Mark Bell's Power Project - Strength Training For Grappling Athletes - Joshua Settlage || MBPP Ep. 1089

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

In episode 1089 Joshua Settlage The BJJ Strength Coach, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about the most vital aspects of strength and conditioning for jiu jitsu and grappling athletes. Follow Joshua on IG: https://www.instagram.com/joshuasettlage/   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below!   🥜 Protect Your Nuts With Organic Underwear 🥜 ➢https://nadsunder.com/ Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 15% off your order!   🍆  Natural Sexual Performance Booster 🍆 ➢https://usejoymode.com/discount/POWERPROJECT Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎 ➢https://emr-tek.com/ Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶 ➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject   🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Become a Stronger Human - https://thestrongerhuman.store ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/JoinUNTAPPED ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Podcast Courses and Free Guides: https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz/ ➢ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

What are some of the main ways that like you would have a beginner athlete start improving their athleticism? In a sport that is so skill dependent like Jiu-Jitsu, you can make huge gains in your conditioning by just improving your skills. Same thing with tactics. And then the third thing would be athleticism. So what are we going to do in the gym that has controllable variables, that has different things that can be tweaked in a very specific way to get a very specific outcome? What's the common thread behind somebody being really strong in jiu-jitsu? Building up postural strength. If your neck and traps and middle back, if that is just completely rocked out, you feel amazing.

What are a couple exercises that you feel are most effective for grappling? Squat, hip hinge, lunging, rotation, pressing forwards and upwards, and then pulling down backwards. How many sessions of lifting do you think that somebody should at least strive for? At a minimum, I found that most grapplers I've worked with can get amazing results just doing two strength workouts a week.

I was surprised at how bad my quads were burning. Yeah, that fan, I think something about the seat on the eco bike, you can't put it in a position where it doesn't just blow your quads up right away. It's like three circles around and your quads just, I tried to cheat it a little bit to make it to where it was like almost like I was standing each one, like almost just under full extension just to get the weight on there, but I still couldn't escape it. You guys do any sets where you're standing on the bike?

So those are interesting where you're out of the saddle they call it. Yeah. That's tough. Not intentionally. Yeah, that's tough. Your butt's off there and you just, you go full blast on there. No, no, it's just different. I think it gets the legs even worse.

Makes them burn even more. I think what's interesting about that bike or the salt bike type stuff is you sometimes forget to use your arms. You're like, oh, I got a great advantage here. I could use my arms and make this whole thing easier, but you kind of lose sight of some of that. Julian Peneau posted something the other day where he was just standing behind the seat and he was just grabbing the handles and he's like, only pull, no pushing, just pull nonstop.

He's like, see what happens. I haven't done it, but I'm curious to see what happens. Eric and I have done this before and I originally picked this up from Cal Deets, but he did a lactate, he calls them lactate retention sets. We'll do something like only using your arms on the fan bike and then hold a med ball or only use your arms on the fan bike and then hold the top of a push-up.

So you just build up a ton of lactate and get the craziest pump and burn possible. And then you have to hold a position so you can't like shake your arms out and find rest. And that was pretty wild. It's weird when you do things through your arms, your heart rate goes up higher. So it's like kind of, it's hard to like maintain control and breathe and all that shit. Yeah, it's crazy. What'd you take Andrew through today? So Andrew, freshly minted blue belt in the house. That's right.

Yeah. Congratulations, Andrew. I don't know if you shared that on the podcast yet. Sorry if I blew your cover. No, no, you're good. You're good. Yeah, no, it's a known thing. He doesn't like to talk about it.

I know, but however, since I'm a blue belt, I'm a walking weapon. So just be careful, all right, guys? You got to make sure you- Registered in the state of California. Exactly. These hands are registered weapons. So Andrew and I, we did a, I took him through a quick little condition to work out and only takes 12 minutes, which is awesome. And this is something that anybody can do on any

piece of cardio equipment, but the fan bike or something that has pedals and arms just works awesome because it kind of wrecks you everywhere. But what we did was six rounds of one minute on, one minute off. And there were a couple of different rules or focus points that I was coaching Andrew through. One of them was through the whole 60 seconds,

just try to maintain a consistent pace. So don't come out the gate way too hot and, you know, crank up to 850 watts for 10 seconds and then crash and burn and fall to 250 watts for the rest of the minute. Try to find something that you could sustain for the full 60. The other thing was focus on nasal breathing in and out of the nose the entire time. And then if you can carry that over in both the work interval and the rest interval, that'd be ideal and Then the third thing was kind of pulling from what you have said a lot where your last rep Should look just as good and clean as your first rep

We use the same approach for this conditioning workout the last interval Should be around or pretty close to the same pace that you had for the very first interval and so that format six rounds 60 seconds on, 60 seconds off, keeping those three things in mind is something that I use with a lot of my athletes to help them either get back into shape if they've been off the mat due to an injury or maybe they're finishing up their off season

where they're focusing on building muscle, getting stronger and conditioning was less of a priority. We'll throw something like that in once or twice a week for three to six weeks as part of their pre-season. And so that's what Andrew did today. He freaking crushed it. It'll be on YouTube at some point. You guys can see how you would progress that

week after week and it was a good time. Yeah, I had a blast doing it. It was tough. One of the things that Josh told me, you know, or he was explaining was like by the third round, you should look at it like, dude, I don't know if I'm going to be able to get through the last three. And once he said that, it was weird. It kind of like calmed my nerves because I was already feeling that I was like, I don't know if I'm going to get through this,

but he said that I'm okay, then this is exactly where I need to be. And the reason why I wanted to do all this was because at the end of my third match, I thought I was going to puke like not even when it was over. I mean, literally towards the end of my third match, I thought I was gonna puke. Like not even when it was over, I mean, literally towards the end of that match. I had gotten side control. We were a little bit out of bounds, so we reset. And when we reset, I'm walking back to the middle of the mat and I'm like, uh-oh,

like I think I might throw up right now. And so I just told myself, all right, don't throw up right now, finish this match, and then you can throw up afterwards. And then when I got the win, I was like, all right, cool. Like, I don't, you know, I just told myself, all right, don't throw up right now, finish this match and then you can throw up afterwards and then when I got the win, I was like, all right, cool. Like I just totally forgot but Super lucky that as tired as I was that guy was a little bit more tired And I had just enough to finish that match and actually got a really cool tap from it But I knew that that was a huge hole in my game

I knew going in that it was a little suspect, but actually at the competition, I was like, oh, like this is a really big hole. And so that's why I wanted to work with you today. And like, like you said, it's 12 minutes, right? You can fit that into any workout. So that's really, really cool. But it's a hard 12 minutes. Yeah.

And I was telling my wife, I'm like, I know what I need to do, but the reason why I haven't done it is because it's hard. You know, it's one of those things where it's like, oh, I got to do that also. So I just need to just incorporate that workout. And again, if somebody sees that video, it's not that difficult to follow. And so I'm like super grateful that we were able to do it. And yeah, I'm going to implement that for all of the benefits, not just necessarily talking about like on mat cardio. How good does it feel for some of you guys when you're in a match with somebody or even

just at practice and you just like, you're like, this guy's toast. Like he's, he's so not necessarily just skill wise, but he's just like, he's really tired and I'm not, and this is a great place to be. It's the greatest feeling ever. It's, it's, um. It's the greatest feeling ever. Yeah, there's nothing like it. Like he's gassed and I can probably do just about anything at this point. I think for different people,

it might feel really good for different reasons. And it seemed like you could probably speak to this also, but everything, at least as long as I've been doing Jiu-Jitsu, all the training has been so like, focused on testing and retesting different training methods, testing and retesting things that you guys talk about on the podcast. You'll send me videos sometime of some obscure YouTube channel and be like, all right, test, retest for the next four weeks. And so to have a feeling like that, where if I'm testing some conditioning stuff, and then to go to open mat and go for an hour and a half and still feel like I got some energy left in the tank and the person I'm

rolling with doesn't have any energy left in the tank it feels really good because it just kind of affirms all the work that I've put in and kind of the the hypothesis that I've been testing and that's fun like you know you guys talk about all sorts of cool dare I say fringe or newer fitness ideas. And then being able to test those things and see how it applies to myself is like, it's just, it's the, it's the best thing ever. It's super fun. There's a lot of people in, uh, probably more so jiu-jitsu than maybe all of MMA, but there's

a lot of people that don't really, maybe they don't love or they don't do a lot of strength and conditioning. And there's a lot of people that have probably made it to the top, there's probably a lot of people that have made it very far. But I think one of the things that's interesting with strength and conditioning is that it could be so controlled.

Like the controllables are so easy to control, whereas maybe if you're going into a class or something like that and you're trying to take it easy and you're trying to like have it be a conditioning day or something more chill, it probably just can be very difficult to keep things at a very particular pace, at a very particular amount of volume. But when you talk about going into the gym,

you can really control a lot of things. But I do know that there's people that have conjecture towards it, like, and they'll say, the only way to get in shape for jujitsu is to do jujitsu. Where do you lie on that? Like, what are some of your thoughts on that? Yeah, we kind of talked about this in the video. Anytime someone asks me a question about specific things

that they can do to improve their jujitsu performance, I try to run through that question, looking at it through three different contexts, if you will. So first one would be skill, next would be tactics, and then third would be athleticism. So a lot of times, and someone like in Andrew's case, you just got your blue belt, you're probably, if you keep training for the next year,

gonna see a giant increase in how much energy you have when you roll, because your skills are gonna get drastically better if you train for another 12 months. Great, you just talked him out of doing his conditioning work. Oh, just kidding. But in all seriousness, like, as you, in a sport that is so skill dependent, like Jiu-Jitsu,

you can make huge gains, quote unquote, in your conditioning by just improving your skills. Same thing with tactics. If you go into a match with someone like Eric, Eric's a great wrestler. If someone wanted to save their energy against Eric, they should probably just sit right to their butt and not even try wrestling with them.

If they tried wrestling with them, they'd gas themselves out. Even if maybe they've been doing Jiu-Jitsu a little bit longer than Eric has, there's the tactics that would go into that match may not be best for conserving energy. And then the third thing would be athleticism. So what are we gonna do in the gym that has controllable variables, that has different things that can be tweaked in a very specific way to get a very specific outcome and kind of go from there. What are some of the main

ways that like you would have a beginner athlete start improving their athleticism? Because I think, you know, a lot of people that have been getting ready and doing jujitsu are people from the general population. Maybe they haven't played a sport before, but they heard about it on a podcast and they want to get into something like this, right? So where do you think is the base level for a lot of people to start? I think if what's been really interesting over doing or what's been interesting about

doing jujitsu for the last seven years is that when I came into jujitsu, what I thought a white belt was looked very different to what I think a white belt is today. And so when I first started jujitsu, my, all my training partners were, I think the oldest guy was probably like 21. So I just assumed all white belts are a bunch of fired up 21 year olds. And then I trained jiu jitsu for a little bit longer and I realized actually there's a guy who's 50, who the last athletic thing he did was 30 years ago and he blew his knee out and that's why he hasn't done anything athletic for the last 30 years.

And he also is a white belt. And so some of the ideas I had about like, oh, this is the most important thing for white belts came from the context of just a bunch of fired up 21 year old white belts. And now over the years, that's kind of changed. And so I think in general, when people are coming to jiu jitsu, if they are coming from a more general population background

where they don't have a huge base of athleticism, they didn't wrestle before, they didn't do another combat sport. Or they didn't do any sports in general. They're just like, hey, I'm going literally from the couch to doing jujitsu. I think building strength and just basic movements like a squatting movement, a hip hinging movement,

a lunging movement, rotation movements, pressing and pulling movements. I used to be really set on very specific variations that people should do for those. Like you have to zert your squat, you have to floor press. But then over the years, I just found like, if they're doing some form of a squat and they're getting better week after week

and month after month, that's probably good enough for someone who's a general population, hobbyistist white belt. Same thing with pressing movements. You should press overhead, you should press horizontally, use a straight bar, use dumbbells. I don't really care if it feels really good, use that as you're kind of getting started. Then as people start to get more invested in Jiu-Jitsu and focus more on competition,

I think that is kind of, not necessarily a different conversation, but there's a lot more variables to keep into consideration. Real quickly, don't forget, you're getting into the competition aspect of what people need to think about. But I think one thing that New York people

shouldn't sleep on is just their body weight ability. And understanding that something like a pushup is not a waste of time. Because I think when you start doing things like weight training, you are like, okay, I'm gonna get my workout in. And then the only time you do something like a push-up is not a waste of time. Because I think when you start doing things like weight training, you are like, okay, I'm going to get my workout in. And the only time you do something like a workout is when you go to the gym. And the only time you do a push-up is when you do your warm-ups for jiu-jitsu.

But I mean, I know you've seen this. At warm-ups during jiu-jitsu, you see some people doing push-ups and they're still struggling with their push-up. And then you think to yourself, well, if you just had the habit of doing something with your own body weight each day, with the floor on your body, you could do some push-up. And then you think to yourself, well, if you just had the habit of doing something with your own body weight each day, with the floor on your body, you could do some push-ups, you could do some, you could do many variations of that.

That skill would improve easily over time. So improve your body weight skill, I think as a beginner, is something that you should not sleep on. It doesn't need to be just heavy weights in the weight room. Your body weight skill is a different ability than just lifting weights. Absolutely. And even all the movements that we just listed out like a bodyweight squat, if you can only squat by holding a plate out in front of you and you lose the plate you fall on your butt, like that's an indicator that you probably need to work on just your overall bodyweight squat. And I think, correct me if I'm

wrong, but I think in Kelly Sturet's Supple Leopard book, the second version, he has a few different movements as like a movement screening test. Might actually be over there. But like in one part of the book, it'll say if you can't squat like this, then like this should be your biggest priority. If you can't do this hang position, you need to address this. And this is before you get into more intense cross-foot workouts or jujitsu activities, things like that.

And it's not even- Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And it's not even really about getting to a point to squat a thousand pounds or squat like an Olympic weightlifter. It's just making sure that you, as a human, have the prerequisites to move well. And then you can take that into whatever you feel like doing later, which could be jujitsu, which could be some of the running stuff

you guys are getting into, really anything. Yeah, it's super interesting. There's so many different things you can kind of think about and break down when you're thinking about, you know, trying to train a very particular way for sport. But something I've noticed with you that I think is really a great testament to all the different training that you're doing is that is your physique.

And it's probably the thing that people are probably most attracted to and probably part of the reason why they're tuning into your videos. While you're hiding it. Yeah, hiding the triple XL shirt over there. Hey now. But I think that speaks volumes to you figuring out this matrix of all these different plates

that you have to spin because it's hard to get your body in shape sometimes while you're training for specific sports. And one of the reasons that can be so difficult is a lot of times people, people when they condition themselves for a particular sport, a lot of times they just do a ton of that sport. Yeah. And we see that a lot of times people, people when they condition themselves for a particular sport, a lot of times they just do a ton of that sport.

And we see that a lot with like powerlifting. We see it a lot with, and powerlifting is kind of an interesting, its own interesting version of things because the training is the sport sort of. So it's kind of a weird crossover there. But if a powerlifter or somebody in really any given sport can just back up a little bit and just kind of calm down and to recognize

that there's a giant checklist of things that you need to get to for any particular sport, for you to be great at any particular sport. And so, in kind of focusing a little bit just on powerlifting in this example, somebody could be so honed in on a particular lift and it could be to their detriment. It's like, dude, if you actually just pulled back

a little bit and instead of trying to work your triceps so hard to have a better bench and have your elbow hurt all the time, maybe it would be wise for you to train your shoulders, maybe it'd be wise for you so that there's less load on the tricep. Maybe it'd be wise for you to train your back, maybe it'd be wise for you so that there's less load on the tricep. Maybe it'd be wise for you to train your back for a little while. Maybe it'd also be wise for you just to get on the,

get on the ski erg at the gym instead of going to jujitsu practice, because all your joints hurt. So there's a lot of ways to manage all this stuff. And the gym is a great, not everyone has to spend tons and tons of time in the gym, but the gym is a great place to go to because again, you can control so many of these variables, but also you can get in fucking great shape. So the stuff that you're talking about isn't just MMA,

even though that's your main focus, that's the main majority of people that you work with, but anyone could do the workout that Andrew did today. There was no jujitsu level requirement for it or grappling level requirement for what you guys were doing today. And I think that's incredible because other people can look at that and say,

this is a really cool system and I wanna be bigger, stronger, leaner, better. And they can follow a lot of the stuff that you're putting out there. Yeah, you bring up a great point and mentioned spinning all these plates, and something that I was thinking of that I think for people that maybe

can't see the forest from the trees when we talk about all these different athletic qualities that we're trying to develop, is I think some people will, if they're, we'll use Jiu Jitsu as an example, if they're doing Jiu Jitsu, they'll look at all the fitness content and all the training content around jujitsu and they'll treat it almost like a record player.

You put one disc on that record, you put the needle on and it plays and plays and plays until it gets to the end. And then you're just like, well, it's not making any music, but I'm just going to let it run and just keep spinning. Cause this is what I'm supposed to do. And I mean, I know I've made that mistake and I think it's more so like if you guys can see on the camera all that stuff Andrew has behind there, there's all these different dials and switchers and buttons and things and the better you get at like dialing one

thing up at one time while you pull down the dial on something else, you can start to toggle a lot of these different athletic qualities. And so maybe for the 12 weeks you're prepping for a powerlifting meet, you toggle that squat bench deadlift dial all the way up and you pull back on your running dial. You pull it back almost to zero. And if you're doing jujitsu, you got eight weeks in training camp. So you push that jujitsu dial all the way up and you pull back your bodybuilding dial. But then you're in your off season. So then you mess with the dials again. You do a little bit of jujitsu dial all the way up and you pull back your bodybuilding dial. But then you're

in your off season. So then you mess with the dials again. You do a little bit of jujitsu, you push up the bodybuilding stuff to work on your physique. It doesn't have to be one song playing the whole time. You can just start mixing with all these levels and things. And a cool thing on that note is just like, remember that if you're someone who's starting jujitsu that jujitsu dial, you're only gonna be able to turn it up so hard. Yeah. Because like, again, like you mentioned with Andrew,

over time as your skill improves, your gas tank will feel like it's magically getting better, but it's not. It's just you're able to stay calmer and you're able to not panic when you're in bad situations. So you have more energy to do what you need to do. But over time of getting better at all these things, getting better at weight training, strength output, jujitsu, when you get in certain situations, you're

going to be able to actually turn those dials up pretty high compared to most people and still not get yourself beat up. But that takes time to improve the skill at all these different things. Absolutely. I do have a question for you and a question for you too, Andrew. When you were a blue belt, did you feel like you're, like when you look back at your Jiu-Jitsu career, do you feel like the hardest roles you ever had happened at Blue Belt?

Actually, you want to answer that real quick? I mean, I literally, I'm barely like getting back this week because I was pretty banged up with, you know, the competition stuff. Yeah, dude, I don't know. I think my biggest asset or biggest, like, best thing I've ever brought to Jiu-Jitsu is that I've been around people like you guys for years. So when I walk into any school, I have zero ego. So, like, I've already been, you know, kind of in some, like, scrambles with some white belts,

and I'm like, oh, he got the best of me, like, whatever, I don't care. Like, so, I don't really have that... Whatever that is, right? Like, oh, I'm not gonna let anybody beat me now, because I'm a blue belt, I'm gonna, you know, fight through every submission. Like, no, dude, that's not me. Maybe that's to my detriment, but... Yeah, I don't know.

So, like, the, you know, kind of getting the almost hazing of a fresh blue belt, right? Where all the white belts are coming after me and not all the upper belts are like, okay, cool, you still suck, but at least now you're committed. So you're really going to feel what Jiu Jitsu feels like. I feel like I've been rolling with a lot of upper belts and I've gained a lot of respect from them. That I won't get too much of that, but I know the white belts are coming. But again, because I don't have that ego,

I'm like, I don't know, I'm not really gonna sweat it. So maybe in a couple months, I'll have a different story to tell, but as of right now, I'm just gonna keep the same mentality, which is I'm not competing against you, I'm literally just competing against who I was yesterday. I'm gonna try.

That's a good point, man. Yeah, I do think the hardest roles were at Blue Belt, and it's like, it's a few reasons, you know, I'm big and strong, so when I got my Blue Belt, now all the black belts that I was training with were like, okay, he's good enough where I can now fuck him up. Now I can really fuck him up,

he's not a white belt anymore, right? So everybody turns it up when you get your blue belt. And they'll turn it up especially if you have a level of athleticism or if you seem like you're an athlete from another sport. Then they're like, let's fuck this athlete up. And you also don't have the skills yet. Like you have some skills. But you don't have all the tools to actually fight back and win.

So now you're literally trying to survive because your opponents are doing things that they've never done to you before because you're now a blue belt. So So now you're literally trying to survive because your opponents are doing things that they've never done to you before because you're now a blue belt. So yeah, you're right. Those, the blue belt roles were the, they felt like actually the hardest roles because now with the tools, roles,

most roles don't feel hard. Yeah. And that's how it felt for me. I think of like the hardest round I've ever done. And that was probably like halfway through my blue belt. And I wouldn't say it was necessarily because like who I was rolling with was like, all right, he's a blue button now, he can get all the smoke.

But it's like, I knew enough to like be really active and not just sit there and think like, what do I do? But I didn't know enough to like, I don't need to do all this right now. So I'm just making myself tired. And then you have like enough of an idea to like point yourself in the right direction, but so many other things are messed up. Like you do it too early. So then you back out and you try it again and you can end up just kind of, you know, shooting yourself in the foot in a lot

of situations and it gases you out. Yeah. I'm going to use Bluebelt as my like slutty college years. Like I'm just going to experiment with so many different things. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to use Blue Belt as my like slutty college years. Like I'm just going to experiment with so many different things. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to be in and out of all kinds of different things. But like, you know, I'm working, you know, Gordon Ryan's like systematically attacking the legs right now. Like, and I train in the gi, but like I want to learn this stuff.

You know, this is all stuff that our boy Chris Robertson was like, dude, the quicker you learn this stuff, the better. He is all stuff that our boy, Chris Robertson was like, dude, the, the quicker you learn this stuff, the better. He's like, even though you train in the game, like just experiencing this stuff is going to be really good for you. But like, I'm yeah, I'm so excited for this, this belt because again, I'm at the level where I don't know anything, but I know enough to be like, okay, this is working for me, this isn't, you know, like just whatever it may be. And so.

Yeah. I could imagine that the hardest roles are going to start happening pretty soon just because like, like, okay, yeah, I probably should be at the level where I can compete with this guy and you know, he's always gotten the best of me, but now we're both at blue or whatever it may be. But dude, I'm excited for the whole journey, you know. What's the, what's the common thread behind somebody being really strong in Jiu-Jitsu that you've seen? Is there something that you can pinpoint? I've heard in Seema kind of mention,

kind of farm boy strength. Like a lot of these guys have like a manual labor background. Some of the guys that he's noticed to be a little stronger. Obviously skill plays into it a ton because how you're going to apply the force and all that matters. But have you, is there any like common thing? And then if there is a common thing, do you try to address that in some of your strength and conditioning program? That's really, that's really interesting. Like someone grabs a hold you and you're like, what, like what the fuck? I just wasn't expecting, maybe they don't even really

look like a whole lot. I know you can't judge a book by its cover, especially in the jujitsu world, but... That's just different. I mean, I've experienced that, you know, being... Doing professional wrestling and football and stuff like that. Just every once in a while you go against someone, you're like... That motherfucker can hit so hard. What is that? And he weighs 170. You're like, I don't understand. Yeah. I think there's two things. And I think I've like not figured it out,

but got first exposed to it in wrestling. When, not when you would shake someone's hand, because sometimes people would give you like a dead fish handshake to not like give too much of a tell. But you, they grab your wrist or you grab their wrist and they just yank it away. And you're like, it's over. I think I'm done. Like this guy is it now. Yeah, I'll pin myself But I think it has to do with grip and then how much you can or can't break their posture

like if you color tie somebody and they you can't no matter whether you put one hand on and you know I'm gonna double up and yank this guy's head and it doesn't move They're like this is gonna gonna double up and yank this guy's head and it doesn't move, they're like, this is gonna be really rough. And they may be a white belt. And so like their skill level is as close to zero as it gets, but you just, they grab your wrist and it's hard to break away and you grab the back of their neck

and it's hard to break their posture. I think that's like, those are tells of someone is just built different and strong. And I think they don't even have to look strong. Like they can just, they might be like on the fluffier side, but their forearms don't have any give to them. Like they're just solid. They're like, Jesus is gonna be rough.

And so I think in kind of how that translates to strength and conditioning, I kind of go back and forth with the importance of grip training. Cause I think if you're doing enough jujitsu, you probably get enough grip exposure. Like a volleyball player trying to work on their vertical all the time. They do a lot of jumping in the season, so probably not a great time to address it. I think one thing though is it's still technically grip work, but extensor work.

That is hardly ever utilized in jiu-jitsu. So doing extensor work in the gym I I think could be beneficial or micro dosing it could be beneficial, but building up postural strength. Like if your neck and traps and middle back, if that is just like completely rocked out, like you feel amazing. Like if you're in someone's clothes guard and they're hanging on your collar or you're doing no game,

they're grabbing on the back of your head and they just can't, like they start pulling themselves up because you're just, you're so locked in. It feels really good. And it's, um, something that I think can almost be discouraging is if someone constantly breaks your posture down and wrestling, if someone constantly is like folding you over and breaking your posture, you just are looking at your knees the whole time and you feel like you can't do anything. But if you can maintain like an upright posture, not necessarily that you always want to keep your chest up and expose your legs, but at least keep your head up and just know like this guy is going to be slamming on my head and it's not going to have an effect. That's a huge confidence boost.

And also applies to the tactics and technical side of things too. So in order to build some of that kind of strength, you got to hit things from a lot of different angles. Because now I'm starting to think in my head, okay, Jefferson curl might be a great movement, but also just like some regular forms of deadlifting, you know, maybe some sumo deadlifting, maybe some regular deadlifts to, you know, get yourself into some patterns where you're really not going to move that much. But then you also probably want to do the opposite of that where there's tons of movement, I would imagine.

Yeah, absolutely. I think I've been so inspired by your old YouTube videos, doing good mornings off of suspended chains, doing these crazy zircher lifts and stuff. And I think not that that should be the only way a grappler trains, but there's a lot of things that could be taken from that. You know, you think about you do a good morning starting from the bottom position. So for Andrew, maybe you could pull up one of those old school videos. Yeah, I used to have the weight, the chain sometimes all the way down to my dick and I had to figure out how to squeeze my fat little body

underneath it to get in there. So it just ends up being a really horrible squat basically. Yeah. I mean, that's obviously way more weight than any grappler would probably need. But just thinking about you're getting in that position and you have to get tight in that bent over position. And then you got to think about squeezing your upper back,

your traps. I mean, even your neck is getting worked so that you can build up all that post over position. And then you gotta think about squeezing your upper back, your traps, I mean, even your neck is getting worked so that you can build up all that postural strength. I think something like that is great. I think something like, and Seema, I've seen you do these a couple of times where you do backwards walks with the sled, intentionally not getting rounded over.

And then sometimes you will let your spine hang out a little bit and round over. And I think getting exposure to both ends of that spectrum is super important. If you're someone that's taking supplements or vitamins or anything to help move the needle in terms of your health, how do you know you really need them? And the reason why I'm asking you how do you know is because many people don't know their levels of their testosterone, their vitamin D, all these other labs like their thyroid, and they're taking these supplements

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you'll be able to work with a patient care coordinator that will give you suggestions as far as nutrition optimization, supplementation, or if you're someone who's a candidate and it's necessary, hormonal optimization to help move you in the right direction so you're not playing guesswork with your body. Also, if you've already gotten your lab work done but you just want to get a checkup, we also have a checkup panel that's made so that you can check up and make sure that everything is moving in the right direction. If you've already gotten comprehensive lab work done, this is something super important

that I've done for myself. I've had my mom work with Merrick. We've all worked with Merrick just to make sure that we're all moving in the right direction and we're not playing guesswork with our body. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at MerrickHealth.com slash Power Project. And at checkout, enter promo code Power Project to save 10% off any one of these panels

or any lab on the entire website. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Let me ask you this too. How do you like, what are some of the things that you think are staples in terms of improving rotational ability? And rotational strength. I think I'm in a huge, I don't know if I would go as far

to say that this is a staple, but I just think it's one of many great ways to train rotation. The landmine university stuff, Alex Canales' system. That is so freaking awesome. Like it feels so good. Cause you can use lighter weights and train a lot of speed and explosive power stuff and rotation, but you could also load it up and do something pretty heavy. And not that

everyone has to use the landmine, but I think that's one great tool to train rotation for strength, explosive power, speed. What we were doing with the medicine balls today, just grabbing a medicine ball and exposing yourself to being able to reach back and throw it and twist at the trunk is a great idea. After this, maybe you can show me some of the rope flow stuff.

I think that's a great way to mix in some lower intensity to rotational movements. And maybe you can speak to that. Have you found that doing, I think some people may look at that and say like, nah, I need to use a landmine because a rope doesn't weigh anything. It's not gonna, you know,

I'm not gonna get much benefit, but I see how you move with it. And I mean, you move great. So have you found like even something as light as a rope helping improve some of that rotational quality? Yeah, I won't go too long about it, but it's one of those things where you're able to dynamically work both sides of the body

and both sides of rotation, and you can load it up with a heavier rope if you want to do it heavier. So the thing is, it's great to improve how strong your rotational is, your rotational ability is with something like a landmine, like the banded med ball rotations that you do. I freaking love those.

Those are really good too. It's good to do that. But then when you think about actually doing something in combat, whether you're a boxer, whether you're in jujitsu and you are rotating your spine and rotating your scap, you're doing that in a dynamic fashion. And naturally we have one side that we're better on rotating on than the other. The rope, whether it's a lighter rope or a heavy rope, allows you to work rotation with speed or without speed.

Most people are going to start slower, doing slower rotations and actually doing minimal rotations because some people it might be too hard for them to rotate fast from side to side. But when you become comfortable with the rotational pattern, you can then speed that up with the rope and you can even make it heavier with a heavy rope. So I think a lot of people, when they see the rope flow stuff, they just think it's swinging a rope around, but you're actually able to train your rotational ability

on both sides and be competent on your weaker side too, in a dynamic fashion. Like in a fashion that you would be doing while you're fighting. That's why I think it's so powerful and it's low intensity. Andrew, can you pull something up? So you're not beating yourself up, you know? I mean, no.

Or rope flow stuff. I'll fully admit, I used to see some of that rope flow stuff from like David Weck a couple years ago and I thought like, I don't care. I'm not doing it. Like it's just, it's just doesn't, it's not heavy. Yeah. Too weird. Not heavy enough.

You know, he didn't hit any ammonia before it. So, you know, probably not for me. But I think sometimes, and I know I've made this mistake a ton, is like marrying the message or marrying the method with the messenger instead of like detaching from it or separating the two and saying like, okay, there's probably some value here. Let me see how I can implement some of this stuff. And so seeing Alex Canellis' landmine university stuff, he came from, or he did something with Westside Barbell back in the day, so I was like, all right, if he was at Westside, probably some common ground here

in like how he approaches training. And that kind of opened up the rabbit hole for me to look at something like this, where, I mean, that looks awesome. It looks like you're swinging a nunchuck, which is pretty sick. And just thinking about how beneficial that could be just for some restorative work for the shoulders

and the spine and just improving your ability to move fluidly instead of being so locked up, which we often do in the gym sometimes. You get locked up and do a squat, get locked up. Even when we do something like a one arm row, you could totally get a lot of rotation with a one arm row. A lot totally get a lot of rotation with a one arm row. A lot of times we still choose to lock ourselves up

and be super stiff with it. Is that sometimes the way that you're viewing some of the exercises that you might be doing in the gym and maybe some of the things that you prescribe do you sometimes say like, you know, hey, like we're gonna be kind of working the lat and the arms and the shoulders and stuff like that via this like one arm row, but maybe at the same time, maybe we don't like bodybuild it and

just lock in on just a lat. You kind of think of things that way? Yeah, absolutely. So in my own training, I try to be really intentional about just what specific things am I going to be working. So if I put in a rowing exercise for say three weeks, I'll put in the same rowing exercise, hit it on my upper body day, but it may be like a chest supported hammer strength row. So I know I'm not getting

rotation because I'm using both arms at the same time, but I'll make sure that like, okay, I did my heavy back work with no rotation for three weeks. For the next three weeks, I'm going to pick a one arm variation and be intentional about getting a really good twist and rotation in there. And then, same thing for pressing movements. I might do like this morning, I did some overhead press work, but in the next phase of training, I may do a landmine version where I'm kind of doing

some of the coiling stuff from David Weck and then pressing, kind of going from there. It makes a lot of sense. You get like a particular outcome from using like a machine. You do the kind of the three sets of 10 to 12 reps. You have, you know, kind of a strict protocol with the tempo. And then maybe other times you're just throwing a kettlebell up over your head. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. That stuff is awesome. And I think what's been great about your guys' podcast is that you're, you bring such a great perspective to how these things can be implemented for people that maybe come from a more traditional bodybuilding or powerlifting background. And sometimes it is hard to, like as a fan of bodybuilding and powerlifting, it was really hard to look at some of this stuff and see like that would be valuable because I don't get a pump while I do it. My veins aren't popping out.

It's not heavy to where I feel excited about it, but there's still so much value in there. And that's what I think is great about your guys' show is that you bring in all these people, you kind of break it down, talk about how you could apply it as someone that loves bodybuilding or loves powerlifting and someone that could use it for jiu-jitsu. And I just think you guys do an amazing job of, you know, taking these methods and distilling them down to their base principles and sharing with people how they could use it.

I think as you get better at stuff though, you can kind of crank the intensity and make just about anything be like a pretty good workout. Yeah. Like, and Seam and I were doing the rope and we weren't like going nuts with it or anything, but like it was pretty good, pretty good exercise for today. And if I took one of the heavier ropes

and really got into it, I'm sure it would be a taxing workout. Even the, I didn't do that much rope stuff yesterday. I did a little bit with him yesterday. And then I did some at my house. And even that little bit, I woke up today and I kind of, I felt some of that. So I think we, we sometimes undervalue

some of these exercises that really don't look like much or you don't think that anything's gonna be like a real powerful outcome. Yesterday, I went to go on a run and I was trying to just kind of execute like a 10 minute run and I got a phone call and it was important for me to grab it. So I, you know, had the conversation and it cut my run,

which was gonna be short anyway, it cut it shorter. Then I went on a walk as I was on this phone call and maybe like a half hour later, I was like, oh, there's like a couple of these hills over here, these like bridges and I'll just like, I'll do three sprints up the hill and I'll go home. And that's what I did for the day. And so sometimes, you know, some of what we're doing, I think, uh, we always

think like, if I don't get 10 sets in or 12 sets, you know, if I don't do those, uh, 12 sets on the bike, on the assault bike with a minute rest, uh, not getting any value, um, but if you're playing the long game in all this stuff and you're trying to execute what you're playing the long game in all this stuff and you're trying to execute what you're working on, again, there's so many plates to spin. Whatever amount of momentum you can put on a plate to keep it from fucking falling, you should do so whenever you can, even if it's just a little push because you want to try to keep that momentum for as long as you possibly can. And I think if you apply that to diet, it kind of reminds me of like when you have a child,

when you have a young baby, there's this checklist of shit that you kind of go through. You're like, well, he's fed, he's changed. I changed him twice. He pooped, he peed. You're just kind of thinking like, why is this baby still crying? And then you gotta kind of just remember, like, and he, you know, you're just kind of thinking like, why is this baby still crying?

And then you got to kind of just remember, well, it's fucking baby. Sometimes they're just uncomfortable for whatever, for whatever particular reason. But most of the time, when you go through your checklist of things that you're doing, you know, if someone's trying to lose weight, they run through this checklist of 10 or 12 things.

And if they were able to check all the boxes, it would be really rare and odd for them to not make the progress that they were looking for. And that's where you would go into like maybe hyper analyzing if they indeed are checking all the boxes. So I just think it's, it's great because you can kind of implement a lot of what you're talking about and, and micro dose a lot of these exercises and things into your day to day without it seeming so overwhelming. Yeah. I think I really like how the guys at Renaissance periodization talk about minimum effective volume, maintenance volume, max recoverable volume and all that stuff. And

in that context, they're oftentimes just talking about, you know, what is the minimum effective volume to grow your pecs or grow your back? But I think just from a life perspective, what is the minimum effective dose of whatever this is? What is the minimum effective dose for working on your business? Like, okay, I gotta wake up 30 minutes earlier and do 30 minutes every day.

That's the minimum effective dose that I need to do to continue to see a little bit of progress. It'd be great if I could just quit my full-time job and just make this my new full-time job, but I can't. So what is the minimum effective dose to get there? And I think we oftentimes just immediately look to, what's my max recoverable volume?

That's where I'm gonna start at. And then I'm gonna smoke myself, and then I either get injured or like burn myself out and then get discouraged and then start the cycle over. I'm starting again and I'm immediately jumping into max recoverable volume and then I smoke myself and burn myself out. And I think I know I've been caught up in that cycle a lot. I think not just with training, but I think just with other life stuff too.

Have you gotten yourself like run down from, I mean, we've talked about it in previous podcasts just from you being a savage and wanting to be an entrepreneur and just somebody that has a lot of motivation. You've kind of buried yourself before, but have you done any of that recently with just getting lean or getting in shape? Because you're in great shape, but at the same time, I'm sure there's probably like a happy medium, right? Between, because you probably could great shape but at the same time I'm sure there's probably like a happy medium right between because you probably could get leaner if you really wanted to you could probably dial that

up even more but then your jujitsu might be you might feel weak and everything else yeah yeah I in the past I think like maybe up until two years ago I felt like my pendulum in any one area wouldn't swing so far. And it got much more, not necessarily controlled, but it wouldn't be so drastic. Like I want to go all in into doing this crazy bulk. And like my, you know, I'd get gassed out at jiu-jitsu really, really bad. And then I would get frustrated at that. So then I'd swing really hard the other way, go to jiu-jitsu twice a day, my freaking elbows and my neck were killing me. And then it's like, well, now I feel weak in the gym.

So I'm gonna swing real hard and Casio, I'll catch you in two months because I'm just working out in the gym now. And so I feel like as I've gotten older, I've learned a much, I think learned, but also I think it comes naturally with maturity, just recognizing like having those extreme pendulum swings probably isn't gonna be the best

for longevity in either one of these things. I don't need to go balls to the wall in jujitsu every single day for my current goals. My current goals are just to have fun at jujitsu. So if I swing so hard in any one direction that jujitsu kind of exits my life, that would probably be a bad thing. Same thing in the gym. I love lifting. I just want to have fun and just keep training. So if something in business swings so hard that

lifting leaves my life, that would probably be a bad thing. Vice versa. And I've made this mistake before. I get so fired up about training in the gym and training at jujitsu that business just takes a dump behind me because I'm not doing what I need to get done and so I think it comes with maturity I think it just comes with a lot of mistakes and learning lessons like yeah I've I've kind of dropped the ball on that so I need to have my pendulum not swing so hard in any one direction. And I think one example, like a tangible example was I had just got my blue belt like a month before I started my senior year of college.

And so I was like, it's competition time, baby. I signed up for, I think three competitions in two months during fall semester of senior year of college and my grades tanked. Everything was awful except Jiu-Jitsu. Jiu-Jitsu was pretty sweet. And I realized like, I can't keep this up. I need to be a little bit more balanced and go to school.

So. I wanna add in something to what you said there. You know, Adam Wardsinski, who just won Worlds, right? Yeah. He was 18 when he started Jiu Jitsu. And through his whole thing, he's just been super consistent. He never hit the podium. He like never hit the podium at Worlds.

Like even as a black belt, as a colored belt. But in this last year, this past Worlds, he managed to win because he's been super consistent and played the long game. And at 33 years old, he managed to nail his first Black Belt World Championship. That's amazing. And the thing is, is like some, a guy like him, I don't know what his training structure is, but he never seems like the guy who like fucks himself up in training.

Like I've seen training videos of Adam. He's not crazy. He seems super chill. He doesn't seem to be like the everyday Pujada type. He seems to be just consistent. And at 30 something, he moves well. He's not crazy athletic or anything, but he's managed to stay in this long enough to get there. And I think the reason why that's so cool is because in Jiu-Jitsu, there's a lot of people who are like, I want to get good fast. And they train super intense

every weekend. If it's not super intense, then you're not really training. And these are the people that five years in, six years in, they end up getting some crazy injury or they end up burning themselves out and they don't get to their goals with Jiu-Jitsu because they either it's an injury or they just can't handle that intensity anymore. You got to be real with yourself with the intensity that you can handle in terms of your training. Right. And if you find that you're getting run down, it's not cause you're not tough enough.

It's just cause you're not ready for that intensity yet. You really just got to listen to yourself and do what your body is able to handle. Because what matters isn't what you're going to be able to do six months from now. What matters is what you're going to be able to do six years, ten years from now. Yeah, absolutely.

What are your guys' thoughts on... I'm just going to call it like riding that wave though, right? Like, because like everything we do kind of comes and goes in waves, right? Like you were just saying, like you signed up for three comps right away and your jujitsu got really, really good. Like you've rode that wave and you got really good, but obviously everything else took kind of a bit of a tank. But when it comes to jujitsu, I feel like there are times where like I'll wake up and

I'll be like, damn, like, all right, I don't really have it today, but I'm going to force myself to go. And then there's other days where like, you know, I kind of wake up before the alarm and like I'm in the out the door ready to go. I feel like when those times do come that I'm like super excited for it. I don't want to let them go. And I don't want to use that time to work on the mobility stuff. Although I'm still going to do it. But you know what I mean? Right? Like, yeah, I feel like in those moments, it's okay to go a little bit harder. It's okay to like right now my knee and my foot hurt really bad, but I'm excited.

I just got promoted. I haven't missed a day. Now I'm not rolling as hard. I'm barely even moving on the mats, but I'm so motivated right now that I want to just like keep riding this wave and I'm so motivated right now that I want to just like keep riding this wave and I'm still practicing these like cool movements and doing all these things. And so again, I'm curious to your guys' thoughts like,

is that a detriment, you know, like to quote ride that wave and continue to keep going even though I know that maybe I should be like, all right, I should probably work on rolling out my legs a lot more than I am right now. I think I get what you're saying with like riding the wave and it's so intoxicating when you're kind of caught on that wave and I've never surfed,

I'd imagine this is why people love surfing, the feeling that you get when you literally ride that wave. And it works out great until you get pummeled by that wave and then you're like, I probably should, you know, change things up a little bit. And I think what's so hard is that, at least in my opinion and from my perspective, that we could tell people all these things,

but eventually they just need to get on a wave and get buried by a giant wave and then learn from that mistake. It's like something that you- Get hurt. Yeah, it's like telling a kid not to touch a hot stove. I mean you got kids probably told him thousand times And they still touched it probably they're stupid Kids are dumb. Especially my kids

Yeah, I didn't mean to take it there man I just go on this like long rant. Let me tell you something You know from what you said there, Josh, like, yeah, you're right. Some people need to experience it, but you just got to hope that that experience isn't the last experience that they have. Yeah. Right? That's the unfortunate thing because it's like some people can experience it, then they

realize, oh, okay, let me back off. Let me back off. Right? And then some people, they just do the stupid shit for so long, but then they have a career ending injury or they get a fucking, they get immun the stupid shit for so long, but then they have a career-ending injury. Or they get a fucking, they get immunocompromised because they've been running themselves down, and they get fucking staff or some shit, right?

It's one of those things. And in your specific case, Andrew, it's like, you know the shit you need to do so you can be at full capacity. So it's one of those things where, OK, you know, keep doing what you're doing, but you're probably already doing those things, but you're probably already doing those things, but you really gotta do those things

so you can be at 100% sooner than later. Right? Yeah, and something that I'm trying to tell myself, and I'm not winning this argument, is like, yes, you are motivated, you're fucking, you wanna go out there and put your blue belt to the test. Do that off of the mats, right?

Use that same intensity to get recovered. So that way you can come back, you know, better than you did, you know, before quote camp. But it's hard, right? Because you know, you got the text messages from the friends. I like, Hey, like, you know, what happened? Did you already give up? Did you retire? You know, like as fun as that can be, it does add up to the, when you're like thinking in the morning, like, shit, should I go? I had that moment this morning, like, I should probably chill out. We're gonna do this workout with Josh.

Nah, let's go. And I'm glad I went. But because of that, I had to really, really put a rev limiter on today's movement. It was super low, but again, people can't do that. That's the thing that I think I have the advantage of is I can be realistic

and understand like today's a full recovery day with a really good cardio session that wasn't detrimental at all. But unfortunately people, they don't have that rev limiter. They're just, you know, everyday Pohada. Yeah. Yeah. That's a tough question. Cause I don't, I hear, I hear what you're saying in SEMA and I, and I mean, all of us can speak to this. I think sometimes people maybe are just born with like they need to experience it for themselves. Like they need to touch the hot stove. And some people maybe are a little bit more on the side of like,

I watched that guy burn his hand. So I don't need to do that. And I don't know where that comes from. Maybe that's just how we're made. Some people lean more on one side or the other, but I think that happens in everything. Not just touching the stove, but training. Like I hear that I need to take some recovery time,

but I'm feeling fired up. So everybody's going to get it today. And then you end up throwing yourself out. And then other people maybe say like, no, I have to take my rest day. Have to take my rest day. Cause my whoop trap said that I can't train today. So it's kind of a tough thing.

There's a, you know, obviously there's different ways so I get to the top, but the people that I've admired the most and the people that, the people that are sometimes like the best and they kind of leave no doubt about it. They usually do things a little differently. And I think that you can do so much jujitsu, you can do it to your detriment. You could do so much power lifting, you do it to little differently. And I think that you can do so much jujitsu, you can do it to your detriment. You could do so much power lifting,

you do it to your detriment. And people seen some of the lifts I've done and they've seen some of that stuff and they think that it's crazy. They think that it's wild, but they don't really understand the amount of other stuff I was doing and how much thought went into all that stuff.

I mean, I would think for weeks and months and even sometimes years on planning out, these workouts to be pretty specific, especially when it came to like the recovery side of things. So someone can lie to themselves and say that they're all in on Jiu-Jitsu and go to Jiu-Jitsu all the time and try to be great at Jiu-Jitsu.

But if you're really all in on Jiu-Jitsu or really all in on anything, then you'll also appreciate all the time and try to be great at jujitsu. But if you're really all in on jujitsu or really all in on anything, then you'll also appreciate all the other aspects that are going to be pivotal to making you great. You wanna really try to examine everything as much as possible. I know there's like, there's the Gordon Rions and there's people like that that are on this like,

crazy like kind of looks like a war path almost, you know, but I'm sure that there's probably a lot more particulars to the way that he trains that probably none of us will ever really truly understand. If you're paying attention and you watch some of what Bones Jones is doing, like he hasn't been, you know, in the Octagon in a while and last time he was in there,

he beat the guy in like 15 seconds or whatever. That was incredible. Or just like a minute or whatever it was. It was pretty fast and hopefully he's able to do that again. But if you pay attention to what he's doing, I mean, it's pretty interesting. He's out on a bike, he's swimming, he's lifting, you know? And I'm not fully aware of all the different ways

that he trains and everything, but I do know that sometimes he gets locked in. I have heard his coach say that he will sometimes just be standing in front of the bag and he'll work on a spinning elbow for like an hour and a half like just by himself. And then they'll say, what are you doing that for? He's like, that's why I'm gonna win the fight.

And they're like, okay. And then he goes and like, he actually executes it in the ring and they're like fucking, everyone's like, what the hell? But he also is not, I don't think he kills himself on a lot of stuff. I know he lifts heavy. I know he has a certain intensity about him,

but I think it's just, it's a good thing to think about, even some of the people that are quote unquote all in on jujitsu, they're all in on jujitsu, they're really probably not, because you're like, hey man, what's your diet like? And you talk to them about their diet and their diet shit, you're like, as good as you are, you're leaving a lot on the table.

You're not paying attention to your lifting, you're not, you don't do anything for your conditioning. Okay, you're in great shape when you do your tournaments. It doesn't seem to be of consequence, but you can be even better conditioned since currently you don't do any of it. So that's the kind of stuff that I try to look at when I'm thinking about how people should do

some of these things and be really careful of falling into the trap of like, hey man, you're a pussy, how come I haven't seen you at practice type thing. Cause I think that it's just, I would just say don't do it. Like do your best not to do it because then you'll have people ask questions of like, how do I stay motivated for the gym? Oh yeah.

Well, stay the fuck out of the dojo for a little bit and then get your ass in the gym and get a good balance of both. A sense of video to Andrew and I wanna see if you can pull it up real quick. I think we may have pulled it up in the past, but this is George St. Pierre, Pierre, your favorite guy. My guy. Donna Hur and Lex Friedman. You might already know what the conversation is about because I feel like you may have seen it.

Watched it 10 times this morning so you can save that clip. I'm just playing. I love GSP. He seemed like a balanced guy. Again, I'm not fully aware of the way he trains but obviously he must have gone all in on a lot of things many different times. I'm sure he probably injured himself and found out the hard way to come up with what he came up with. But if we're telling people ahead of time that we know that you're going to get injured or you're going to have regression, then it's a good idea to consider some of these things. Yeah.

I've seen athletes have the worst diets. God bless Travis Stevens for that guy won an Olympic silver medal basically on McDonald's and candy. George St. Pierre for 80% of your career, you were powered by McDonald's and Coca-Cola. Eto'Gene Alfredo, that was my meal of choice before a championship fight. Gordon, for him, his youth was just five guys hamburgers, Gary Tonan, same thing. All his guts fucked up. I've worked with Japanese judo players who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and won Olympic gold medals. I've worked with Russian

wrestlers who just ate whatever was put in front of them and their athletic performance was outstanding. I've worked with other guys who did have what would be considered a very clean diet and their performance was no better than anyone else on the mat. So I've never seen someone say, okay, I changed my diet. And because of that, there was a measurable improvement in sports. Who beats Gordon Ryan though? Himself. Himself. Yeah.

He has a lot of those gut issues. I'm not saying they're 100% related to his nutrition, but they could be. No, I think you have a point. I think GSP also had some issues. Yeah, he had ulcerative colitis. And he, that's what, to my understanding, was one of the indicating reasons on why he stepped away, I think in 2013, he stepped away

from the welterweight division and kind of retired on top, which is crazy. And he had, at least to my understanding, some stomach issues, ulcerative colitis, and then came back. And even when he came back and beat Michael Bisping at middleweight, it was still a pretty big issue. And I think since then, since he's retired, he's done a lot of stuff, I think with Dr. Jason Fung,

I think even with Paul Saladino on trying to get his gut back together and kind of restore some of that. But I think with a clip like that, it's discouraging for some and maybe encouraging for other people. Like it's a green light for someone to say, yeah, good enough for GSP, good enough for me. Chicken off for it all day. And maybe for some other people, it may be discouraging. Like that guy just freaking was the best in the world and didn't care about his diet at all. I got no shot.

And I think it's a similar, you can almost like relate it to genetics. Like there are so many videos about genetics and people saying like, oh, this guy, he got the best genetics. C-bum is only good because of his genetics. And at the end of the day, like, I hope people listening don't take this the wrong way but

genetics at the end of the day don't matter except your own. So what are you gonna do about it? Yeah, C-bums, muscle insertions are the greatest ever. You don't have that, what you gonna do with yours? Yeah, GSP's genetics or GSP's diet, he was still the best in the world. Based off that, what are you gonna do about it? How much better could he have been? Maybe he would have never retired. Maybe he would have just been champ for 10 years and just dominated. That's another good question,

because maybe he wouldn't have retired. Maybe he would have been beat. Maybe he would have had, unfortunately, like an Anderson Silva tail end of his career, where it's riddled with losses that are really tough to watch and people don't necessarily hold Anderson Silva. They don't remember him as the spider when he was at his peak just killing everybody.

So you never know. And this is something to think about. For example, when some people have like crazy hard jujitsu sessions and crazy hard weekly type of training, there are certain athletes who are going to be able to get through that, survive it, and that'll be something that benefits them. And then that there's the majority of people that do that, who will wreck themselves, who will injure themselves,

and then tell themselves that this wasn't for me. I look at nutrition in somewhat the same way, because all those guys were probably getting enough calories to be able to perform. For sure. Like when you're drinking soda, and you're eating fucking McDonald's, and Five Guys, and all that type of stuff,

you're getting in the calories, and you're going and working out. So you're going through that. But does that mean that your gut is healthy? Does that good for your longevity? When John's talking about that, I totally get what he's saying because these athletes will still be able

to perform on the day. But we gotta think about what about our long-term health? Do we wanna perform 10 years from now as healthy as possible? Because over time, like with Gordon and with GSP, these things have their toll. But if you want to be able to do this as you get older, like for me, I know that my prime,

I'm in my prime and I want to keep that going. And then after your prime too. And after my prime too. You know what I mean? I want to stay healthy so I can do this as long as possible. But if my nutrition isn't in check, that's gonna be one of the things that could fuck with me. So if you're a normal person,

or if you're just any type of athlete, you shouldn't sleep on your nutrition just because you've seen Michael Jordan or fucking Gordon eat shit and still be great. I do understand what they're saying too. And I think, you know, there's been so many athletes that have had kind of like whatever diets that it appears that, unfortunately, it's like hard to say

but it doesn't seem like it has that big of an impact on performance for most people. But it's gonna have a big impact over time, over like a long period of time. And it may not even impact certain people's, their leanness and stuff like that. But again, you know, going back to someone like GSP, like in his career, it's like maybe,

I mean, he was pretty lean, he was pretty stacked as it was, but maybe he just ate a little bit more protein, maybe he would have lasted a little bit longer, maybe he would hold onto a little bit more muscle, maybe he'd be a little stronger for a couple of the guys that were able to defeat him or something like that. But I guess there's also this other flip side to things of food is hyper palatable, it's fun.

And so having a routine after practice maybe of like everyone going to grab some food and just kind of kick it and hang out and talk more about jujitsu and just like sit on the match and watch tapes and stuff is probably something that they probably did stuff like that commonly as they're hanging out for 10, 12 hours every single day working on their craft and having that junk food

may have been something that actually was sort of looked forward to in some way, you know? Yeah, I think one thing that stuck out to me in that clip was John Donoher said that there is no measurable difference and that is so tough because there's so many things that are kind of on the leading edge of health and fitness and nutrition that we may not have a very clear measurable indicator that it worked, right? But we may feel better and if we feel better, that may be good enough to implement.

And I think about like all the great stuff that Merrick Health is doing. Now there's like, hey, you fix your diet in this way. Like yeah, your blood markers are literally better. We took a before and after, you know now. When before, it may have just been like, man, when I eat these foods, I'm like kind of gassy and kind of bloated, I don't feel very good.

Kind of like crash later in the day. I don't know why, but just eating a lot of red meat and white rice, I feel really good. And that may be hard for someone else to hear because there is no measurable difference, even though as time goes on, we're gonna find more and more ways that can kind of, for lack of a better term, prove or provide

measurable differences that we can see. What are these differences? The difference is stress things. What if the difference is stress management? What if the difference is in sleep? You get a little bit better sleep than things that come at you that are stressful. They're just that much easier to, everything's easier to deal with your food, your hunger signals.

A lot of people could be just insanely hungry just from not having great sleep. And that could kind of be causing like a, you know, for you to kind of fall into like this loop of just eating shitty food. I was thinking about this on the way here today and I'd be interested to hear what you guys think. I was thinking about when someone starts working

with a really, really high level athlete, like someone who's already the best in the world, do you guys see that not as a wasted effort? Cause it's not always a wasted effort, but almost like it's not doing as much as everybody hypes it up to be because that person got to be the best in the world in spite of all the wrong things that they were doing. And I had talked to Stan about, uh, Stan Efforting for friend of the show. Um, I had talked to Stan and was just asking him questions about John Jones. He's like, yeah, like John like is amazing. And he became the greatest fighter ever in spite of a lot

of things that could be improved. And for, I'd be interested to hear from your guys' perspective if you think that's not necessarily like a wasted effort, but they got there doing things a very particular way. So it may be hard to change anything because they're like, I'm the best in the world and I did all these things to get here. And now some guy out of left field is saying like, you gotta do this.

And it's like, I'm already here, you know? Yeah, I think some of the mindset that someone like John Jones has, I think, has probably benefited him or has benefited him for his whole career. So maybe being a little nonchalant and just, I guess, making it look easy. He always makes it look, he makes it look easy almost every single time.

He's had a couple of fights that were like a little harder. He's got one fight that was actually really hard where people were like, oh, you know, that guy really took it to him or whatever. But, and he's got like one other fight where he just didn't put the guy away really easy. And those are like, people like to point to those, you know, but he's dominated.

And I think, you know, having a particular mindset. So I think when a new coach comes into that guy's life, it's probably, it's very hard to really make big changes. Stan helps Bones Jones, but I don't think he's able to get him to fully commit to the vertical diet. I think he eats some of the vertical meals and some of the stuff, but I think it's probably hard to,

when somebody already has these particular habits and like rituals and so on, they're just, and they're already doing great. It's like, what would they really want to change? So I think they only get like small add-ons from being around some of these other people. Cause then I think that's how these guys end up with a bunch of coaches.

That's how they end up with like six or seven coaches. Cause it's like, yeah, I'll listen to you on this. Cause that's pretty much your area of expertise, but I'm not going to listen to you all the way probably on that. And I'm going to do this with this other guy and do this with this other guy. They get a good mix of like some small changes, but probably nothing big overall. That makes sense. Yeah. I always look at it. Um, it's super like like oh what if right We always think like what if like what if john jones's diet was always on point What if he did this and it's super easy for like let's just say somebody with the background in

biomechanics that's like looking at his workouts and be like, you know, like oh if he did this like the levers and blah blah Like he would be so much better But like would he like, yeah, you know, like there's one John Jones, there's one George St. Pierre, like, yeah, I think it is more in spite of, like I think because no one else has done, has been able to accomplish what these guys have done, probably nobody has worked out the way that they have,

you know, with the mindset stuff of it as well So yeah, I think the way they did it is exactly what they needed to do for themselves it's kind of a cop-out answer, but I Think we can see a lot of the stuff that they do and we can pick and choose some of it But also understand like you know I can't I can't be John Jones You know like after a match if I broke my toe, like I would have fainted. And he's just like, oh shit, that's weird.

I'm like, what? Like this is, to me, like the simplest thing like that is like, well, no, it's not simple, but like the smallest thing like that, I'm like, yeah, dude, he's a different person. You know, he's barely human. Yeah. Yeah, everybody has their intangibles.

Cause like, like John, he has this like side of him that's just like absolutely just savage. You've seen it in interviews and you've seen it in fights. But at the same time, like there's one through line that I think holds true for all these guys. It's probably they're getting in good training and they're getting in good recovery. Like probably these guys aren't missing sleep. They might have certain habits like Michael Jordan loved to gamble.

There is Dennis Rodman, who famously fucking go... barely get sleep coming to you, but that's probably not most guys, right? So, it's one of those things where if you can help any of these guys improve their recovery from the hardship that they're doing, right? And improve their performance. Doesn't mean you have to stop them from potentially gambling or drinking a bit even though they do something that maybe helps them reduce stress. But if you can help improve those aspects, then you're going to improve everything else

that they do most likely. That just seems like what makes sense because it's something that happens with everybody. If you get good recovery, that's going to help everything else you do. It's going to help the way you handle your nutrition. That's going to help the way you actually have your output. That's going to help you being able to maintain the benefit from your training sessions. Right. So it's, it's kind of like that. Yeah. I used to follow basketball, like the NBA basketball, like really,

really closely and the same thing. Like, um, you know, I was a huge Kings fan and like Chris Weber would have like 40 piece chicken nuggets before every game. And then you think like, Oh my gosh, what would happen if he cleaned up his diet? Like, oh my goodness. It's like, dude, he was one of the greatest power forwards of all time. Like, I don't, I mean, you know, what could happen, right?

And then so as these players would get older, they would all of a sudden start trying to like, optimize everything that they did. So like I remember Pajic Sejakovic would be like, yeah, I'm older now, so I'm gonna start paying attention to my diet. And it's like, what do you mean start paying attention? Your career is almost over.

But every time they would do that, nothing would change. They wouldn't all of a sudden get an extra two, three years. It would just be like, I don't wanna do this anymore, and they'd retire. So the elite athletes, they were elite, right? Like there's not much else is going to change that. But for myself, I know for sure if I were to eat McDonald's before the night before a roll

I would have a terrible morning of Jiu-Jitsu. Not because those are good or bad calories but just because it's not going to sit well in my stomach. I'm going to feel like, I'm gonna feel sick. So I have to implement all these things to optimize as much as I can because I'm not them, I'm only me. Yeah.

And I think part of those guys probably just thinking that they maybe are a few notches above people that they don't need to do certain things, I actually think is probably is somewhat of a healthy mindset in some ways. But that is sometimes how you get your ass handed to you too. Like sometimes, you know, somebody shows you that, hey, maybe you do need to pay attention to every aspect

because you know, you got somebody younger or someone stronger coming through. Andrew and I went to 49ers, we went to their facility like maybe two years ago or so. And not everybody was there, you know, like this is like pre-season, it's before anyone had to really report to go there and do sort of these like mandatory practices

and workouts and so forth. But it was just kind of interesting who was there. You know, there was a couple of guys who got cut, you know, shortly thereafter, I think even before the season started, a couple guys got cut and they got cut the following year. And those were guys that had that mindset of, I better be in there as much as possible. I better be around as much as possible

because I'm kind of holding on, barely. But the other person that was in there and he's working out very hard was Fred Warner. And he's one of the better players on the team. He's one of the best linebackers in all of the NFL. And he even went over to the strength coach and he was like, Hey, I'm going to do, you know, this, this and this. And then the coach told us like, yeah, sometimes he just kind of tells me what he's going to do. And I just say, yeah, that sounds great. There you go. Because he's like, I want him to be excited about what he's doing. And I

don't want to be like, no, you gotta do it. So when you get to coaching some of these athletes, I think it's collaborative. Whereas maybe sometimes you're helping someone online or you're helping somebody that's really new and they're like, oh, I wanna do walking lunges instead of a zircher squat.

And you might say, hey, walking lunges are great, but for this block, here's what we're doing, and you might sort of force them into it a little bit. Not that they can't do some of what they like, but just so they can kind of see the benefit of it. Whereas when you're dealing with these higher level athletes, you don't wanna really fuck with any of that too much, probably.

Yeah, you bring up a great point, because I think that's something that I've learned a ton over just the years of being a coach and before like if someone didn't, like for example, the wrestlers, the high school wrestlers I used to work with, if someone didn't do exactly like the exercise that I prescribed, I'd get kind of heated over it. Like these freaking kids, I said dumbbell, lunch steps, not walking lunges like don't they listen. And eventually I kind of realized like I would get some of the athletes that I work with online. They would send me messages where they say like, Hey coach, I'm sorry. Like I know you said zirca squat, but they have a belt squat machine

and it felt really, really fun to do that. So I did that instead. And I realized like, dang, I don't know if that guy would look back at this workout and think like, that was really freaking fun and push himself. If I made sure he freaking did his Urtula squat, but instead he found a belt squat, thought it was really fun, you know, got a great training stimulus out of it. Um, and I think as like the coach athlete relationship grows, you're right. It is so much more collaborative and a lot of it's just like, coach, this is what I did. What do you think? Like, that sounds good. Yeah, cool. One thing, actually, I'm curious what your thoughts are on this, Josh, is like,

the level of the athlete, because like you're mentioning your high schoolers. Um, if one of those high schoolers was like fresh, they're two years into training, they haven't really done shit, right? They probably need to be a little bit more to the plan than just like doing what they feel is right. Because compare that to, let's say a grappler that you're working with who's been at this for more than a decade and they're pretty healthy

and maybe they're pretty strong. Or compare that to a John Jones or Michael, just any type of professional athlete. They didn't get there by chance. Yeah. You know what I mean? They didn't get there with minimal experience. And there's probably things that a coach can help them with. But if they start doing a movement and they're like,

you know what, I don't like how this is feeling on the back of my hamstring right now, probably should trust their intuition, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think kind of to circle back to the start of our conversation when we talked about like what a white belt can do to improve their athleticism for jiu-jitsu is just focus on base movements. And I think especially with high schoolers, that's where I really saw that being

most important. Like, am I really going to like try to explain to a high schooler like the intricacies between a safety squat bar squat, a high bar squat, a low bar squat, like they just need to get their hips parallel and be really strong in that position. So if they wanna do it, holding a kettlebell in front of their hand or in front of their chest or putting a bar on their back, I'm not gonna dog them too much

for not doing it in this very specific way. Cause if we can just get them better at squatting, just however they kind of initially feel comfortable doing it, then we can just get them better at squatting, just however they kind of initially feel comfortable doing it, then we can make a lot of progress in that. And then, you know, taking the squat, for example, if they only do goblet squats and they try to pick up like 150 pound dumbbell and it's killing their wrists and they're like, coach, I don't what's wrong with me today?

And it's like, have you ever tried putting a bar on your back? Like that might be the next best progression for you. You've never really thought of it, but kind of maxing out the benefit of doing a goblet squat at this point when the goal is to train your lower body. And so I think with some athletes, or with newer athletes or athletes that are a little less experienced, I try to keep things as simple as possible. And so I may just say like, look, either pick up a kettlebell or a dumbbell and you're gonna do, you know,

as many goblet squats as you can. Just tell me what number you get at what weight. And then we'll kind of run that for a few weeks and then we'll say, hey, you know, you've been using a dumbbell or a kettlebell. We're gonna use a bar this time. It's gonna be kind of similar because you're gonna put it in the crook of your elbows.

This is called a zirca squat. And I want you to kind of work up to something heavy for say two sets of five Kind of see how that feels and kind of teaching them And gradually getting them exposed to the same Quote-unquote movement just with different tools. It's the same squat just with a different tool and over time Then they start to kind of build like a menu of exercises where they can relay back to me like, Hey, there's a squat. I freaking love that one.

The back squat. I don't know why I just hate it. So do we have to do back squats? And they've already done so many other things to get to that point where it's like, yeah, if you just want to do zirca squats, go for it. That's fine. You and your ladies had an awesome night. You got dinner or you just came back from the gym and it's time for that fun time.

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exercises that you feel are most effective for MMA grappling For jiu-jitsu, you know kind of looking at Like the main movement pattern squat hip, or picking something up from the ground, lunging forwards and backwards and side to side, rotation, and then pressing forwards and then pressing upwards and then pulling down and pulling backwards. So looking at those, something that I think... They're almost looking at it like as if someone's standing up like in a fighting position. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. So for like a squat movement, I'm a huge fan of the Zercher squat. I think once someone gets to a point where they're squatting like close to Zercher squatting

two times their body weight, like that's... If you've made it that far on the zirch or squat, like you're killing it. You probably don't need to keep pushing your zirch or squat. So let's see how things go with a SSB squat or a belt squat and kind of go from there. So I'm big fan of the zirch or squat, big fan of box squats too. It's not only a great teaching tool,

but I think it's great to help people kind of learn how to load up their hamstrings a bit. Sometimes when people do a... Seems a little safer, I'll say. And I also think that the learning curve on it isn't as severe, you know? And you could set the height up appropriately for whatever height your body can handle at the moment.

And I would say like, if you're newer and you really just struggle with squats, I would even suggest you put the thing up you know a couple inches above parallel until you can more appropriately do better form of a squat. Yeah. I freaking love the box squat. It's awesome. For hip hinge movements or deadlift type movements I was really adamant several years ago like

you got a sumo deadlift. It's going to train your hips, you can deadlift more weight. It's gonna work on your mobility for the lower body. And I- I like that a lot. You know, don't forget some of your train of thought, but we forget, you know, because the sumo deadlift got like bastardized and everyone talks about it cheating

and everybody kind of kids around about it. But what a great exercise it is. It really truly is an awesome exercise. And, you know, I don't know a ton about jujitsu, but it seems like you guys are working on the strength of the inner thigh quite a bit, and it seems like a great exercise for that. Yeah, anyone that's done jujitsu for less than a year

has probably pulled their adductor before, and that's the worst. And the sumo deadlift can be a great way to help- Strengthen that up. Yeah, help strengthen your adductor. Shouldn't be the only thing. I think you have a really good video on YouTube or maybe Instagram about groin training,

but sumo deadlift can be great for that. And I think like, you know, when we talk about the zirca squat, the sumo deadlift, the floor press, the Z press, bent over rows, pull ups, like some of those more traditional grappling specific exercises, I think those are great. I just don't think any grappler should get married to those. And over the years, I think I've made the mistake

of only talking about those. People are like, hey, I don't ever do conventional deadlifts because Josh said sumo deadlifts. I think like, well, yeah, maybe you should use a trap bar every once in a while. Or maybe you should do a conventional deadlift or maybe don't stand with your feet perfectly lined up with the bar. Do a staggered stance deadlift or something like that. So, um, over the years I've tried to get a little less adamant about like saying this exercise is the best. Just saying it's a tool and

if you are kind of collecting tools in your tool chest you could solve and fix a lot of great problems if you're working on a car and so these exercises are tools that you could use in your training and just kind of match them up with what would be most appropriate for the goal that you have. I like what you were talking about earlier about like the minimum effective dosages that's really cool. And in jujitsu, we all know majority of the people, they love jujitsu, but when they go off the mats, you know, that's when life takes over, right?

They go work, they got, they got family, they got all these things. And then the lifting stuff gets pretty much ignored because right, we all have these thoughts of like, well, if I don't get an hour in the gym, then it was not worth it. We all spoke about that earlier. But what do you think as far as exposures to it? How many days a week or whatever you want to call it, sessions of lifting, do you think that somebody should at least strive for? We know it's like whatever you can get, but sometimes when you say, yeah, dude, just whatever, 20 minutes, whenever you can, that turns into, well, shit, I don't have 20 minutes,

so I'll miss every session this week, but that's okay, because I don't have that much time, and you said whatever I can get, well, I couldn't get it. However, if you were to say, hey, can you strive for X amount of days in conjunction with three days of hitting the mats? Yeah.

I think with the topic of micro dosing is if someone wakes up and they say like, oh, I don't have time to go to the gym. I'll micro dose it. It's like, unless you're like really dedicated to it, chances are you're probably not going to micro dose it. But if you went to bed knowing that I gotta get up and do this 60 minute workout, like are you really gonna skip or like forget

to do that 60 minute workout? It has such a bigger chunk of time in your day, it's a little bit easier to adhere to. So for Jiu Jitsu athletes who are looking to implement some strength training, you know, you mentioned it, which is do as much as you can, just as long as it doesn't negatively impact your Jiujitsu training.

And at a minimum, I found that most grapplers I've worked with can get amazing results just doing two strength workouts a week. And if you want to mix in some conditioning, you can do like the workout Andrew and I did earlier today, just at the end of one or both of those workouts. And if you find that you're still able to recover and at the end of the week you're like dang it's Saturday and I still feel like kind of antsy and fired up, then maybe for a month or two months try doing three workouts a week and see how you feel. And I've been doing jiu-jitsu since 2017 and I wrestled for a long time before that and I've tried everything from working out once a week to seven days a week and nothing, they've all worked marginally.

And it's just kind of dependent on how much mat time do I have throughout the week and how well am I able to recover. So some seasons of life, you're like, man, work is kind of chilling right now. I'm going to jiu-jitsu six days a week. I don't have much extra energy to dedicate towards lifting. So I might just maintain that minimum of twice a week.

And then things might flip where work gets super busy. I'm not going to jiu-jitsu more than once a week. So I'm just gonna make sure I lift four or five days a week. So I think at a minimum two days a week is probably a great place to start. And then you can kind of toggle up and toggle down based on how well you recover and the other stuff that's going on in your life.

And then like roughly like a 60 minute session. Yeah, yeah, probably 60, 75 minutes. When I was lifting at super training in the morning with the AM crew, the sessions would, I would always like put enough exercises that we should get it done in 75 minutes, but it always took way longer than that because we were just messing around way too much. So if you're on a schedule, like give yourself 60 minutes, you can get everything done.

Things will probably be fine. If you go with your friends, then it might take a little longer. And then outside of like the fan bike workout that we did, what other like cardio specific implementations are you putting in? It depends on the weakness of the athlete So if someone is doing jiu-jitsu most days of the week, so four days a week or four sessions a week or more I usually don't put a whole lot of extra Conditioning maybe we'll put in some a couple sprint intervals

Like 15 seconds on 45 seconds off in one of their workouts, or maybe we'll kind of quote unquote bake in conditioning to some of their dynamic effort work where I'll have them do a set of like banded kettlebell swings and medicine ball throws every minute on the minute for 10 minutes. It's not like traditional conditioning, but you still get a little bit of a conditioning response. If someone is doing less than four sessions a week, in my experience, they usually have a little bit of a conditioning response. If someone is doing less than four sessions a week,

in my experience, they usually have a little bit more time to add some more conditioning. So maybe a run at some point, which I can't believe I'm saying that because a year ago, I would have never said that. But you guys helped change my mind on that. So maybe put in one extra run a week, or maybe they do like a medley of dragging a sled, picking up some sandbags. Coach house is always about, what is he calling? Meathead medleys or something like that. So it's just like having fun. 30, 40 minutes, you just pick up and carry something for a little bit.

You pick up something and throw it. You do a couple of sets of curls mixed in there. So it's like more GPP focused. So I really, the way I look at it is it's all dependent on how much grappling training they're doing. If it's, if most of their training time throughout the week is spent at jujitsu, they probably need a little less extra conditioning.

If they're not doing as much grappling training, they could probably benefit from a little bit more. And then are you recommending like a jujitsu day and then a gym day or do you have them on the same day and then a full day off or whatever? Like how does that look? You know, a couple years ago I used to be really adamant about like, like prescribing like this session has to be on this day to optimize this. Tutor Bampa and periodization said you need to put these sessions here.

And then I just realized like just do whatever guarantees that the work is going to get done. And I think that's going to be different for everybody. I think what's important though is that if people are choosing to do only one form of physical activity every day, so maybe they do three jujitsu sessions and three workouts. And if you do only one of those a day, that's six full days of training throughout the week. So by the end of the week, you're gonna accumulate a lot of fatigue and you gotta be ready for that

and you need to be prepared for that. So throughout the week, don't mess around with your sleep. Throughout the week, don't mess around with your nutrition. Throughout the week, maybe dedicate a day that you're still gonna train, but you're gonna be really intentional

about bringing down the intensity. Maybe don't do all the sparring rounds, maybe do half of them and spend the rest drilling off to the side. So that way you don't wreck yourself by the end of the week. If someone is going to stack lifting and jiu-jitsu in the same day, Chad Wesley Smith has talked about this before where you want to stack your high stimulus training sessions in the same day. Because if you try to do high stimulus training sessions once a day for six days in a row, you are going to burn yourself out. But if you stack your high stimulus sessions and kind of alternate them every other day or maybe once every three days,

you do give your body a little bit more time to recover. So on Monday, maybe you lift and go to jiu-jitsu. If you're still going to go to jiu-jitsu. If you're still gonna go to jiu-jitsu on Tuesday, dial it back and keep things pretty chill. Wednesday, maybe you do lift and go to jiu-jitsu again, but you know that you're gonna take Thursday off. And then Friday, you're not crushed from all the training you've been doing all week.

You have a little bit more to give on that Friday session and that Saturday session. So there's a lot of toggling up and down with the dials, I think, when it comes to how to balance Jiu-Jitsu and lifting in the gym throughout the week. And if someone's having like a tough time, like I guess being like motivated to do some of it, I think a great suggestion is just to do it every day.

I know we did talk about burnout and we, but like sometimes you might have to just make that commitment and maybe not necessarily with jujitsu because I would just imagine that it can beat you up too much. I do know there's people that practice it every day and they do great with that, but it's probably a little too much. But with gym stuff, you know, pulling a sled, med balls,

like there's so many options that I would see nothing wrong with someone going every day, just to give them enough of a challenge for them to get into it. And if someone's new and they just like, they've just been super wishy washy with the gym forever, it's like, just go every day, maybe pick two to three exercises.

It's all that needs to be done for the day. Maybe do two to three sets of those two to three different. That's all that needs to be done for the day. Maybe do two to three sets of those two to three different exercises and that's it. And then come back again the next day. Because again, sometimes I'll say 10 minute walk or something, sometimes these things, I think you just kind of get brushed off because the challenge isn't like,

they don't have to like step up to it. You know? Yeah. What I like about what you said about doing something every day is that you really do, if you're going to do something every day, you really do have to restructure so many other things. Like if someone said, Oh, I'm only going to go work out once a week.

You just kind of look at the week and say, like, I'm going to figure out how to squeeze it in on Wednesday. I don't really know. I'm going to do that. But if you commit to doing something every day and you open your calendar and you're like, geez, I got to do that. But if you commit to doing something every day and you open your calendar and you're like, geez, I gotta move some stuff around if I'm really serious about committing to this daily habit. And I think you're right.

Scheduling it's important. Yeah, scheduling it and then doing it every day, you end up building that consistency. And then, maybe you dial things back after a while, depending on what it is, but yeah, I think that's awesome. What are some of the big, like three big injuries that you see or common injuries you see with jujitsu? Biggest one that I've seen is the neck, the knees,

and then to some extent, like, just, depending on what kind of athlete you are, low back. And I think the neck is the biggest one. I've had too many neck injuries and they've all freaking sucked, but you are just getting your neck cranked on constantly. And when you get excited, you don't want to tap because you're like, I'm not, I'm not choking out, but my neck is going to break.

And I'll wait till the very last second. And then in the moment, you don't feel it. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing too. You don't feel it till like you're driving home or you get out of the car and you're just like, Oh, that's right. So yeah, you're absolutely right. I have a story about this. This was 2019. I had done jiu-jitsu in the morning and then this was when I was still working here at Slingshot and I was driving to work and by the time I got to work, I couldn't turn my head to the right anymore and I would feel like the bulge and feel like it press on the nerves a bit and it was

I mean it was super frustrating because it's like man I know like the choke wasn't completely set in but I still decided like I'm not I'm gonna grid it out because it's a Crank not a choke. That was a dumb idea But neck for sure people's necks are constantly getting banged up. What do we do about it? I think I'm not a physical therapist, so take this with a grain of salt. But one thing that's helped me with my neck pain is just neck decompression.

So there's a thing called a neck hammock I found on Amazon. Basically put your head in it, and you kind of lay on your back, and it's attached to a doorknob or something. And you can scoot forward, and it just kind of pulls on the. You lay down on your back, you're not like in a chair or can you do either one? I don't know if you could do it in a chair this one you you lay on your back. Okay. Yeah And so does it pull it pulls upward pulls you okay. Yep. Yeah, so it's pulling upwards, but you're laying

I got you kind of going that way and that was super helpful for my own neck injuries because I think Like there's just so much compression Yeah, it's that thing right there that thing feels amazing so just decompressing some of the discs I think can be really beneficial and I think when people experience neck injuries, they jump to just loading flexion and extension based movements They don't really take their time and building up Isometric strength and also working on some of that decompression to kind of give their neck a break. They kind of just like, oh, it hurts.

Well, I'm going to load it and start doing stuff like this. So I think there's a time and place for that. But I think first, like if your neck is really banged up, try to get some decompression, try to build up some isometric strength and then just train smarter. That one looks dope. That's great. Yeah, I haven just train smarter. That one looks dope. That's great. Yeah, I haven't tried that one. That looks crazy.

I've seen you set up things like this in the gym with just like a band and stuff like that, right? Yep. Just a band on like the dip bar, I think you had it hanging from there, and then you were lying on the ground, and it was tractioning your, so you know, you gotta be cautious

on kind of where you put these things and how you set it up, but people can probably experiment a little bit and just find something that's giving them a gentle decompression. Yeah, absolutely. I think with specific neck exercises, there's a whole bunch of great stuff. You put out a video on neck strength, which is awesome. But I also think people just need to like tap earlier and not get so caught up in training

because at least from my own experience, my neck was killing me. I had a, I had injured my neck and then it was leading to nerve damage in my left arm and I got pinned under 135. Like I couldn't just press on that side. And it's weird. Cause like, it's not like it was heavy. It's just like my tricep just stopped working. This was in 2019. Damn.

And I couldn't do a pushup either. So I would go down and then I could push up on my right side but my left side just wasn't doing anything. And I think the lockdown was the best thing that could have happened for my neck because it was eight weeks of no one touching my neck. And when I came back to Jiu-Jitsu, I was actually able to have some function back in my arm

and things got way better just because I was forced to take time off training. And that can go for any injury with the knees, with the low back. If you need to just take time off, you may benefit from taking a little bit of time off so that way you can improve your longevity. So maybe not just from like a training perspective,

maybe not so much like, hey, train the fuck out of your neck and hey, walk backwards with a slight of tone. Maybe just be more cautious in your jujitsu training. And then along with that, let's also talk about, strengthening the neck and having better mobility through the neck. Yep, yeah, I think we can almost look at it from like a preventative standpoint

and then a rehabilitative standpoint. If your neck isn't injured and you're not doing any neck strength training, like definitely build up isometric strength in your neck. Definitely build up your traps. Definitely build rotational neck strength, neck flexion strength, all that good stuff if you're not injured yet.

If you are injured, then you may need to take some time off the mat and get that thing looked at. Same thing with your knees., if you are injured then you may need to take some time off the mat and get that thing looked at Same thing with your knees like if you blew your knee out and you're just kind of putting a brace or band-aid on it Like it's too late. Yeah, you had a knee thingy going on. Yeah too long ago, right? Mm-hmm Yeah, almost two years ago. I tore my LCL Which sucked because I was doing a submission on somebody else and I freaking tap myself Which sucked because I was doing a submission on somebody else and I freaking tap myself

But that was I think all the knee specific stuff that I was doing before definitely helped At least I believe it definitely helped that injury not be as severe as it potentially could have been so training my hips Making sure that I can move an internal and external rotation, building up my hamstrings to be as strong as possible. Obviously doing stuff like backwards sled reverse Nordics to train up the quads. I think all of those things were helpful. And so if we think about like trying to, we can never a hundred percent prevent an injury, but we can definitely start putting in some work to decrease risk of injury as much as possible. That comes with just getting stronger and improving your ability to move. So if you can't turn your head very far,

you should probably improve your ability to turn your head. And if your neck keeps getting folded over, when you roll, you should probably strengthen your neck to not get folded over. Same thing with your knees. If your knees, the muscles above and below your knees are weak, you should probably get those stronger. If your hips are really stiff and immobile, are weak. You should probably get those stronger. If your hips are really stiff and immobile, you should probably take a look at those. Same thing with your feet. And then I think some of the hip stuff

also just helps with the low back. Cause a lot of times if people have stiff hips when they're getting pressed down upon in bottom position playing guard, a lot of that pressure goes into their low back and that can be pretty debilitating. I'm curious for both of you guys and Suma and Josh when it comes to skill acquisition for jiu-jitsu What have you guys found that has helped you again acquire more skills for whatever it may be technique submissions movement, etc I'm a huge fan of Greg Souders and everything he's been doing with the constraints led approach

or constraint based games. I think that's what he calls them. The ecological approach. Yeah. Those have been freaking awesome. And ever since he came on the podcast, I think maybe eight months ago or maybe almost a year ago, I've been trying to do more of that in my own training. And I think from a skill development standpoint, I've seen my progress skyrocket. It's been freaking awesome. And so Greg Souders is on the Power

Project. He would be able to explain it much better than I can. But you can almost think of it as instead of like having someone show you a technique and then you just practice that technique against a dead fish training partner, you could see a certain end goal like you're going to try to get chest to chest connection from half guard and then you kind of build a game with some rules around it that help you work on some of the things that are going to help you get to that outcome. I'm still pretty new to all of this. There's a lot of terminology that just flies over my head. But the ecological approach, the constraint-based games,

that's helped a ton with skill acquisition. Yeah, constraint-based games are great. I'd say outside of that, it would be a good idea, especially if you've been doing Jiu-Jitsu for a while, if there's something you're trying to work on or a guard or a position, to find an athlete that's at a pretty decently high level, that's doing that within the competition.

Because you can always see it in an instructional, and instructionals will give you direct things. And honestly, there are some really good instructionals, because you'll hear something that really helps position click. But outside of that, watch matches, and see how people put this together, see how people do it in action.

Because then that's like a place where you're going to be able to see, okay, the opponent really doesn't want this to be successful, but it still is. How did he end up have that happen? I think a lot of people don't watch as much Jiu-Jitsu as they potentially could. And like you noticed, you watched a move recently, and then you ended up using that move in your class when someone did the same type of thing. So watching jujitsu can be super effective if you take the time to do it.

And that's why I was like so it caught my eye right because exactly what you said it was in competition, right? It's like the proving grounds, right? And it worked there. So I'm like, well, shoot, it could probably work on the training mats. Yeah, so that it's So I'm gonna ask this question we talked about this earlier You do see some lower belts trying stuff that they probably shouldn't be working on Because they give up position and they walk on to a leg or a limb whatever it may be and they're hanging on to it for dear life because They saw something on Instagram and they're hanging onto it for dear life because they

saw something on Instagram and they try it on the mats. What are your guys' opinion on people watching stuff on Instagram and then trying to replicate it in Jiu Jitsu? I think I kind of, I'm kind of split because on one end of the spectrum, I think if someone's really excited, they're probably going to be searching for stuff online because they're so fired up about it. And I wouldn't want to necessarily kill all that excitement and be like, get down, white belt, like stop looking up Jujitsu on Instagram. I don't care how much you love it. That just, that doesn't seem like a great way to further grow someone's excitement.

But I do think there kind of is an issue. I know I've made this mistake where I get really fixated on one type of garden. It's the only thing I do. And then everyone else figures out how to stop it. And then it's like, Casio, what do I do? How do I have a better guard? And, you know, usually Casio will say something like, well, you just don't do the same thing over and over and over again.

That worked for a month. Just be better. Yeah. Get better. Work on some other stuff. So I think it depends I I think it's great that social media can like curate all of these new techniques and all of these moves but I do think you know if someone was only learning jujitsu from Instagram University that would leave a lot of holes in their game yeah I think yeah and I agree with you somewhat but I also think that like, you

know, everybody who's doing jiu-jitsu, right, they're going to have their own style of the way that they grapple. And there might be something or multiple things that somebody sees on IG that looks pretty flashy, and they'll try it and it'll work and then it won't. But then that's why they call it human chess. Because when you do something, and then people figure it out, then you figure out what to do to potentially further that technique or to counter what they've helped you figure out. And then when you counter that and then your training partners figure out how to counter that, you continue finding new pathways of getting to the destination of the tap or the

submission or the top position. So it's one of those things where it's like, I know some professors get frustrated at it because they have their curriculum, but I also think like, I think there are so many people that are doing so many cool things when it comes to jujitsu and it would almost be somewhat foolish to only learn from your professor

because your professor only knows what they know. It doesn't mean that they're not a great professor and they haven't helped a lot of people learn Jujitsu, but at the same time, you might be doing something they haven't seen before. And that's not a bad thing, you know what I mean? It's a new problem to solve. Yeah, it's almost like being dogmatic with your inputs,

right, because if you're getting instruction from one outlet, then you you're getting instruction from one, you know, one outlet, then you know, you might have this one singular thought, but then you go to someone else's open mat and you're like, oh, okay, this is different. This is hard. And for some of like the more experienced people listening,

I totally get how like a new person looking up something and trying something, there's probably so many holes within the way that they're doing the technique, but at the same time, over time, these things are ironed out. Over time, people's technique gets cleaner. They're, all these things get cleaned up. But to kill somebody's creativity

because they saw it on Instagram, I don't know. Why? Why? I mean, John Jones is a prime example of someone who's watched something and then doesn't imagine knocks people out. There are fighters who watch things in video games and they're like, Oh, that's cool. Let me fucking do what I saw in tech and then they fucking it works.

Right. So it's like, I mean, you got a body, try this shit out. Well, and there's nothing wrong with like maybe being a little delusional. Maybe you're 260 pounds and not in the best shape. And you watch Demetrius Johnson, you're like, I think I can pull that off. It's actually kind of a good thing that you think you can pull that off. I mean, you'll find out, you're gonna try the technique

and maybe it's not gonna work to your favor, but kind of along those same lines, something that helped me a lot with powerlifting was to, I'd watch something that like Ed Cohn did, and I'd be like, oh man, that's amazing. Okay, I'm gonna go in the gym and mess around with that and try it. And I would try it and it was like,

and that was way harder than I thought it would be. And then I started watching people that were maybe of similar height to me or similar like body type. And then I was like, oh, when I go and do what that guy's, okay, that's easier for me to mimic this guy because this guy is around the same height as me. Whereas Ed Kohn is shorter and he's able to take advantage of those long ass arms and everything.

And so it was literally very difficult or maybe near impossible for me to actually mimic what he was doing. So it might be something to kind of keep in mind when you're watching people do jujitsu and you're trying to get a grasp for it. You watch like the highest level people that are maybe different body type than you. Not that you can't do that, not that you can't get there, you don't wanna put a limit on it, but at the same time,

it just might not be in the cards for you right now. And you might say, oh well, let me try to find people that are maybe of similar belt to me or similar size or have a similar style. And then you kind of probably try to mimic. That's probably gonna be a little easier. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

I think we've all... Oh, no, I was just gonna ask. So when trying to build out your game, like Insuma had recommended that I try out collar sleeve guard and it just, it was not clicking. Like I just, I wasn't able to really work. Like I just, I couldn't get it to work period. Like somebody would just do the simple thing of like a simple little backstep

and like, Oh, there goes my leg off their hip and they're past my guard. Just like they did two seconds ago. But then when I started working like single leg X to X guard, I was like, Oh, this is working. This feels great. So when it comes to building out your game was I like, yeah, when you're, when it comes to building out your game and something happens the way it did with me, where like, this is just not clicking. Do you have to be more patient with it and try it until it

finally works or do you just recognize like, yo, this maybe, this is not for me and maybe I'll come back to it later. Let me try something else. Man, that's a good question. I don't know. Let me think about that. What do you think, Encima? Man, that's a good question. I don't know. Let me think about that. What do you think, Ensima? There are certain guards that certain body types are going to gravitate towards.

Stockier guys are going to gravitate more towards half guard. They're not going to gravitate towards an X guard, a collar sleeve, a spider. They don't have the legs sized down the length. Probably you don't have the arm length either to do that. They're probably also gonna gravitate towards butterfly stuff. So when there's a body type thing

that there's a lot of sense there. But secondly, nothing makes sense immediately for a lot of people. And if we're aiming for something to make sense immediately and the body type thing isn't even an issue, but if we're just like, this should click and it's not clicking and there's frustration, that's because your technique isn't what it needs to be.

It's not because it's not a guard for me, et cetera, because if you have a fairly standard physical capacity, you have fairly standard long arms and fairly standard long legs, there's a lot of things in jujitsu that can click. X guard, a collar sleeve, a butterfly guard, a half guard. All these things can work. It's your lack of technique.

That's the reason why it's not working, not because of anything else. There are certain things that might click a little bit faster. And I think for most people, they should do what they're most interested in doing. So if you're not interested in learning a spider guard, or you're not interested in learning a collar sleeve,

but you're more interested in learning an X guard, you're not interested in learning a collar sleeve, but you're more interested in learning an X guard and you gravitate towards that and you enjoy it, learn that. But at the same time, it's one of those things where if something's not clicking, I personally would not quit out of frustration. I would figure out why is it's not clicking because I know this is actually going to help my game. And the reason why it's not clicking because I know this is actually gonna help my game and the reason why it's not Clicking is because of me not because of it. Yeah, that's how I look at it How do you interpret something if you look at like someone like a BJ Penn who just has like that? ridiculous mobility with his like legs and hips and he's a

What does he compete at like one? He used to compete at like 160 pounds 150 pounds something like that mmm, like what if you pounds, something like that. Like what if you've watched someone like that and you're a bigger guy, do you sometimes think like, even though you're mobile, you sometimes think like, maybe that's not for me or when you see a move like that, how do you kind of think about it? Just like how we were doing rope flow

and you were seeing what my shoulder was doing behind my head, right? And how the body was moving. A lot of things, like, I think a lot of things is like, yeah, there are some people who have crazy levels of mobility, but there are also some people who are doing these, it's almost like an invisible type of rotation or technique

to allow them, their bodies to get into a specific position. So some people might look at something that BJ Penn does, maybe he does have a just a crazy level of hip mobility, but maybe there's a rotation going on in his front foot that's allowing him to open up his hip. You're not paying attention to both sides of how he's moving. You just look at that one foot go up over his head

and you're not thinking about the rest of the body. There's something else that's helping the body to move in a fashion. And usually it's not just the one crazy mobile shoulder. Usually it's the rotation of the spine that allows the shoulder to get into the position that lets the athlete do said thing. So I think when we're paying attention to when you're watching matches and seeing people do things, instead of looking zoning on the one thing, look at what is the body doing that allows their body to get into that position?

Because there's something there, like there probably is a good level of mobility, but there's an aspect of how they're moving and contorting the rest of their body to let them get into these somewhat crazy looking positions. That's really interesting. And maybe you've experienced this as you've been doing Jiu-Jitsu a lot longer. Do you feel like when you got into Jiu-Jitsu, you almost had to learn how to learn Jiu-Jitsu? And then once you kind of crossed over the threshold of learning how to learn, you're like, okay, I may not like master a movement right away, but I understand the process so much better

of how to learn a jujitsu move and can start working it. I know it's gonna take maybe like four to six weeks to really get it down and hit it consistently. That fly just loves you, doesn't it? It's on you. It hit me like crazy. I'm gonna try not to move. No, you're good.

Yeah. I was just gonna get it with his tongue. Give me some chopsticks. I'll damage you. Yeah. That's why. But it seems like if you're brand new to something, you almost have to learn how to learn. And then once you kind of cross over that threshold, it's like, okay, I got the basics of learning how to learn new stuff in this particular area. And then I can be a little bit better at implementing new stuff.

Holy shit, why is it? You gotta kill that fly. It's going nuts. I agree with you there. There's, like, over time, more things start to make sense. But also, there's something where like the other day at Casio's last week, we've been working on Butterfly. And one thing that you notice with newer people,

God, I'm sorry for you, bro, that fly is annoying. Just swiping at it because the camera's on in Seymour right now anyways. So what happens like when you see some of the newer people working on that, right, is they're trying to use their arms a lot and they're really trying to force the movement. But then they're like, oh shit, no, I need to use my legs too. And then they start using their legs, but then they don't do enough of the sweep from their arms. But as you become more experienced, you learn to use your body as a full unit. You learn to use everything, all the leverages, which is why, like Mark, you were asking earlier

about like, why do some people feel stronger? Certain people that are like 170, 180, the reason why they feel so much stronger is because they know how to use all their body to create pressure onto somebody's point. Rather, a new big guy just gonna use his upper body and push in, but his legs aren't really doing much. Experienced grapplers and people who have experience know how to use their whole body to do a specific movement.

That also ends up taking less energy and it also sucks more for the opponent. And when learning things, what does you get deeper into Jiu-Jitsu, you learn how the whole body moves as a unit to make something happen versus just using your arms to do something. You learn how to use your arms and your legs to rotate and do a specific movement. That's a really good point. So what are you going to do when you grow out of that chain right there? Your neck is just getting bigger and bigger and eventually it's just going to friggin

burst right off your body. Gotta move to a, I don't know how long this one is, but I gotta move to a bigger one. You were mentioning in the beginning of the show about how your mindset changed on like how to coach a white belt because there's so many different types of white belts. It might be a white belt that's 50, it might be a white belt that's 20 and so on. Have your views changed on anything else like drastically

in the last maybe year or two has been something where that's, you know, you did mention like rope flow and a couple of other things. Is there anything kind of, you did mention running too. Like what's been some of the difference with running? Like, and you said that you test retest. And so what did the retest look like from running? Yeah. Oh man.

So I, I'm honestly still shocked like that. That I would even say on this podcast, I run twice a week. Run around like a sissy. That's right. Yeah. All those years you telling me, settle gate, go take a lap. Yeah.

I'm catching up on those laps. Yeah. So I had, I was pretty like anti-running, just personally, cause I didn't think it was that much fun. And we were, my family was in Sacramento. We were at a coffee shop. It was in downtown Saxon. There were some homeless people around

and there's one coffee shop that kind of shares a patio with a restaurant And so someone had left like a $5 tip on the table and this homeless guy to come up and take it and my mom It was my me and my mom and my brother my dad and my mom was like me hole go get him go chase him And I was like I'm not gonna go chase that guy over five bucks and besides like if I ran like that I'd probably pull my hamstring and she was like, I'm not gonna go chase that guy over five bucks. And besides, if I ran like that, I'd probably pull my hamstring. And she was like, oh, your poor hamstring. And when she said that, I was like, damn it. She's right. I should probably improve my athletic capacity to run a little bit

and not blow my hamstring apart. So... You didn't get this guy and shake him down for the five miles. No. I thought we... I thought your mom wanted you to chase somebody down though, before it was... Yeah. That's interesting.

Anyways... That's an interesting predicament. I probably would have done anything my mom would say. So I would have, like, been tunnel visioned. I probably wouldn't have thought about it. I'd probably be halfway down the street. Yeah. So anyway, that was honestly, like, as funny as it is,

that was a pretty big wake up call to think like, dang, I just realized that if I needed to run, I'd probably wreck myself. And if I needed to like do anything more than run that wasn't specifically lifting or jiu-jitsu, I might wreck myself also. Not just from like a combat perspective, but just like an athletic perspective. If I wanted to play basketball, I'd probably mess myself up. And so that was kind of like the first kind of like drop in my brain. Like you should probably improve your capacity to do some running stuff.

And so I looked at a lot of the stuff you were talking about, Mark, a lot of the stuff and see that you were putting out a lot of stuff. Our buddy Graham Barefoot Sprinter was putting out And I decided like, okay, I'm gonna, it's gonna be really hard for me to build this habit by myself. So I'm gonna find someone that's good at running and try to just tag along with them. And so a friend of mine from church, he runs marathons.

He ran track in college. Like he's a really good runner. So I was like, dude, I'm gonna be real slow but I'm just gonna try to keep up and just try to learn from you about some of this running stuff. And so him and I started running twice a week and it wasn't anything crazy.

It was, there's one loop by his house that I think to start, it took us maybe 45, 50 minutes and we would just kind of talk throughout the whole thing. So it was pretty zone two conversational pace, not nasal breathing the entire time, cause we were talking, but when he was saying something, I was trying to get back not nasal breathing the entire time because we were talking, but when he was saying something, I was trying to get back to nasal breathing and vice versa. And we just did that twice a week for probably three, four months. And I didn't really test

it all that much until there was an open mat that I remember I went to and I like just crushed it. Like I, I didn't do all the rounds But I think in I think I did like 17 or 18 six-minute rounds And I was tired afterwards, but before I was never able to get to like 18 six-minute rounds I'd probably get the 10 be like peace out guys. I'm I'm out of here important to make sure people know like You're still doing other forms of conditioning. Correct. You didn't remove those. So like running didn't like necessarily save the day.

It's just an add on that assisted. Exactly. Yeah. That's, that's a really good point. I was kind of carefully and gingerly mixing it into my training week. So that's how like I definitely felt a lot better at OpenMap, but a really interesting like practical piece of evidence was I'm, I've been pretty good about tracking my resting heart rate. Just first thing in the morning

when I wake up, um, just on one of those, uh, blood oximeter things. Probably like 120. Well, yeah, not recently. Cause you're always fired up, ready to go. I wake up, bam. So I remember I had been tracking it for a while and it was hovering like really low 60s. So 60, 61, 62. There was a really hard couple of weeks of training that might like jump up to maybe

like 66 or 67. And so I've just tracked it and the other day, this is probably a month ago, I just looked back and saw like, man, I wonder where things are at. And the lowest it got to was around 43. And the highest it's been over the last couple of months is like maybe 52 on like a really hard week of training. So at least seeing improvement in my resting heart rate was pretty impressive and yeah, that's probably been the biggest thing I've changed my mind on. I still think that some

grapplers who aren't in the physical condition yet should be really careful about how hard they run when they first start getting into it. Because the first time you and I ran together, my achilles and knees were kind of wrecked afterwards. And even the first time running with my buddy, my lower body was wrecked a little bit and I had to take a day or two off a jujitsu. So definitely kind of ease into things

twice as slow as you think you should go and then gradually build up your capacity from there. And then what's she been doing with your diet? Has there been any big changes from last year when you were on the podcast? You look like you're always getting in better shape, but has there been any major change or shift? Not, not a whole lot. Um, this is more recent within like the last two weeks. Um, but listening to some of the stuff you guys have been talking about with fasting. I did a ton of intermittent fasting Like in 2015 in 2016 and I hadn't really revisited it That much since then so I figured well, maybe like once a week

I'll do a 24-hour fast just to see how it feels So I've been playing around with that don't really have much else to share is like I got crazy shredded if I'm doing a 24 hour fast just to see how it feels. So I've been playing around with that. Don't really have much else to share as like, I got crazy shredded from doing 24 hour fast. But one thing I will say is that it did kind of point out just how much I snack when I'm bored. Like I would set the timer like, okay, gonna fast for 24 hours. I had to catch myself like walking around

in the kitchen for no reason. Like, what am I doing? It's like, I'm not eating anything, but why am I here? Oh yeah. I'm in my kitchen all the time. Yeah. Fasted or not, I'm just waiting. Just hanging out.

I'm like a dog, you know, your dog sits right next to you, like when you got your food. Have you guys seen that old British cartoon called Wallace and Gromit? It's like an old claymation. I've heard of it, I've never seen it. Oh, I know that, yeah. Yeah, there's an episode where he has these robot pants.

Have you guys know what I'm talking about? I haven't ever seen it. Okay. I don't know if Andrew, you could look it up. Wallace and Gromit robot pants. Anyway, this guy, he's an inventor and he makes these like special robot pants. And of course, at night, his pants walk him to the kitchen. That, yeah, that's it right there. His pants walk him in the kitchen. That, yeah, that's it right there. His pants walk him to the kitchen and force him to eat?

It's been forever since I've seen it, but yeah, it just does a bunch of goofy stuff like this. Oh, this looks familiar. But that's how I felt doing the 24 hour fast. Like my lower body would just take me to the kitchen for no reason. Was this on in the 90s? I think so. Okay, this looks familiar.

Let me ask you this, John. He's walking on the roof. So the running stuff has been making a difference and that's really cool. My first question on that, and then I'll ask you another one, but my first question is, when you did start doing just the longer runs,

was there anything you noticed that was uncomfortable in terms of like the gait? Is there anything that helped you do those runs? Was there a certain footwear that was helpful or not helpful? I would imagine barefoot footwear on concrete isn't the most comfortable, right? Yeah, I wore, so I have a pair of ultra running shoes.

I can't remember what model, but that was really helpful because it kind of forces me to stay on my toes a little bit more and Think about kind of running on the balls of my feet as opposed to just heel striking the whole time The other thing that I found helpful was something that you had said which was jog as slow as possible Like if you saw someone Jogging down the street you don't everybody knows what jogging looks like and everybody can see how that's different than a walk. So jog, but don't worry about speed. Just jog as slow as possible. And so that's something I worked on a lot was like, okay, jog as slow as possible. Um, you know,

really focus on nasal breathing, all that stuff. Anytime I was running by myself. Um, and then the other thing too was just really taking care of my feet before and after. We gotta kill that. Sorry. This lie is gonna get smoked soon. This lie is the most persistent fuck ever. Jesus. Did you get it?

Did you get it? I freaking hope so. I whacked towards it. It seemed like it kind of flopped off. So maybe you got it. It's not flying. Oh, fuck. You just have to wait a little bit

and it'll show back up on the headphones. On camera, Mark says. Being able to handle the stresses of your day, the stress of exercise, and being able to stick to your nutrition plan takes good rest and good quality sleep the night before. And if your mouth is opening during sleep or if you're snoring,

well, your sleep quality is compromised. That's why we partnered with the best mouth tape in the game, Hostage tape. If you have a beard, it's gonna stay on. If you have a CPAP, it's gonna stay on. This tape is not gonna fall off your mouth like most other tapes do when you're asleep and to enhance the way you breathe through your nose, they also have no strips. Head over to hostage tape dot com slash power project where you can get a three month supply of hostage tape for only 65 cents a night. On top of that, you're gonna receive a free pack

of nail strips as well as a bedside tin. Again, that's at hostagetape.com slash power project. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. All right, so you're saying taking care of the feet. Taking care of the feet. That was a big thing. Cause one thing I noticed that when I first started running, it felt like, even though I was wearing minimalist shoes

that had a wide toe box and all that stuff, it still felt like my feet were like fists, and I was running on fists. That was really weird, because I'd never really felt that before. So I started looking at barefoot sprinter stuff, doing the hand foot glove, doing, just kind of like you guys have some of these pads here

where you can like mash your feet on and stuff, doing a lot of myofascial release stuff. And then- That stuff helped you out? Yeah, yeah, it helped a lot. So I would do it before and after my run. And I noticed quite a big difference if I didn't do it, like my feet would start barking at me

if I like rushed out the door and didn't work on my feet beforehand. So that helped a lot. Okay. And then my last question on on at least for now is, is there anything because you've been you always are learning and adding new things to what you do. But what are the things that maybe you're the most excited about in terms of what you're adding into your repertoire of knowledge or just anything in general when it comes to this physical shit? There's a lot of well, not a lot of stuff, but I'd say three things in particular.

Brady Vollmering, Dak Performance was here recently. His stuff is awesome. And so I've been doing a lot of his slow lowers and extreme isometrics. I think Jay Schroeder or Schrader maybe was doing extreme isometrics a long time ago. So I've been doing those and those have been really beneficial. And for those listening, the slow lower or the, well, we'll do slow lowers first. Imagine like you're doing a pushup and you're going to do a tempo, but the tempo to go from

the top of the pushup all the way fully bottomed out at the bottom is going to take like one to three minutes. So it's a long time. And one thing that I found was so many muscles fatigue as you're working your way down. And so you're like in my like pec minor, I could feel that working way more than if I was just doing a regular pushup

or dumbbell bench press. And then once you reach the bottom, I found it's great for mobility because it's such a loaded stretch. You're kind of easy. You can control how much you want to let yourself sink into it as opposed to just kind of jumping into a stretch. And so I found that really helped with mobility and just feeling really strong at some of those end ranges. The extreme isometrics are similar in the sense that you kind of start bottomed out at one of those movements.

So like start at the very bottom of like a ring push-up or something like that. And those can be kind of tough because you are kind of really just going at the most intense position right from the start of the one to three minutes. So I've been mixing in slow lowers for a while now I'm doing the extreme isometrics. The other thing I really liked was Brady's impulse exercises on the hyper arm. I think that would be so huge for jujitsu athletes because imagine like how a pendulum would swing

on the reverse hyper and then you just attach that to any movement like a curl, like external rotation of the shoulder, hamstring stuff. And Graham had mentioned this to me when I was telling him about it. He said, you know what, that's actually a really good idea because most injuries happen when some kind of crazy force just jumps on a muscle or a tendon. It's not like, I'm sure people maybe have injured themselves doing curls, but if you do a really slow curl, you're probably not going to like destroy your bicep and obliterate

your bicep tendon. It's because something yanks you really hard and that's what kind of snaps that tendon off. And so gradually and slowly exposing your body to be able to have that load jump on your muscles and tendons with something like an impulse or one of those hyper arm things I found super beneficial. And then this one's kind of weird, Andrew, I don't know if you could look up

AFSM exercises from Cal Deets. These have been awesome. I've been loving mixing these in. I think Cal Deets has like a second coming of his book coming out. Really? Yeah. I'm gonna have to check that out.

Yeah, we'll have him on the show, help him promote the product. But yeah, I mean, have to check that out. Yeah, we'll have them on the show help them promote the product, but Yeah, I mean he put out that tear system. What's a... Triphasic training? Triphasic training. There you go. Yeah, he put that out years ago and It was a big hit with a lot of people. Oh this stuff? Yeah, these are awesome. And so in some of the videos that Keldeets talks about for this he says The most explosive athletes don't just recruit a muscle really, really fast

and explosively, but they relax the opposite muscle really, really fast. So oftentimes, you know, your limitation on how explosive you could be may not be because you can't flex fast enough, it may be because the opposite muscle can't relax. Yeah, both ways, right? Exactly.

In that example there, it looked like that guy's leg was in a band, but he was getting resistance going forward on almost like a leg extension and a leg curl, right? Back and forth. Yep. So I've been mixing in a ton of these. Oh, that looks amazing. Right?

Yeah, that one lights you up. Wow, I'm gonna add that stuff in. So I think this could be so beneficial for so many people because not only is it gonna help improve your explosiveness and your ability to contract one muscle quickly and relax the opposite muscle quickly, but in Simi, you had asked about like white belts who don't come from an athletic background.

This is amazing for people to build up explosiveness without needing to try to do like an explosive box squat with bands or an explosive bench press. They may not have the technical proficiency to do that explosively, but they could do something like that. That takes almost no technique and you just light yourself up with those.

And you can modify it in any way you want that feels really good on your joints. So maybe doing like a seated leg extension version feels better than standing or your shoulder. Maybe you can't do a lot of shoulder work, but you have some band assistance. I've done that one before, that's tough. Yeah?

That's really tough. With the dumbbell too? I haven't done it with a dumbbell, no, just with a straight band. Wow. Go to Brian McGinty's page real quick on Instagram, Andrew. Just want to add something real quick back about the running and I want to see what your thoughts are on this.

You think it would be a good idea for most people in jujitsu just to maybe like as a first goal to get out of the way is just to comfortably be able to run or to be able to jog maybe for about 20 minutes. I think that's a great idea. Yeah. Just kind of get yourself to that range.

And if you, if you can get yourself, you know, past that capacity, you might not have to really worry about it too much. Like if you can go out for a half hour run and the half hour run doesn't really have, it doesn't like land on you in any real negative way, then you, you kind of probably accomplished what you need to accomplish in your jujitsu running career. Yeah. Like I don't think, you know, personally, I don't think it needs to be pushed too far beyond that. Of course you can get into like track work and doing 400s and 200s and I'm sure that

that would have a lot of merit and have a place, but you know, just getting yourself to be able to run for 20 minutes straight comfortably at some point would probably be a good idea. Yeah, I think that's an excellent idea, especially since I think I realized for myself I missed the physical capacity to do that. Seem as gonna smack the shit out of me. No, no.

Here we go. I'm gonna go down like Larry Wheels from that slap to the... That was actually about to do it, but I'm going through it now. That was nuts. This, what you showed me, had me thinking about this, that you see a lot of Ryan McGinty doing.

Because think about how explosive this athlete has to be, but then think about the ranges that he's getting into with those hand weights. Yeah. Right? This is another thing I think would be a... That falls in line with kind of what we're talking about there. I need to find these hand weights so I can start doing more of this stuff because I've been wanting to for a while Just haven't done those is that like a glove that they're wearing It's like a weighted it's like a weighted med ball that has a handle that you can like hold like this

Oh, like you can really like a little bit like Donnie Thompson's product a little bit like that Oh where you like put your hand inside the the bell. Yeah, it's just like outside outside here. I think okay Yeah, it's more. Yeah, it's more of a handle. You don't put your hand inside the bell? Yeah, it's just like outside here, I think. It's more of a handle. You don't put your hand inside of it. But he does a lot of this type of stuff. Looks like a kid throwing a tantrum. Yeah. Well, actually, that's actually a great thing that you're bringing up. I remember when Jake was little and he'd cry and move his arms around. I'm like, I just want to try that. I just want to try that and see.

And I try to mimic it and do it. It's like, you can't move like them. I mean, you can, you certainly can. You got to like retrain yourself to do that though, to have that kind of reflex or impact. It's nuts the way they can move, you know, tremble their whole body. Including the pool one, click that phrase.

Those pool things are sick. I'm assuming it's, yep. You know, so it's doing a similar thing kind of to the band, but it's in the pool because you're working against that resistance. It's funny, it's like, I used to be able to do stuff like that when I was a kid. And then like after we had him on, I tried to do it.

I'm like, whoa, like it's weird that that skill is like gone. So slow. Like, so slow in comparison. I just remember like being like, being a kid and laying down, it was like, I'd wrestle with my brother or my sister. My go-to move is I would put my legs on their body and I would just shake like that. And they were playing around, they're like,

but I was able to do it. And I was like, I wonder if I still, I'm like, I don't have it no more. So I have to work on that. That's just a weird realization. Whoa, I used to be able to do that and now I don't have it no more. So I have to like work on that. That's just a weird like realization. Like, whoa, I used to be able to do that and now I can't. That's a big thing that Brian was pointing out and he was here is like,

you have to teach yourself to do, to move like this. Yeah, I think more like, cause when people see this on social media, a lot of people are like, oh, look at them just convulsing and shaking or whatever. But I think really, like you said, it's something that kids are able to do. There's a lot of things that kids are able to do that for some reason you lose and you said, it's something that kids are able to do. There's a lot of things that kids are able to do

that for some reason you lose and you wonder, what is that, like, what ability am I not able to have because I can't fucking just, I can't like do that, right? And it's, if you can build that, maybe you're gonna be able to be that much more explosive, that much more just like... It's like a one or two year old fucking just crawl on the ground so fast and the way they

all like just kind of roll over and just do certain things. You're like, holy shit. It's like really amazing. We need to get back to some of that. Casio told me a story one time. I don't know if this was him or someone he knew, but he, uh, this guy was watching his kids. His kids were, I think he had two kids.

They're both under the age of six and he was just watching how they sprint everywhere. It's like time for lunch, and just zip around. And so this guy, I can't remember if it was Casio or somebody knows, but he said, you know what? I'm just gonna follow my kids and just mimic them. And he said within like 45 minutes he was exhausted. Yeah, no, my son, he jumps non-stop. He does not stop jumping. His calves are looking pretty big, so it's really cool. There we go. But like, no, we're talking like he's eating

like Monster Mash or something, gets a mouthful and he's jumping. The only time he stops to jump is to eat some more and then he's jumping. And you know, like I remember stuff like this too, where like I could, you know, could fall from a certain level to my knees and just keep going. I would jump off my couch onto my knees

and my brothers would be like, what? How can you do that? That's what he's doing. I would die if I did that. And you can hear the, I'm not gonna do it for the audio thing, but you can hear the thunk of his body hitting the floor. And he just gets up and he's just like having a great time and I'm like

Dude, don't ever stop moving like this, you know, so like we I don't encourage it, but I just don't tell him no It becomes an issue when we go somewhere else and jumping on a couch for four hours straight. It's not the norm But you know, it's like whatever i'll take the heat for this because he's just moving non-stop I'm pretty sure he's burning more calories than when he's in taking it. How are the ankle weights and stuff going? How's that project? Yeah, well, so I'm running into a little snafu because apparently like there's like some laws against like making workout equipment for children this small, but we're going to try some workarounds and maybe I'll just say it's for small people. You say small people and then now another group is mad at you for using that term and so it's just like all that stuff.

If that's children make the equipment, that's the key. That's, I will explore that. The workarounds. Yeah. Are there labor laws for that? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, I'm getting it from all the other angles. I don't need another one.

All right. All right. I'm just saying, saying AZ is going to, his room is just gonna be a factory. It's like AZ, you gotta pump out your product. That's how he's gonna stay in shape. He's just gonna be making the workout equipment. So diet-wise, you normally just kind of communicate with people to try to eat mainly meat, fruit, vegetables,

and kind of stay on a path like that. Is there anything real particular that you try to share with people? Yeah, over the years I've, I think there's so much, I've found that there's so much great diet information out there. There's so many different things that can work for a lot of different people.

And so I usually just, all the diets that I help athletes with just always come down to three things. And then they kind of have their own individual tweaks based off these three things. The first thing would be eat what has a mom or comes from the ground. Don't really see why that would be a huge issue for anybody if the majority of their food

either was that has a mom or comes from the ground. Consume, I know you're laughing. People have a mom is just so sad. Relax guys, okay? Yeah. So eat a-based stuff, and what comes from the ground. And then number two would be consume one gram of protein per pound of body weight, given that might be a little bit too much protein for someone that isn't like a serious athlete,

but for most of the athletes I work with, just one gram of protein per pound of body weight. And then the third thing would be, I definitely don't want to demonize any individual food, but I think if you made the choice that if it comes in a box, bag, or can and has more than three ingredients, there's probably a better option for you to eat if you want to feel and perform your best. That's not to say that you can never have anything that deviates from those three things, but imagine if 90% of everything you put in your body was an animal-based product or came from the

ground. Every day you got a one gram of protein per pound of body weight and everything else you just look at it through the lens of if this comes in a box, bag, or can and has more than three ingredients, I'm going to make the choice to try to find something else to eat. I think that's a great place to start for almost everybody. And so I'll, when working with a new athlete, I'll have them just start with that for about a month. And then afterwards we kind of figure out like, Hey, did you get it? Did you get it? I think so. Did you get it? We got to find the body. We don't see it flying around anymore. There we go. So I'll have people start with that for about a month and then we'll start making some individual

tweaks based on things that they like eating. Thankfully, our boy Smokey has helped me get hooked up with Merrick. So the athletes I work with are able to get a blood test. So there may be specific nutrition things that we implement based on their blood test results. Now the truth comes out. You're hooked up with Merrick. That's right. I thought you looked a little bigger. We'll see what happens.

By the way, I have a question about that. Working with, you know, grapplers, do you have your young, do any of your young grapplers ask about trying to be on TRT? All the time. All the time. How do you handle that, dude? Cause it's one, yeah, how do you handle that? I think, as much as I try to say like, no, you probably don't need it right now, you're 21. I just put it in like Jiu-Jitsu terms and say like,

you're a 24 year old brown belt, right? They're like, yeah, I've been training Jiu-Jitsu for almost a decade. It's like, how would you feel if my brown belt, right? They're like, yeah, I've been training jiu-jitsu for almost a decade. It's like, how would you feel if my first day of jiu-jitsu, I said, look, I'm only going to work on the buggy choke. They'd be like, that'd be dumb. It's like, you haven't learned enough jiu-jitsu to like really appreciate like all the other stuff that's involved. Yeah. And so when I put it like that, they understand a little bit better.

Like, oh yeah, I am kind of a white belt and like focusing on developing my athleticism. So let's tackle all these other things first. Yeah, white belt in like the weight room sort of, right? Exactly. And then just trying to like jump all these levels. Exactly. And the other thing too, and I know I've said it before on this podcast is I think if we looked at all the Jiu Jitsu

athletes, 90% of them probably don't even need like serious PEDs. And of the ones that are taking PEDs I don't think they get as much benefit out of them as most people think. So when someone looks at someone like a Gordon Ryan it is so common for people to say like oh he's only that good because he's on steroids and like well I don't know if you know but almost all of his competitors are on steroids, which means that everybody has the same level playing field because they're all either on gear

or have the choice to jump onto gear. And Gordon is outperforming them. So that must mean that he's doing something different than just taking a bunch of gear. And I think sometimes people- Maybe he's just taking more than enough. I'm just kidding. I mean, maybe, I don't know.

But I think- It's clear there's other things involved in his victories, obviously. Exactly, and I think because the conversation of PEDs is like, it's ironic, because it's not forbidden fruit in jujitsu, but just societally, it's kind of like forbidden fruit. Like, I know the answer, trend.

That's gonna help me the most. I think when we can just like scrub away all the, like the mystique and like forbidden fruit aspect of PEDs and just say like, look man, you hardly sleep. Like, do you really think that the pain for all the stuff is gonna be the most beneficial thing? Or how about we just start with sleep for six months and we just got your blood work done.

Your blood work, you don't even need PEDs to fix this stuff. You can just fix your diet. And think about how much better you're gonna feel when you tackle your diet and your sleep. And then run this for five years, and then let's revisit it again and see if it's really something you should do. Tough choice.

That was really well said though, like the comparison to Jiu Jitsu, right? Thank you. Like, no, I'm a white belt. I wanna work on nothing but bar and bolos all day. Yeah. It's like, hold on. There's a couple of other things you can optimize first.

Yeah. That's sick. Thank you, man. Always awesome having you on the show. And business-wise, you got some new projects. Got anything you're really pumped or excited about? Yeah. So I'm working on building an app, the Strength Matrix

training app. What? I don't know. It's crazy, because I'm like way over my head in a lot of this stuff, but thankfully I got... Just becoming a software engineer behind our back. I don't know how people do that, man. I am like calling customer service every day, be like, can you guys help me out with this again? So, but I am in the process of building an app.

We're still quite a few months away from being able to release it to the public, but you guys can keep on the lookout for that because I'm pretty excited about it. It's really just going to be like, I think about like when it comes to training and nutrition and balancing all of this stuff, I really do think of it as like you have all these dials that you can mess with. And if you learn how to like toggle those dials, then you can decide for yourself and learn for yourself what is going to be the best thing for you to do as opposed to just blindly following a training program that says three sets of 12 on week one and five sets of 12 on week two.

You actually can start to understand why you would need to make some of those changes and then can kind of take that information and make faster progress because you have a little bit more control over the different dials that you're toggling back and forth. Yeah, I think that's great what you're working on because I know you're a fan and a consumer, like you've told me all the different apps that you utilized over the years and how you learn from. And so then now you're actually making one and you have that experience of utilizing those tools to make yourself a success. So that's cool that you're on this side of it now. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Where can people find you? At Joshua Settlage, everywhere. Strength is never a weakness, weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later, bye.