's the same amount of calories, but I have to refuel the body differently because when I'm lifting, I'm using a lot more carbohydrates. And I want to refuel carbs. I don't want to refuel fat. Whereas with women, women are different. You know, like when we talk about like their cycle, like women, you know, they have the follicular phase, the ovulation phase, the luteal phase. know they have the follicular phase the ovulation phase the luteal phase and like during the follicular phase they're just like guys their bodies use carbs just like a dude and then it's funny because you'll get this

poor this poor woman right and a lot of women don't know this because the funny thing is about aesthetics is that aesthetics in terms of marketing is it's 90 towards women but science and nutrition is 90% men. You know what I mean? It's men talking to men. There's not one woman that's leading the way in any of this that I see. And maybe there's some that are trying, but they're just not able to get the microphone. There's no Kelly Starrett woman equivalent.

There's no Mark Bell woman equivalent. There's no – at least that I see. And I feel like I'm, I feel like I researched the hell out of all this stuff. And it's really rare. You know, you have like Rhonda Patrick, I guess. Yeah. Who's been on Joe Rogan quite a bit. I mean, you have a couple of women out there.

I know that they're trying, but hopefully more women get into the space because I think it would help. I think it would help a lot. Oh, yeah. Talking to women nine times out of ten, I ask them, like, what phase is your cycle in? What do you mean? Yeah. You mean I just had my period and, like, nah, that's not what I'm talking about, you know?

But understanding that, you know, it's important. Like, our whole science is based on time, type, timing, portion size, and hormonal responses of food. And I think a lot of people don't actually look in. I love the fact that you're not about the calories in and calories out because I think there's so many ways to discredit that. And it breaks things down, but it's like we're athletes and we have a goal. So it's a little bit more than that. Yeah. I mean, even just something as simple as eating a steak.

200 calories worth of steak is going to be different than 200 calories of rice. You know, the protein that's in there, I think you mentioned that, you know, 40% or so of your own digestion energy output will be devoted towards breaking down that protein. Exactly. Where it's probably quite different with carbohydrates and things like that. Right. And even sources of those macros too, right? Like even the type of protein. If you have the same example of steak versus protein from another source, how bioavailable

is that? Does your body assimilate that the same way? You know, so a lot of that stuff isn't created equal, I don't think. People get really hung up on the different advice that you guys give. You know, I've heard some different things over the years. I've communicated with you over the years about some different things. And you've got, like, kefir and you have, like, honey. And they get kind of stuck on the actual thing that you say.

You know, you might say, hey, just in passing, you might say, yeah, I really like blackberries after a workout. And it might just be that you particularly like those. after a workout and it might just be that you particularly like those um do you uh do you find that that people sometimes are like so hung up on the specifics and uh obviously if it's a weight cut situation then you like you said earlier you have it down to a science and might need to avoid certain foods uh but in general like if you're saying hey fruit after a workout probably just eat some fruit and like don't stress so much about it. Well, yeah, you know, I always say like nutrition is a lot like religion. You know, if you say something that, you know, like, you know, let's say somebody is on a specific diet and that diet works for their lifestyle.

They're gung-ho and they think that everybody should be on that diet. And if you say something outside of that, you're wrong. You know, and I definitely believe that everybody, you know, has a different goal. But we all say, like, there's a perfect program, and then there's a perfect program for you. If, you know, if I write a program for you, like, the actual word diet means food you eat in a habitual way. So if you hate blackberries, you know, like, why on God's green earth would I give you blackberries? There's nothing habitual about that, you know. And, yeah, people, like, because I can literally take something that anybody says in nutrition

and I can pick it apart, make it really good or make it really bad. I think a lot of people take things out of context. But there's never a right or wrong answer. We say there's not a right or wrong, but there's a good and a better towards that specific individual. Kind of like you mentioned earlier about peanut butter. Like, is peanut butter bad? It's like hard to answer that question because what are you talking about? When are mentioned earlier about peanut butter. Is peanut butter bad? It's hard to answer

that question because what are you talking about? When are we talking about? What if it's the fighter's favorite food? They love peanut butter and they just won the belt. And they're done with their fight. Maybe fucking eat a bunch of peanut butter.

Right. 100%. It's funny you find too, the more you restrict things from people's diets that they love, they're inevitably going to eat it and it's going to be something they eat to an extreme a lot of times even. So if you tell somebody, don't ever eat peanut butter, eventually they're going to eat a jar of peanut butter. They're going to sit down and go, I'm eating peanut butter right now. At least I've found with different clients, the more you restrict, the best things to give people are giving them a group or a category of foods that they can pick through. And then the best food is the one you're going to eat in that category. who is not really a fighter, somebody who maybe weight trains and exercises a little bit, but

they're having trouble ever really having any control or consistency over their diet. How do you guys utilize different diet strategies for people like that? Like control and consistency in terms of like cravings or eating? Well, like you're on a diet for two days, and then you fuck up and you're on it for one day and you fuck, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a couple of different ways you can approach it. I mean, what you touched on earlier, I think, has a lot of value. And I've found with people, not so much athletes, but maybe just everyday person, creating some metabolic flexibility, getting people more fat adapted, doing ketogenic style dieting, doing some intermittent fasting and getting them more fat adapted to where the cravings seem to subside. I think that helps for some people, some people maybe not. The other thing is just the human factor in diet and nutrition, right? If somebody eats two days on a

diet and then they go off the rails, what do they generally do? They stay off the rails. They just say, fuck this, I can't do this, right? Yeah, not sustainable, yeah. Yeah, you know, part of our job is to account for the human factor and talk to those people and say, listen, you know, this is a your diet is what you habitually eat. This isn't there is no, you know, we have short term goals, obviously, but the point is to lead a healthy lifestyle for the rest of your life. So I like that human factor because Gunnar Peterson put up a post like two days ago where it was literally just it said you know fruits and it listed out some different fruits and said veggies and it listed this is handwritten right yeah it's handwritten proteins and it

listed out some different lean sources of protein veggies and it listed out some veggies and and it was on a just a piece of notebook paper took up about half the page and he said this is what somebody charged $400 for. And so what's the human factor in that? Nothing. No. If you don't get to know that individual and if you don't have a continued dialogue with that person, I think you're kind of setting them up to fail. Because when you do hit those inevitable speed bumps, if you're looking at it as like, okay, I'm trying to get to the top of that hill and I derailed, so I'm just going to stay at the bottom. You know, that's a pretty common

thing we see rather than just looking at it as a straight line you're on for the rest of your life, right? If you hit a speed bump or a pothole or you derail, just get back on track and one foot in front of the other. It also does you no good, does both of you no good to say, hey man, I told you that this is the path. Yeah. I told, you know, what are you doing? And you keep going back and forth. The best thing that you can do is listen to them and say, hey, maybe we can try to go to the other side of the mountain and see if we can climb up that way.

Exactly. You know, and back to the peanut butter example, you know, if you were to look at that person. Right. I love peanut butter, so I if you were to look at that person right i love peanut butter so i keep going back to it but yeah if you know if somebody eats peanut butter that's off the programming that we you know put in place for that person talking to them about why they did that like what was going through your head when you ate that and how can we work around that to add it back in fuck is wrong with you yeah exactly right and how do we unfuck that piece you know and maybe that is just integrating some things that uh can satiate some of that need for peanut butter or whatever it is.

But it's just everybody's different. The best diet is the one you're going to follow. The best food is the one that you're going to eat within reason, obviously. But it's working around those things to individualize something that people would follow for the rest of their life. I try to share this a lot, and people, for some reason, they always misinterpret what I'm trying to share with people. A ketogenic style diet for me, what it has done for me and a lot of the people that I've been able to help, it has helped a lot with food cravings.

It's helped me gain control over my diet. And then the other thing is through the use of intermittent fasting, it's allowed me to kind of understand hunger. I advise for anybody listening to this show right now to try some fasting. Try a 12-hour fast. Maybe one day try a 20. Learn what it's like for your body to feel hungry the same way that you learn what it's like for your body to feel hungry the same way that you learn what it's like to feel uncomfortable yeah when you're at when you're on the bottom and someone's trying to work you over in jiu-jitsu i mean that takes a long time to even get used to that these guys are digging their knees into your stomach and your chest and they're hitting pressure like wherever there's pressure

points like and their shoulder in your face yeah they're Yeah, and the fucking smell and sweat, their sweat dripping into your mouth and all kinds of – you got to get used to a lot of that. And so like for me, intermittent fasting and cutting out carbohydrates have really helped me control my diet. And that's what I found it helped a lot of other people. So in some way, I call it like the fat guy diet or the fat kid diet. You're trying to, in some ways, just regain control of your nutrition. And for me now, I'm able to put some oranges in. I'm able to put some sweet potatoes in. I had a great training session last night. Went home, had some of my cranberry juice. It's got the iodine. It's got the potassium in it. And I had a steak and I had a sweet potato with it. So things, that's what I think people don't understand. It's like I'm not trying to say that everyone needs this diet. MMA fighters or CrossFitters or people that have these crazy high energy outputs need to do a no-carb diet all the time or even a low-carb diet all the time.

And I don't even think it's good for myself. So, I mean, that's my little side rant on that. But you guys utilize – it seems like you utilize carbohydrates as almost like a weapon. Well, you know, it's funny, man. Utilize carbohydrates as almost like a weapon. Well, you know, it's funny, man. In terms of carbs, like if you look at our nutrition, like it's actually pretty low carb, you know. You talk about, you know, a higher fat diet.

If you're sedentary, like we say, give the body what it needs when it needs it. If a guy is not working out, his body's primary source of fuel is going to be fat in an aerobic state. So there's no reason for him to be pounding carbs. And you know, you ask everybody on this song, like. You hear that Smokey? You know, if you ask somebody how many carbs they have, they'll tell you, God, they'll be like, you know, I've had 232 carbs, 30 of them were good. And you know, you're like, what the hell is a good carb? What the hell is a bad carb?

You know what I mean? Like your body cannot tell the difference between a carb. Carb is a carb. It breaks down. They all turn into sugar in your body or glucose, right, in your body? 100%. Yeah. But, yeah, you know, this happens to me all the time.

See what happens if you get hit in the head. I lose it. Yeah, we were just talking about carbohydrates, and you were saying in general you're – and I do get that sense that your diet is fairly low carb because I primarily hear you talking about fruits. And even if you were to eat like five pieces of fruit, you know, it depends on the kind of fruit I would guess, but that's still not an enormous amount of carbohydrates. Do you guys use rice and potatoes and things like that too? No, not actually. I don't actually do a lot of like starches, like brown rice, sweet potatoes, stuff like that.

I don't actually implement that post-workout. You're big on stuff digesting really fast, right? Right. If you're doing it with a workout. I think that's where a lot of people kind of mess things up because if you're not working out, do you need a large amount of carbs? Obviously, our body's always burning a mixture of fuel,

fats, carbohydrates. But when you're anaerobic, obviously, body's always burning a mixture of fuel, fats, you know, carbohydrates. But when you're anaerobic, obviously it's burning a lot more. And we started doing numbers. Like for instance, you get a guy your size, it's very easy for you to burn 800 calories. A guy who's huge and handsome. You know, the thing with a lot of these fighters too is like, you know, it's very easy for them to burn 800 calories in a workout. And I'm like, okay, if you're anaerobic, how many grams of carbs would it take to refuel 800 calories? They'd have to take intake 200 grams of carbohydrates. And, you know, like most guys will have like a banana right after they're done working out.

And they're like, dude, by the end, like end of the week, like, man, I feel like ass, like my muscles, you know, like I have no strength. Yeah, that's one workout they do in a day with three workouts. We're talking about, you know about a mixed martial artist in camp. You know what I mean? So driving those carbohydrates in quickly and getting them in the bloodstream immediately between very glycolytic workouts is super important. That's, I think, kind of where you're going, right? Right. It becomes a weapon, right, or a tool for us to help that athlete get the most out of every training session.

Yeah. And post-workout for some of our listeners, they might have post-workout windows, maybe only four times a week, where it sounds like some of the guys that you're working with, maybe they have 20 or 15 times a week. Sure. You got so many workouts, right? Right. And it's important to turn over.

Basically, the gist of it would be if I did some jujitsu right now, when I get done with that, carbohydrates are the fastest, most convenient way for me to, quote unquote, recover, get some energy into my system so I can get into that next workout. Right. If I ate a steak or something, that's going to take eight hours, 10 hours, something like that to digest.

And so I won't be able to, that energy won't be available to me. And it won't help replenish the glycogen stores that I probably just burnt out in the jujitsu workout as I'm going into my striking workout. And then later on that night, maybe working on some wrestling or something like that. No, not at all. I mean, your body will go through gluconeogenesis, but that process takes, I mean, it's not going to be an efficient way. And so, yeah, I mean, again, it's dependent on goals. But with an athlete, you know, I mean, we want the most efficient method possible. So that's why we always go with carbohydrate post-workout at a level that a lot of people kind of look at you funny when you first start working. What does that look like? Like a post-workout at a level that a lot of people kind of look at you funny when you first start working what does that what does that look like like a post-workout shake specifically or uh yeah post-workout nutrition in general uh as it as it is uh you know per uh

fighter so depending on the actual workout itself you know like i said we'll use the metabolic equivalent find out exactly how many calories and then the intensity of that workout will dictate what percentage of those calories are going to be from carbohydrates. You know, and if you're doing two and three workouts a day, the rate at which you're able to replenish those carbs is huge. One thing that we actually use is caffeine. There's been a lot of studies that show that caffeine will help out with the amount of glycogen that's in the body, as well as using, I've talked to you about the transporters that we have, the GLUT5 and the SGLUT1. You know, one of them is a sodium-dependent transporter, dextrose and fructose.

Using both those together, it's funny because our body can only process one gram per minute. But when you use both transporters, your body can, you can process up to 2.3 grams per minute. And there's been some studies that have backed that up over the years. Oh, yeah, yeah. Tons of studies. You know, everything we say, you know, basically like, you know, I'm a meathead and you know, there's no way to come up with any of this stuff. Like, you don't have stuff. I don't even know what the heck I'm talking about. But you know, honestly, like you got a guy, people are like, well, what's the importance if you have a regular guy and they, you know,

go and eat after a workout and they do one workout a day and then they go out and eat and their goal might be like, you know what? I just want to just kind of want to lean out. You know, go and eat after a workout and they do one workout a day and then they go out and eat. And their goal might be like, you know what, I just want to just kind of want to lean out. You know, they're not like, hey, I'm going to hit new PRs and I'm trying to get to this next level. That's fine. You know, and that's where I think you say you get these people that are so specific. Like, I'm not going to take in 200 grams of carbs. It's like, yeah, but you're not going to burn 800 calories either because your workout versus that professional athlete's workout you don't understand so um it's like take it like i said everybody's a little different but we give the body what it needs what it needs and uh it

is funny we start off with a 40 30 30 40 fat 30 carbs 30 protein at the beginning of the day and that obviously changes uh via workouts and things like that but um yeah we're really high on the fats and the types of fats, like omega-3s and omega-6s. It's real important. Let's just back it up for a second. We already discussed why post-workout nutrition is important to get you from one workout to the next. But why is it just important in general? What was that? I'm sorry.

Why is post-workout nutrition just important in general? Let's just talk specifically about somebody just lifted weights. Right. Why is post-workout nutrition just important in general? Let's just talk specifically about somebody just lifted weights. Right. You know, why is post-workout nutrition, and particularly post-workout carbohydrates, why are they important? Right. So, you know, as soon as you're done working out, it's like I always use the analogy of a car. It's like you just drove that car a long, you know, long distance. The first thing you want to do is you want to refuel that car.

Right. Along you know long distance the first thing you want to do is you want to you want to refuel that car right? And right after your workout your body's insulin sensitive You know meaning that you're gonna you're gonna get a lot more for your more love more bang for your buck Yeah We usually like as soon as you step off that freaking matter or step out of the gym like it should already be prepped Got on truth with our program We want to use we actually like let's say you have to have for this specific workout 100 grams of carbs 50 of those are going to be during the workout and 50 50 afterwards um like as soon as you get off because number one you're going to start refueling right away but also like the

insulin blunts cortisol levels you know with with the with the sport obviously you're going through a lot of stress the body's got tons of stress as it is um but make sure that you're replenishing for the next uh like the next day one thing like when we're working with connor um a lot of people are like man i'm tired right now they think okay if i have some carbs now that i'm going to feel it it's like what you refueled yesterday is what's going to fuel you tomorrow you know and that's we always want to make sure that our muscle glycogen is topped off the average american kind of goes a little overboard but um yeah so so basically it's uh it's topped off. The average American kind of goes a little overboard. Yeah, so

basically it's almost a way of kind of almost shaking off or if you're big into video games, it's like a way of get your health meter back up. It's like in the green and it's fucking trembling down to the red and you

restore your health by getting in some of that post-workout nutrition. Yeah. I've heard George explain it like a gas gauge on your car, right? Like every time you finish a workout, it's like you're on empty. So you need to refuel, especially if you have multiple training sessions a day. And, you know, that's why we use this quick digesting carbohydrates, but back to the average guy that's just training, you know, if you go and eat your carbohydrates through meals, through, you know, rice or potatoes or whatever your, your chosen carbohydrate is, you're going to slowly fill that gas tank back up for your next workout, uh, versus Conor McGregor, who's training at an extreme level multiple times a day. And he's

to, we need to get that gas tank back to full real quick so he can go rest, get ready for the next training session. So, uh, that's where a lot of that stuff becomes valuable. It's just like George said, what, what does that athlete or what does that person need in the moment at the time? You know, when is this right for me, not is it right for me? When it comes specifically to something like fructose, there's been more and more evidence showing that fruit in general kind of has these cofactors in it. And even potassium. A lot of people don't notice that, don't know that potassium kind of mimics the action of insulin in a sense, helping the carbohydrates get to the proper cells in a way. But a lot of people don't realize that, you know, when it comes to fructose in particular, which comes from fruit, it's been bastardized because of high fructose corn syrup.

And so people are thinking, oh, fructose, Now you see a lot of stuff labeled no fructose. And I think somehow, as Americans, we have a way of really twisting things up. And we think that we got fat from fruit. America loves an enemy, man. You got no fat, no sugar, no fructose. We love to have the bad guy. I've noticed also people say, oh, the food pyramid's all jacked up. And it's like, yeah, maybe, like, maybe it's jacked up. And maybe it is. For who? What person are we talking about? Yeah, maybe it

is to, you know, for financial gain and prosperity of the farmers and different things like that. But somebody that follows the food pyramid, even strictly, I wouldn't even imagine that they would even be fat. You know, I think that we have a tendency to kind of like, you know, think that these things are really harmful to us. Meanwhile, we're not really looking at the real enemy. And the real enemy is these processed foods that are at our fingertips every single day, French fries and fast food stuff and Doritos and all this stuff. But something like fructose can be digested very easily. Fruit has a lot of cofactors in it, fiber and various things that are in it. Again, potassium to help you digest those carbohydrates.

Sure, and it slows the absorption rate as well, right? I mean, that becomes a big issue with a lot of simple carbohydrates or simple sugars. You drink a sugary drink and it doesn't have the fiber associated with it. You have it by itself with no fat. And so it digests immediately in your bloodstream very quickly. And then your body uses it. And if it doesn't need it in the moment, it generally stores as fat and leads to a lot of chronic disease that we see. So on top of a number of other issues with it, we're eating like a piece of fruit in its natural form. Our body digests that much, much more efficiently in ways that I don't even think we fully understand yet. Right. Yeah. And it just seems to make sense from like a primal standpoint. You know, you're,

you're, you're walking, you're hungry, you're starving. You haven't seen any food. You haven't been able to hunt anything. And there's this bright orange, orange, fucking orange tree. And you like scratch your head like an ape and you rip it down and you uh take a bite out of it like that's gross but the center's good right i could peel it off and eat it yeah and you got some uh fuel for a little while right yeah man and if you believe in evolutionary biology i mean our bodies have been eating and digesting and using an orange for a very very long time versus orange drink or some shit that you buy at the grocery store that has an orange on it um you know we evolution takes a

very very long time human beings haven't evolved to chill with the orange sorry yeah he's still working on it slowly i'll get george to eat actual food. Caffeine, baby. Are there any common foods that you guys recommend across the board for all your athletes, or is everybody different? You can take that one, and then I'll piggyback off for you. Common food? I mean, no, nothing specifically. I mean, kind of back to what we initially talked about. At least for me, I mean, it's more dependent on what the athlete enjoys.

me i i mean it's more dependent on what the athlete enjoys you know i mean those our clients work so hard and and we try to go the extra mile to make food something they enjoy make their diet something to look forward to so we look at what that athlete enjoys and then we look at how do we integrate that into their programming so they benefit from it and then even try to present it in a way that's attractive and we try to plate the food well i mean every little thing we can do to make the experience just that much better so no i mean you know we stick to general staples but if you know if a fighter hates salmon i don't give them salmon you know yeah even though i find it a very beneficial source of protein and omega-3s and you know a list of other things if they don't enjoy it i'm not going to force feed it you know i saw you uh making those delicious meals for Conor McGregor.

Yeah. Um, that's the last time we had you on the podcast. You were actually out there with him, uh, helping him get ready, ready for his Mayweather fight. And I just kept seeing you post these pictures of food. You were making them. And I was like, damn, I want to be in that house. Everything, uh, looked really good.

What's, what's the idea behind that? I mean, sometimes, uh, for some of us meatheads, we're just cooking up a steak and it's on a plate by itself and it's all bloody and there's not any thing to make it look fancy. That looks beautiful. That looks beautiful to me. Steak is steak. You know, we have a saying, like, you eat with your eyes first. You know, a lot of times, you know, Connor, he's an anomaly. Like, I'm really good at making a little food look like a lot, you know,

and he would be like, no, not today, George. I know this ain't nothing in there, you know. But a lot of times, like, you know, like I said, you eat with your eyes first. And a lot of times when it looks good, you know, a lot of times, like him, I don't know if you've ever seen him, you know, playing the food. We got a couple of people like that are from like Wolfgang Puck. One of our guys, Eric Treleggi. Yeah, there we go.

Getting some pictures of it up right now. Yeah. Yeah, that was mine. You know, if you guys look at our, we have some chef chefs on our team now that make that look just ridiculous. But it helps out. And it's funny because like you look at one of his plates, it looks like artwork. And they actually slow down. And, you know, we know that, you know, guys like us,

like, we just start pounding the food. It takes five minutes, and it takes a while for our brain to register like that we're actually full. And that's why a lot of times people, they tend to overeat when they actually start eating slowly. You know, they enjoy the food. And also, too, like, the more flavor it has, then, you know, the less likely that they are going to overeat. enjoy the food. And then, um, and also too, like the more flavor it has, then, you know, the, the

less likely that they are going to overeat. So it goes back to us trying to make our clients happy in every form and fashion. Yeah. Especially during the weight cut that becomes such a, uh, a big deal for guys I've noticed, you know, and when the food looks really nice, it's presented in a nice way, it becomes something that they look forward to, you know, it becomes more of an experience, you know, so it kind of takes a little bit of the stress off in the moment. Is there anything in there, you know, during these cuts, is there any like, I don't know, cookies or cheesecake or like, but maybe something you make it out of a more natural source.

Maybe it's not traditional. For me or them? For them. Yeah, you're sitting there just like going. That sucks, man. You look like you're really tired, man. You look super hungry. You know, there's a lot of people that I've worked with that, you know,

there's certain things that you can flavor. A lot of times it's also texture. There's this stuff I call, it's called bark that you make, and basically you just put cocoa powder, you put peanut butter, and then a little bit of water. You put that thing in Tupperware that you can bend, and then you put it in the freezer, literally probably 30 minutes. Break it up. It's just like bark. You sit there, and it's got a crunch.

And crunch helps you feel a little bit more satiated. So if somebody likes chocolate, that's something that we can do. Maybe a little bit of fruit, maybe some heavy whipping cream on it or some, you know. Oh, we load them up with fruit. You'd be shocked at how much these guys eat. Like nine times out of ten, they're sitting there like, I can eat all this? Because like during a weight cut, like people don't realize, like for you to lose one pound, you have to be at a deficit of 3,500 calories. So you got a guy that's got to lose, let's say, just 10 pounds.

Like if we got a weight cut for 10 pounds, I don't know what I would do. But you'd have to be at a deficit. Sometimes it's almost harder to lose like small amounts of weight. Right. I don't know. I mean, if we have one guy do that, I mean, like you say, or we were talking about earlier, man, some people, they come in, they've already been cutting weight.

You know, like there's a big difference, you know, like losing 10 pounds, fully hydrated, full of carbs, and so on and so forth. But these guys, you know, like there's a big difference, you know, like losing 10 pounds, fully hydrated, full of carbs and so on and so forth. But these guys don't, you know, like to lose 10 pounds, you'd have to be at a deficit of 35,000 calories. You don't eat that in a week anyway. So if we starved you all week, you still probably wouldn't make weight. It's all water at that point. So everything's got to be conducive to losing water.

And that's kind of back to what you said earlier about like the more jacked the guy is, the easier it is to pull water off him. He's got water in his muscles, right? Yeah muscles right yeah yeah super easy can you describe water loading yeah that technique i've heard i've heard a lot of people talk about water loading and it's it's funny because i've heard people say like you're teaching your body how to sweat and your body's pretty good that's like teaching your body how to breathe like it's kind of known for that um but with uh with the water loading the thing is like we have salt we have water basically uh i think it's like 440 milligrams of sodium can hold up to two pounds of water we want to get as

as much salt as possible problem is is once you start dropping salt too much or too for for too long um then aldosterone is raised aldosterone brings sodium back in the body vasopressin keeps water back in your body saying hey waitifressin keeps water back in the body. Yeah, your body is saying, hey, hey, wait a second. Yeah, exactly. Blood pressure is dropping off. The bar receptors, they start signaling, you know, and that's things we don't want. So we usually start the water load 10 days out. And what we do is we overload the water on the body.

So if you have salt, you have water, people are like, whoa, I'm just drinking the sodium. And then they basically, they pee it out and they're like, why do I keep doing this? Like, I'm just reloading it up and up. The thing is, is when you drink water and when we start to cut on Tuesday, you're drinking water. But when you pee, you're peeing out salt and water. So it's like every time I'm loading up the water, that sodium keeps going lower and lower and lower. So basically through loading your body up with water, you're able to excrete and extract more water from the body. Yes, sir. So you might weigh a little more for a little while because you might be down in a lot of water, right? Right.

A hundred percent. Yeah. That's not true weight. Guys actually do freak out quite a bit when they first do that. Like, what happened? I gained six pounds. Yeah. And they don't trust that we keep them well into fight week drinking a significant amount of water and they

see that water weight on the skimmy what a gallon is eight pounds so we have guys drinking two gallons a day they're 16 pounds up it isn't true weight but they do get a little bit nervous it first time we work with people they they get scared you know and then when that water immediately drops off then yeah we're superheroes yeah it's it's crazy. But Sear, we just worked with him for the very first time this last. He's like, I've never been this heavy before. But in his past cuts, he would drink like half a gallon of water like two days out. Whereas literally, up until Thursday, they're drinking two gallons of water. So when they start sweating, it's just like, holy crap, I did one bath i lost six pounds you know like the weight comes off and that's what a cut is a cut it should

be like quick fast and in a hurry um so you know once again you you get past these negative feedback signals you know all week is vasopressin and then thursday it's all about the aldosterone because the blood pressure is super low um we give them a bunch of stuff for that like teas like hibiscus tea even whey protein helps out with that. So, you know, once those hormones are, you keep those hormones, and people don't realize how much hormones affect so many things. Right. It's everything.

So that's what we do. And then. That's huge. Everything you eat is going to have some sort of hormonal response. Exactly. Exactly. That's basically what we base everything off of. Right.

It's huge. It affects you in so many different ways. I mean, you kind of touched on it earlier when you're talking about your, your ketogenic diet and doing intermittent fasting and how you're learning about true hunger. I mean, when people talk about insulin resistance all the time, people commonly see that, but people never talk about leptin resistance and how much that affects your ability to know when it's full, you know, know when you're actually hungry. And when you're doing intermittent fasting and that style of dieting, you're, you're, you're learning to now,

not only do you become less insulin resistant, become less leptin resistant can actually feel when you're full, feel when you're hungry. And anyway, just interesting how, how, how many different things hormones affect, not only within a weight cut, but in all these different styles of dieting, nobody that I really hear commonly talks about what are the hormonal effects of these things? And why am I feeling the way I'm feeling? Well, generally it always comes down to how it's affecting your hormones. Something I noticed is that whether it be their diet or whether it be

training or whether it be business, people very rarely ask themselves, and then what? You know? Yeah. And we've seen it happen with some different people that have been to this gym that have had goals. And they meet that goal. And then there's, they never had the thought of, and then what? Like, even Mike Tyson. Yeah.

You know, Mike Tyson, I saw him do a standup comedy routine in Las Vegas. And he said, my goal was to be the youngest heavyweight champion of the world. And the thing popped up on the screen behind him and it said, become the heavy, youngest heavyweight champion of the world. And a little box came up next to it and went bing and a big check mark came in. And he goes, ladies and gentlemen, that was 1983. Cause he didn't, he didn't have it. And then what? Like, and then what am I going to do?

And so people set up their nutrition and they're like, that's it, man. Tomorrow I'm going to, I'm going to eat this way. I'm going to eat less. I'm really going to commit to it. And then they eat less calories and maybe they do reach some of their goal. Maybe they're like, you know, maybe they lose 20 pounds in a month or whatever it is. But then we get that question that pops up again. And then what? And they restricted themselves so much. And maybe they did so much cardio.

Where can they go from here? Right. What else could they do? Work out more and continue to eat less? Yeah. Then we end up altering our body fat composition. And we end up messing up our metabolism. Right.

fat composition and we end up messing up our metabolism. Right. And what you guys seem to be promoting with a lot of these guys is like almost the more in the cases of the fighters, the more that they eat, the more of a well-oiled machine they become. Right. And they're able to consume pretty good amounts of food even as they're cutting, it seems like. Yeah.

Yeah. No. And you know, it's funny, like with our nutrition program, there's a lot of people that, you know, like regular people, they start losing weight. It's funny because when you do it in the proper way, and I love the fact that you said, you know, you're not all about just cutting the calories,

you know, because I truly believe like a lot of guys when they start, let's say they'll eat 4,000 calories a day. And it's like, oh man, it's time to start, you know, fight camp. They'll go down to 2,000, right? Well, what happens is like, once those calories are gone, those calories are gone. Your body starts learning how to,

to work off that caloric intake. And now what happens, you cut them too much. Like by the time it's, you know, comes fight time, it's like, there's no more calories to get rid of. There's nothing left. You know, I want to, I always say like, put a bigger engine in the car, you know? And if you look at the physiological side of that, like people are like, that's not how the body works well you know actually it does like if you've ever lifted like i know if i gave you um a workout and let's say you were loaded one day and then the other day you weren't you know you just had a bad workout it was the same exact workout both days but i guarantee you on the day that you were popping you burned a lot more calories yeah you know so what i say is like you know you're driving a car more because you're getting

ready for a fight, right? But you're fueling it up less and expecting performance to increase. That's the dumbest thing in the world. It's not going to happen. It's going to fall out. I need to put a bigger engine in the car. And what I mean by that is like, if I got, you know, let's say I got a 350 pound person that's like, okay, I'm trying to lose weight.

Well, it's not like I could be like, okay, go do a, you know, 50 box jumps or do, you know, like do a thousand squats. They don't have the engine to do that. But if I got this one individual, it's like, okay, we're feeding them. And every workout he's popping, he's burning calories. Like it's going out of style. We're reloading the muscle, which puts it, you know, making sure that that engine's rocking and rolling, but he is burning or she is burning that fat.

That does take a little bit of time. Right. Without cutting the calories. I think we have a lot of times we will like undersell the value of the actual training. Right. And what you just said right there is basically if we're not able to train as hard, we're losing a lot. Exactly.

You know, we're losing out on the bigger picture and we're losing out on the stimulus also. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing is on the bigger picture and we're losing out on the stimulus also. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing is a big symbiotic relationship, right? I mean, nutrition is obviously a giant piece of it. Training is a huge piece of it. But also, you know, what does your sleep schedule look like? What does stress mitigation look like in your life? I mean, do you have a complete picture of how to optimize the engine or create a bigger engine?

Because all those things are linked together in ways that get overlooked, I think, many people, you know, some guys really have their, their nutrition dialed in, they train like an animal, but they sleep two hours a day and then they're not reaching goals or peaks like they, they wouldn't. And when you look at how that affects their hormones or how it affects the way their body is digesting food, um, you know, they're, they're missing a huge piece of this overall healthy lifestyle, right? This complete picture. So, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. you know, they're, they're missing a huge piece of this overall healthy lifestyle, right? This complete picture. So yeah, I think you're absolutely right. You know, it's all those

things need to be focused on and something George and I have spent a lot of time with on our, our athletes that we, we don't really talk about often, but that's a huge piece of it is having complete lifestyle. It's helping you accomplish those goals and, and, and checking every box, right? Not just is my nutrition on point? Is my training good? Is everything that I'm doing setting me up for success? And yeah, it's a huge piece. If you're not physically with the person, like you were with Conor McGregor, is there some things that you ask people to do to kind of bulletproof their house? You know, like when you have a kid, you childproof your home, you know, so the kid doesn't stick

his finger in an electric socket, kid doesn't fall down the stairs. Are we, you know, figuring out ways of getting rid of the ice cream and figuring out some different strategies so that they're in an environment that will promote the habits that you guys are looking for? You're talking about a fighter or just an everyday person? Let's say everyday person. So with an everyday person, we do something called like the foundation and, you know, me and, me and Dan, we'll take a select group of individuals and we'll, we'll basically text

them or call them every single day. And what we do is we, we create these behavioral changes. You know, like you were talking earlier, like with the diet that you're, you're on, like it's had a lot of effects on, you know, understanding what talking earlier like with the diet that you're you're on like it's had a lot of effects on you know understanding what what full feels like a lot of yeah a lot americans don't need their full until they're like i can't breathe you know what i'm saying like it's just some people do that every meal overall i know but so that so you have you have physiological things that like okay you're hungry because like people don't realize like hunger is created from a hormone you know

what i mean but also it's you know they're and then you have the physiological side then you have the the psychological side you know some people like every time they watch tv they got to be eating something why is that you know they're automatically hungry there's a difference between the desire to eat and actual hunger but what we need to do is like reset those hormones when you're born you're you're literally born with like biomechanics. You do perfect squats. You see a 20-year-old do a squat for the first time, they look like a baby deer. They're like, you know what I mean? It's the craziest thing in the world.

But same thing, when my son was born, he'd pick out fats and carbs, whatever his body needed. And then me growing up, my mom and dad, my mom was Mexican. My dad, old-fashioned white guy, he's like, my mom's like, mijo, you need everything. She's like, you need to eat more white guy. He's like, her mom's like, me, you need everything. You know, like, she's like, you need to eat more. And my dad's like, you better finish everything on your plate. So to this day, if I got food in

front of me, like, like at a restaurant, I'll be stuffed. I'm like, I gotta, I just gotta keep going, you know? But with the foundation, what we do is we'll basically be like, okay, like a day one, drink a gallon of water. Okay. Did you do it? No. Okay. This is what we're going to do. Some people like, it's like, you know, I'm a business person. So like, I can't be peeing constantly in like a business meeting. So we have to attack that issue and make that diet fit their lifestyle. Like one of the biggest ones is like grayling. Like it's a time release hormone.

And like you said before, like the sumo wrestlers eat twice a day. That's basically the average American diet. You know, like a lot of times they don't eat all day long and they get home and they're ravenous. And they're like, oh my God. Two, three times a day. Yeah. So the thing is, what we do is like, we'll be like, okay, tonight I need you to go ahead and put a timer on your phone. So the moment that you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, I need you to put a timer every three hours. And every time that timer goes off, I need you to put something in your mouth. I don't care if it's a ho-ho, a ding- a twizzler whatever the hell it is and what happens is like everybody's like that's so simple that's easy day

and then like next thing you know they're like holy crap the timer's going off again you know it's like it's not as easy as they think but the cool thing is you're starting to reset that one like okay you're gonna start getting hungry at these times and then we kind of move forward on and creating an environment which is what you were talking about it's like we need to create an environment in your house where you know once you do get those cravings, we got to mitigate those cravings and understand, like, what is it? Like you was talking about leptin resistance. You know, we have the gray line, you know, things that are, what makes my body hungry in the first place? Some people are stress eaters.

Some people are like, like I said, the psychological aspects as well. Once we find that, we try and make it as much as possible. But then, you know, you're never going to be able to take away all starving or all being, you know, like, man, I just, I'm just craving pizza or something. If it's in your house, you're going to do it, you know? So creating that environment is one of the aspects we have to that. And it, we have, I mean, huge, you know, we have a lot of good results from it. Yeah. I heard you talking about cinnamon, you know, helping a little bit with cravings and

stuff. What's, uh, what's the deal with that? Basically, you know, uh, you know, like diabetics and all that became, you know, popular with them, like basically like, um, you know, insulin and, uh, for people that let's say they haven't eaten for a long period of time, I'll be like, Hey man, you know, like take a, take like a tablespoon or two of, uh, of, uh, cinnamon and put it in a liter of water. Um, and then also like psyllium husk because psyllium husk expands. So it'll kind of give you a, a full feeling.

I gotcha. Yeah. The fiber, huh? Yeah. The thing is like you wait, you know, wait 15 minutes. Cause a lot of times people are actually hungry. Like their bodies mistake thirst for hunger. They haven't drank a lot of water that day.

So you put down a liter of water and you have the cinnamon, you have the psyllium husk, you wait 15, 20 minutes. If you're still hungry, it's probably because your body needs some food, you know? Right. And that's just like mitigating everything. Yeah. I've been telling people for years, you know, never shop hungry, but you also really shouldn't eat that hungry.

Right. You know, I mean, in cases of like where you're messing around with some fasting, obviously at first you're going to be, you're going to be pretty hungry. But even just thinking about my own day and my own things that happen, I might be here for a few hours and then I'm like, oh, shit, you know, I better get home and eat. But there's stuff here that I could eat. And, you know, I always have some sort of snack with me or whatever. Even something as simple as just eating a cheese stick or a carrot or something, or a piece of fruit before I head home.

You kind of know, like, I think we think that right when we get home, we're going to eat. But a lot of times there's, you know, it still needs to be cooked or it's going to take a while. So it could be an hour, two hours. And now we could be talking about you just went six hours without any food. If you're specifically setting up intermittent fasting, it's different. But if it's not a planned fast, then you're kind of in trouble. Right. And even just a small snack can make a big difference.

That's huge. We always tell people this, like stay ahead of the hunger. Like you're like cheese stick. I bet you people are like cringing. Like, did he say eat a cheese stick? But it's like when you eat that hunger. Like you're like cheese stick. I bet you people are like cringing. Like, did he say eat a cheese stick? But it's like, when you eat that cheese stick, you're in control of it. And I always say like, it's, it's best to eat when you're not hungry. Why? Because you're in control of what you're eating and how much you eat. When you get a lot of people, they start dieting. And the first thing they're like, well, I'm not hungry. So,

you know, I'm going to go as long as I can without eating. And next thing you know, they're ravenous. And it's like, what are you craving? It's like nachos, like salty, high fat foods. You know, your body wants those calories quick, fast in a hurry. But if you look at it like, okay, I have this cheese stick now, like, man, later on, you're able to be more in control of your hunger and it's a lot more beneficial. Right. And a lot of people eat really fast. You know, they don't take a half breath, you know, in between their meals. And I've seen some research talk about you're not able to even do much with that.

You're not able to absorb that when you're eating that fast. Right. Yeah, no. I know, like, it takes a while to feel the fullness of the food and everything that you're eating. That's why professional eaters, they go at it so fast. Yeah. They get three, four, five bites in like within a half second almost just so they uh it doesn't register right i can eat more and more and more

what are some uh some very satiating foods that you guys would recommend you know just for the average person like like you turn like snacks and stuff yeah just in general like somebody who's you know listening right now they're just like well shit i want to you know hit the grocery store after i you know listen to this podcast but podcast, but what foods are going to fill me up and keep me full longer? I typically go higher fat foods, things like nuts. It's stuff that you're able to carry around all the time. You talk about fruits. Make it easy.

Yeah, like an apple. Convenience is probably one of the most important things. You hit the nail on the head earlier. I always tell people that I'd rather somebody follow 10% of a diet 100% of the time than 90% of the diet 10% of the time. You know what I'm saying? So if I give you this perfect program and the only thing that you can't do anything, but I tell another person, drink a gallon of water, and they're able to do that all year round. But that's all that they did. So I know there's people that are probably listening like like this dude's great advice is nuts and apple. Yeah. Like, yeah. If it's easy

to carry around and it's something that is going to keep you from starving. Yeah. And I think that's the best thing. Keep it simple. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and there's easy food prep goes a really, really long way and it doesn't have to be that complicated. You know what I mean? It can be something as simple as like going to buy a couple of different veggies that you like and some hummus and putting those veggies and that hummus in a Tupperware and throwing it in your car. You know what I mean? Like it's very simple. That's meal prep.

You know, now you have a snack that's high in fiber, that's satiating, that's going to keep you full for a significant amount of time. So, you know, an apple and you get one of those things that you slam down on it and it's cut. You throw it in a Tupperware with some almond butter or something that you like. Like that's an easy way to have a snack on the go. It takes 30 seconds to throw together on your way out the door. So yeah, simple stuff like that, I mean, is my general go-to, you know. Yeah. You go to Whole Foods, you go to really any grocery store now, they have kind of meal prepped foods.

Oh yeah. That are fairly healthy. They got salads. kind of meal prepped foods. Oh yeah. That are fairly healthy. Yeah. They got salads.

They got, you know, they have a wide variety of different things that you can really just walk in there, grab a hold of and take off. There's even, you know, even more convenient is Starbucks. They have those protein boxes. The protein boxes, yeah. It's got cheese. It's got two eggs in it. It's got a little bit of fruit. I mean, there's really not many excuses that you can come up with nowadays.

You know, when I did hear you talk about the cheat is you're on someone's podcast and they were like, you know, they listed out, rattle off all these crazy things that they ate. to have people typically not overindulge too much in foods that are processed, but they can overindulge in anything else that's normally on your list of foods, right? Right. One thing that Leith has taught me over the years, like cooking, it's funny, we're two jarheads. And back in the day, we used to talk about rifles that we were shooting. Now we're talking about freaking Tupperware that we bought

and we're so excited like bro I just learned how to you know he taught me how to plant vegetables I was like that is the fucking coolest thing ever

you know I don't know what happened to us but sorry man we lost our edge man I get stoked about bean beans now

dude this is the best apron on the planet are you kidding me you look at me like with a serious look like you know seriously the funny part is that you also are as excited as I am so it's like I don't feel as stupid

picture a guy with like oven mitts on and stuff used to be boxy gloves now oven mitts super excited like we're always like but the thing is that cooking is so freaking therapeutic because you're getting the senses you the thing is is that that cooking is so freaking therapeutic because you're getting the senses you're smelling things like that and and um like when you when you're cooking your own food you know you'll tend to taste it which believe it or not you're slowly

eating right so we talked about boom boom next thing you know when you're done with that meal you're like man i'm actually uh like i'm not starving i'm not ravenous you know and that's uh i think you know getting that in some people's head, like starting to cook your own foods. In terms of, like, the cheat, like, I never liked the word cheat, you know, because, you know, and I know it sounds stupid. Like, well, why do you care so much about the verbiage? Because a thought process is so important when it comes to actual nutrition. You talked about earlier, like, when people feel guilty, like, they're like, ah, screw it. You know, like, I've talked to you about the, like, finances.

It's like, dude, if you buy something slightly out of your budget, you like, ah, screw it. Like, I've talked to you about the finances. It's like, dude, if you buy something slightly out of your budget, you're not like, fuck it. I'm just going to go and just go into debt. You know what?

I went over my budget. But people like... I'm just going to mortgage my house. Right. They'll have like a little extra piece of cake and they're like,

fucking cheated. Might as well fucking go all out, you know? And then they'll get like a couple large pizzas and stuff. So it's a thought process. So like, I don't want

to use the word cheat. It's like your body, again, it's a thought process. So like, I don't want to use the word cheat. It's like your body, again, it's a freaking car. I know I'm going to get a lot of shit for that, but your body's a car. It's like you have this Lamborghini, right? And it's like, you know, this thing's been running pretty good. Let's put some shitty fuel in there. You know, it doesn't make any sense. So, you know, what I do on is that there is a reason for the cheat.

Remember I said, we want to create this stimulus. And like, let's say if I have been depriving my body, and my body, like, you know, and I'm sure, like, you've died for a long, long period of time. And then after a while, it's like, dude, you just seem like you're hungry all the time. It's like, your body's like, you know what? I legitimately need, you know, these fuels.

Shift gears. Exactly. So give it what it needs. Like, listen, and I tell them this. I'm like, you know, certain guidelines is like, still hit the water, don't hit the water while you're eating. And then, you know, if you Like, listen, and I tell them this. I'm like, you know, certain guidelines is like still hit the water. Don't hit the water while you're eating. And then, you know, if you want like sweet potato, man, have as much sweet potato as you want.

You know, and I tell them, like, understand you want to be able to get to that point where I can eat more, but I'm satiated right now. And you give them that capability. They actually, you know, they don't eat as much. You know, it's like, hey, go crazy, but kind of listen to your body and that's what we do for a load like listen to the body give them as many you know sweet potatoes brown rice whatever the hell they want as long as it's not processed it comes straight from the ground like noodles you can't you can't pull a noodle up so you know like rice beans like that yes it's uh it's also just easier to tell people

like just don't cheat because they're, they're gonna, there's going to be some error in there anyway. There's gonna be some human error in there anyway. They're going to be sneaking some stuff here or there. Uh, but in my opinion, what we're really striving for is like on our worst day, the worst food that we ever eat is still better than anything you're going to eat. Right. You know what I mean? Like, I think that's a good, that's a, that's a, uh, that's a good, uh, thing to try to take still better than anything you're going to eat. Right. You know what I mean? Like, I think that's a good thing to try to take on. And maybe you're not perfect with it. But, like, on my worst day, I'm still going to exercise more than you.

On my worst day, I'm still going to learn more than you. On my worst day, you know what I mean? Like, I think that's a good thing for all human beings to try to strive for. Otherwise, what are we talking about? Oh, 100%. You know, a lot of times I feel like, you know, like I don't even notice it, but it's like I remember this really hit home to me one day. Somebody asked me how to, you know, to get to McDonald's when I was in Quantico,

and I was like, fuck, I don't actually know how to get there. Like, you know what I'm saying? And you realize people go there all the time. It was just never been an option. Like going to Mickey D's where, you know, like I'll, I'll go out and I'll, you know, we'll, we'll have like our cheese, but realize like, wow, man, you're like, I do have my, everybody's got their limitations. Like, okay, this is, I'm not going to go past there.

I'm not going to have this fried or I'm not going to have this. Like, uh, me, I won't, I won't drink anything with calories in it. Like if I'm with it, if I'm going to get calories, I'm eating it, you know, cause I love food. Um, but some people don't, don't drink Coke. You know what I mean? Whereas like, you're like, man, you just pounded 300 calories, you know, you could have ate X, Y, and Z, you know, so. That's where it's hard. It's hard to like overly impose your will and or not even your will, but your values on somebody else. I kind of agree with that. I mean, occasionally I'll put

some cream in my coffee. You know, I know, I know you're big on drinking like kefir and some things like that. And so there might be some calories from some liquid somewhere, but in general, you're not having a soda ever. Like to me, when I look at that, I'm like, man, that's a complete waste. You know, if I'm going to throw away some calories, it's going to be with some ice cream or pizza. But for some people, they, you know, maybe because they had the Coke when they were a child or something, for some people, they really, really enjoy that. Right.

No, 100%. Everybody's different. And I think that's, as a profession, that's what our job is, to find out, okay, what is it that you absolutely need? And then basically just kind of create everything around that, you know. In some cases, you guys go and live with people, right? Cook for them and everything. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I just did it for a year straight. For a year, man. Wow. And one client for a year straight lived with her. And, yeah, it was intense. But great. I mean, I got to learn a lot about one specific client and see the ups and downs and learn very intimately the human factor that goes into a lot of what made her tick and why

she uh did things and didn't do things so cooking for them uh take him to the gym and training him and stuff too or i didn't train her she had her own trainers but um but yeah i mean when we do live with fighters we yeah, yeah, I mean, when I lived with Daniel Cormier, I drove him to every training session, trained with him when I could. You know, times I wouldn't get my ass kicked too bad. You know, but, yeah, cook every meal. As soon as you finish training, back to the house, you know, have things prep post-workout that I have with me at the gym.

As soon as we walk in the door, I'm cooking. He's relaxing for the next training session, eat again. But, yeah, it's getting to a good rhythm. There's some people, Dr. Dre, Steve Jobs, there's some people that I've heard that they wear the same shoes every day. And they wear similar clothes every day because they don't want to make an extra decision that stresses them out or slows them down. Right. And food is like really stressful like where are we eating like i don't know yeah like uh there's and even thinking

about like this place like where we are in relation to uh pretty healthy meals like we're not that close to healthy meals so uh you guys are taking a lot of that guesswork out and uh once you take a lot of guesswork out and there's a lot of convenience, people are just like, okay, well, I'll just, what you made me is nutritious. It's what I need. It's for my goals. And you're able to rationalize. Yep. You're right. That's what I should be eating. That's what I'm going to do. Did you have any problems or any setbacks during some of this? Cause like, you know, people are, you're not like literally with the person 24 seven, right? No, no, no, not 24 seven. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's, it's funny because you do take a lot of that guesswork out, I think, right. Where it's just

people oftentimes I find eat unhealthy because it's convenient, right? I mean, it's easy to go to Mickey D's, go through the drive-through, it's harder to meal prep, you know, a couple of times a week or whatever you need. And, um, but the other thing I found that even when we're living with a client and providing every available resource to eat healthy, people will still eat outside of that. And they'll still eat, uh, things that are not necessarily good for them or things that they're craving or the overeat. Um, and so what I found to be the, the, the most successful in helping people work through that stuff is just finding out the, the why, you know, what, why are you doing that? What, what happened? What was going through your mind? And it's different person to person. I mean, my last client, a lot of it was like emotionally driven stuff. If she was lonely, she would want to eat this. If she was, uh, stressed out from work, she'd want to eat something differently. So it was like trying to get ahead of those things looking at her schedule and going

Okay. Well in a few days, I know there's a photo shoot coming up. It's gonna create a lot of stress I know these things are good. So it's then you know talking to her about it preparing for it and again, it just all comes down to the human factor knowing your clients and You know fighters are no different. They're people too. They all have different cravings. They crave different stuff I mean Daniel Cormier is famous for this shit, you you know he has a song about steak and what is that sort of a cake and pie and shit you know dude loves sweets and all this stuff so it's like getting ahead of that and talking to him about his why i mean his fighters wise are easy yeah that guy that you're fighting i mean you know you need to make this weight you have this big uh you know every fight for every fighter is the biggest fight of their

life right the next fight is the biggest fight of their life so yeah man it's there it is look at that guy try to get that guy to eat healthy that's too much i love him the first fight camp i ever did with him i live at his house and i lived in a room so he you know he stays upstairs with his family and i live in a room on the bottom floor with uh where the kitchen is. And the, like the second day that I was living with him, barely knew him at all. I heard something in the middle of the night and I got up and walked in the kitchen and he was in his pantry, like rifling through some of his kids' junk food. And I caught him in the middle of it. What's the rule? What's the rule, Mark? If you eat it while you're still standing at the pantry, it doesn't count.

Yeah. It doesn't count. Yeah. If you eat it in the pantry and no one sees you, but you saw him. I saw him. I totally caught him, yeah. Boom, done. Yeah. Now it counts. He turned around and he was like, I knew you were the right guy for this. And he put it back and went to sleep.

He still fucks with me about that to this day. What do you do? That's like seeing like a giant bear or something just rifling through tons of food. Well, man, I mean, that's one of the scariest. It's like you can't, it's not like you can fuck him up. Nope. Now you're like. not even a little. Never mind.

Please put that back if you want. Yeah, I mean, the worst with those guys is when they're cutting weight, and you've got to tell them no. It's like you kind of stand with the door half shut. You can't do that, and you shut the door. You know what's amazing is that it just goes to show you, no matter how dedicated you are. I mean, this guy's a world champion, highly decorated collegiate wrestler as well.

It just goes to show you it doesn't matter, you know, the level of dedication that you have in one area. You just can't have it everywhere. No, I mean, and I think food with everybody is a struggle in one sense or another. Everybody has, like everything else in life, right? Everybody has their difficulties. They're all different. And so, you know, George and I have spent all of our time over the last decade figuring out, okay, well, this person has this problem.

Where have we seen this in the past? What are the things that have been successful? And over time, just working with people from all walks of life and all different difficulties found, okay, well, this works well for this situation. This works well for this. Even then sometimes people throw you a curveball. So it's just been this ever-evolving thing and every person is different and everybody needs something a little different. So to anybody listening, I would say don't feel like you're out there on your own like, oh, I'm craving pizza.

What the hell is wrong with me? Everybody has cravings. Everybody deals with those things. It's just finding, figuring out what your why is and then remembering those things and trying to do your best. Make one step forward every day. And if you step off that track, understand that. Just step back on the track.

It's a lifelong endeavor, you know. Yeah, I always tell people you're one meal away from being off your diet, but you're also one meal away from being back on it. Exactly right. Exactly right. And when it comes to some of these cravings like ice cream and pizza and stuff, I mean, my thought process, too, is like just don't bring it into the house. You know? Yeah.

My brother loves to go watch movies. And so when he watches a movie, he has popcorn. And he eats candy. He eats kind of whatever he wants. And he sees a movie, I don't know, like twice a month or something. The rest of the time he's eating pretty good. Same thing with like pizza. Like if you go somewhere where they have pizza by the slice and you have a slice or two slices.

Again, as long as you're not bringing it home, you're not having that readily available all the time. To me, it's helped me quite a bit doing things like that. My kids have these like ice cream sandwiches and drumsticks and these different things that they have. Again, that's like portion control a little bit. You know, it's like, I don't know, you ate 200 calories worth of ice cream. Like you're not going to die. You're not going to go to jail. Like everything's fine.

Well, that's not a huge deal. Where cheat meals became a big issue for me even too was, is, you know, like, I would say, okay, well, on Sunday I'm going to have a cheat meal. I eat clean all week. And then, like, that's a license to slam a large pizza by myself, you know, because, oh, it's a cheat meal. So I'm going to eat this large pizza all by myself versus what you're saying where it's, no, no, there is no cheat meal. But I'm not putting such a restriction on myself that I'm a crazy person, you know, like I, or I'm miserable all the time. You can still be social, have a drink or whatever, yeah. You can still enjoy your life a little bit if you want to have a slice of pizza, sure, and feel good about it, you know, versus eating a whole pizza on a cheat meal and feeling like shit for two days in training and, you know, yeah, I think.

Well, we know what cheat meal means too. It's code for cheat day. Yes. too it's code for cheat day yes and it's code for cheat weekends yes because you do it on saturday and you're like ah we can you know tomorrow i'm going to a barbecue and i might as well just go all the way off all right 100 yeah yeah yeah it's um yeah i think after i got back from the ultimate fighter i weighed in at 170 pounds and like four days, four days later, I was 213 pounds. Dude, I was, like, so freaking swollen. Bloated, right? Oh, my God.

I was just, you know, I was calling my friends, and I was actually worried, you know, like, I don't know. Like, what's going to, like, I can't stop eating. Like, I literally just can't. I had this, I had all these, like, packages around me, like, fries and all this other stuff, because UFC was paying for it all. I was like, dude, I'm just going't. I had all these packages around me, like fries and all this other stuff, because UFC was paying for it all. I was like, dude, I'm just going to get everything.

I had one of fudge and so many. And I'm laying on the bed, and I kept closing them, and I'm like, no more. And then I'd pop it open. I just got to keep going. Dude, it was disgusting. Well, I'll say that carbs beget carbs. That's it. The more that they're there, and I, and I heard you, uh, make a great analogy for it. Um, uh, the bread that they put down at, uh, at a restaurant, they put

it down on your table right when you sit down. And, um, at first, I mean, we, we kind of know like bread, there's nothing really wrong with bread. There's nothing really wrong with carbohydrates. It's just that we have a tendency to suck them down and, uh, and almost not even be aware that we did that. Right. And so when it comes to this bread that he put down, you're like, ah, you're pretty hungry. So at first you're like, ah, I won't have any. Then next thing you know, you reach for one, and then you have three, and then you ask for more.

Yeah. That's all she wrote. Right? Yeah. And you just suck down a lot of bread. Then you eat your meal, and you had a steak and all these other things with it. That's no longer that appetizing because you just truck through a bunch of bread with butter on it and salt. And that tasted really good.

And so you don't even eat the healthiest part of your meal. You're not even getting in your fats and proteins from your steak. You eat about half of it. You're full. And then what do you do? You order dessert. Well, and physiologically too, right? Your body starts craving that stuff immediately because it gets that huge dopamine hit, right? You have that, the nucleus accumbens in your brain,

right? That little spot in your brain where your, your body is grabbing for dopamine. As soon as you eat that bread and it turns into sugar and it starts producing dopamine and you go, that was awesome. I want more of that. Right. So then your regular meal comes and you're like, fuck, I don't want this. Right. Give me the ice cream or give me the dessert. I want that same rush again. I want that same. And it just compounds like you're saying.

You think about like these food companies, you know, companies that make things like Doritos. Like the most expensive thing you can buy in most restaurants is usually a steak. Right. You know, you can go to a nice restaurant and you get a $100 steak or even some places, you know, $200, $300. I mean, it could be off the charts depending on where you go and what you get. But if you eat a Dorito, which is like, I mean, how much is a bag of Doritos? I don't even know what it costs. It's just.

Four bucks. Yeah. It costs like next to nothing, right? Yeah. Yeah, it costs like next to nothing, right? But even just eat one or even just, I don't know, eat a handful of Doritos and then follow that up with the most expensive steak that you've ever had, the best tasting steak you ever had. That steak is now almost completely flavorless. Oh, yeah.

Those companies are beating the shit out of us. Yeah, I mean, it's an entire science dedicated to creating hyperpalatable foods, right? I mean, there's just, there's an entire industry developed to make regular, real whole food taste like absolute shit in comparison. You know, I mean, it's A Dorito is almost the equivalent of putting, like, a battery on your tongue.

You ever do that as a kid? Yeah. It just lights up every sense, it lights up every sensory thing that's going on on your tongue. It's like a fucking party going on. Yeah, I mean do that as a kid. It just lights up every sense. It lights up every sensory thing that's going on, uh, on your tongue. It's like a fucking party. Yeah. I mean, there's a whole book written about that called the Dorito effect. I mean, there's, it's, it's a very real thing where your body just starts to crave that hyper palatable food and nothing else really lives up to it. So it's very, very difficult to then be satiated by sitting down and eating something good for you. I did not know there was a book on Doritos.

All right, bad boy. I didn't know it was about eating healthy. I bought it because it was called the Dorito Effect, and I was like, I want that effect, so I'm going to read about it. Oh, because Jesse Burdick and I have stumbled upon Doritos, a fair share of our Doritos in our time. And when I was 330 and I was trying to gain weight, we found that Doritos were the fastest route.

They tried gaining weight. Oh my God. It'll get you there. It would put, it would just, it would give us a, like in powerlifting, it's weird because you were talking about being bloated. Right. We sometimes are almost seeking that. Okay.

That bloat feeling that you have, you know, would be detrimental in MMA. I mean, it would be, you'd probably get choked out easier and faster and stuff with all that extra. Just out of breath right away. Yeah, extra water weight and all that fluid kind of almost behind your eyes, that pressure you get. But when we lift and we have all that pressure in our fat face and then through our stomach and stuff. We love it. It really helps us with training. And that's why, again, people keep asking over and over again, on a keto diet, do you lose strength?

On just about any diet that you're on, when you start to lose weight, if you lose weight pretty fast, you're going to lose some strength, lose some leverages. pretty fast, you're going to lose some strength, you're going to lose some leverages. And then in the absence of carbohydrates, I say, yeah, you're going to probably, it's probably not the most optimal thing. Maybe you can, but it would be more optimal to bring some carbohydrates in if strength is your main worry. If you're fat as fuck and you want to make a big change, then it's probably a good idea to restrict the things that you keep eating over and over again that are keeping you fat, which primarily, in most cases, is carbohydrates. Right. 100%.

They're available. They're everywhere. Oh, man, those little bastards are everywhere. Too easy, too fast. When it comes to the post-workout, I know some people probably wrote down some of the stuff that you mentioned earlier. So we have fructose and dextrose together. We get a multiplier effect. We're able to consume more carbohydrates post-workout.

Post-workout, there's like a post-workout window that people talk about, right? We don't really need protein at that time, correct? Right. We usually do like BCAs. Anything over 10 grams BCAs isn't going to have any effect on anybody. So 10 grams of BCAs and then also, like I said, the caffeine. And then if you're going to do the dextrose, that was salt. So the amino acids are just to kind of shuttle amino acids in because the carbohydrates are shuttling into the muscles as well?

Yeah. And I've also actually read that it, you know, helps out with the synthesis of carbohydrates itself. So, you know, basically creates that, I guess, gate in the, in the cell itself. So, I mean, honestly, I don't know if that's the case, but, you know, in terms of. Might as well try anything and everything. Right, right. We've had a lot of good effects.

Like, you know, I don't do a lot of supplementation, like bca is like you know dextrose freaking you know the the reason i take protein like whey protein like an isolate again because it keeps all the osteo down but i honestly i don't take like a lot of the way um like post-workout i think that's a big thing for people and i just um don't see the benefits of it um so we got we got fructosextrose, sometimes branched chain amino acids, and caffeine. All those things are working together to allow you to handle more carbohydrates post-workout. Yes, sir. Obviously, it depends on body weight. It depends on the style of workout.

Let's just say you got done with lifting, and let's just hypothetically say you weighed 200 pounds approximately. How many carbohydrates are we talking about? It depends on the intensity of your workout too, but. If it's 10. In general, yeah. Let's say it's a 7 out of 10. If you guys got a calculator, it'd be intensity times 3.5 divided by kilograms in body weight. Yeah, go right through.

There we go. Tell me what to do here. Walk me through. So we'll put an intensity of 10. There we go. Tell me what to do here. Walk me through it. So we'll put our intensity at 10. So put 10 times 3.5, which is one met, divided by kilogram of body weight.

So you're 200 divided by 2.2, right? Yeah. So we'll say 100 kilos. There you go. 100 kilos. Easy day. So divided by 100. There you go.

So boom. So 0.35? No, no, no. So you did. Did I mess it up? No, no. Divided by 100. There you go. So, boom. So, 0.35? No, no, no. So, you did. Did I mess it up? No, no. Divided by the kilograms. Now, divide that by, I believe, I believe it's 200.

It might be, yeah, divide by 200, and then you're going to multiply that by the duration of the actual workout. Oh, my God. So. We got ourselves in a real mathematical conundrum here. I can do this real fast. Let's see. So.

George starts doing math, and I immediately just tune him out. What do the carbohydrates look like? Like, is this food or is this liquid? What is it? Generally, we just use like a dextrose powder. But yeah, I mean, you can use real food. I think it just is going to get in your system slower. I think for the average person, that's probably not that big of an issue, though.

That right there would be the amount of, that's probably not that big of an issue though. That right there would be the amount of calories that you would consume during that workout. And then at an intensity of 10, you'd want 80% of them. So you just multiply that by 80. So you're probably pulling in,

you know, about 800 calories for that one workout of a level 10. So 840 calories worth of carbohydrates. Right. Basically.

The 100%. So yeah, that equation is super simple. It's intensity times the 3. Right. Basically. A hundred percent. So yeah, that, that equation is, it's super simple. You just, it's intensity times the 3.5. It's multiplied by the kilograms of body weight divided by 200 and the duration. So it might be, it might be about 200 grams of carbohydrates. A hundred percent. Yeah. And we, like I said, we take them, you know, half of them during, you know, like, because

Oh, I gotcha. Okay. You know, you start, as you start working out cortisol levels, you start going up, you know, um, that insulin, you know, that helped blunt that. And then, um, maybe like once you sweat and you get through, uh, your first kind of, uh, main exercise or main intent of the day, I think no matter what you're training for, if you're lifting, um, there's, there's always like an intent that we're going to have. And so, uh, once you're done with that first thing or two, then maybe that's when you start sipping on your post-workout shake type deal.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a lot of studies that show, like, I don't know, there's something called the theory of perception. Basically, like, you know, those people that put like a little bit of honey on their mouth right before they lift or before they wrestle, basically sending signals to the body that, hey, we have that glycogen, so the body's going to be able to perform optimally. Sipping on something sweet while you work out as well has also been shown to kind of increase the workout itself.

Well, sometimes when it gets to be hot out, especially, that's kind of sometimes when you start to kind of bonk, too. And you don't want to do the extra exercises. Yeah. And so you mentioned dextrose, but is there like a fruit juice in there or something like that? Or how are we getting that? I mean, you can do a lot. Like I've told you before, like it doesn't sound sexy, but you know.

You mentioned Gatorade. Gatorade, man. I mix Gatorade and orange juice. It tastes phenomenal. Yeah. You know, and it's, you know, again, like you make your own mixture, kind of like, no, I like drinking this. This is what I want.

You know, just as long as you're getting those. In terms of the mixture itself, like the dextrose and fructose i don't get too wrapped up like how much fructose you're going to get how much dextrose right does it matter i mean for some of the more sciencey people that are listening you know fructose is supposed to uh go to go to the liver does it matter at all like post-workout that that's uh happening rather than uh it uh getting into our bloodstream? Yeah, I've always, you know, wondered, like, as you're reloading, you know, the body, like, how's the body, is it taking this to the liver first, is it going to the muscles first, you know, and everything that we do, I just, I stick with the macros. If I'm giving the body the muscles, I truly believe that the body, if it needs glycogen

here, it's going to get there. Yeah, it's going to basically figure a lot of it out for us. Yeah. And then when somebody gets done with their workout, are they eating like fruit? Or are they just continuing with that shake still? So that shake, as soon as they're done, an hour after they're done with their post-workout shake, that's when we usually typically have them eat their first meal. Just have like a regular meal.

How about for you guys? How do you guys eat? Okay, let's not go there. I mean, bad. No, I think for me in my day-to-day life, I mean, I generally try to eat every three hours. I don't get too wrapped around like counting calories, but I do eat get too wrapped around, um, like counting calories. I, I, but I

do eat generally pretty high fat, pretty moderately, uh, eat protein and only carbohydrate I ingest is generally post-workout, especially if I'm going to do jujitsu in the morning and then lift in the afternoon. Um, you know, I've, I really focus on trying to reload glycogen. If I'm not, if I'm going to just do jujitsu or if I know, um, like yesterday, for example, I did, uh, jujitsu before I got on the flight, but I knew I wasn't going to train today. So I didn't really do anything too drastic post-workout. I just had a meal when I got home and included some carbohydrate in that meal. And I just had some rice that my son made. So I had that along with the rest of my meal. But yeah, I mean,

I try to just keep things to consistent whole food meals, stay ahead of the hunger and try not to ever cheat, ever overeat. Just try to stick with, with very basic things. What do you guys think about people eating candy during their workouts? A lot of power lifters started eating like Skittles and things like that during training sessions. I mean, he'll probably disagree with you on this. I'm actually for it. You know what I mean? Like I said, you have that sweetness in your mouth, you know. I think it has a lot of benefits to it. Maybe just don't get carried away with it.

Yeah, I mean, if you're chowing down on a bag of Skittles during your workout, it's probably going to have some negative effects, but, you know. If you had just a handful or something, probably not a huge deal. Right. It may have some advantage, too. If you're drinking, like, a large – I've had this problem before where, you know, I try to, you know, eat a certain amount of carbohydrates like during a training session. It kind of starts to mess with your stomach a little bit. You're like, oh, fuck, now I just drank this big old shake.

And your body's trying to, you're training and your body's trying to like digest something. Yeah, it's a bunch of blood rushing to your stomach trying to deal with it, yeah. Yeah, it's like anything more than like just Gatorade or something seems to be a little bit hard, you know. Right, yeah. You know, like with MMA, and I know it's a little bit different for like powerlifting. I know you guys, you know, you guys get an adrenaline rush, stuff like that. But like with fighting, you know, we have something called the anterior nervous system, which basically any time our adrenaline goes up, you know, your body sends norepinephrine.

So 10% of our metabolism comes from actually breaking foods down. So it does, like, blood does go to that. But what happens is because, like, our body's awesome, like I said, survival mechanism. Like if a bear came out here and was like, okay, I'm going to either digest this food or I'm going to haul ass from this bear. Your body's like, you know what, I'm going to stop digesting food. But the fact that it's still sitting in there. You know, with fighting, it's actually kind of a big thing. The timing before a fight, we usually have them stop eating meals five hours before the fight.

Basically, stomach's empty, muscles still full. So in terms of powerlifting, I don't know. Maybe taking that amount of carbohydrates, even through fluid, might be too much. I don't know. Yeah, and when it comes to powerlifting, I mean, it's my belief that you just don't need enormous amounts of carbohydrates anyway. You know, now if you did a lot of powerlifting in the beginning of the session and you did a lot more reps later on, or even in your powerlifting, sometimes we switch things up and do higher reps,

then maybe you would need more carbohydrates. But it seemed like almost like bodybuilding style training is where they would need a little bit more carbohydrates because they're just doing more overall work. They're doing more reps and more sets and more of everything. Plus, it's also in a shorter condensed period of time because they're usually in better shape than we are. Powered up, there's just a lot of resting going on. I guess my point is, you don't need 150 grams of carbs when really what you did for the day was three exercises and you did, you know, a pretty,

you know, pretty heavy training session. And it wasn't a lot of, a lot of actual, like real work going on, even though what you did was intense. Yeah. It's incredibly taxing on your central nervous system, but maybe not as taxing on the muscle. There's not as much microtrauma, right, or damage that you're trying to recover from. I'm glad you say that because I've worked with some powerlifters before, and it's like, okay, I'm trying to figure out exactly how much they're going to take post-workout. And they'll be like, well, I worked out for two hours at a level 10. You know, I'm like, okay, we're not going to give this guy 2,000 gallons of freaking carbohydrates.

You know what I mean? Like, what is your actual, like, working sets? You know, it's a lot different. Like you said, it is extremely intense, but for a very short burst. Like, whereas, like, with MMA, it's very easy. You know, it's like five rounds of five, you know, like you're sparring or whatever. So definitely different sports, but, you know. Also, I'd say, too, like, but you know, I think also,

I'd say too, like if you haven't ever tried any of these things, uh, keep in mind that, uh, it's all, it all might be new to you. Uh, so don't make this gargantuan shake and think that you're going to just all of a sudden digest it really well out of nowhere. Same thing with protein. You know, somebody might be like, man, I tried to eat more protein and I'm farting and everything else. It's like, well, you know, you shouldn't have gone from, you know, only having 60 grams of protein a day to having 400. Right. You know, let's build some of this up over a long period of time. So if you're listening to this, I've had a lot of success with just having about 30 grams of fructose and 30 grams of dextrose and 30 grams of fructose

post-workout. Uh, that's always worked really well for me when I've tried some of your, uh, recommendations in the past. I didn't really see that. I feel that I needed, uh, more, much more of that, but, uh, especially in the summertime when you're sweating like that. And, uh, for some reason, I don't know, I don't know if it's just me, but like, you're just kind of craving, something sweet you're craving like fruit and um that really helped me uh quite a bit

you know get get through some monster training session a question over there andrew yeah i just i didn't want to switch gears too much but you were working with max holloway yeah yeah yeah um so he was deemed medically unfit or what i don't even know exactly what happened because he was, for anybody who doesn't know, he was going to substitute, be a sub fighter, whatever it's called. Right. He was going to step in. Replacement. Replacement. There it is. Sorry. I got all, my mind just went all over the place. He had what, like a 48 hour notice to make weight or something crazy like that? No, no. He had, I think it was six days. Unfortunately, he was in Hawaii. So, you know, he had an 18-hour flight.

Yeah. So, you were working with him to try to make weight and then somewhat medically he wasn't cleared. Right. So, do you think he might have been able to make it or do you think that was someone else's opinion? So, you know, here's the thing. So, one of the first things when I got the call, you you know first thing is a george can you make the weight yeah and i'm like okay i talked to uh tyler tyler minton who's uh one of the guys that uh was working for us like like i was talking about the guys we get certified he's one of the guys we had

certified and we sent him out to hawaii and he lived with uh max for six six weeks for his last fight to 145 so i looked at the numbers the thing is, last time he did a cut, the numbers, they didn't match up like last time. I mean, I'm talking, there's a, we used a human factor, and there's like a deterrence, or I guess like a small safety net. And it's like, okay, if this guy's tough as nails, maybe we can go a little bit over. For an example, let's say you're drinking 16 pounds of water a day

and you have 16 pounds to cut. Those numbers match up. Those numbers add up. If you have to lose 17 pounds and you're drinking 16 pounds, that's where that like, okay, this guy's going to have to suck it up a little bit. Max is like five pounds over, and I'm like, ain't nobody. We know. And then the,

like, I always love the coaches there. Like the coaches are in there. Um, cause you can, you know, for what I see, like,

cause I, you know, you don't know him as well as the coaches, coaches like, you know, they might be like, Oh my God, he looks horrible.

You know, but we're, we're looking at him during this cut and they're like, dude, this is the best cut we've ever seen. I'm like, you tyler's sitting there like lockhart man i don't i'm like no it's the kid is tough as nails you know i just tough tough tough um with that being said this was an opportunity of a lifetime he wanted it man he was almost like he was excited when when he called like like let's do this man i can't wait to do this adventure, right?

So we cut, you know, throughout the night. Everything was going as planned. He was literally like on my notes, like number-wise, we had a 10-part cut in front of us, literally like almost to the ounce where he was supposed to be. Now, the commission came in, the the commission they came in um and in new york it's uh you know mma is not exactly you know popular yeah with the commission stuff out there but the doctor came in and uh got on his truth if i would have saw the numbers from last time

and i was the doctor my whole purpose in life is to make sure that this fighter is safe i would have said the same thing and the thing is he's only there for you know i can't be like well dude no this guy is super super tough and he can do it this is a world championship fight like he's like you know that's not my job my job is to make sure that this person so uh when he called it i wasn't gonna be like no let me let me show you um but i will tell you max was uh he was literally singing and dancing i got a text from uh from tony he's like hey man he's singing and dancing the guy did the kids like sweating like crazy and then they stopped it to check it and then they just they weren't happy with the number and the amount of time that we had left so you know yeah um they called it but you know i wasn't mad like you know max obviously he wasn't mad you know with us you know just like hey man he's like dude you guys are you know like

everything we told him basically came to fruition. And then the commission, they just did their job. So, you know. And I know it's kind of like, I guess like Mark had said at the beginning of the podcast, kind of cutting into your business. But do you guys think that there should be more weight classes so people don't have to cut as much? Or do you think that they'll still cut? They'll just cut differently. Yeah.

And that's the part that people don't get like hey man we're not against like that like it's just like we're we're here because you know these people are always gonna cut way there was gonna try and find that edge and I mean like I said we're talking about some things that you guys did back in the day you like you guys are insane like the stuff that I do but you guys are always looking for like that much more, like give me that edge. So if there's 10, 10 more weight classes,

people are going to cut to that next one. 10 different weights. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's that people, when they talk about this conversation, I've heard it over and over again about more weight classes,

making the sports safer. But the athletes that we work with, I'm like, if you are at 170 pounds and you know, you have no chance in hell at breaking into the top 10 at 170, and that cut's still difficult, and then 160 comes along, fighters will try to make 160. So you're going to have the opposite extreme coming into play. It's a hard problem to solve, but I think that's why George and I and these athletes who seek out professionals like us know that part of the the the job we have is to find out if this is a safe cut or not you know i mean it's it with the example with max we felt it

was a safe cut he was doing really well and the commission did their job and stopped it but we've done that exact thing without any commission stepping in you know and those things don't get talked about or televised or whatever but you know we have to step in and make those decisions and i think it's important for every fighter every athlete in a weight class related sport to have somebody, a coach, a nutritionist, whatever around who can make those, because most athletes and, you know, all of us included are going to push ourselves well beyond the limits of what we should. So it's important to have somebody there in your corner to pull the plug for you.

Do you guys think it was a good move to get rid of using the IV to replenish the body? Personally, yeah, I do, 100%. Yeah. 100%. You know, what we do, like, our rehydration process, like, our cutting, man, if you sit down, like, you know, like, we go over the numbers, and we just came out with our system, like, got a whole DVD set, like, telling you, like, and the thing is, we tell everything, like, like.

You guys have an app and stuff too, right? Yeah, like, FitnessVT is what we put, like, all the fighters, like, we've got a whole DVD set, like telling you like, and the thing is we tell everything like, like. You guys have an app and stuff too, right? Yeah. Like Fitness VT is what we put, like all, all the fighters, like Connor, like Connor uses it. Everybody uses that app, you know, and it tells you exactly what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat based on like, you'll never get the same diet program, you know, every day or any day, you know, same one, you'll get a different one every single day, grocery lists, you know.

But in terms of like the rehydration process, like dvd said it's like it's like you'd think that 90 would be the cut and then uh you know 10 to reload it's mostly all the reload because how you know making sure that these guys do it properly the one thing i will tell you is like ivy is kind of like the protein bar there's not a whole lot of ways to fuck up a protein bar you unwrap the thing you eat the thing it's over right so there's not of ways to fuck up a protein bar. You unwrap the thing, you eat the thing, it's over, right? So there's not, is it, is it, is a protein bar the best thing for you? No, but it takes the guesswork out of it. If you know how to properly orally, uh, like, uh, hydrate orally, um, it's, it's so much better, especially if you have the time, you know, people don't understand the whole purpose behind, um, the, the IV and, you know, like me and me and

Dan, you know, we did like TCI training in the Marine Corps and military. We iv and you know like me and me and dan you know we did like tci training in the marine corps military we're you know combat conditioning specialists um an iv like it's like someone needs to get back in the fight quick fast and hurry you stick them in that iv put on their shoulder and it's like rocking and rolling it's for something that's quick fast and in a hurry um these guys they have 30 hours to rehydrate you know know, naturally the way the body, um, you know, wants it to, to, to go. And, and the thing is, if you look at let's just numbers, like we break things down, but I mean, you know, you get a lot of guys that take in two IVs, right? So two IVs, that's 9,000 milligrams of sodium chloride. Um, that's 18,000 milligrams of sodium chloride. Like people don't realize

like what's going on in their body. And then they go out and they're like, I need soup and I need sushi and I need this and this. Like, like you're like, dude, like how much sodium does need man? Um, you know, they didn't understand that there's gotta be a balance, you know, like sodium, potassium, magnesium, like these electrolytes. And they're not getting that in the, in the IVs. Whereas when we give them these shakes, they got that perfect combination dictated by their actual cut. It could be really dangerous, you know, having that, you know, large amounts of sodium and not enough potassium. Or maybe somebody not knowing what they're doing and they taking large amounts of potassium. There's all kinds of things that can happen to you.

But when you're gaining this weight back, you can also, like if you just go hog wild and hit buffets and eat a lot of sodium, I'd imagine your blood pressure goes from being pretty low where, you know, people when they're weighing in, they look sickly almost. They look a little whitish. And then, boom, your blood pressure could be spiked and you could pass out. I mean, there's a lot of things that can happen, right? Right. No, absolutely. You know, and it's like at the end of the day, we all say a 3% dehydration equates up to 30% decrease in performance.

You're 3% dehydrated. You might be walking in there as a 7% fighter. You know, we, we, we monitor and make sure that everything that goes in these shakes, everything that goes in their mouth, because the point thing is, is a fighter is a fighter is a fighter. It's like, as soon as they're done, they start drinking a little bit of water. They just want to eat.

They just want to pound, you know? And it's like you got to save them from themselves. Like, hey, man, we got to get some water in you before you start eating, you know, that food. And, you know, as dangerous as you think, you know, in terms of like blood pressure, these guys, their blood pressure is so low. Like, you know, it would take, you know, a considerable amount of time

and for them to continue to do that. But imagine if you got this guy who stuffs himself. And I would say it's like an upside down filter, right? With these guys, they freaking plug that filter up. Their body wants it, but it's like, dude, I can't eat because it can't digest that food. They end up eating like once or twice, you know. I've had that happen.

You weigh in and you're all excited and you you eat you know any and everything and then uh you're just like gassy and stuff and you can't you can't really consume the food that you wanted to consume did you get your body needs absolutely you just can't break it down that fast can you put more weight on somebody than uh what they originally weighed right so what we do is we actually we have a formula to find out exactly how much glycogen your body all based in in your liver and your muscles, right? And we get, we like, you know, for example, you have to stop eating five hours before your fight. And then obviously you're not going to be eating while you sleep. So we get the amount of time, okay,

this is the amount of eating time that this person's going to have. This is the amount of meals that this individual is going to eat, maybe six, seven or eight meals. And now let's say like it'll someone like you, I'm guessing your body would probably hold 450 to 500 grams of carbohydrates. So what we do is we break that down into six, seven, or eight meals. And then that's what we get to make sure. And it'll bring you back up to the start of the cut. So whatever they show up on Tuesday, that's typically what you're going to be fighting at on Saturday. And the big problem that we have is like a lot of guys, they almost took it as like a

sense of pride, like, like a goal, like, oh, see how big I can get. You know? And it's like, dude, you're 10 pounds heavier than you were on Tuesday. Like, how do you think that's going to help you in any form or fashion? You know, it's just, they're going to be slow, slowish and lethargic. It's hard to rationalize it. You know, you're competing and I think we, we tend to get nervous. Yeah.

You know, and then we start to think, oh shit, that guy that I'm in there with is a real beast. He's real strong. Right. You know, I better weigh 180 when the plan was for me to weigh 170. Right. A hundred percent. Yeah. You probably see a lot of guys doing that, you know, going a little overboard.

Yeah. Like, his name was, like, Gleason Tebow. Yeah. That guy would go nuts with weight cuts. Yeah. All I'm going to do is humongous. Yeah, Gleason's huge. Yeah. I was like, holy crap. When I saw him, like, I saw him in person. that guy would go nuts with weight cuts yeah the dude was humongous yeah this is huge yeah i was like holy crap when i saw him like i saw him in person i was like you gotta be kidding like this

guy's a 50s he's my size man like yeah there's a couple of guys like that out there you walk you see these guys backstage and how i yeah doing this every day i still look at guys and go that's too much max holloway like even man like when i saw max for the first time before we started working with him and he was like he was like 190-something. Just this big dude. I was like. Dude, Vic is the biggest 5500 I've ever seen in my life. Vic's my boy.

Fucking love Vic. Man, he shred it. He makes me work for my money, I tell you that. Every time we show up, it's going to be a story to tell. Yeah, look at that guy. What was it like prepping all those meals for Conor McGregor and being part of that whole just team? Dude, it was surreal, man. You know what the craziest thing is?

So his client, Demi, was singing at the fight. Yeah, she sang the national anthem at the fight. That was cool. It was nuts, man. So he got two jarheads, man, that we started off with a dream back in the day. And the next thing you know, we're sitting in the T-Mobile arena in Vegas backstage in Conor McGregor's, you know, corner room. Kind of like, dude, your client's singing the national anthem tonight.

And my client's going to be part of one of the biggest fights in history. It is, you know, it is a few things in your life. You know, like this is going to be history. You know, like you see those pictures of like George Foreman and all these other things, like back in the day, those boxers. It's like. The rumble in the jungle. This is it, man. There's going to be pictures like that.

So it was, it was awesome. It was incredible. Yeah. And going to, you know, some of those different, he kept popping around these different countries, like for that world tour, for that flight. That seemed crazy. And they'd get up there and they'd talk shit about each other. And that was amazing. Did you end up going to some of those things?

I was at every one. If you see me, I'm the guy in the corner with the lunchbox. Like literally had a lunchbox. And like Conor, he's like, he's all about his boys, all about loyalty. And then freaking Mayweather's guys started talking smack. And I'm sitting there like, man, like, I mean, I'm a professional. I can't be getting in fights. But I don't want that corner to be like, dude, you didn't have my back.

So I'm like, all right, man. So the next thing I know, like, all of them started coming together, and I'm over here with this lunge. Like, can't fuck up the food. Trying to, like, push people back. And it's just like, oh, this is ridiculous. But, I mean, dude, it was such a just, like, going to, like, the jads and stuff like that.

And then I flew home. I flew home coach after the fight, you know. And I'm like, where's my fucking blanket and my salmon and my booties? What the hell? You know, but it was a hell of an experience, man. Yeah, it looked like. I mean, I can't even imagine. You must be just absolutely mobbed everywhere you guys went.

It must have been pretty crazy. Do you have a role when it comes to that, too, or do you just have, like, regular security? No, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm just a food guy, but the cool thing is, like, you know, we have a background. Like, you know, I fought for 15 years. Yeah, you need to bump somebody out of the way for them. It's no big deal. 100%.

Like, boom, they call me Steven Seagal because, like, you know, he was in under siege. He was the cook. Yeah. They're like, yeah. And I'm like, you know, I'm not aagal. Cause like, you know, he was the underseat. He was the cook. Yeah. They're like, you're like, yeah. And I'm like, you know, I, you know, I'm not a big fan of Steven Seagal, but it was kind of cool. You're like, dude, that's, he was the cook and, uh, you know, he was actually kind of bad-ass, but, uh, I'm just a food dude.

That's, uh, that's, uh, that's pretty cool. What did you learn from that experience? Like in terms of, uh, kind of like the human element, as he was talking about earlier, um, and just seeing like, uh, you know, Conor McGregor is the champion. He's like, he's one of the best. What have you learned by kind of, uh, rubbing elbows and seeing these guys first, uh, firsthand? I mean, um, there's, there's so many aspects to that team. Like, uh, you know, like John Cavanaugh, he's, he's one of the best coaches in the world

for a reason. He's a, he's a mentor to all these guys. And it was, it was cool. Cause we stayed at, so there was basically three houses. You had the sparring house. You had the fighter house. And then you had Connor, you know, for his family. And I got to hang out, you know, with Artem and Colin and, like, everybody.

And it's just, you know, like, just crazy, the personalities in that group. Dude, I can't even begin to tell you. But you see, like, Connor's – he's one of the few guys that had the team from the beginning. Same exact friends, same exact team, everything. You know, like, loyalty is a real big thing to him. But he picks his people very wisely. Like, it's not just like, oh, we're going to be loyal to you. It's like he's loyal after he picks you.

And, like, when we first started working together, it was for the Jose Aldo fight. And it's like, like okay they took their time to pick me and then everything i said is like boom done deal you know but um his coach like i said he's a great mentor um connor the thing about it is uh he was more calm like the entire time like i'm sitting there like this is this is gonna be like televised everywhere yeah and i'm like he's just sitting there like calm like he'd be eating dinner at night and he's like you know i remember i'll never forget this he like he was talking to me and he's just like he's like dude i honestly think this is gonna be an easy one

and i was like oh my goodness like this is gonna happen like i think i really believe and i do and like when people say like i understand where the level of mayweather it's just like this guy is constantly just kind of define the odds and things like that i know i mean he went 10 rounds with the the greatest you know for his first boxing match um but that mentality and that that um i guess confidence you know it was cool to see it's a really cool video going around it's on youtube it's uh it's about stoicism and it's it talks about conoror McGregor and he's got like these seven things or 10 things or whatever. Somebody put a compilation together and they talked about how he'd said

something in the press and he was pissed and he's like, I don't want to fucking be here. You know, 10 days earlier, like he was just frustrated. Like, you know, all the fighters get frustrated.

They got pressed stuff to do. They're trying to make weight. There's a lot on their mind and all they want to do is concentrate on the fight. So he complained once, boom to do is concentrate on the fight. So he complained once, boom, got it out of his system. Then he got tried to get baited back into that in a, in a conversation where somebody just interviewed him on the street and boom, his mind changed just like that because he's just brushing it right off his shoulder.

Like, well, you know, how do you feel about being here? He's like, actually, wherever, whatever city was in or whatever, he just like, you can tell he kind of just made it up, but he's talking himself into believing it. He's like, the city of Detroit or wherever the hell they are. He's like, I absolutely love it. You know, it's actually good to be here a couple days early. He's like, my whole team comes with me. I get to prep my, you know, I get my food

and I get everything all situated. And it's kind of nice being here a little bit early, which he just totally diffused the situation. Yeah. Whereas he would have went back on that rampage again, he would have led himself down a stressful road. And as a champion, you can't have that kind of stress around you. Right.

So it's no surprise he's cooler than the other side of the pillow when it comes to the situations like that. He's so witty, too. Like, it blows my mind how witty this guy is. Like, I'm like, he probably likes to have fun, right? Oh, my goodness, yeah. But, yeah, like,

when he started, he didn't know that he was actually going to get the mic when him and Mayweather, nobody told him. So they just, like, basically, you know, Dana was, like,

you know, rating, defending, and there you go. Dude, like, without even skipping a beat, was like, boom, just like, and just started going,

and, you know, and then, you know, Mayweather started talking smack. I don't know if you guys saw the one in Canada. Connor was like, boom, just like, and just started going. And, you know, and then, you know, Mayweather started talking smack. I don't know if you guys saw the one in Canada. Connor was like. I love that stuff. It's so good. Bro, he's like, not again.

He's like, never again. I'm not, no. So he like, literally, I mean, he was just talking with us the entire time, stuff like that on the flight. You wouldn't even think that he was thinking of anything. He went out there and I was like, man that was that was nasty like i mean so the guy's witty smart in so many ways yeah mayweather had that uh briefcase full of money it was like there was like that ten thousand dollars in there or something he was making fun

of him like yeah he's like that's it that's all he's like ten thousand bucks he's like come on bro the the comment about these like you're dressed like a schoolboy with your little backpack and you can't even read. I was like, God. This is just, yeah, they didn't hold anything back. I'll tell you that. I remember, yeah, he's pulling all the money out of the backpack and stuff. It seemed like a couple times they were really going to fight. You think they were just playing with each other? I think one of these, I don't know, which one is it?

I just pulled up Canada and it said it was in Toronto. So I don't know if this is the one that you were talking about. Yeah, it became like a rap don't know, which one is it? I just pulled up Canada and it said it was in Toronto. So I don't know if this is the one that you were talking about. Yeah, it became like a rap battle. No, this one I think is New York. Okay, it might just be like a compilation. Oh, wait, no, no. Yeah, there's the bag. I was going to say one of them might be the first one.

But yeah, you'll see me in the little lunchbox in here too, guys. My little two seconds of fame. But yeah, I'm usually the guy in the corner. It was funny because i'm like dude's gotta eat dude's gotta eat dude's gotta eat and like when he's going through this obviously you know like he's getting such a rush i mean there's so many freaking people thousands of freaking people he's not hungry but you know i'm like following around with lunchbox like you ready now you ready now let's uh i love how he's just even sitting there like even just sitting there

like uh you know in his suit and everything just just chomping on that gum the whole time. Yeah. Like, looking like he doesn't give a shit, right? Man. From what I remember, like, it was, like, I think one of the first ones where Connor's mic, like, just magically stopped working or whatever. But, so, I don't know if that was staged or what not but then afterwards Mayweather said he was upset because it kind of yeah

it fucked up the fight or whatever it was this one it was this one you want to know which one this was this is the very first one

so I got separated from the group right so they put all of Conor's guy on one side and then they put me

on the other side and I turn around and there was nothing but freaking Mayweather guys around me and I'm around and there's nothing but freaking Mayweather guys around me. And I'm like, Oh hell. And they started talking, started talking smack. They're like, he's one of them. And I'm like, man, I don't know. Yeah. Those guys will fight you right there. You know, Pops is looking at a unload on somebody. I went that week to Mayweather's gym with Demi to watch his

workout. And I mean, at one point Demi's manager looked over at me and was like, you should probably leave. And I turned around and there was like eight guys pointing at me and talking to him. I was like, okay, I'm going to go. Everything I ever heard about Mayweather is that he works his ass off. Yeah. You know, he's got this perception of being like, you know, very over the top. You know, he's got his carts of money being unloaded from his van.

You ever see that? Oh, yeah. They take out stacks of cash and they put it on like a cart and they like wheel it across. He does all kinds of crazy, weird stuff to, you know, get attention in the media and different things like that. But from everything I've ever heard about him is like he's one of the hard-working guys out there.

And, you know, he's just been of the harder, harder working guys out there. And, you know, he's just been dominant as a boxer. Oh yeah. I mean, you couldn't get to where he's at without that. Like you're right. Everybody's told me that like, um,

and I think the guy, I mean, he's just, he's crazy smart, you know, he's super intelligent, you know, with what,

what he does. A lot of things, you know, can you mimic that walk for us after being around him for that many weeks? That Conor McGregor walk. You know what's funny? I can't mimic the damn Irish accent. But when I'm in Ireland for like six weeks, I can do it perfectly.

And then I come back to the States and it's like. And you're all screwed up again. Look at this guy, man. Oh, shit. That freaking walk. But to me, all of that's a very big part of it. How you feel. Yeah. You know,, convincing your mind that you can, uh, you can do it. I think a lot of people learned a lot from Conor McGregor and, you know, the, the fight,

uh, Mayweather never really looked like he was in trouble, but to be able to do anything against, uh, Mayweather, who's, you know, arguably the greatest fighter of all time, greatest boxer of all time. Yeah. Uh, that was just. It was ridiculous. Relief's a powerful thing, man. It's unbelievable what he did with that. It was great.

That one right there was Toronto. That's it right there. How do you manage sleep? With these fights and this kind of traveling and dealing with other fighters that you guys have dealt with over the years, how are we making sure that we're getting enough sleep? and dealing with other fighters that you guys have dealt with over the years, how are we making sure that we're getting enough sleep? And then what is enough sleep for some of these guys? Oh, for him, I mean, like on a private jet, like we'd make sure, like, you know,

he'd sleep in the back. They'd block everything off. He'd go pass out, you know, because, like, the very first flight, we flew from Ireland to – Is that, like, a discussion that you have to have with, with somebody like him or, or some of these other guys, like, you know, Hey man,

like now would be a good time. Like, let's put your phone away. Or is he professional enough to be like, I'm I'm Hey guys, I need to sleep. You know, the funny thing is he's,

he's crazy intelligent, you know, in terms of like, you know, I've, I've never seen anybody like watch more footage in my life. Every time this guy is like at a breakfast breakfast table, dinner table, just sitting there just watching footage, you know, just soaking everything up. But he's got a team.

So we have Doc Julian and me. We discuss, okay, this is what he's doing for training. This is what, you know, okay, let's go around this path, like, in terms of sleep. And, you know, the funny thing is he would know what to do, but then he would turn to us and be like, okay, what's your opinion, you know, okay, let's go around this path, like in terms of sleep. And, you know, the funny thing is, is he would know what to do, but then he would also even turn to us and be like, okay, what is your, uh, what's your opinion? You know? And you kind of like, oh, yeah. Like, all right.

Well, okay. You know? And like this Conor McGregor, like, I don't know if I'm going to tell you to go to bed, but, uh, you should probably go to bed. But no, man, um, you know, he's got a team, like we had people like monitoring, like monitoring his sleep. They had a, they had a thing that's basically telling him like how his sleep was, man, you know, he's got a team. Like, we had people, like, monitoring his sleep. They had a thing that's basically telling him, like, how his sleep was. You know, like, Dog Julian was in the Olympics for, like, cycling and things like that.

The guys, I mean, I've never asked him a question that he didn't know the answer to. He's like a robot. But it's cool to have, you know, he brings somebody in for their own specific thing. And the cool thing is that we actually work as a team. There's a lot of teams I've been to where it's like, you know. People are in disagreement. Oh, my God. You got the Jets coach being like, this is what he needs to be.

And I'm like, wait a minute. I don't tell him how to do Jets. Why are you telling him what to eat? So that's a big thing, working together. Yeah, it's got to be a tough deal. Because, deal because, as we mentioned in the beginning of the podcast, for some reason, especially men, I think guys always think they know how to fight. Yeah. 100%, man.

100%. A guy who's big and strong is like, oh, yeah, I could go over to Uriah Faber's place and jack some people up. It's like, not any of the professional guys. You certainly wouldn't have a chance. And even some of the amateur guys have only been over there for a year, probably take you down and put you in an ankle lock and you'll probably be done. Right.

No, it's crazy. Probably cry. Yeah. The more time I spend doing martial arts, the less I ever want to get in a fight with somebody. Cause you learn, you know,

I mean, it's, and you hear a lot of guys that, that train consistently in MMA or whatever, any martial arts. It's also not any different for somebody who's heard some stuff about nutrition here and there. You guys are living it every day. Right.

You're with people every day. You're monitoring things every day. You're looking at sleep cycles and all kinds of different things. You guys looking at blood work at all? Yeah. Occasionally we will. I know Dan's big into the blood work. I've got I'm, I've got to outsource that a little bit sometimes, or is it like, you know, he, he handled it or how do you guys do that?

It really depends on the client, I think, you know, but, but yeah, I mean, generally, if we're working with somebody over a longer period of time where we can have some pretty dramatic impact in a deficiency, like if we notice some significant things that we can't seem to solve, right? If we have a program going, you know, with somebody and there's still a step off and not recovering, like we think they should be or something, then it's maybe a time we would recommend some blood work or with a client we're going to work with long-term, we may recommend it. And then, no, okay, we can do some interventions here if they have a certain deficiency and whatever, zinc, pick whatever it it is you know um and then do

some dietary intervention to help with that but as a general rule if we're working with somebody you know the majority of the athletes we work with uh outside of you know through our website and things like that i mean it's fight week you know so we're not going to go to an athlete and say well listen we're going to help you make weight this week we want you to get blood work first you know so it just again it's very dependent on the client, but yeah, we do. I mean, and if clients have blood work, like recent blood work done, we always ask for it and try to review it, but yeah. George seems to be very intuitive when it comes to a lot of this stuff. What do you think his best trait is in being able to help some of these nutrition problems for people?

You're asking me to give George a compliment? Set him up for one. Oh, no. George seems to be pretty like, basically like. You stumped him. The first time he's been stumped today and it's just a question. You've got nothing good to say. Tell me something good about George.

Yeah. Listen, I can hear. He's got a great voice. You do have an awesome voice. George, yeah. We were actually just right before we went live talking about how George, after we finish up our careers in nutrition, is going to maybe do some children's book narration, I think. Every time, well, every time he calls, my son knows exactly who's on the phone. He runs in Uncle George.

No, George's best attributes. I mean, look, George has been my mentor in this business. I mean, ever since we first started. And I think George genuine, his biggest attribute as a nutritionist is genuine concern for his clients. You know, I mean, it's everything he's saying is absolutely genuine. He spends time getting to know clients, getting to know what helps them, what makes them tick, what things nutritionally are going to benefit them based on what they like. I mean, he gets to know their families. He knows everything about every client he works with. So I would say that is probably besides the encyclopedia of knowledge that he has in the photographic memory. And I mean, it's I can I can go on and on.

I don't like him, but I know, it's, I can, I can go on and on. I don't like him, but I know he, you know, that, that would be my biggest, the biggest attribute I would say about George is he's genuinely concerned. So he's able to apply all of this knowledge he has in a, in a very personalized manner, because he really does care about each person. It's not just a client on a piece of paper. It's somebody that he's really trying to have a lasting impact on their life. So every client he takes on, he looks at that as an opportunity to mentor somebody with something he's very passionate about. Yeah. People definitely need to know that you care because otherwise, you know, a lot of times if you just send somebody something, you just send them, hey, here's the food list or here's

what you're supposed to eat. They're not going to really follow it. But when they kind of learn that you care about their well-being, you care about them being better, then it's a lot easier for them to be on board. Yeah, sure. It's like the example we just said. You know, if you've been eating on a diet for two days and then you go off that diet one day and then your nutritionist sits down with you and says, okay, let's talk about why that happened.

I'm genuinely concerned about how we can benefit. Like how do we learn from this situation and grow and get you back on your path to be successful and hit your goals and feel good about it. Right. And so every time we do that with the client, I mean, when George and I started with this, I mean, George started with a couple of clients and now we're up to 130 clients. And that has been with no advertising or marketing or anything. It's just people getting to know who George and I are and understanding that we really care about their success. So that's what we built our business around.

And that's really a testament to George, man. I mean, that's who George is. When it comes to the sleep stuff, there's been more and more people talking about it more recently. What kind of recommendations do you guys have? Do you guys have any tips or tricks for people to get more restful sleep? And then also about how much sleep do some of these people need? Go ahead, man. I'll go outside the grain with this. And obviously this is, it's part of

what we do, but not what we do. But honestly, I think that the more natural things are like, I would say consistency again, like with nutrition consistency with sleep and like, you know, you're training your body to go to bed at the same exact time. Um, and I think sometimes we need more sleep than others. Like if you're, you're banging things out, you know what I mean? Like, um, workout wise, you know, you might need more sleep obviously for, for, you know, recovery of your muscles and things like that. Um, and then less sleep, obviously, for, you know, recovery of your muscles and things like that. And then less sleep, obviously. Like, you ever woke up on a day where you had literally nothing, you were excited that day?

You might have slept for, like, five, six hours, and you're like, man, you know. Then there's those days, it's like, man, you got freaking paperwork and all this other crap. I'm tired before the day even gets started, you know. I, you know, like, when I was in the Marine Corps, when I was training, if I didn't get, you know, eight hours of sleep, it was, it was all she wrote. Like I'm like, and then, you know, it started getting to like six hours and it was like four hours. It was like, okay, man, well, we slept last night. So it was good. You know what I mean?

It was like, you don't, you know, you don't need as much as, as you, you know, you think, right. As a fighter, it's like, how much do they need? Well, a lot of that just like nutrition is based on their, their, their activities, like how hard they're training and things like that. But the best thing, like I said, the most, most important thing I think is consistency. And that's one of the hardest things that with Connor is because not only we're, we're in different places, different environments, but different freaking time zones, you know? So it's like, now it's like, he's got to be on point.

It's like, damn, this is what time he's supposed to freaking sleep. Right. And I think that's something that fighters and people need to, you know, keeping, um, keeping their brain housing group. Like when, when a fighter flies from Australia over here, that's, I mean, you've been training at, let's say six o'clock in the evening and now back, let's say in Australia, now it's like 12 o'clock and your body's got to get used to that.

So, right. Yeah. I mean, keep it simple though. Keep it simple. Yeah. And do, do some 12 o'clock and you know your body's got to get used to that so right yeah just keep it simple though keep it simple yeah and do do some of the obvious things you know i mean uh prioritizing sleep and knowing okay if i'm going to try to get to bed at 11 tonight by 10 o'clock i need to start setting myself up for success with sleep like almost like a warm-up to go to sleep right starting to eliminate uh sitting under lights or looking at a tv screen or looking at a computer screen. You know, take time and sit down to read. I'm a big fan.

I take usually melatonin, like two grams of melatonin before I go to sleep to kind of start easing myself into getting ready to go to bed. But just making it a priority. Most people don't do that. They sit down at the end of the day and they watch TV or they sit on their phone or sit on their laptop or whatever, and they inevitably just stay up and think more about more problems or the next thing they need to look up or the mean tweet they saw, and then they can't sleep because they're pissed off about some shit somebody said online or whatever.

You just need to cut those things off and prioritize sleep, just like you do your nutrition, just like you do your training. It just needs to be a piece of something. It takes some fore some, uh, forethought, right? Some, some focus. When it comes to a general population, are you guys, uh, okay with, uh, the different proteins that people eat, like, like red meat and things like that? I know with the fighters, you don't seem like to be a huge fan of it because, uh, it occupies a little bit too much of a, of your digestion. Uh, but for some other people that main, mainly are just lifting weights, like a lot of the power lifters watching the show,

um, do you think red meat would be okay? Because, uh, you know, we don't, we don't need that energy, uh, the same way maybe a fighter does. Yeah, absolutely. I think so. Yeah. I mean, and I even use red meat pretty consistently in camp with fighters. I mean, the nutrient density you get out of a piece of red meat versus a chicken breast. I mean, there's no comparison. So, yeah, I absolutely include red meat. And I mean, really, we start eliminating red meat during the cut or like immediately, you know, five hours before a fight. We're not going to last meal, give somebody something like, uh, you know, a big steak, but yeah, in terms of nutrient density and, and, um, you know, the, the fat profile of like a good piece of grass fed beef. I mean, I think it's, you're getting so much bang

for your buck in terms of micronutrition, you know, micronutrients, um, that you're just not getting from other sources. So I think, yeah, it's an excellent, excellent source of protein and something you should be including, um, even organ meats and things like that from beef, like beef liver is fantastic. So we try to include that as much as fighters will let us, you know, I mean, some guys won't eat that, but yeah, absolutely. What about like a pre-workout? I know you've talked about honey. What about like, I don't know, let's just say somebody, you know, wakes up at eight o'clock and they're supposed to train at like 10.

Do they eat some food in the morning or, you know, what does it look like? So, you know, let's say you're doing like stream training or like, you know what I mean? Obviously I want to, you know, have some food in their bellies. But like we talk about the hormonal responses of food, we typically give people protein before they work out for the hormonal response of glucagon, basically telling the body to release free fatty acids and store glycogen. We will put like some fruit. Like I think one of my favorite things for people is like kefir, like let's say like

a cup, cup and a half of kefir with some fruit and chia seeds because, you know, obviously like omega-3s we're really big into as well. Give it a little something. It's nothing big, you know, that they're, you know, it's going to upset their stomach or anything like that. But again, it's going to create that hormonal response. Um, I'm also a big fan of beta alanine, you know, typically like 4,000 milligrams a day, you know, um, first thing in the morning, like you just get ready for the tingles, you know, but, um, other than that, you know, and then,

um, and then right before, uh, the workout, like I said, like a little bit of honey and beta alanine is for about beta alanine so we have something called cornucine in our bodies your body doesn't create you know enough of it's basically a buffer you know helps out with muscular endurance thing is a lot of things that we ingest you know once it gets through our digestive system it doesn't stay the same it doesn't stay the same product now if you mix histidine with uh beta alanine it becomes that cornucine. So, again, it helps, like, buffer the muscle. It helps increase muscular endurance. And there's tons and tons of study.

Like, NSCA has done tons of studies on that. And another one that we use, but, you know, like, we don't always promote, you know, we give it to Connor and stuff like that, is baking soda, like sodium bicarbonate. You know, I'm a big fan of that. You know. Does that help with the stomach or something like that? What does that do? It helps buffer. It does the opposite of helping your stomach. You know. Does that help with the stomach or something like that? What does that do? It helps buffer. It does the opposite of helping your stomach.

Oh, it'll definitely help your stomach. But, you know, so basically it's a buffer. You know, like people that have a high level of acidity in their body. Oh, I see. Yeah. So, you know, if you ever take like a strip, like before you, I don't know if you've ever seen those alkaline strips. Yep. Yep. You know, if you take one before you work out after you work out i mean after you work out things

like black but you take in like sodium bicarbonate man you'll uh i mean it'll help out with that and you'll feel it right off the bat you know um problem is is that because of the sodium like a lot of people can get osmotic diarrhea basically pulls all the water and you'll be sitting on the pot you know but but, um, for a while, but afterwards you feel great. It's like a super soaker. It is the most intense thing of all time.

He's very much underselling this right now. It is. We, we, we thought about like, you know what, we can package this as like ass blast 2000. You know what I'm saying?

Just for people who are constipated, just blast it out of them, shit your pants off and then run a marathon. There you go. Increase performance and lose weight at the same time like uh magnesium citrate yes yes yeah the first time he ever talked to me about this we were still in the marine corps together and he's like yeah man we're gonna go spar so we're gonna do that you know some we're gonna take some baking soda beforehand and see how we how we respond i'm like all right man i trust you no problem it

one of the more intense, an hour and a half later, I was like, I am still not ready. You know what I mean? Cause there will be shit all over the mat. So it took some time to learn tolerance for that. You have to figure out how much you can take. Yes. I'm just trying to make it very clear to the listeners. Do not take baking soda and then go lift like right after, cause you will not be invited back to the gym so it but it basically would help you with uh endurance is that it yes it's a buffer right so uh like waste products of muscle contraction right they become limiting factors in exercise you know

so um same with carnosine um you're buffering those out so you're able to contract the muscle more efficiently for longer i mean with with uh with a lifter like, no, not Baydellin, but, you know, baking soda I don't think would have the same effects. Like anything from like a three to five minute window in that, you know, basically aerobic system, it'd be super helpful. But like somebody that's lifting, maybe not so much. Right. But.

What do you think about the, you know, people talk about kind of the trauma that fighters go through, you know, getting punched, getting kicked and so on. And then also them being dehydrated. Do you think the way the rules and stuff are set up right now are okay? Or do you think these weight cuts and stuff could be factoring into these guys potentially getting hurt worse? Or the way that you guys rehydrate, you think that that's maybe helping them enough in their fight. Right. I definitely believe like, you know, people working with us, they're obviously, you know, going to be good to go. The thing is that

everybody talks about is the blood brain barrier, making sure that, you know, the body doesn't have enough fluid, like it's dehydrated, so it's not protecting the brain. We have those osmoreceptors, and the one thing is it takes at least 72 hours to rehydrate the brain. What people don't realize is that it also takes a long time for you to dehydrate because the body, that's the last place your body's going to start pulling water. So everybody's like, oh, we talked to Dr. Kennefick. This guy's got a freaking phd in oil rehydration he's like dude there's no way that these people are freaking

uh near dehydrated enough yeah your brain cells have protective measures specifically against that as well right you have idiogenic osmoles in your brain cells that basically like change the solute in your in your brain cells so that you're not drawing fluid from your brain cell the same way you would like a muscle cell. So, I mean, if you are efficiently rehydrating yourself and doing the cut in an efficient manner, not over an extremely long period of time where you're drawing a ton of fluid from your brain, like we do, right, over a short period of time where you're cutting over, you know, two and a half, three days, uh, it, it's not a concern in the way that I think a lot of people have made it to us. What's kind of the biggest change you guys

made maybe over the last year or so? Like, uh, you know how, like you just kind of keep seeing new research or you guys are, you know, maybe a fighter loses a fight or whatever. You're always gaining knowledge and you're always, uh, improving improving what's something you've seen maybe in the last year or so or last couple months maybe even man i uh oh so many things like um you know you're you're constantly trying to figure out okay you know the one thing is that you know i'm probably gonna offend a lot of people but like i know a lot of bodybuilders and a lot of you know power lifters and stuff like that they do stuff because it's like basically regurgitation of knowledge they'll actually understand why you know like a bodybuilder like a lot of times they're power lifters or stuff like that they do stuff because it's like basically regurgitation of knowledge they'll actually understand why you know like a bodybuilder like a lot of times they're like

you know um when my one of my exes like they'd get ready for a show or a figure competition they'd have like a couple glasses of wine they they like i don't know that's why we've always done it you know like wrestlers would take honey why do you do it i don't know and that what i want is like us to like okay this this this, this symptom happened. What do we do to affect this? And like, you know, trying to keep this aldosterone down. Okay. What happens when the blood pressure gets to here? Like, um, we've changed so much in terms of like timing of the bath.

Like when you get out of the bath, your body cools down like that. Right. Um, and that's the time we really want them sweating the most. We don't want them sweating the most in the bath. We want it when they're out of the bath because, uh, basically it's the body's cooling itself off and it's a lot less aggressive. The water, basically, it's kind of like if you stuck your hand in 180 degree water, you know, you'd burn the hell out of your hand. You put it 180 degree freaking sauna. It's not, it's not that much. So it's a huge effect on the body, but what we're doing is we're heating up

that core temperature. So, you know, back in the day, now we're starting to do like, we got cold weather gear that we're using that, they basically like roll out of the tub they don't stand up because you know they stand up those bar receptors they start kicking in you do that too fast then they go out right so they're rolling out and they're they're just like falling into these like uh these like uh cold weather gear we just zip them up and they just lay there uh sear he did two baths one at night one in the morning he sat in that cold weather gear we just zip them up and they just lay there uh seer he did two baths one at night one in the morning he sat in that cold weather gear we're just sitting there talking we call it like in the rink we call it like a pickle because you look like a freaking pickle

while you're in this thing um he lost like six pounds his first one and then six pounds the second one and it was all she wrote some of the stuff with the oral rehydration we really learned a lot about too just like uh you know looking, looking at how much sodium we're having to reload into somebody over the course of an hour and a half, two hours, right through a few shakes and finding that when you're giving somebody who has a really significant cut, a ton of fluid or a ton of sodium, they can get osmotic our, our oil rehydration ratios and how much we're giving people when, and, and, uh, and fine tuning that has been a really, uh, huge eyeopening learning experience. Talking to guys like Dr. Kennefic about how to really, uh, nail that thing down perfectly. That's been a big thing this year for us to like now really feel like we have it to a level that's perfect. Yeah. Yeah.

Have you been able to heal anybody's gut? Like you run into somebody that just, they don't, they can't digest anything. Like just everything they eat, they fucking shit it out. Yeah. I mean, I think I found with trying to heal. Asking for a friend. Son of a bitch. Yeah.

I mean, you know, I think a lot of what people, what I find with people that maybe do have some gut issue is, is what they're not eating anymore. When they start working with us, it's become a big thing. And then, you know, when we start adding in things like fermentable fiber that's creating butyrate and helping heal the lining of the gut and things, I mean, over time. But, I mean, we're not getting, you know, like stool samples set out and getting like, you know, microbiome tests for clients if that's something that they were after we could do. But we're still trying to give a lot of people a lot of prebiotic fiber, fermented foods. And in a general sense, you'll see, I think, it's not like one piece, right? If you see somebody that has in their blood work like really high C-reactive protein or they have like a lot of big markers for inflammation. And then we have

them do blood work later on. It's hard to say like, well, they have less inflammation because I helped heal their gut. It could be because I helped them have a better sleep habits. They have a cleaner diet. Their training is more efficient. It's a number of things. So, but yeah, we absolutely try to account for that. And if somebody has really, really serious gut issue, then we, as a general rule for a person not in training camp, like an average Joe, I would start doing a bit of like an elimination diet, pulling things out, um, getting down to a very basic diet and then trying to slowly integrate things and see how they, they affect that person if they have any, any issue with it. And then, yeah, adding

a probiotic, adding a lot of prebiotic fiber, uh really help. What kind of prebiotic fibers are there? Like where do you get that from? Oh, I mean, a fermentable fiber that's, I mean, just- Like kimchi or- Oh, yeah. Fermented foods. Yeah. Like kimchi, sauerkraut, kefir is a great one. Fermented pickles, like lacto-fermented pickles are one of my favorites. But yeah, I mean, any way you can integrate those in your diet are great. And then prebiotic fiber, like, you know, just green leafy vegetables and fermentable fibers like that, that are an excellent, I mean, basically as your gut microbiome starts to break those down, they create a short chain fatty acid

called butyrate. And that's what helps heal the endothelial lining of your cells in your gut. So a lot of people have like leaky gut issue um once they start eliminating the things you know the processed foods that are causing that problem for their diet and then starting to give their microbiome the fuel they need to give you what you need i mean it's a pretty incredible relationship right you have all these little foot soldiers in your gut and if you give them the right shit then they're going to generate what your body needs you know so uh it's oftentimes we're just giving them the wrong things we're giving sugar constantly to the bad bacteria and yeast and you start getting people with you know SIBO and issues like that so um yeah it's just dependent person to person i think but what does

uh kefir do for us it's like one of those things man it's a it's a great probiotic itself man cleans out the system like anything else and the cool thing is like a lot of people that take anything like lactose um it's because of a lack of enzyme like lactase you know and the one thing i have is it has tons of lactase and um i don't know like a lot of people that have taken it it's high in protein and low in carb um it helps i would say that you can mix it with fruit you can do you know there's so many things you can do with it and like if you read about kefir. Is yogurt the same or no? No, no. Like, you're not going to have near as much bacteria. Like, I think how much is, like, 90% of our cells are, like, bacteria.

You know, like, you see that you got good bacteria, bad bacteria. You know, making sure that we have that good bacteria. And that's, you know, that's one of the reasons I give people kefir so much. And, like I said, because. Are people like, fuck this. Because kefir is, is like it's different bro you don't like yeah it's sour i mean i don't mind it i i like like i like a lot of natural tasting stuff right most people love it or hate it you know like they're like this is the shit or

this is shit so you know yeah it's funny too i've even seen people who hated it starting out and eventually begin to like it and uh you know know, the more research I do on the gut microbiome and gut health in general, the more I realize that it's such an emerging science. I don't think we actually really have a grasp on how any of that really functions and what the relationships between certain types of bacteria are. But one thing I do find that's pretty interesting is a lot of times, like even with sauerkraut and kimchi and kefir, people really don't like those. And then down the road, like I'll, they'll, I'll see them eating it. I got, you know, and, and comment on it and they'll say, well, yeah, I actually really enjoy

it now. And part of me wonders, and I, I mean, this is completely just my opinion. If their gut microbiome is changing over time and they're starting to actually crave those things. And we have the vagus nerve that runs from our brain right to our gut. And that microbiome is talking directly to our gut. So a lot of the time I find that people I think are generally like their, their, their palate is adapting. And a lot of that I think has to do with how their gut microbiome is changing. So people who have been eating shit processed food and super hyper palatable stuff, that's terrible for their gut, crave those things until they eventually eliminate them. And as they're good bacteria starting to get a stronger foothold, they're

starting to get the tools and the fuel they need. Your taste can actually change with that. You know, it's weird thing to think that something else living inside you, that's not you is kind of dictating what you're craving. But I think there's a, there's a lot of science out there saying that, that is the case. I think it's pretty simple. If you don't like the taste of many healthy foods, then you probably have a problem. Yeah. You know, because a lot of these things are rich in flavor. You just don't notice it because of the Dorito effect that we talked about earlier. If you're used to eating pizza and hot dogs from 7-Eleven or those, you ever see like the weird shit they have at 7-Eleven?

Like they have the, those, it's like a sausage, but then it's not like. It looks like a shit dog. Yeah. And then it's got like cheese and bacon and everything. I mean, they taste phenomenal. Yeah. But, you know, try. A friend told me, I don't know.

Yeah. Try even just enjoying a glass of milk after eating something like that. Like you're just not going to taste it anymore. Right. Yeah. You can be desensitized to it, to a, uh, a certain degree. And I think, um, what you're saying sounds to me like, uh, once people start to eliminate stuff from their diet, um, when they have some of these natural things in front of them,

uh, let, let's just say, let's just say you took somebody and you said, Hey, you know, I want you to really limit your carbohydrates for the next 30 days. Really the only carbohydrates you're going to have are going to come from some vegetables. And then you give them fruit and they're going to be like, holy shit, that fruit tastes a pineapple and orange. Now that thing tastes so good because, uh, they got rid of a lot of the junk food that they were, uh, you know, overindulging in. And again, those flavors kind of desensitizing you to how things are supposed to naturally taste. When you remove a lot of those things and even just eating spinach just plain by itself, you're like, oh my God, spinach has like a nutty flavor to it.

Yeah. But you would never know that because you drown it in tons of ranch dressing all the time. Right. You know, and bacon and cheese and everything else. Yeah. It's interesting how your body starts to crave things that are actually good for it, right. Over, over time versus the things that you've just been giving it, you know, your body adapts to what it has available, you know? And so once it starts having things that are very

nutrient dense and beneficial and it's feeling, you know, vibrant and optimized, it starts to crave those things. I mean, it's, it's been something that I've heard echoed by clients for years and years. I'm sure both you guys have experienced that too,. I mean, it's been something that I've heard echoed by clients for years and years. Right. I'm sure both you guys have experienced that too. But I mean, I experienced it in my own life too. I mean, I never thought there would come a day in my life where I crave salad, but I do. It's a weird thing.

Well, especially if it's a good salad. Right. We had an awesome salad with Kyle Kingsbury. Oh, dude, it was so good. It's like one of the better meals of my life. Yeah. I asked his wife like four or five times, like, dude, what did you put in this? And she's like, oh, just a ton of salt.

I'm like, no, there's more to it than that. I'm just like. They might have gave us some psychedelics. I don't know. Yeah, Kyle's an interesting dude. Yeah, we did overly enjoy

that salad, so. Who the fuck knows? We might have been fucked up. Yeah. You put some mushrooms in it. I thought it was weird when we were all naked all of a sudden.

No, that's how most of my salad's in too. No wonder that's how most of my salads end too. No wonder why you like them. Yeah. Create my naked salad. Yeah. You guys earlier were talking about somebody who was training and then like two hours later, or who woke up and then two hours later, they're going to train.

What if like your everyday person who's like fighting the clock, you know, they're waking up at 6am, trying to get in a training session, and then they got to be at work at like 8 o'clock. Should they be training fasted or should they be eat something or should they be focused on like the post-workout meal? Well, I think it's dependent on their goals. First of all, I mean, if they're trying to lose weight, then yeah, absolutely, go and hit the gym fasted.

Also go to bed early and wake up early. You hit it right on time. That's exactly what I was going to say. Go to bed earlier, get up earlier and eat your meal. You know what I mean? It's just how bad do you want to accomplish your goals? Because you need to build your whole life around what's going to be beneficial to you and your schedule.

So, yeah. You also might want to try, you also might want to try both ways. You know, try, try, try, you know, go into the gym fasted and then try, you know, just maybe during, during a certain periods, you try certain things and you, you switch in and out of them. Yeah, absolutely. And you can train, change your training around those changes as well. Right. I mean, you can do more aerobic work and train in a fasted state and get the benefit to your body and your mitochondria from that style of training versus eating beforehand and being very optimized and working on new PRs or a lot of volume training? I'll have some days where I'm like, I got an opportunity to eat over here.

But if I'm going to eat some meat or eat something, if that's where my mind is at and that's what I was going to eat, then I'm like, it's really just easier just to train. Because if I train, I don't have to take 15 minutes to eat the then I'm like, ah, it's really just easier just to train. Because if I train, uh, I don't have to take, uh, you know, 15 minutes to eat the food or maybe even 15 minutes to cook it, 15 minutes to eat it, uh, 30 minutes to process some of it and still not digested while I'm trying to train. And so sometimes it's just easier for me to be like, well, I'll just go train. But it really is highly dependent on the goal. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Like everything. And again, with the guys that you guys are training and working with all the time, they don't, they can't afford to really miss meals, it sounds like. No. And we do a lot of fasting. It's like, at the end of the day, like, people are like, well, you know, they're not losing weight. Why do they do a fast? Because I actually need to see what their weight, like, we ask them for their weight right before they go to bed,

wait when they wake up. Oh, yeah, you talk about true weight versus, you know, they have different body weight all the time. They weigh themselves throughout the day? Yeah, so they'll do, like, you know, I don't want to drive them crazy with it, but they'll do it before they work out, right after they're done working out. Like, you have some guys that float like crazy. Like, we have a girl right now that she fights at 115.

She floats eight pounds a night. Wow. Floats, you know, she's 115. I'm like, dude, she's a freaking anon. Wow, that's a lot for somebody that low a body weight. Yeah. You know, we have, you know, we have a guy that he does 10 pounds every time. He's a 155er.

But, like, the girl, she's like, why am I, you know, why do I float so much? And I'm like, I'm not even going to begin to, like, pretend like I know the answer to that. Like eight pounds is ridiculous, man. Like, you know, you're, you're 10 pounds and floating eight of it. I don't know. But, um, yeah, I mean, I like understanding, but understanding how they, how they, you know, some people, um, you know, so you, you know, you get into this number game and you start realizing like, okay, there's certain, like we talk about the human factors some guys some guys don't actually um float for anything and again you know i'm like crap you know are they already dehydrated is there something that i'm missing then they go and they get on the treadmill for like five minutes and they're drenched you know so they actually need okay this person needs to

work out this person doesn't need to work out you know so understanding how they're floating kind of kind of gives us basically the game plan, what we're going to need. Obviously, if they're going to work out more, we need to be loading them up a little bit more with carbs, you know, to give them the energy needed to do it. And if they're just chilling, man, we're going to be giving them like a lot of fats and things like that. How did you guys meet?

Me and him at a bar. He thought I was cute. I bet he's – he had a pretty mouth. He had the beard already? Did he have the beard going on? We actually met. Yeah yeah we met in the marines kind of looks like

a lumberjack a little bit with that beard thank you what did you think a bit what I'm going for did he have a flannel shirt on he was holding an axe he had some work boots on

and no pants that's what I'm I mean that's what I'm picturing that's a perfect picture actually rode off on his Harley that's how I want

everyone to picture me that's horrible yeah George and I met in the Marine Corps, man. And actually, George was teaching at the... I think I stole your water earlier. I think this one was supposed to be mine, but I stole yours. So there's some water. Thanks.

Yeah, we met in the Marine Corps in 2007. Yeah, it was like 2007. Yeah. And George was teaching at the Martial Arts Center in Quantico. And I went there as a student. And that's how I met George, and him and I hit it off right away. George was teaching nutrition there at the Martial Arts Center, and it was a huge interest of mine. And so him and I hit it off right away.

And then I eventually got back from Afghanistan in 2010 and got orders to the Martial Arts Center to teach there. And so George was still an instructor there. You got orders to teach there. What does that mean? Uh, so basically my, uh, my contract, my time in the Marines was up a few months after I was getting back from Afghanistan. And so, uh, I received orders. I requested to become an instructor there like years before that. And, uh, so I eventually got orders. They basically said like, you can get out of the corps if you want or you can go teach at this martial arts center in quantico and that was like a huge dream of mine so um oh so that's kind of cool so you're able to still be in yeah it was a non-deploying unit to go teach hand-to-hand combat and and strength

conditioning nutrition how fucking cool it was the greatest that sounds yeah, I mean, it was an incredible experience, and I learned a ton in that process. But George was teaching there, and that's how we met. We immediately hit it off. I mean, I think the day I showed up, I went and said hello to everybody. I reported to my lieutenant colonel, said I'm here. And then George was like, go change your shit. We're going to go fight. He's making it a lot more professional too

so in the Marine Corps the more you like somebody the more you mess with them and uh we had this stuff like OC spray that you guys

basically oh when I was a student oh yeah so we all liked Lethal because Lethal he's just like a tough you know like you'd fight anybody

at any time and we used to do like a lot of like weapon sparring stuff like that but we had this one drill I'll never forget to do like a lot of like weapon sparring and stuff like that. But we had this one drill. I'll never forget it. Like they're at the top of this hill, and you have these helmets, obviously,

because you guys are hitting each other with like non-lethal gear and stuff like that. Well, we were looking. They have all their helmets in the back of the truck, and they have all their names in the back. We're like, where the hell is Lise? And we find Lise, and, dude, I just doused it with OCD spray. OCD spray is mace. Yeah, literally, dude. So this dude, he puts

it on, and the thing is, it dries up, but once you start sweating, it's in oil, so it crystallizes in your shit or whatever. You spray it on, and as soon as you sweat, but when this shit hits your eyes, your eyes are closed. There is no fucking opening your eyes. There's no breathing anymore. It's in your lungs like you're snot and shit running and uh yeah i could have fucking

killed him well and the worst thing is is that was on the battle course yeah yeah so the battle course you do to graduate the the martial arts center the course is seven weeks and the like main last event you do is called the battle course and it's all day long you're hiking for miles you're fighting at all these different engagements it's an all-day event i mean it fucking kills you it's really really intense and in the middle of that they did that to me so i am running up this hill with my helmet on thinking i'm gonna go fight somebody and all of a sudden i was like i can't my face is on fire i can't see shit and so i fight with the guys that you know at the hill and then I turn around and I see this asshole

just dying at the top of the hill meanwhile I still had like six hours left on this course I had to run so I had the rest of the day

just my face on fucking fire that was my introduction to that guy so we've been best friends ever since how did he do

fighting wise did he do okay oh did he do okay? oh yeah he's like a little juggernaut just like the funny thing was he looked like a you know like

you see those people that are attacked by bees so you know he couldn't you can't see you can't have a garage or anything like that but it's like

everything around him trees grass everything around him if anybody came in the vicinity of him they were going to get taken out like just he was very aggressive

couldn't see where the fuck he was going but he was aggressive as hell so yeah yeah i remember that it was good and then it started dripping down like the sweat was dripping down like into my shirt and you know it was uh i was on fire but yeah that's how we met man and we we kept working together we we built uh what i was really proud of like a really great nutritional curriculum for that school together and then george got out and started uh working with athletes and as soon as i got out i mean once we were ready to contact ever since oh yeah we talked every day how did uh how'd you get into nutrition man i was uh i was you know i was raised when i was little i was morbidly obese i was 200 pounds when i was in sixth grade i was just uh you know a little hefty thing and um you know as i got older

i started like you know what, I'm tired of this. I made a decision. I don't want to be this guy anymore. So I basically started starving myself. You know, like you were just like, I learned a lot of things what not to do, but I do this journey. And, you know, I actually started lifting, got into football, and then I started fighting. You know, I turned pro when I was 18, you know, went through every bad weight cut you could possibly think of, but I'd study, you know, on my own. Um, and then, you know, I went into the, the recon route, learned a lot through nutrition

too there. Like when I got deployed, I'd help a lot of people out with nutrition. And then when I was at the MACE, um, they were doing the combat conditioning, you know, program and then, you know, Colonel Shishko heard me talking. And then I started doing like the, the, uh, nutrition classes started doing the nutrition classes and they started sending us around. They sent me and Leith. They had the Olympic Training Center come, the TSAC training come out to us.

They sent us to API. We went to Florida to go learn at API, which was great. We just got just a plethora of different environments, people, different professions. And then the funny thing is it all just happened by chance. Brian's like, dude, man, he professions. And then, you know, the funny thing is it all just happened by chance. Like, Brian's like, dude, man.

I'm like, you know, he went from the W. He was the 205 world champion at WC, and then WC got bought out by UFC. And, you know, at UFC he wasn't doing too well at 205, you know. And I told him, I was like, dude, you guys got the biggest head and the littlest arms. He's like that fucking T-Rex off of the Robinsons, you know. I'm like, you have no reach, you know. So he's like, you think I can make 185?

And then sure as shit, he made 185, and then we've just been doing it ever since. And then, you know, everybody just started calling. Here we are, man. It's crazy. You said earlier you got deployed. Do you guys get deployed together to some spots? No. No.

No. We were separate units. George was a recon guy, and I was an infantry guy. So we had different jobs until we went to the Hand-to-Hand Combat Center. And you got deployed to Iraq? Yeah. Did you do one in each? No, I did Afghanistan, not Iraq.

Twice. Yeah. So I went to Iraq. You went to Afghanistan. I can't imagine what some of that's like. I mean, even with all the training and stuff, I mean, it's got to be extremely nerve-wracking, right? Yeah. I mean, you do have other people going.

You got other people by you and stuff, too. But it's got to be intense. Yeah. Yeah, it's very intense shit, man. I mean, it's the best and worst experience that I've ever had. Yeah. That's the best way I try to explain it. Getting through it, being able to survive, it makes you a different person when you get through the other side, right?

Yeah, sure. And also the camaraderie and the brotherhood and the trust. I mean, there's just things you learn about people, man, that you don't learn in any other environment other than combat, I think. Yeah. I went to the Marine barracks when I went to Washington, D.C. Oh, yeah. And I got to train with some of those guys and stuff. And I just, I put something up on Instagram and just said, hey, I'm in the area.

I want to train. And a bunch of people were hitting me up. Oh, there's this power thing gym. And I was like, oh, you know, there's this fitness center. And then somebody hit me up from the Marines barracks. I'm like, I'm going there. That sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah.

Those guys were so awesome and they were so fired up to have me in there. And they're telling me like, they're like, you're such a badass. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. I am, I am, I am not a badass. You guys are amazing, you know, and I appreciate, you know, their services. I appreciate you guys doing that for our country as well. But what was really cool is after I did that, you know, I posted like a picture or two from there. I must have got over 100 messages from Marines that weren't even there.

Right. They're like, hey, man, thanks a lot, man. That means a lot to us. Yeah, it's a small community, man. The Marine Corps is a very small thing, and it's a tight-knit family. And, yeah, anytime a Marine sees somebody taking care of Marines, man, it's a, you know, everybody really appreciates. We all gather around that person, you know, because it's a small community

and we get shit on quite a bit in the Marines. So anytime somebody steps up and, you know, wants to hang out, wants to train, wants to impart all the knowledge they have, I mean, we got to experience that at the Martial Arts Center quite a bit with guys coming out to train with us, and it was always. Oh, it's a huge's, uh, we, we got to experience that at the martial arts center quite a bit with guys coming out to train with us. And it was always, oh, it's a huge deal, right? Like, or even somebody sends you something, you know, we, we fire out slingshots and all kinds of products out to, uh, all branches of military.

Yeah. But you know, the, the, what we get back when people, when people write to us, they're so excited because let's face it, like you're in some shit, right? Yeah. You know, things, things aren't great.

And so, uh, just being able to, uh, you know, me having the opportunity to go there and check that out. It was super cool. And they were so excited to show me around.

They were showing me all kinds of shit. Oh yeah. And I'm like, ah, we're not really supposed to be in this area, but don't worry about it. I'll say it. Just don't take any pictures.

They're showing me all kinds of shit. It was, it was super cool. Yeah, if you ever get the chance, if you go back over that way, you got to check out Quantico. Go down a little bit further south. I will. I heard that that's fucking amazing. Quantico's an incredible place to see and see all the training facilities they have out there.

That's where all the Marine infantry officers are training. It's a really incredible thing to see, man. Where do you live at? I live in L.A. now. I'm from Michigan, but I, I live in LA now. And then you're in what, Atlanta? Yeah, I'm in Georgia. Yep.

George from Georgia. Cool. And then how do you guys, do you guys collaborate a lot with working with clients or is it like he, you know, he's got 10 people and you get, or how's it work? No, we're constantly on the phone and everything, you know, getting cards. Like right now, you know, working on the Chili card. We got Chili coming up, Chicago, L.A., Utica. We got, I mean, so, you know, I'll be calling because, like I said,

we're getting people certified at each card. So, like, I'll get people like, all right, I'm going to call these people. And we got to vet them because the thing is, like, they actually get hands-on with the fighters, but we can't have like fanboys you know what i mean like oh i want to you know like you know we had uh i think we had 63 people hit us up for this last card in in jersey and we had one woman that got certified like that was it you know just kind of like yeah i don't know um you know and then he's uh he's better a lot more

things like logistically like obviously he's a lot more, I'd say, polished than I am. You know what I'm saying? He's organized. Maybe you're not as organized. Oh, no, man. You hear the way I talk. I'm talking. I probably answered maybe two of your questions today because you're like, where the fuck is he going?

I go off on these tangents with my head over here. That's my partner. We're a military-owned company. Obviously, Marine, we just hired. This is the coolest thing. One of the guys from my old unit, I wasn't actually in the Marine Corps with him, but one of my old boys is like, man, he's looking for a job. He's good at this, blah, blah, blah. And then, yeah, man, we're able to hire him.

Like you said, being able to help out Marines, that's the coolest freaking thing in the world, man. It's awesome. But, yeah, he does, like I said like he uh you know call you know calls the fighters talks to fighters you know like you know we have guys that do that but we you know we shift off of things but like i said he's a lot he's a lot better a little bit more polished out of like scheduling organizing and things like that how many uh like employees do you have i mean people got working for you man honestly we got like seven seven or eight yeah with the new chef yeah we have eight now yeah so it's yeah it, it's a small team, you know, but George and I work together,

you know, I mean, we're on the phone too much, you know, I get tired of listening to him do this shit all day, but yeah, he, uh, we don't get to work together with clients as often as we'd like, but when we do, man, it's a lot of fun. You know, we really make a good, and we're in a place now where the cards get so busy and I'm finally coming off this, uh, year contract. I was working with Demi Lovato for a year. And so coming off working with like a pop star, getting back into MMA, it's exciting because I get to work with him hands-on at fights again,

working with the cards and helping, you know, train the new people we have coming in, getting certified, teaching classes again. Like all that stuff will be great to get together. How did this idea of like moving in with people, like, how did that start? Like you're not, you're moving in and you're getting rid of crap food and you're shopping for them and you're prepping every meal. Like, how did that start? You know, honestly, so this is crazy.

Like, so he got out of the Marine Corps and, um, he started, you know, working on a construction company. Right. Um, it totally new to him. And that's what, you know, that's why I love him. Like, you know, like whatever you put in front of him he's gonna conquer it you know like in a year's time like he was like going up the road but i was working with chris cyborg and daniel cormier calls and he's like hey man i need something to help me out with my cut and i'm like there's no way i can

leave chris so i called him up and like literally like he's like got it yep dude quit his job literally quit his job well i mean it sounds more yeah when i got out of the marines like the company you know we weren't in a place as a business where we you know like i had a little boy at home and a wife like i i had to get a real job you know i wanted to go chase this dream with him but i'm like i have mouths to feed so i started working construction and he called and said hey daniel cormier wants to come live with him like now's the time let's do it. So I quit my job and did it. But to answer your question, which he again,

didn't, uh, squirrel, we got started doing this cause fighters requested it. You know, we were working with fighters, but they, they, like you said, they wanted to say, okay, you did this with us, you know, uh, fight week and you were here at the hotels, but like, how do I get you to come do this for six weeks? You know, I have so much weight to lose. And so, you know, for some fighters that's cost prohibitive or it was, you know, I think we have it in a place now where it's, it's very reasonable for anybody to do, but yeah, back then it was just kind of a

by request thing. People would say like, I just want you to come here and take over this problem. You know, I have this issue with my weight. I need to get it down. I want to be, you know, this is the biggest championship fight of my life. i want to cover every single avenue i can and so then people started bringing us out now other fighters teammates see that at every camp and we work with fighters at every major camp in the world so fighters see us with their you know one of their teammates every day for six weeks and go shit well i'm fighting for a title and you know that happened to to me at americanboxing Academy. I went there to work with Daniel Cormier. And I mean, a week later I was working with, living with Luke Rockhold. And

then a week later I was working with Cain Velasquez. I mean, it was like, I almost bought up an apartment there because I was, I'm just bouncing from fighter's house to fighter's house in the same team, but it just became like a need for everybody. I don't want to fucking deal with my diet anymore. Like, look at how that guy performed. He didn't have to do anything when he gets home. He doesn't have to drive himself to practice. So people were like, you know, they jumped on it right away. Yeah.

With Daniel Cormier, he's preparing for a heavyweight championship fight. Yeah, he is. Are you a part of that process? Oh yeah. Or is he just eating ho-hos? No, no, no. Listen, all kidding aside he's a big guy right and you know everybody jokes about his weight but that guy is so fucking

dedicated man and he he uh even going up to heavyweight wants his diet to be perfect you know i mean he he that guy does not miss anything he trains at a level that is it's hard to put in words i mean it's it's incredible and even going up to heavyweight, he won't, outside of his diet, like when he's outside of camp, he'll go off the rails with what he eats. But in camp, yeah, he's heavyweight, whatever, it doesn't matter. And we work with several heavyweights. I mean, even if they don't have to cut weight, I mean, I worked with Cain Velasquez. They just want better nutrition. Yeah, they just want to perform at their best.

And they want somebody to take the guesswork out of that. And so most of these guys, they don't have any idea what they're doing when it comes to diet. So they just, they're happy to sit back and learn what they need to learn about their opponent and sharpen for the fight and just eat what we make for dinner. Do you find it harder to work with somebody that's kind of like him, that's going to go off the rails outside of camp versus somebody who's going to be more consistent? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. Their weight cuts way more difficult, you know, and, and the amount of intervention and caloric restriction that we have to do in camp to get them

to a reasonable weight before fight week, uh, becomes a challenge because now you're walking a line between trying to get somebody to lose some body fat over the course of a month or two, uh, but also perform at an, you know, the top level that they possibly can get a little bit better every single training session. So you've got to really find a balance between eliminating some calories and getting them down to weight, but also making sure they perform well. Where does he walk around at right now, if you can share that? I couldn't even guess, honestly. Honestly, I don't even want to know.

I don't even want to know. I don't even want to know. I mean, I could ask him, but he would lie to me. When I saw, like, he was taking on a lot of, he was just doing a lot of work for UFC, doing a lot of commentary and stuff, I was like, oh, man, I wonder if it's going to impact him, but that guy's a savage.

Any videos I see, you know, he's working with person after person, you know, just wearing one guy out after another. Cain Velasquez was always kind of the premium guy when it came to stamina and stuff. And Daniel Cormier is right there with him and maybe even then some. Watching those guys train together is inspiring shit, man. It's crazy. Yeah, DC, man.

I mean, he just took over the job as the head high school wrestling coach in his town. I don't know. He's doing cave side commentary. He's on UFC Tonight. He's the light heavyweight champion. He's fighting for the heavyweight championship, and now he's a high school wrestling coach. And he has a kid's wrestling program at American Kickboxing Academy. He's funny, too.

He does a good job talking trash. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's great, man. But, trash. Yeah. Yeah, he's great But yeah, the guy is he's all over the place, but most people I would say man That's too much but not that guy that guy just I don't he works at a level that it's it's it's inspiring shit, man He's a great table there. He's able to handle it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, and then he goes out there against like impossible odds and looks like a you know Tiny guy in comparison to these Goliath dudes he fights and then he cartwheels them through the air like they're fucking weightless.

That's unbelievable. What's going on with Cain Velasquez? Is he going to make a comeback anytime soon? Yeah, as far as I know, last time I talked to him, he was healing up. He's always fun to watch. Yeah, that guy's incredible, man. Again, one of the cooler people I've ever met in my life, man. Just a total goofball and awesome to be around.

But, yeah, I mean, he was really banged up. His back was giving him a lot of issue and now after this last surgery he had, he's back training at 100% and he's helping DC get ready. Last time I talked to him, he said he's ready to go. What's the goal? What's the overall goal? What are we shooting for? What are we looking for

in the next couple months and next year or something like that? What are you guys going in the next couple months and next year or something like that? What are you guys looking to do? Total domination? Take over the world? Well, we've had the same goal. Like, we first started out, it's hilarious. I was like, I want the entire UFC.

You know, I'm thinking by, you know, end of next year, it's going to happen. And then the cool thing is— Do you have about, like, a little more than half the roster maybe right now? Yeah, the thing is, it's a tipping point. We've had one big issue. And the problem is, is all the big names that are able to afford us, we got them. Like. Right.

The problem is, is the people we want to help out are the people on the lower end. And we just got some new stuff. Like the certifications. We'll be able to fund those fighters. So not, you know, we'll be able to actually kind of sponsor these fighters and help them out and get the rest of the people on the card. It's not that they don't want to work with us. It's just like, man, I don't know if I can actually. The money, financial commitment.

You know, in the NFL, the agencies that represent the guys that are about to be drafted right now, The guys that are about to be drafted right now. They pay thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to these high-end facilities to train these guys for the combine and stuff. Because there's millions and millions of dollars at stake depending on where this guy gets selected. And UFC is not like that at all. They don't have that kind of dollar amount associated with it. Has that gotten a lot better over the years from what you guys have seen? Yeah, I think so. The purse is getting pretty, I mean, are they getting a lot better?

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely like if you look at, you know, like people like Connor and things like it has definitely grown. But in terms of like us making money like off the fire and stuff like that, that's just definitely not the business model you want to be going after. It's a popular sport, and it's like, you know, we genuinely care about people, you know?

So the way we do it is like, do you charge this guy a bunch of money, or do you charge all the people that follow him? I think there's like 25,000 MMA gyms in the United States. So if we get the nutrition down where these people can follow, like we have the Fitness VT and stuff like that where people are following it. It's like we're able to help these people, teach them, make sure that their weight cuts are healthy, they perform to the best of their ability.

And then when they get to the UFC, then they can hire me or leave the team. Yeah, there's how many UFC fighters that are just, well, you would just say, like, are just professional and ain't got to worry about anything else? Probably not that many when it comes down to it. No. Not every contracted guy,

you know, has 500K in the bank, right? No, gosh, man. I mean, most of these guys, you know, are still teaching at the gym that they train in to make extra money.

I mean, guys that you would see fighting on a pay-per-view, they still can't, you know, pay for their, I've worked with a female fighter that couldn't even afford a cell phone. Yeah. So I would just – I could never text her or call her or ask how she was doing. I just had to go to her room and check on her constantly because she couldn't afford a phone.

Fighting on pay-per-view, though, you know what I mean? So you would think that she would – but, no, I mean, it's – it is growing, and fighters are starting to make more money. But, yeah, it's still a very new sport, really. And, you know, it's still growing. And hopefully, you know, what George and I have dedicated our lives to is going to continue to grow in the sport as it grows. You know, and hopefully, like George said, the model and the idea is to be able to find ways to fund helping fighters that can't afford to pay for us in other avenues. Find ways to fund helping fighters that can't afford to pay for us in other avenues So that's really what we've been focused on this year with the DVD coming out and doing the certification program Is not only educating people that want to get certified

I mean, there's no school to go to for weight cutting I mean a lot of the things that we have have figured out how to do and George has really mastered is You know the opposite of what you would go to school for in nutrition, tricking your body to dehydrate itself. I mean, it's not something that a dietician is going to be like, yeah, I know how to do that. Every time we explain that to a doctor, a dietician, they're like, how in the fuck did you figure this out? Like, it's the opposite. So the idea would be to show people what we've learned, teach them through the certification program. And when they pay to

get trained, it helps the fighters, it helps the sport. So it's kind of a symbiotic thing we're trying to create where we're helping teach what we've learned and, and in turn, you know, impart that on the fighters. And I mean, I was a wrestler growing up. So a big goal for me is then to transcend into other weight class related sports and teach young wrestlers. I mean, I almost killed myself in high school cutting weight, literally. I mean, I went into real failure, almost died. I almost killed myself in high school cutting weight, literally.

I went into real failure and almost died. So, you know, eventually being able to help kids, help young athletes. I mean, jiu-jitsu and MMA is getting more and more popular. So eventually, you know, we want to help everybody in these sports with what we do. And I think we're getting there. We're on the way. I'm going to move you guys in with Smokey. He's too fat.

How'd you guys get to meet Ape Man? I know they're trying to get a little bit more into MMA side of things. They're both practicing jiu-jitsu and doing some sparring and things like that. Right, yeah. I met Adam because we were working with CB. Yeah, CB Holloway, right? Yeah, me and him, we got to talking you know especially like a lot of nutrition and stuff

and I was telling you earlier this guy's a freak you look at him he's 225 pounds the guy used to run ultra marathons which is like that's an anomaly

and I was like dude he's like yeah you don't have this issue and I ran a 50 mile and I was like sounds awful dude that's horrible

like why would you do that you know like why would anybody have troubles driving that far? But, you know, now you look at him, he looks like, you know, like a powerlifter. Like, he's got a lot of bulk. And then it's funny because he's going to go back and do it. So, you know, we connected real well.

Like, you know, we talked a lot about the nutrition. And then, like, we see everybody in MMA kind of like, well, what does he guys do? He's got this apparel brand. You know, they're new in the sport. We're new in the sport. We're like, let's team up, you know. So we teamed up, and it's been such a great, like, I mean, everything's been working out so well. He's going to be coming out to the fires.

We'll be videotaping, like, so many things that we're doing right now is because of them. So, you know, it was a good partnership, you know. That's great. That's awesome, yeah. I've always liked those guys. Those guys have been friends of mine for a while. Uh, had them on the podcast a while back. Um, and, uh, you know, Noah, um, is somebody that I, you know, still text and still contact here and there. And they've, they've been good friends for a while, but what's really cool to me is that, and I didn't even really know this, but when we got

them on the podcast, I asked them about their business and asked them about how it got started. They're like, well, we got into power thing because of you. And I was like, oh, shit. Okay, cool. That's awesome. So that ended up being really cool. And then on top of that, they were the first sponsor that we ever had for the

podcast. And so that was a few years ago when no one else believed or cared about what we were doing. And they swooped in. So it was really cool. That's awesome. It was very cool. Where can people find you guys?

What's your Instagram? My Instagram is just d.leith. It's pretty fancy. Cool. And what website do you guys have? Lockhartandleith.com. Check us out. Our DVDs are still on that.

You can hit us up for the certification program on there. So if you're interested in learning more, the DVD is a sale on that. You can hit us up for the certification program on there. If you're interested in learning more, the DVD is a good first step. It helps build a foundation, teaches you a lot of the math that George rambled off like a machine gun. Yeah. That math was crazy. I just say numbers. You should watch him do the

rehydration math. It's like watching fucking Rain Man. He's done it a couple times. What's the most weight you ever put back on somebody? And how to be effective, I guess. You know, honestly, it might be you, Leith. I mean, what we did at 40 was, you know. It's almost 50.

Yeah, so he lost, I think it was like a three-week or two-week period he had to drop. So he was at 205. He was humongous. And I'm like, I don't know, man. Like, let's, you know, like, again, freaking short arms. So we got him at 155, man, three weeks, 50 freaking pounds. Damn. Yeah.

He's a good friend, right? That was his advice. Let's cut all the way to lightweight. I'm like, let's try this. You know, like, he's not a client. So if he dies, you know, we got to get sued. But, yeah, 50 pounds. And then, yeah, so I think and at the time did you get ivs

you got yeah i got ivs for the fight yeah that was i mean we're talking 10 years ago or something like that now but yeah i mean it was it was i was 200 pounds walking in the cage you look like baby godzilla like the thing is like we've been training duty training like you know every man stuff like that he just picked that kid up and just like flinging him around. Like kids like, I'm going to get up. No, you're not. Boom. Just like, you know, that's, did that for three rounds.

So it was. He basically put 50 pounds back on. Yeah. What did you, what did you weigh starting? And then what'd you weigh on the scale? And what'd you weigh when you fought? So starting out, like, so we started the diet to diet down like three weeks out. But I mean, probably the cut was, I don't even know if you remember, but it was probably.

I remember looking at numbers and wondering how the hell we're going to make it. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, probably starting out, the cut was 35 pounds, I don't know, fluid, something like that. And, you know, glycogen, fluid. And I weighed in at 156 and then fought the next day at like 200, 199. Holy shit. Yeah. It's a world record right there.

I felt bad for the guy I fought. Yeah, it was bad. He was like 160 pounds. He probably cut five pounds. So when we fought, I was. Probably thought you guys paid off the reps or something. Yeah. I mean, it was a mismatch, I think.

It was good, man. I would never recommend that to anybody no we learned from that just our friends yeah yeah we just deal with your friends

that was early in the start of this thing so we just tested everything on ourselves and I was the dummy for that one but it worked

it worked I won it was alright my boy thought I was cool yeah I mean oh man

it's huge but uh oh and my my Instagram is lock lock loaded mma so that was uh you know anybody can look me up on there and if people dm me uh like for certifications anybody that dms me i'll i'll actually call them back and actually like vet them that's how important it is so i'll vet everybody they just got to make sure they leave their number make sure that they uh they write out that they uh um want to get certified and

we make that happen. They're going to say, how much fruit? How much kefir? When do I drink my kefir? When do I do this? When do I do that? I don't know. Is peanut butter good for me?

Is peanut butter good for me? DMs are going to be flying in. Anything else, Andrew? No, that's it. Thank you, guys. That was fucking amazing, man. Thanks. Strength is never a weakness.

We're out of here.