Mark Bell's Power Project - Winning Strategies For Fight & Sports Longevity - Alan Belcher || MBPP Ep. 1035

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

In Episode  1035, Alan Belcher, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about Alan's amazing comeback to MMA, becoming a Champion and how he is able to improve as he ages. Follow Alan on IG: https://www.instagram.com/alanbelcherofficial/   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!   🥩 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!   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 ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/untapped ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

Do you feel like in the UFC that there was like maybe unfinished business? People ask me, I'm like, no, I'm done. But inside, I'm like, nah. Those first couple workouts feel good or do they feel horrible? Yeah, horrible. Doing it all wrong. Okay. I mean, just paying attention to nasal breathing instead of mouth breathing.

I mean, it's the... Yes! I mean, it's the... Yes! Yeah, it's like the simplest thing that's even hard to admit sometimes. You have to listen to what the long-term goal is. That's your guide every single day, whether or not you take the day off or not. I think some people think after 30, it's downhill.

How do you continue to find those wins? When I was 30, I was like, damn, I feel old. I can't imagine what I'm for. And now I'm like damn i feel old i mean man i can't imagine what i'm for and now i'm like i'll do that i feel better now power project family we've had some amazing guests on this podcast like kurt angle tom segura andrew hooperman and we want to be able to have more amazing guests on this podcast and you can help it grow by leaving us a quick rating and review on spotify and itunes if you're listening to the podcast just go ahead and give us a review let us know how you dig it and help the podcast grow so we can keep growing with y'all and bring you amazing information.

Enjoy the show. You got a fight coming up with Junior Dos Santos. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. JDS, man. Yeah. Legend.

Yep. That sounds pretty cool. And you were in the UFC the same time he was kind of climbing up in the UFC as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. We came up together. Yeah. He was, yeah, heavyweight. Yeah. He was, uh, um, yeah. Heavyweight,

obviously I was in middleweight and yeah, I watched him climb up and, and, uh, I was kind of doing the same thing, you know, he just, uh, he got that belt and hang hung on it to it for a while, you know, so it's just kind of crazy, you know, that I'm fighting him now. And, uh, that I, and I actually, it's weird just looking at that. They might almost have like two careers, you know, we'll literally have two fighting careers. It was like, I stopped fighting, started doing other things and I went back to it. So, um, yeah, it's just a, yeah, it's been a cool experience, man. Now I'm sitting here and actually believe that I'm a heavyweight champ, that I can beat JDS.

I didn't really have that belief about the middleweight division or the light heavyweight division. So it's like total shift. Do you feel like in the UFC that there was maybe unfinished business? Do you feel like when you maybe discontinued being with with the UFC do you feel like your fight career wasn't complete oh yeah yeah for sure I you know I just I played with that idea for years you know there was there was actually after I fought Bisping in 13 it took me about three years of just kind of being like I'm gonna I'm gonna come back i'm just kind of getting my mind right work on some different skills or whatever until i just kind of floated away from it you know and and uh you know we could get into that at some point but i mean i think it was all it

was all mental you know it's just kind of not understanding not understanding yourself you know where you get into because i see people do it all the time i've done it before i did it with baseball i was i got had too high of expectations wasn't getting good enough fast enough and then ended up quitting you know and you quit too early so i did the same thing with with ufc where it's like all these the struggles and stress and different things we were talking about the weight cutting earlier and, um, you know, losing at that higher level. And they're like, Oh man, the only place to go here is to fight the top contender guys and win the belt. And so you have to really, you can't fake that. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You can't fake that. So that's what I was battling with. And in my mind, I just really didn't know it at the time. So it comes out as different things

like, ah, I want to do this now. I've already done that. I want to do something else. But you're kind of running away from the thing that you really need to do. You just got to fix yourself and figure out how to get it done. So it just took me a long time. It took me a long time to get myself. I had to kind of age and be like, then start having, you know, having the time thing. When that came into the picture, it was like everything started to get clear.

I'm like, oh, shit. I don't have a lot of time. I need to do this. It's totally, it's not for, it's not about other people anymore, you know, and that's what, I feel like that's probably all my focus going into that as a teenager and being a, you know an athlete or whatever it's all it was about other people what they thought about me and what i looked like to other people and how you know what i mean that type of thing so when i turned the the focus more internal and what i

wanted to get out of it that's whenever it was you know do you think because like at that time in the ufc i, unless I'm mistaken, you had like multiple consecutive fight of the nights. Like there were multiple fights where you had like just bonus, bonus, bonus, right? And there was a string of successes. Do you almost think that it would have been good if there was a little bit of like a bump in the road there to allow you to kind of just like just train more

and have something to chase more before having to go to the top 100 yeah what you're talking about is a um is like an amateur career like what you're supposed to do so the younger guys that i can kind of be like a big brother to now that i try to give some advice to it's like i'm like you need to have an amateur career as long as you can you need to have all those you need to win when you weren't supposed to win you need to lose when you weren't supposed to lose you know you need to have that weight cut that kills you and then you lose because of that get all that shit out of the way go through all those experiences and you need to be so hungry to turn pro and just someone needs to be there to

kind of hold you back me if you're watching me in my career coming up i was like a i'm like a teenager that is just in control of everything and everybody had to listen to what i was doing but i didn't know what i was talking about i just thought you know what i mean i just thought that my way and i had great people around me, you know, but it was, it was, I was pretty hard headed.

So I was like, I'm going to do, but no, I'm going to, I'm going to go, it's time for the UFC. And I'm going to win a couple of fights and I'm going to have the belt. And I didn't have it after a couple of fights where I,

oh no, next fight is going to be the best fight of my life. And then I'm going to fight for the belt after that. And that's how I was thinking. And I wasn't thinking long-term. I was just thinking short-term gratification, that type of thing. So once I learned that, I was like, all right, I could do this for a few years. My mistake for it was I tried to do it too fast. So let me spread out my last, give it like five years. And now what can i do over time over five years slowly step by

step follow the process and then step by step get higher and higher up the ladder you know so the plan has been and been working out it's kind of shocking sometimes i'm like damn this is it actually kind of worked you know because i probably I was – I got – I had – I was trying to chase this thing that's inside, but I was doing it with just different business projects and trying to make money and things. I was like, well, I can't make it there. My goal after UFCfc was like well i guess i'm just gonna try to be rich i'm gonna try to be just like the you know rich and famous and have these businesses and just be i was trying to build myself validate myself i didn't really

validate myself when i was younger i guess so um you know i was chasing all that and it was just like a dead-end road you know and i was I was drinking almost every single day and I had just kind of started turning into just like, I was living like a retired life, but I was, I was, I was hustling different things all over the place. ADD was out of control. And, um, dude, I just got to a point where I was like, man, enough's enough. I have to, I have to stop doing all this all this, not only just bad habits or whatever, but just like everything that I'm putting my time into. And I need to focus on one thing. And actually, I knew that for a couple of years and it served me pretty good in business because

I was doing too many things. I just kept getting smaller and smaller. I was like, man, this is a good lesson to learn. I need to now, if I'm going to fight, I've been thinking about it for years, telling everybody, no, I'm done. People ask me, I'm like, no, I'm done. I'm done. You know, but inside I'm like, nah, that type of thing. So I was like, well, if you're going to do it, you gotta, you gotta go now. You gotta start. It's going to be like a year of just getting your body ready to just have one fight. It's not going to be the best fight of your life, you know? And then you're going to be the best fight of your life you know and then you're going to build yourself up from there you know you need a plan so started kind of working on the plan bkfc presented itself i was like oh this is how long ago was that that was oh it was

about three years ago yeah yeah probably a little more than two years ago is when i had my first my first bKFC fight. Did you just kind of come to the realization like, I'm a fighter. I need to just lean back into that. Yeah, exactly. I don't know why we do that, but I think a lot of people do that. Things that you're good at, things that you end up being maybe a little bit better than other people at when you first start and uh you you build on it and you do well with it and then for some reason

um maybe it doesn't go your way type thing and and you find yourself trying to fill in those gaps and fill everything else in with other stuff but ultimately you must have woke up one day and just decided hey you know i need to get back what get back. What was that? Was there like a day? Was there like cut to a Rocky scene and you're like in the gym training with Mickey and he's holding your feet and you're doing sit-ups? Yeah. Well, you know what it was, man? It was several years. Man, this is almost embarrassing to say this, but there were several years where I just lost my discipline.

And I just kept trying to do what I did before where I was like, tomorrow I'm going to wake up and I would just get gung ho and start. And then it would just I'm like, man, I'm one of those people that can't fucking do it now. You know what I mean? And then I did that for a few years and I was just getting further worse and worse and just like a little bit bigger, a little bit, you know, whatever. And I was like, no no i have to i have to change something big so i just started um just trying to figure figure out how to change myself man did you call a coach or a friend or did you talk to anybody like no that's i would yeah up into i'll tell you something else up until this point in my life i have way more friends i'm way

more external with what i'm thinking and stuff like there was a certain time where like most of my life it's all internal i'm saying things here but it's different inside it's lying really you know what i mean you're like lying to yourself and it was like uh you know kind of like a you know awakening type of thing you know so just had to just had to wake up to it and, and, uh, get started. I had some people who became really close friends around that time. You guys know movement doc, Robbie Ellis, my other friend, uh, um, Chase Taylor, those guys were really, you know, there's certain times in your life you need these guys that are, that are,

you have these conversations with is like therapy you know so just kind of worked through it and uh yeah figured out a way to get that that fire going again you know because it's always inside of you but you you don't know what's going on it's just like a bunch of emotions and stuff those first couple workouts feel good or do they feel horrible yeah horrible yeah yeah pretty horrible the first thing i did was i was i'm gonna run every day even if it's just a little bit i know and it was brutal yeah it was brutal and i always had good knees like seriously like i never had a knee injury nothing ever like you thought paul harrison didn't get a knee injury exactly exactly yeah i wouldn't yeah yeah and

like being with like leg locks and stuff like that and never getting anything toward i never had an ankle knee that's none of that stuff so i was like i'm just gonna run every day my knees have been good to me i'm just gonna run every day slowly whatever and i just did that for for probably about a year straight. I stopped drinking too. So this is my second time in my life where I've been sober for a long time. First time was six years. When I got into the UFC first, I was young.

I was drinking. It wasn't a problem or anything, but there was a couple scenarios where I was like, okay, if i want to make it i gotta stop that so i stopped drinking for like six years or whatever after i after i thought this being one of that for some reason slowly just kind of came back into my life i'm just drinking a little bit and it's more and more and more um so that was a that was another thing i did it was it's march um that was another thing i did it was it's march um you know february 2021 something like that yeah yeah or yeah somewhere around there so i haven't i haven't drank for like yeah two or three years yeah yeah so i stopped drinking that's the main thing i started drinking start running every day

um you know and then just there the there, the journey, the journey begins. When you went through like the, uh, kind of getting back into things, did you gain like a new perspective? Just, I'm just thinking you're a fighter. Uh, you're always in great shape. And then you see people that are out of shape and it's like, Hey, how do I get in shape? And you're like, you just work your ass off. Like, what do you mean? How do you get in shape? So going through that, did you gain kind of like a new perspective on, you know, how people can get healthier and stuff? Yeah, I mean, I think I knew already. Like I'm probably more advanced at that point than most people, but everybody knows what to do. Like you may not know a lot, but whatever level you're at, you kind of know what to do.

It's just a matter of making yourself do it, right? Yeah. So it's all just, you know, it's all just you know this video that we had real this video that we have on the screen is like you almost pulled this guy's legs apart like literally like i was ripped his legs off his body he was known being like mean with leg submissions too like ripping people but you you won this in the first round i think yeah this is where before that when i was trying i was like hell that's a get uh oh there he goes yeah so you had my you had my knee straight for a second yeah uh-huh when you when you lost to bisbing was there

like some thought in your head like because Bisping ended up winning the belt and stuff like that. Was there some thought in your head of like, well, you know, I should, does that, does that make it any better? Like, cause you lost to a guy that like won the belt. Can you rationalize that? You can justify that. Yeah. And say like, oh man, you know, I lost, but like, that's the best guy in the world.

And maybe I should give this another shot. Like, why do you think maybe that didn't run through your head kind of around that time? I don't know. Low, low self esteem. Just maybe it may. Low self worth. I don't know. Yeah. Probably at the time. Um, yeah, it just didn't, it just didn't equate to me like that for, you know, at that time, you know, it was kind of like, if I can't be the best and I just got to do something else, you know, kind of all or nothing. If I can't be the best, then I just got to do something else. Kind of all or nothing. Yeah, yeah.

I had to learn a lot, I think, to get where I am now. It's mainly all learning and mental. I'm curious about this, man, because you mentioned that there was a time that you started doing things outside of fighting, just trying to concentrate on other things, right? But you are good in multiple disciplines. Like there are some fighters who they come into UFC and they're specialized boxers and they've done a little bit of grappling. They specialize in this, but you have black belts in multiple disciplines and have been

doing a lot for a long time. So you're like kind of like a true fighter. How, I guess, how could you actually step away from that? Because you're not just a guy that dabbles. You do a lot. Yeah, I guess, how could you actually step away from that? Because you're not just a guy that dabbles. You do a lot. Uh, yeah, I don't know. I guess I just, it was hard. It was hard a few years of not doing it. I was still training and still like I was coaching a little bit, training a little bit, that type of thing, but not fully, not fully committed to it, you know? And I had other, other things that i was working on but it just

didn't have that like singular just focus or whatever so they're only going to do as well as what you put into it you know um so yeah training was just kind of kind of it was what it was you know at the time um i don't know how i don't know how I really walked away, but I couldn't. I'm coming back. I'm fighting now. I'll be 40 next year. Does any part of you feel somewhat limited with doing just punches because you are a very good grappler? You're a black belt in judo too, right? You're a really good grappler, right?

So do you feel like you don't have certain tools that you'd want to be using or do you love boxing? I love boxing. Okay. I love boxing, yeah. I think the way that I developed different skills was like I was telling him I did taekwondo and competed in that when I was a little kid, and then I kind of switched to jiu-jitsu and was like, you know,

have everybody try to hit me and I'll just take them down and do jiu-jitsu. And then I learned, hey, my skills that I had from ta to hit me and I'll just take them down and do jujitsu. And then, and then, uh, you know, and then I learned like, Hey, my skills that I had from Taekwondo and stuff kind of makes me good at like kicking. So I'm going to do this Muay Thai stuff. So, you know, so this is all as a teenager. And then I just cycled through different times in my life where I was really focused on, you know, getting really good at half guard. Yeah. And then over here, I'm just really good at, at, at takedown defense or whatever. And take these, you know getting really good at half guard yeah and then over here i'm just really good at

at takedown defense or whatever and take these you know and that's how you do it mma people like what should i how much i train a little bit all the time is like no you want to train everything all the time but whatever your folk whatever you need to work on you have to put more into that area yeah you know you put more into that area. Yeah. You know, you put more into that area at this time, get that up to a certain level, and then you work on something else, but you can't, you don't want to lose the skills that you develop somewhere else, you know? So that's what I feel like I've, I've got better at that over the years, but it just kind of worked out just because I've been doing it my whole life that I've spent long periods of time working on different things.

And luckily I didn't lose the skills whenever I weren't, wasn't working on them, you know? Yeah. It seems like you might even be more explosive now than you were when you were younger. Is that maybe something in your training or is that something you're, you're focused on or.

That's I would say a combination of not, I've always been pretty explosive. Just the, it kind of burned out quickly in the fights because i was cutting so much weight when i was a lighter fighter so combination of eating what i what i what i need to eat to make myself explosive um not like there's a secret food but eating enough food to make yourself explosive yeah yeah you know it's got fuel. That's one part of it. And then the other thing is just the movement, like really focusing more on mechanics

but not being mechanical, being smooth with the movements. And then you can make up for it. You know, you can be smooth and it really, really is effective in punching and kicking and these types of things whenever you're whenever you move smoothly all the the rigid movements and stuff they cost so much energy to your body but also they throw um they throw your your punch

or your kick off or whatever you have a certain target that you're trying to hit. You want to send all your energy into that, you know? So I can't, you know, we were talking earlier about trying to jump higher and things like that. You know, like I would really like to be able to dunk a basketball with two hands. Improving your sleep quality is as easy as shipping your mouth. And what I mean by that is putting some tape on, breathing through your nose will increase your sleep quality. It's no longer just something that only the bros do. It's now been researched and people understand that if you can breathe through your nose while you're asleep,

you'll have better sleep quality and you will wake up more rested. Hoss's tape is also really awesome because I know what I used to do. I used to use a little bit of a cheaper tape and every time I'd wake up in the morning, the tape would be somewhere else on the bed or on my face, but it wouldn't be on my mouth anymore. But hostage tape, if you have a beard or if you don't, will stay comfortably on your mouth all through the night. And if you're someone who has a problem breathing through your nose, hostage also has no strips. So you can place those on your nose while you're asleep or if you want to be like one of those Hermosi guys, you can wear it during the day. Andrew, how can they get it?

Yes, that's over at hostage tape.com slash power project, where you guys will receive an entire year supply of mouth tape and the no strips for less than a dollar a night. Again, that's over at hostage tape.com slash power project links in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Do you think your background in baseball helped some, obviously your bat, your background in martial arts helps a ton with all this stuff.

But like baseball, do you think baseball kind of taught you to kind of use your hips and to throw? Because that punch almost looked like you were throwing 100 mile an hour fastball. Yeah, the overhand is essentially a fastball because you open your hips and your shoulders first. And then the hand comes behind. As opposed to most of your of your other strikes the hand you want to lead with the hand because if i give it away with my body you see the hand going my jab has to be the hand first right overhand you turn the body and then the hand comes out aim those a little bit more towards i don't want to be like snoring on the ground looking up at the lights and like, what happened during that podcast? Yeah.

Yeah, baseball. You know what baseball taught me? The coach that I had when I was, I don't know, eighth, ninth grade, something like that. I had a really good coach that was, you know, just one of those guys that really cared about developing athletes, but in life too. I learned a lot of stuff from Coach Richie. It's like a lot of the mechanics and paying attention to the detail. Baseball really helped me with that because you're trying to figure out how your your body works together and and um your step and how you're opening up your hips all these little details are um i'm really big on the the mechanics of punching and things like that so i think i picked all that up from baseball because that's all they

work on it's a real slow game you know you know you're just working on little little minor details all the time you know so i think that has a lot to do with it yeah maybe when you throw a punch maybe you're thinking about things that maybe other people aren't thinking about maybe uh like because if you're thinking about throwing your right hand somebody might think of like the right side of their body but what about the what's the left side of the body doing exactly how are you moving your hips how you're moving your back how you're moving your legs yeah all those things yeah and it's really um people underestimate that what exactly what you're saying the intricate details they underestimate that and you can take

you can take it so much further because i had i to not only rebuild myself back up, but I'm like, I can't think that I'm just going to get myself back in shape. I have to get better. And that's been my goal the whole time. So I was trying to defy learning as an older age athlete or whatever. So I really have made improvements. I'm still making improvements. Sometimes I'm like, man, still, I got better today.

You know, it's kind of shocking. So, um, yeah, I think learning how to learning how to get better is a, is a big part of it. And the mechanics that all happens in, in your training and not necessarily thinking about it in the fight, but it's the amount of drilling that you do, the amount of repetitions, the drill, and you make it a subconscious thing because when you're fighting, you want to be in the zone. And when you're in the zone, you're not necessarily, you're aware of mechanics.

You know what I mean? You can be aware of mechanics, but it's more of a feeling. There's not words that describe it and that's that's the only way to be people can win fights and whatnot but to consistently win and i studied this because i like you know you look back in my career you'll see two or three wins one loss okay i'm gonna be really really honest it's more like two and one but especially in a UFC at the, you know, the higher level. And I was like, man, why can't I win three in a, in a row? You know,

at the end of my career, I finally won three in the UFC in a row, I think three or four, it might've been four in a row. And then I lost to Okami Bisping. Um, but I was like, I got to fix, I have to figure this out. What is winning? How do you win at things? And so I just started learning more about how to make sure, the mental side of it and how to make the decision to win and do everything according to what you're trying to do. That's your guide is what you're trying to be, who you're trying to turn into. That's your guide every single day, whether or not you take the day off or not. You have to listen to what the long-term goal is. So, yeah, I started learning how to win. I knew going back into it that this was my plan from the get-go. You can ask people, they saw me come back into this in like

three years i'm like i'm going to win every fight and when i lose i'm done that's what you said recently that's what i said three years ago that's what i say now okay if i if i lose them i'm done i'm done pretty much you know i mean i'm at a level i've made it past a lot of my first goals you know so now i'm at a level where i'm making a lot of money and it's it's you know so i mean it may be it may be different i i could probably lose and then get another couple big paydays or something and why not but what if it's like a dumb decision like what's that what if it's a decision loss like not like oh yeah you know would you would that still be the type of loss we'd be like i'm done or would that be like no because i'm thinking in terms of um i'm thinking in terms of all of publicity and because when i'm coming back into fighting one thing i'm trying to satisfy i'm

trying to validate myself i'm trying to find my potential and all these things that are, but I'm also, I'm trying to accomplish, you know, going to the top in the sport, literally to the top of sports. So now you have to think there's more than just learning and being good and knocking people out. You need the opportunities. So you need the networking. You need the negotiation. You need the right manager. You need the publicity, the social media. You need the people that give you the credibility.

You can fight the right person that's going to then put you to the next thing. You need to win a belt or something. So, you know, BKFC, I knew from the get-go, I'm like, I'm going to go there, beat all these guys. Like, I could do it today. Like, when I first started with BKFC and I looked at their heavyweight roster, they're good fighters, but I felt like I could probably get through the fights now and beat those guys. I'm just going to sharpen up and I'm going to use four or five fights to kind of warm back up and then I'm going to win the belt.

I'm going to win the belt. Everybody's going, oh, this guy came back. I remember him from that. I envisioned the whole thing. I knew what people would think. Yeah, he was good. He was close to the top back then, but now he's a heavyweight and he's winning and he's got the belt and that, and it's exactly what happened.

He's kind of catapulted me into the next thing. So you've got to put together that whole plan and then figure out how to do it one step at a time. Don't make the wrong mistake. and then figure out how to do it one step at a time. Don't make the wrong mistake. Everything is, you know, I think about who I'm fighting and making sure that I'm going to win, do what I need to do to get ready to win or whatever.

Now, because you got to the top of BKFC, and I'm curious about boxing, but I want to go back to the four fights that you won consecutively in the UFC when you said you figured something out there. What was different when it came to your mindset on winning, when you managed to win those four fights in a row? I wouldn't say that. That was more – it's hard to remember that time. I wouldn't say that I was really dialed in on how to do that.

I feel like I almost accidentally stumbled upon that where I would just kept – it was just me thinking, don't lose this time. I noticed that I was losing after a couple, and once I noticed that, I do one more. So it's almost like you can only do what you set out to do or what your limit is or whatever. So I just changed, I just realized that I was winning two and then losing one several times in a row. Yeah. So I was like, I got to stop doing that. I got to win three in a row. So I would focus, I focused and then I won three in a row. It's, it's literally that simple,

you know, especially for my mindset then or whatever. Um, but yeah, now it's one, number one is you don't put yourself in a situation where it's a high risk for you to lose so when i was like all my ufc fights were high risk because i was young i didn't have much of a amateur career i was straight into ufc after a couple fights you know it was new too. It's like whoever knocks somebody out and gets some fans, we're going to put you up for the belt. That's what I was always trying to do

is have a nice knockout and then make a case to fight for the belt because there was a shortcut to it. Nowadays, do you feel like and maybe this is something you didn't recognize when you were younger. But if you're like a 10 out of 10 on each day with the things that you're supposed to do, you're going to be really, really hard for someone to beat. Did you maybe not recognize it when you were young?

Like maybe when you were young, maybe – I don't know if you cut corners, but maybe you did a little bit or maybe you felt like you did. I did, yeah. I mean I was – there's several things I did differently. You know, I was, that's, it seems like that's one thing that I talk about a lot now or, or, you know, cause it's, it's like a comparison from the, I can, I can almost compare the old me versus the new me. And it's like, what has changed? I think people can learn from that. And there's a, there's a couple of different things that have really changed. One is that my ability to control my mind and my emotions way better now. So a loss before would send me into two months, depression, wasted time, lost time. You're now having to, when you take two or three months off of what you're doing, you know, or you're not really focused on it that much, you lose a lot of what you've been working for. You know, so that's the downtime.

The bounce back time is always going to be a factor in winners and champions is how fast can you get back up and keep doing it. You know, the loss, you can now learn from that, implement the things that you learn and then get better and then go back in, you know, so that, that was a huge, that was a huge part of what's different now. You know, there's, there's a, there's a couple of things that are, that are different. But I would say that's, that's probably one of the biggest ones.

How do you stay ahead on a day-to-day schedule, like when you're in camp? I'm just imagining it's got to be challenging. You're working on sparring, you're working on grappling, you're working on all these different things. On top of that, you got to be ahead with your food and so on. So how do you manage that do you have a team do you have people that help you do you have significant other that helps with stuff as well or yeah oh yeah i do um yeah main thing is i the team around you the people around you they have to understand you have to work together as a unit. So everyone's different. It's like a band operating together. So I'm like the CEO.

I ultimately have the final decision. But I'm also cool with accountability and people, you know, that type of thing, having conversations. But the number one rule is just always be honest and always be truthful. And let's not justify things. Let's look into it. Are you taking today off really because you're just being a little lazy or what? You have to discern that and it helps to have other people around that you can talk to with that.

And you're never going to make it with winning 10 fights in a row or a championship or whatever. That's the difference is that extra, that longer consistency, you know, and that type of thing the um yeah my girlfriend she's she's full-time helps me with with uh food and things like that so that's that's a huge help that's pretty new too you know so i feel like that's going to be a bigger a bigger improvement going into the future you know because last last few years there's been lots of times where i've had you know my food and everything last few years, there's been lots of times where I've had,

you know, my food and everything going pretty well, but then I'll fall off for a few weeks and never off my diet. Like in the three years, I'm never like, just like, oh, I got, I'm making bad habits or anything like that. But as far as, you know, having to eat out or, you know, just grab, we don't have preparation for, because that's, saying staying ahead right i'm actually now getting better at that i know i have i have food ready to go it's silly little things like that but that's the that's the difference and if people aren't doing that shit like that adds up you don't do the dishes from the night before then you got dirty dishes in the morning and you are like oh fuck it i don't want to eat breakfast and then yeah you go train fasted and then you're starving at lunchtime and then you make a bad

decision yeah and like just shit starts rolling downhill pretty fast yeah yeah now you're doing things you know that you're making adjustments to what you need to do you're doing doing other things because of other things you're right it's just just all, it all adds up. What's, uh, what's true about bones Jones. You know, you hear all kinds of things. He's, uh, mentioned on,

uh, interviews before. I think he said he learned like how to fight on YouTube. And, uh, some people are like, man, that sounds,

that sounds absolutely crazy. Yeah. Uh, I've heard other people say that like for one particular fight, he just kept working on this move over and over again. And then he landed the move in, in the, in the fight and stuff like that.

You kind of hear these mythological things. Like what have you seen from bones Jones? What are some things you learned from him? Yeah. Well, the second thing that you said where is, is kind of like, that's a,

it's like a champion secret. It's like you work on the move over and over and over and you do it in the fight. That's not, that's just almost, that's a science. As you the paul yaris fight that we were watching a minute ago that fight was all because and i'm literally that's you know there's a lot of hardcore fans out there that when if they recognize me they say it's that fight you know it's they want to talk about that fight for some reason that was very impactful and i think a lot of it was because of the the the skill battle and what i had to do to get ready for the fight was just practicing practicing the same moves all over and over it's going to show up

in the fight now john jones when you say that he learned from youtube that's because he can watch what you're doing and then just do it. He kind of has that gift. But he also drills things. He reps things out over and over and over and over. So John, yeah, he's an interesting character for sure. He's definitely – I've learned a lot with the mindset of a champion. You know, you be around a lot of fighters, but you really, you got to look at someone

that is higher up than you, that's done something that you can't do. That's the only way you're going to learn where to go. So, you know, I've studied these guys and getting to spend time with John. I've realized that he does whatever it's going to take to win the fight, you know, and it starts way before the fight, way before the fight,

his mind starts getting into it. The whole camp, the whole entire experience, everything is boom, boom, boom, right to where, you know, right to where it needs to be a fight. And as he gets closer and closer, he makes sure he knows where he needs to be two or three weeks out. And he always gets himself there two or three weeks out you can't be a champion like that for so long and then wait till a week of the fight and then i'm not quite there maybe i can you know it's not like that it's it's a guaranteed win for him every time because he gets himself exactly where he needs to be two or three weeks out and um he decides that he's going to win and it's just a guaranteed win every time.

Yeah, the way he talked to Daniel Cormier I just found to be like amazing. Like this guy must have so much confidence in himself. And I mean everything he said like turned out to be the way that it ended up being in the fight. He even told DC he's like I'm going'm gonna he's like when we get together in the ring i'm gonna actually steal your powers and use them against you and he kind of did i was like this is ridiculous like who is this person like an alien yeah superhero yeah john yeah john's wild man he um he i'm pretty sure he's yeah he definitely talked about this i'm thinking like what i don't want to give away any secrets. But, yeah, he has this whole, like, shifting of his whole persona and alter ego and stuff as he gets ready.

He has this whole prayer and stuff, the sprints, and then he just transforms into a different person, you know, whenever he goes out there ready to fight. But he's very honest. you know, whenever he goes out there ready to fight, but he's very honest. Like John is like to the core, like he, he is, he's going to tell you what he's thinking, you know, he's not going to hide things and lie things or whatever, you know, everybody makes mistakes or whatever, but he's, he puts it right out there in front, you know? And, and I think that's a, that's a huge key to this. You can't lie. You can't lie to yourself.

That's going to be the biggest, the biggest thing, you know, if you're relying on other people, obviously you're lying to yourself, but, um, that internal, the internal thing, it's all about knowing, knowing yourself and what you need to do. And John Jones knows his self better than better than most people. That's for sure. It's time to step up your wardrobe. Now we've partnered with your clothing because their clothes are stuff that you can wear in the gym but also on the go to a dinner on a date pretty much anywhere this is their strato tech tank and this is their range shirt jacket you guys have probably seen me wear these types of combos on this podcast for a long time now and this stuff is super comfortable it fits super well and the winter months was coming so you need to get yourself some nice long sleeve wear from their website. They also have a lot of other stuff like their Stratotec T, their core shorts, which they have a ton of different colors and they're pretty damn amazing.

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automatically when you go to that. Links down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. I want to know about this because you mentioned like, you know, hardcore fans will understand the technique that you had to have when the Paul Harris fight, right? And then you also mentioned how like John, he uses his opponent's gifts against them. So he must like watch his opponents and understand how to counter things, right? There's some people that say, I don't really watch what my opponents do. Like I just focus on what I'm going to do.

And that's their strategy. But do you think that most of the really good fighters like yourself and John, do you guys kind of study and understand your opponent beforehand? Or do you think you just go in and focus on yourself and your skill and kick some ass? Yeah, it's a mixture of both, but I would, so this is what I've learned is you, if you want to be great, you have to study your opponent. Like in, in most fighters are avoiding that. Okay. I would say 90%.

What percentage of fighters are world champions? You know what I'm saying? It's like one out of a thousand guys or whatever, right? I mean, that are in the UFC, like there's five champions or whatever, and then there's a thousand people on the roster. So look at what those guys are doing different than all the other ones. So a lot of people are taking advice and listening to what guys are saying that are the 99% of the guys that aren't at the top. And they may be better than you now, but if you want to keep going, you got to look at what the top guys are doing.

99% of the guys out there say, I don't study my opponent. It's because you're scared to. It's because training camp's hard enough and stressful enough, but who wants to two months away from the fight, start feeling all like insecure. Yeah. And you start, you watch your opponent who you're going to fight. You put yourself almost in the,

in the fight right there. And this is a practice too, because the first time you do it, this is probably why guys on, they probably at one point said, I'm going to watch my opponent for this. And those feelings, for some reason you avoid watching your opponent, especially you watch a match they win yes exactly you're making me think

of uh rocky when uh the guy's watching the tv and uh it's uh apollo's trainer he's watching the tv and rocky sylvester stallone is punching the meat and uh he's like hey you know you should check this guy out like this seems like a big deal you know he's punching the meat and uh he's like hey you know you should check this guy out like this seems like a big deal you know he's punching the meat and uh carl weathers apollo he doesn't want to see it he's like ah you know i'll knock him out in three rounds or whatever but he probably should have watched it because he was different oh yeah yeah oh yeah always watch it always watch your fights um yeah the younger me was like that too i didn't um i was going to say that's another thing that from compared to the old to the new is i didn't i didn't watch my fight i didn't watch my opponent and i justified it as some um is some you know smart reason why not to but it wasn't i if you

realize that you're honest with yourself that's what i'm saying you can know yourself you really look into it look into it look into it man And you'll see that you're avoiding that because it makes you nervous. It makes you kind of feel like you're about to fight. Like it's going to be bad enough. There's nerves. You got to work your way through the fight night. You know what I mean? Why you want to do that every day leading into the fight?

But I'm telling you, that's the thing. Put yourself there every day. Get yourself through that mental thing two months in advance, right, and then six weeks and then four weeks and then leading up to it, it's like you're ready for that guy and his skills. It's not a personal thing. It's not about out on the streets having a conversation type thing. We're competing in a sport, and I want to figure out what you can do,

and I'm going to try to have a chess match against you, you and you got to figure it out. And that's, I knew this going in, you know, I knew that's something I was going to change. I changed it a little bit. I started getting better at it. And then I started working with John and it was very apparent. It was very apparent from just even, you know, Hey, you can come out here next week. Okay, cool. First thing we'll do is sit down and we're going to watch the, you know, watch your opponent, watch my guy, whatever, dah, dah, dah. come out here next week. Okay, cool. First thing we'll do is sit down and we're going to watch the, you know, watch your opponent, watch my guy, whatever,

dah, dah, dah. Cause I want you to be able to emanate and imitate steep. Hey, and I want to be able to imitate Roy for you and that, you know, or whoever I'm fighting.

And John will literally, he has easier day, always productive. So he supplemented with, Hey, everybody come over. We're going to watch it in the garage. And he watches the stuff. He gets the, the the the controller himself back and forth boom pause boom let's talk

about that everybody's got notebooks and stuff i mean it's yeah i i hope i'm not giving away john's secret it's it is a secret and if you're if you're an athlete or if you can apply it any way in anything that you're doing, the preparation is just – you can't do anything else that will do that for you. Because you don't need every skill to fight every person. You see what I'm saying? And that's what happens. If you're not training for your opponent, you're training on yourself, what are you going to work on? You're working on all your skills to go for that person. There's a skill that you can be more productive.

Let's just work on footwork for this fight. There's no way the guy will beat you if you just do footwork for this fight. Because he has no feet, you'll control the whole fight, something like that. You'll not know that until you really learn what they're good at and what they're not good at. Yeah, you see it in other professional sports, you know, football, basketball, baseball. I mean, they're going to study everything that you do. They're going to study every pitch that you throw.

In football, they're going to study. There's more money on the line. When there's money on the line, you do everything that it takes. Right. You see what I'm saying? Or whatever that thing is that you want it so bad, you know, and money seems to be that thing a lot of times like oh this is a million dollar fight yeah you know it's like we're not screwing around on this one we're gonna do anything that can give us an edge

and that's why they do it in those those sports there's so much invested in the athletes and the coaches and the whole thing it's like you guys better be watching some film too you guys better be have some scientific equipment break down all the shit, like whatever you can do. In pro football, you'll see sometimes like a quarterback will come in for a few weeks and he'll do really well. It's like the backup. But they really don't have much tape on the guy.

So one, two, maybe three weeks goes by and the guy does pretty well, wins a couple games, and then he just gets his ass kicked because they start to figure out his tendencies. Now they got game film on him and it's over so it could be that important yeah having some tape on somebody seeing that somebody always moves their left foot a particular way when they circle a certain way or they throw a certain that's what the champions are doing that's what the champions are doing there it's easy picking they're stepping sitting back like these guys ain't even studying the tech they They're not even studying their opponent.

I know it, you know, and that's what big part about what the champions in MMA and boxing are doing is they're understanding what they're up against before they go in there. Did you watch that last Israel Adesanya fight? Mm-hmm. Do you think that's kind of what happened there? Because, like, people that were watching it were just so surprised because, like, Israel,esanya fight. Do you think that's kind of what happened there? Because like people that were watching it were just so surprised because like Israel, I love Israel.

I'm Nigerian. So like there's that. And then I'm like, he's just such a, like he has such a range, but the way that he just got walked down in that fight, it was weird. And do you think that was because of like his tendencies were understood?

Yeah. Short answer. Yes. 100. Because with that, it Yeah, short answer, yes, 100. Because it seems I've had the exact same thought. It's something to do with that is underestimating your opponent is what you're saying basically. And so since he underestimated,

he didn't think he had to really prepare for the Sean Strickland because if you just look at him, and I underestimated him before the fight too. I think a lot of people did. And so they're like, he don't have real good, not a whole lot real good about him. So he's just tough and he just comes forward. So it's like, I already got it figured out.

I already got it figured out. Like I just need to sharpen myself up. I can beat this guy. And that's the mistake that you make. You have to try to find something good in your opponent a lot of people will they'll just look for yeah but he sucks at this and that or whatever yeah i got this one or whatever and that's the tendency that we want to have because it builds confidence in it but you want to be above that to where you can find the good in your opponent what is scary about it i'll build every single one of my opponents up i'll find their

their strengths and i'm like that's that's scary that guy could put me to sleep that could got you know what i mean and i build because i have a tendency everyone's different i have a little bit of a tendency i could drift off a bit and start to underestimate my opponent or justify things or whatever but i have that practice of being realistic about what they can do and maybe even go a little further, maybe induce a little bit extra fear in myself because that's where I'm going to get my best training out of if I'm thinking I'm in deep on this one right here. I'm going to train the best for that, so why wouldn't I make that for every opponent?

That's honestly such a mental strength because the fact that you said that I'm trying to find the good things in my opponent, like automatically when you're going to like fight or grapple someone, you're like, nah, you know, I'm better than them at this. I'm exactly like you said, you want to build yourself up. So you have this level of confidence, but if now you're sitting down and looking at all the things they're good at and you're stoic enough to not let it affect you to make you think that your opponent is better than you. There's so, there's so much shit that has to be just good in your mind for you to do that. That's a big deal.

Yeah, man. 100%. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the, that's the idea is the stoicism,

you know, what that is, is really knowing yourself, you know, and being able to discern your, your automatic emotions and thoughts. And, and, uh, I don't think that a lot of fighters can articulate that type of thing and what's actually going on. You look at someone like John Jones, but I studied John Jones. It's, it's the same. It's the same thing.

It's this intense, realistic view. Realistic. it's the same thing it's this intense realistic view realistic you mean you can't it's not you can't you can't win in real life with a fantasy plan you know it's got to be it's got to be very very realistic have you uh been in fights before where you almost like uh maybe for just a second you kind of forget the game plan like you you get in the mix of maybe what you're doing. You're like, fuck, I'm not supposed to do that with this guy. Does that ever happen where the training kind of just takes over and you're like, I forgot I'm not supposed to trade with this guy or I'm not supposed to wrestle as much with this guy?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, of course. Yeah, man, and all this that I'm talking about how well I've prepared myself and got so much better. And just in my last fight with Roy Nelson, I made some mistakes. A lot of it was my first MMA fight back. So I've been boxing, doing all this, and so now I've got to pick up jiu-jitsu and wrestling and be ready to do highest level at MMA.

And I underestimated a little bit of how much more I really needed to do, you know. And so I prepared. I was like, all right, I can stop him. My footwork's going to keep him from getting on the fence. When he gets against – my defense is against the fence, I got that. I got that. So that was mistake number one right there, thinking, oh, I got that. No.

If it might – it could happen, you know. You'll see – you go back and look at roy's fights you'll see this position in a lot of his fights i just didn't take it seriously enough right because i was like okay i can beat that but you can see i'm struggling i mean i'm stopping what he's doing i'm slowing it down but his position and everything was just so good this was a lot you know this is how he slowed the fight down um right about those legs though shit yeah it's got to wear you down too a little bit he was leaning on you yeah yeah yeah and in preparing if you if you box for uh three years um you've you've created a different energy system too so getting back into

grappling is i'm still kind of building back that that energy system for for the grappling when it comes to bare knuckle what are what's like what are some of the biggest differences because a lot of fans probably still aren't super aware of bare knuckle what's the biggest difference between just watch here in this fight right here as as that little exchange there it's a matter of being i'm being more careful you see where my hands are see how i'm like okay oh get there and get out of there and my hands up see how roy's hands are kind of wide he's a lot more openings right that's i mean kind of an obvious thing but i mean don't underestimate the the power of just being careful and being very tedious on what you're doing you don't want to get touched with

the knuckles it could be a cut could be over right away yeah so picking your shots um you can't you know you're not going to be able to rattle off combinations and stuff until you really get the range and the focus you get into the fight in the beginning of the fight that's how i'm knocked a lot of people out in boxing bare knuckle is by just being careful and and probing jab i'll jab the stomach and just see what you got and sometimes i'll just accidentally counter them and hit them but i'm my main focus is just me not getting hit and then they end up getting because they're kind of like all right i'm not quite prepared i think in bare knuckles you're like okay it turns into more of a toughness exactly even when you're in there the experience fighter like roy nelson you get in

there and he's like i'm gonna bite down and go he's like he didn't quite you know what i mean and it's like you didn't quite prepare yourself for what you're getting into. This is like a knife fight, man. You have to be very, very careful. So picking your shots and having, you have to have better accuracy with your shots so you don't hurt your hands. How do those hands feel, by the way, versus like when you have mitts on, like the aftermath? It doesn't hurt unless you miss. is like when you have mitts on, like the aftermath.

It doesn't hurt unless you miss. So if you hit soft parts of the body, then your hands are going to be fine. And, you know, so when you hit the skull and elbows and things like that, that could take you out of the fight too, you know. So my guard's a little different. I have a lot of things that I do where I try to get them to hit my elbows type of thing. I'm like, elbow's always right there. That would suck.

Punch an elbow? Yeah, because if you can break someone's hand, you take away one of their biggest weapons. Is it tough to be – I guess it may be a little bit of a silly question, but is it hard to be accurate because you don't have the, you know, the, a glove is like way different to hit with. Do you punch any differently, slower or more for accuracy or harder? Is there any difference? Well, I would say not harder. Yeah.

So probably you want to be, you want to hit as hard as you can, but be accurate. You don't want to miss so think about that so yeah you you want to hit them hard as you can always but i can go i can be a little bit more i can let them go a little bit more if i have the mma glove on just like the boxing glove i can let them go a little bit well i did i broke my hand in the middle of this whole thing i broke this this one right here in this fight. Um, not in this one. Oh, okay.

Before in a boxing match, um, several months before this. And I did, I kept it under wraps. I didn't put it on social media or anything, but I had a whole, um,

surgery and, and everything and healed it up and, and got back in there. But that happened in a boxing match. Um, just because of that exact same thing. I'm like, all right, I'm going to work on my power in this fight. And I was really trying to hit him hard.

Ended up, it was a very experienced 40-plus fighter, Rayford Johnson. And I hit him in the head. I think that was his strategy. He got on the ropes and I was just hitting him in the head. He kept – he was – I think that was his strategy. Yeah. He got on the ropes, and it was just – I was just hitting him in the head over and over. He was like – I almost sat on the ropes and moved my head, and he was just kind of trying to be crafty. And I ended up breaking my hand and had to finish the fight with my – with only one hand. Have you hit guys before that, like, for some reason it just didn't seem to register with them? You blast them pretty

good and you're like this guy's an alien like what's going on here yeah uh i mean i'm sure that's that's that's happened before but i mean i would um pretty rare yeah yeah if i i think i i you feel the difference and when you when you connect when you connect. When I connect, not that I'm a better puncher than everyone else, but I feel like when I connect with what I'm doing, I have a higher standard for what it is. So if I didn't really hurt him, it's probably because I missed. I see. It was kind of the wrong angle or whatever.

Yeah. You're more precise with your punches. So in, uh, in conjunction with like what you were saying earlier about putting yourself in the fight, like, you know,

two months out and that sort of thing. What else do you do to, I mean, you're a seasoned vet, so it's probably like easier for you, but to kind of get rid of those pre-fight jitters, because I can't, I've only been in the back of an MMA event and just

being in that environment, I could feel everyone's tension. I wanted to get out of there and all I was doing was taking pictures. Like I, I hated it. I genuinely did not like it and I have not gone back since. Uh, so what did you do to like try to ease those pre-fight jitters? those pre-fight jitters um so yeah so the the question is it's uh it starts earlier so it's you can't not address that and then go into the fight day that's impossible that's that's not going to happen and that's what a lot of people try to do um and that's why you struggle with it you see bad performances and stuff i've had lots of them earlier on, you know, when I was younger, um, I'm, I'm in the locker room warming up. And one thing that just stands out in my mind, multiple embarrassingly, not one fight, but

multiple fights I had in UFC where I I'd be hitting the, I put my wrap, get my hands wrapped, put on the gloves, you know, and I would start to warm up on the mitts and I'd be like, man, I didn't practice very much with these MMA gloves. Holy shit. I should have been, you know what I mean? So that's just an example of it. It starts earlier because that's part of the mind because at that moment, then you're like you're not quite ready for it, you know.

So all these things, you start this earlier so i start to you know wear the wear the gloves that you're going to fight in right and whenever i go into sparring uh here's a huge tip for for fighters or any type of athlete you say you're getting ready for your event what the way that you're practicing you need to have some type of a practice that is emulating the whatever competition seems obvious but you'll never believe how many guys will spar for you know they'll train for an mma fight and never go into a cage yeah but you need to be in a cage you need to you need to know what it feels like to step up in those steps and knock it in there and now we're going to do i'm to do three, five minute round against the same guy that's trying to beat me.

Not just fresh opponents. All these things go into it. When I get ready for my sparring night or my training in general, but especially on the sparring night, I'll be there two hours early. Way more time than needed because I'm set in the environment for a while yeah and whatever you do and meditate and have the same meal that you normally would have exactly yeah the same yeah exactly and and um yeah so i found that eating like less than the day of the fight actually helps so i do that on the sparring day too you know just kind of snack and kind of set you know kind of get that so everything matters and you're putting yourself in there

and then when we're and then we get in there i it there's a there's a matter of like putting yourself in the fight that you're going to be in later but now okay if you don't have that realistic you know what i mean because it's hard to explain explain, but we can spar and do that type of thing. But I'm here with you guys doing it, and I haven't put myself later in the fight. And then when the state of mind shifts, you're not ready for that state of mind. And it's a real feeling where you're just like, this is a, you know. But as you get experience, you start to feel what that's going to feel like. You start to match the state of mind is what I call it is like, I have a, there's a certain state of mind that I want to get to for the fight. I got to start practicing that months in advance to get my, to be able to dial in and just choose the right, you know,

state of mind that I want to be in for the fight. That's not going to happen last minute. You can train, do, you know, be in the best shape, have all the things and all these other elements come in with the lights and the audience and all that. It's going to make you have a bad performance. It's almost like you want to intentionally, when you feel those butterflies, you want to actually dive into it and not run away from it, not put it to the side because uh i know for myself with competition and public speaking and different things like that every once in a while you're like oh fuck what is that like oh man i'm okay i'm pretty nervous about this yeah and in the past i i would i would you know i would push it to the side and i'd be like well i'll worry about that when game day

comes you know i'm not going to worry about that for now yeah uh but then as i got older and more mature i understood like i should actually walk myself through this what am what am i worried about oh i'm worried about my squat well maybe i should train it a little differently you know maybe maybe i'm asking myself to like maybe the number i have set for myself is a little is a little on the high end like let's be more realistic about it did you get the right amount of training and you know how many weeks in are we how many weeks out until the competition and they start to really just rationalize everything you walk yourself through and you're like well i've been doing this my whole life so i'm pretty good at it and i'm gonna do well i just uh need to maybe change

my expectations a little bit and walk myself through these scenarios and chill the fuck out and when you get it all matched up would you say that you're matching all those things up expectations a little bit and walk myself through these scenarios and chill the fuck out yep and when you get it all matched up would you say that you're matching all those things up and that's where you're in the line once you start your expectations outweigh the reality and that's where you start start messing up and you always outperform you always outperform what you thought you were going to do because you re-evaluated it in a more rational way oh yeah you end up with a better outcome like maybe some of the knockouts you've had in the first round of some of these of some people that

you fought uh you know maybe you know maybe in the preparation for the fight maybe you knew you would be able to catch a guy with a good shot but you know knocking out another professional fighter like in the first round maybe uh you know wasn't exactly what you had in your head at first. Roy, I was watching this fight, and Roy, I will say, he was probably the only person that kind of, because you're like, have you ever hit somebody and they didn't go down? I should have just said, yeah, Roy Nelson. But I expected it. I've expected it before.

That was one of my things going into this fight. That could have cost me the fight is if I was like, I'm going to knock him out like everyone else. I knew training for him. When you hit him, he's not going to go down. So it wasn't a surprise to me, but I did hit him with some good ones that he didn't go down. He looks like that kind of guy.

He's got the haircut, he's got the name, and he's got the body. Yeah. He's definitely one of those one of those guys he looks like a backyard brawler the uh the locker room fear thing i think it's twofold things it's like what we're talking about with being prepared realistically and and all that and it all kind of builds up and you've been there before and it all matches up and then there's like hard how do you deal with this right now type of thing you know um so i like what you were saying you were talking about having the butterflies or that type of thing it's like that's that's inevitable that's that's one of those things i wish i could teach people

that it's that's not gonna go away that's not it's a normal thing that is definitely something that is that can work on your side. It's not something that you can now feel, oh, I'm not confident. I'm not whatever. You have to lean into that in a way, and that's what fighting is about. It's going to let go of all that, trying to relax, get in the zone, and let that energy – it's literally an energy that protects you. You know what I mean? It's like that anxiety is it's it's making you

sharp and making you focus to protect yourself so you want to dial into this survival thing but you don't want to be you don't want it to control you it's like a fire you know and it can get out of hand and once it controls you you don't have any control over anymore you just wait like shit i'll lose that fight damn what did i do wrong it just went so fast you have to have control control of this and just kind of let it out a little bit at a time type of thing you know so fear is definitely that's that's something i changed my mind on before i tried when i was young that's a that's a common mistake is the guys hide it inside hey what are you you nervous? You know, it's every fight, every fight. Why are you guys asking me if I'm nervous?

I can tell you I'm not. You're supposed to. You sure you're not a little bit nervous? But I'm just lying, I guess, you know, lying to myself. But, you know, now it's like, yeah, of course I'm nervous. That's good. Hell, yeah. I've learned that the more nervous you are, the more potential you have to really do something in that fight.

The fights that I was actually legitimately not nervous for, I did not do very good at all. I fought nuts. I told this story about this guy, Jason Day, and he was a really good fighter, so not to take anything away from him, but it was someone that I thought that I should have beat him and um I just wouldn't I couldn't get myself ready for it I was like I'm gonna beat this guy easy and it was 80,000 people in Montreal just for whatever reason I just couldn't get myself excited for it I had a kind of a bad cut and I was kind of back there watching the fights beforehand I'm just kind of like zoning out to the fights I couldn't get myself ready and then I I went in there, and dude, he came out on a mission.

He's like, I'm a local guy. I'm fighting somebody that's already in the UFC. I'm going to make my name. And he was focused on beating me, and I thought that I already had him beat going into it. You know what I mean? So I didn't have the proper amount of fear. So are you nervous? Yeah, the proper amount have the proper amount of fear. So are you nervous?

Yeah, the proper amount, the proper amount. I have the proper amount of fear. Are you afraid that this might happen? Yeah, I believe it's the proper amount of fear needed for this. The really cool thing, I think, about what you're saying right now is understanding that that nervous nervousness those butterflies going to be there you shift your perspective on it because it's always going to be there but at the same time you're someone who does so many things to prepare for a person right and you still feel that like you're watching tape you're new you understand their tendencies you're setting up the your fight camp and your your coaches are setting things up

so that you're doing all the things that are going to be their weaknesses. Right. And then you get in there, you are ready, but you still feel it, but that that's a, that's a good thing. Right. Yeah. That's, there's a lot. Yeah. At that point, it's, um, um, you should be afraid of, of losing or in a way or not performing like all these things that whatever's triggering the thing it doesn't really matter that much it's just that it's it's there and it can be a good thing to you know i like i like the the fear i feel like is a big thing for people because they don't really want to speak honestly about it you know yeah it's going to be there no matter what you do what are some of the things you do in training with uh movement doc what are some things you do with uh robby because he came here he showed

us some cool stuff uh some really cool just movement pattern stuff what are you guys working on sometimes oh yeah man um all kinds of all kinds of things man it's really been life-changing for uh the idea of of just um listening listening to your body and and just kind of adapting you know the adaptation i would say is is probably the biggest overall concept is not like something that we're doing right now but just that that um we kind of developed together and i've learned from robbie is that is to is is always just adapting and making you know every day is let's figure out if today is just going to be like a physical therapy day because it might be I might feel different than I don't do the same exact same thing every week it's all based on what I did

yesterday and what's going on you know and also I mean I'm a dad I got things up sometimes I take off night training to go to my son's basketball practice or game or something, you know. So learning that from him has been amazing. Yeah, and just doing everything different than what – that I ever did him before, you know. You just really don't ever do squats or bench press or anything like that. It's always – we're always working on coiling. We're always working on, you know, the fascial sling, the, you know, the head over foot type of balance. Everything has to do with balance, has to do with breathing.

He introduced me to breathing, which led into, with the breathing, he was really big. Even years before, he was trying to tell me about breathing and stuff. I wasn't listening for a while, but once I really got into it, I was like to tell me about breathing and stuff. I wasn't listening for a while. But once I really got into it, I was like, hey, there's something here. And that really led me to meditation, too, which is really one of the biggest factors in the whole thing is that I got control of my mind with meditation, with these type of practices. but with meditation, with these type of practices. And there's no better mindful practice that you can have than sitting there and just paying attention to your breath and focusing on your breath.

That's like the ultimate mindfulness. I mean, it's like focusing on your concentration. Because, I mean, honestly, if I was to – my back backstory doesn't even matter that much it's like I was you know I had ADD and was dyslexic and they said I had learning disabilities and and uh you know I was a hyper little kid I was a chubby little kid and um man it the the none of that really even matters. I think it's the overall, a lot of people have this fast mind. You know what I mean? And it's a trait that is in successful people a lot of times. So learning how to slow down your mind has just taught me so much.

Because once I slow down, it's almost like you can see everything so much more clearly. And I'm probably not telling you guys something you don't know but i was i was i talked to people a lot about breathing and meditating a lot and it's like they don't really get it and i'm like man you don't really realize how much you're you're leaving on the table you can change into a totally different person you're not going to it's almost like um everyone has all the neuroscience and how to do these things and these hacks and whatnot but you can't implement that software really until you clear out i'm just coming up with a random analogy it's like you have to clear out the hard drive you know and it needs to be a blank space and then you can then you can install new software into it and that's that's uh you know one of the ways to do that is by

meditation you know i didn't really know what it was until i got into the breathing and i realized in a in a in a breathwork session after you get 20 minutes into it or whatever i'm like oh what's happening i'm like oh i'm not thinking i'm not thinking now i'm just watching this light and I'm starting to go deeper into it. And it's like a feeling, you know, and up until then I never experienced it because I, I guess, you know, since I was a kid, I'm just all the time in my head, in my head, in my head, you know? So that was probably my biggest, my biggest obstacle was getting out of my head. And, uh, you know, I know i have to have to give props to movement doc he really he set me on that path you know and introduced me to all that stuff question about first off because there's there's so much here but when it comes to your breathing

and your performance what did robbie help you understand about how to breathe when you perform that had an effect on the way you fought the way you breathe when fighting what did you notice oh shoot yeah i was doing it all wrong okay i mean just i'm just paying attention to nasal breathing instead of mouth breathing i mean it's the yes i mean it's this yes yeah it's like it's like the simplest thing that's even hard to admit sometimes but it's like i was breathing out my mouth you got me breathing out my nose what else do you want me to say i mean it makes a huge difference well it's hard to adopt you know and so you try it and you're like he's full of shit this sucks yes it's hard at first you have to yeah and and you'll you'll get well i have the deviated symptom and i can't get through there i'm like you gotta you gotta open it up man you gotta practice you gotta

breathe harder and and make a hole through there so you know that was that was the beginning it was like let's breathe through your nose and i'm like i can't and like let's just keep practicing keep practicing breathing through your nose and even with your deviated septum you made it work yes yeah because i was i was a person that was like i have a deviating septum it won't go through this side and then i noticed as i as i practiced and practiced i was like and robbie he's done this with several things he was like trust me lean into that it hurts it feels like it's not working it's just slow he said months down the road that you're going to be able to breathe and i was just like robbie i tested it and then i was able to breathe through

my nose and it's also there's a skill there's a way that you use the nut muscles in your nose and kind of flare your nose but not like that but just kind of softly you can do it too hard where you suck your own nose exactly i say well when someone will try to prove someone will try to prove to you that they have a deviated septum they're like i can't do this or that whatever my excuse is the deviated septum what they'll do do is they'll take a deep breath in their nose like this. I'm like, dude, you're doing it too hard. Yeah, no one can breathe like that. No one.

You're closing it up. You're sucking it closed. Like, relax and just breathe softly. Yes, exactly. So it's kind of a silly thing, but that's, I mean, that's the biggest game changer. Then you start to notice more things. You get more advanced at it just like anything else. Take the breath work, get more advanced at it.

That led me into the meditation. Just keep getting more advanced and more advanced in it. And it's like, yeah, I'm far past the beginning stages of that. What does meditation look like for you? beginning stages of that. What does a meditation look like for you? Um, I've learned that it's, it's, um, it's almost like an all day practice for me now. So I do it every chance that I can. Um, and also it's some people, maybe not, they don't know it. They, maybe they don't need it or they, they don't know that they need it, but some people do need it more. There's a spectrum. Obviously it's like anything else.

Some people are just going to need to meditate a lot to fix you. You know what I'm saying? And you need to do it all. And I'm one of those people. If I stop doing it for a while, I'll start to resort back, and my mind starts to resort back into just racing. Oh, shoot, I have that. I need to get my mind clear again i want to get there was a there was a game changer type of day that happened for me when i remember exactly where

i was stepping out of my shower i was living in my camp i lived in a camper for a while when i went to this whole um when i told you like three i stopped drinking and stuff i sold my house sold my business everything i was i'm gonna just i need to prepare to just focus on this and not care about money for a while so i downsized everything i was gonna live out the camper i went into monk mode i went into desert you know i did the whole thing psychedelics all that all the stuff and so in this time period i'm starting to learn this i i step out of the shower and i just for a moment i was like man no thoughts no thoughts. What's going on? This is weird. Is this how people are? Normal people are? I'm like, what's going on here? And I'm like, oh,

that's it. And I've always used that since then. I'm going to get, you know, try to stay there or back to that. I find myself racing thoughts and I'm a little, you know, off or whatever. I'm like, you can just stop and just kind of test where you are. And you're not going to know what I'm talking about until you start to get into it. And so just like the nasal breathing thing, you tell someone in meditate, they're like, I tried that, tried that before, but then I can't concentrate. I'm like, that is the point. You need to meditate because you can't concentrate. I'm like, that is the point. You need to meditate because you can't concentrate. So you sit there and you try to not think.

It's a very simple concept. Trust me, it's very easy. All you do is you sit there and you don't think. That's it. And now since you can think or since you start to have thoughts, you realize that there's something to work on. Since you can think or since you start to have thoughts, you realize that there's something to work on. Because if I tell you to put your hand in your pocket and leave it in there, you can leave it in there. If your hand pops out of the pocket, something's wrong and you're trying to keep it in.

You understand what I'm saying? So the same thing's happening here. I'm like, don't think. There's a thought right there. Bam, something's wrong. I need to be able to say, don't, I need to be able to command a blank slate. And if you can't, if you can't do that, you have room to grow. I don't think I can do that.

That's what I'm saying. I don't think anybody can quite do that, but it's literally the practice of it. It's the bouncing back and forth. It's just like anything else. It's that struggle, but it's so easy to create it in your mind. It's so easy. Just try not to think, and you just struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle. You're like anything else. You're lifting weights. If there's no struggle, you're not going to do anything. It has to be kind of heavy.

It has to be kind of hard. There's got to be some kind of stress to grow. It's very simple. In your mind, try not to think, and then when the thought comes, just let it pass. Get back to not thinking. And you're focusing on your breathing or yeah there's different there's hacks okay there's okay if you're if there's like if you're just starting out it's going to be so hard i always tell people like start off with like guided meditation or something like that because you there's breathing they're telling you what to do they're telling what to think

they're telling what to you know that'll help you what to think. They're telling you what to, you know. That'll help you kind of get into it and understand it. When you're just by yourself, especially in the morning, in the morning you get out of bed and you sit there and try to meditate, it's going to be the worst time, and that's the best time. Because as soon as you wake up, you now come back to the real world, and you've woke up from your unconscious sleep to now conscious, and now you remember everything, and your brain starts trying to tell you what you've got to do today to now conscious, and now you remember everything.

And your brain starts trying to tell you what you've got to do today and all this, and it all happens. That's why that's the best time because it's the hardest time. And if you take the time right there to slow all those thoughts down, your day will just be completely, completely different. And if you're like me, you can touch on it here and there throughout the day. This is a funny one. I always tell people I meditate when I'm driving sometimes. If I find that I'm driving and I'm kind of in that zone where I'm just like thinking or whatever, I'm like, I need to meditate because there's a difference. A lot of people think that meditating is focusing on something, thinking about something or manifesting or something.

It has nothing to do with each other. Really. It's, it's literally, if I'm in a, in a days thinking about something that's, um, my brain is just running rampant. So whenever I'm driving, I'll start to focus on my breathing, whatever, holding the steering wheel, my right. I mean, this is silly stuff, but it's the same thing. I've saw a lot of you guys's

videos where you're you're taught all these little movements the way you hold your hands and the way that you're doing your feet if you're focusing on these little things this is a concentration practice you know and that's what meditation is a concentration practice and um you know so when you have physical things it helps you concentrate on it more that's why a lot of people i don't need to meditate i'm doing this other stuff and like well you concentrate on it more. That's why a lot of people, I don't need to meditate. I'm doing this other stuff. And it's like, well, you can take it to the next level because it's going to be harder if you just try to sit there and not think. Then if you got something to focus on, like the guided thing, the meditation is going to be a little bit easier to kind of get into that deep zone.

But the hardest is going to be whenever you first wake up and you don't have any music, you don't have anything. It's just you sitting with your thoughts. That's going to be the top of the food chain, like, you know, monk mode is if you can wake up in the morning with all those thoughts and get yourself there. And that's how I can test myself. When I wake up in the morning, I'm like, all right, I'm awake. And then I'll just start to meditate. And I know how screwed up I am right then and there. I'm like, okay, pretty good.

And it all has to do with practice. I'm practicing every day. I wake up. I'm right there. If I get off of my practice a little bit, I wake up and I just can't quite get it right. I want to skip meditation today. I want to skip it because I can't afford that 10 minutes you know it's so silly but it's just like it's like 10 minutes can change your life is that normally how you do it is normally like 10 minutes like do you sit on the ground or

um you're mentioning you do it throughout the day so i'm sure you so other times a day yeah whatever way you can protocol all right this is why i don't really have like the exact protocol because i've done so many different ones that you get to a point where you're kind of like like everything else you're using those as tools you know so sometimes sometimes i need to get myself i need to lower my anxiety and get in the zone right now so i need to do some really heavy hyperventilating so if you if you do the hyperventilating okay i know I'm just talking about like things that you can do, but I don't have like a – my main – I would say my main protocol right now is I wake up and I've learned – this is – I've never heard anyone else talk about this. This is something I just figured out myself, so hopefully the science backs it up. But I feel like you get up, you do your morning routine, and say you meditate every morning.

Let's say it's 15 minutes after you go pee and whatever, and you go do the thing. The time between you open your eyes in the 15 minutes is crucial because that's when it's the worst. Like the time, like you've wasted now that time because you're now you're, you're doing all your morning routine with you. The first thing you need to do is meditate. So now what I do is I'll either lay right where I woke up or I'll set up on the edge of my bed. So the faster I get into it, the better. And it's also more productive. It's like quicker to get into it. Right. So I just set up and sometimes now I'll, I'll know that I'm where I need to be. I don't time it or anything. I'll just set up and I'll just, it's kind of like,

kind of like what I do with that, with working out a little bit. Sometimes with some things I don't necessarily have the reps. I just know the feeling that I'm trying to get. You guys know what I'm talking about. You're trying to pump the muscle up or you're trying to do whatever. It's a feeling. So I'll do the same thing with mine. I'll sit there and I'm going to sit there until I get the result, the workout that I really want to do. And I get my mind under control. And then, and then I go into, in my, into into my day and then as i go in my bathroom there um i'm trying to think through my routine because i never like think about like having routine but i do have certain things i have to do um and i go in the shower do the cold shower and breathing the whole time so a lot of times i'm brushing my teeth or whatever i'm breathing brushing my teeth with

the left hand all these little things are like they feel like they're simple because you're a right-handed person yes exactly that's what i meant by that yeah okay yeah so just to just to kind of mix it up so the first thing in the morning it's like it's easy to do this so i gotta do this and now i'm thinking about that because i want my mind all racing so it's you gotta brush your teeth anyway you should right so i've already done a couple minutes there then i go in there to brush my teeth with my left hand, and I'm breathing. I go in the cold shower, and I'm breathing while I'm in there. And I'm trying to do several different things. I'm trying to get the hyperventilating.

I'm trying to clear out my sinuses and bloat out to get some mouth breathing in, some nose breathing, all that stuff. And then I just feel like quickly like in 10 minutes got got myself where i need to be a good jump start to your day yeah so i hope hope that helps you know i think for me it was wim hof that really showed me what meditation was um movement doc robbie was on uh he was really on on Wim Hof for a minute and we were doing it every day. And it was the same thing. We do the workout. And then we were, we started with a 17 minute video on YouTube. And, uh, it was like, man, we're always thinking like, we need to do

this. We got to do it. 17 minutes, just 17 minutes. Right. And, but once you start doing that consistently over and over you really start building on it that's what really taught me everything because the wim hof is really heavy hyperventilating and so if you if you can't meditate then you need more you need more breathing you know what i mean you need the guided helps but probably anything with anything else or more than anything else, it is breathing. The more that you can get yourself, or you could even do it sprinting. If you're in a park or whatever and just sprint across the park and get yourself really tired and then lay down right then, you'll realize it's easier to understand what's happening with your mind.

Does that make sense? It does. Lots of breathing helps you, you know? So after like the seven, at the end of the 17 minute Wim Hof, if it's enough for you, some people, um, at first I couldn't really, my first couple of times doing it, I couldn't get anywhere with 17 minutes. I would just get through it and I'm like, well, nothing really happened, you know? But you, you get better at it and, um, you know and then you get where you can – in 17 or 20 minutes, you can really get into a deep state, change longer periods of time, anything longer than like 10 minutes or so. So I should probably try a little longer and see how that feels.

But something that's been helpful to me is when those thoughts come in, when I am starting to think about stuff, I kind of think of it like a computer screen. And I think about like swiping it and just, you know, throwing it off the screen. And then now the screen's blank again. And I kind of just think that way in my head. And then sometimes what also will help is if I start to think about or focus on my breathing a little bit, next thing you know, like maybe a couple minutes later, I feel like I'm thoughtless for a little bit. So it's helped me a ton too.

I try to recommend it to people, but I think people need to come to it or find it in their own way on their own time. That's it. Yeah. If I had to trick somebody into getting, I would, I would, I would, I would sell them on the Wim Hof breathing. Like, this is going to really make you stronger and make you have better breath, you know, or whatever. And then, you know, cause they have to kind of discover it and then you're like, okay. And then, you know, actually me robby were one day after we were

doing it we're like man have you ever see this like little purple dot you know and they're like yeah i saw that too oh my gosh and then you go to reddit or whatever and it's like oh the purple purple eye i'm like what this is real you can actually go into a different dimension or whatever. It's like – The sky. Yeah. But – I'll talk about it in a second. But it's literally – and that purple eye is what I'm talking about. It's like when I close my – if I take about a minute or two and I don't start to see a purple eye, then I'm not – my mind isn't where it needs to be. It's going to take me a couple days to get back where I can automatically access that deep area.

Does it look like an eye or is it like a dot? Well, it's not like a – They call it the eye, but it looks like a – Yeah, it's kind of – well, it starts out for me. I can only say my own experience. But I've actually seen – if you look into like meditation, sometimes they use it in their logo or in their graphics or something. I'm like, there it is. That's what I see.

meditation sometimes they use it in their logo or in their graphics or something i'm like there it is that's what i see but it's like um it will start off as just kind of like a blurry little purple kind of fuzzy dot and it will actually start to get more defined and as you go deeper into it it turns into other things because you're going into you're basically dreaming in a way consciously you've heard of lucid dreaming yes it's the same thing as practicing lucid you can't you can't lucid dream without understanding this meditation because lucid dreaming is is like the ultimate meditation because um i haven't really been trying but there was there was times where i try lucid dreaming every night for a while or whatever and um just because i was like and that would be cool to be able to control my dreams.

Yeah. And I've had it happen a few times where I start to fall asleep at night, but then, you know, ended up just falling asleep and then I wake up in the morning or while I'm meditating. But that's the idea is lucid dreaming is you're, you're conscious in the dream. So you understand what I'm saying? So you, you I'm saying? So you go deep and you fall asleep and everything, but you're, it's just like, we're still here talking. And I'm like, damn, I'm dreaming and I'm still here talking, you know?

So that's the, that's the idea. I was, I think that's the ultimate, that's the next level. Next time we talk, I'm gonna be like, yeah, I got, I mastered that. So let's say that you've already gotten your blood work done with Merrick Health. You've gotten the right supplementation. You've handled your nutrition, but how about the people close to you? How about the people in your life? Recently, I had my mom get her blood work done with Merrick Health, and she's gotten her blood work done many times in the past. But Merrick did an amazing job at looking at her blood work and giving her the supplement ideas to help her move forward. thing is, is when you go to hospitals and they get your blood work and they do your blood work, when they look at your numbers, they're comparing you to the average person. They're not trying to optimize you and help you move forward. They're just trying to make sure that you're not breaking.

Whereas Merrick Health, when their patient care coordinators look at your blood work, and when they looked at my mom's, they're trying to figure out how to optimize you and make you live the most vital life possible. So if you've gotten your blood work done, great. But think about the people close to you. Would it be good for them to get their blood work done and get this type of work done? If so, Andrew, how can they get in contact with Merrick Health? Yes, super important stuff, guys. Head over to merrickhealth.com slash power project. That's M-A-R-R-E-K health.com slash power project. And at checkout, enter promo code power project to save 10% off the power project panel, the power project checkup panel, or any lab that you select on their website again merrickhealth.com slash power project

links in the description as well as the podcast show notes quick question about the uh the what you see do you mainly see that stuff when you're doing the wim hof type breathing when you're doing the normal meditation with normal breathing or both um The more you breathe, the more that you're going to get deeper for sure. Yeah. So when you say that, when you say the more you breathe, the more that you incorporate breathing, incorporate. So if you're focusing on your breathing, you're going to get deeper into it. If you breathe harder, you're going to get deeper into it.

The more, the more, the more breathing. That's my own experience. And I think that that it's because it's almost like you got to physically get a hold of it and like, like settle down, relax, you know, as opposed to, I'm just sitting there quietly and it's,

it's hard to, it's hard to concentrate or whatever. Gets you a little high. Yeah. Yeah. It does. So like that, that purple eye,

that's a really good, I actually didn't know that that's what it was kind of like referred to as. But as I get closer to it, you know, like on a Mac when something's like frozen or something, you get that pinwheel. So as I get closer, that wheel will go from purple to like a little bit bigger and it turns into that spinning beach ball for me. And then I'm inside the entire thing. And I just keep going and going and going until i'm no longer in this dimension anymore as insane as that sounds yeah yeah yeah so as um in the very beginning though it was crazy is when i would start to like like okay level one i'm just i'm

relaxed level two i start seeing some cool shit level three i'm no longer here but when i started getting into that level two uh like dimension we'll call it i was actually falling backwards i was i was falling through a bunch of pillars don't know what the heck was that was all about yeah but then eventually i was like can i go the other way and then so those pillars slowed down and i started going this way and that's when i started going towards like the colors and stuff and all that was just through transcendental like breath work and that's how like that's really the started going towards like the colors and stuff. And all that was just through transcendental like breath work. And that's how like that's really the only way I can like sit still for a long time. Yeah.

And then start to like kind of clear out that I call it the cache, you know, like on a computer when it's like filling up. That's how I'm able to kind of clear that out. This guy's great. He knows he knows what he's talking about. This is literally like that's an experience that many, many people have had. And all it is is just deeper into meditation you're literally you're you're like you're you're in your subconscious yeah you're in your subconscious and whatever you're seeing your pillars or whatever it has something to do with your life and your subconscious something from you you're going to see different things it's just like dreaming when you dream you're

accessing what's really in there you know it's like kind of how hypnotize like that's the basis of everything that we're talking about, about changing yourself and becoming the athlete, changing your identity, all these types of things. It's like you have to access the subconscious to be able to put in this new this new software. software you know so people are really missing i think a big point on this when they're doing all these different things but they're not addressing it from the deepest level of the brain you know you have to open that up they say open your mind that's kind of like what it is you got to open your mind it's got to be plastic right so uh the the plasticity is it's not going to work you're not really going to change anything. I'm like – I'm trying to be a scientist over here. You know what I mean?

I'm just pushing it. Yeah. When you're doing that stuff, like have you ever seen something that it was like whatever it was – it's really you, but whatever it was was telling you, hey, you need to address this because that's what's happened to me a bunch of times. Just whatever I'm going through and like I'm trying to push it off to the side in reality oh yeah but in there i'm like i don't want to work on that right now let's move on and it's like no you're not going anywhere you're stuck here and then those are the sessions that end up like so i'll do it for like an hour yeah those ones feel like five hours because i'm like no i don't want to be here like get away from me and then it just like nope you're gonna keep working through it uh-huh it's so crazy yeah

yeah yeah yeah exactly that because when you get in there it just like, nope, you're going to keep working through it. It's so crazy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Because when you get in there, that can be, let's say you're not thinking, you're not just like listening to your thoughts. But when you get to that state or whatever, you could kind of get some type of your subconscious is trying to show you something or tell you something or whatever. And then that kind of comes to you. It doesn't feel like a thought. It's not a thought. Okay.

Because you're thinking, you get past the thoughts and you go into there then you get a feeling that's like oh wow shoot that did happen to me when i was a kid and that's why i always get pissed when this thing happens i'm like right there it is that's how you know it's the same thing this is how hypnotizing works and you these ways of shadow work, digging into your subconscious of where all your little triggers come from and all that. It's all connected in a way too. We're talking about fighting, but we're talking about – it sounds like a mental health podcast or something. But it's like – it's the same. If you're just working on your physical health and not your mental health how does that work for you like that doesn't work

you uh in addition to the meditation do you work on uh like mindset type stuff and and if so like how do you practice that um yeah i think they go hand in hand because it's it's like um i get my myself in a state because I can't change. When you say mindset, we're talking more about my mindset of what I believe and my identity and what I'm going to do. Do I really believe I'm going to do it? That type of thing. And you have to address it at the core. Otherwise, you're just saying things or it's like affirmations in a mirror or something doesn't work because you're, because I tried that for years. I did,

I studied personal development and growth and mindset and all these things. And I was trying to do all the different little tricks, the affirmations and things. And you, you know, it was just like when I was a kid and I would pray and I'd be like, God, I really,

if you're real, you know what I'm saying? That's how I pray. It was like, you're not doing anything. Your prayer is not working. If you're kind of like, it's not way, it's a deeper, it's a deeper, you know, understanding of that. So the, the affirmations aren't really going to do anything as they don't get you in there, you know? But, um, I think, um, that's a, that's a constant, that's a constant thing.

A lot of those are just negative thoughts. And a lot of people try to overcome the negative thought by saying, no, don't think that. Think that you're a champion or whatever. And that's some way to kind of deal with it at that moment. But it's not going to be long-lasting. You're going to deal with that. That belief is still there. So we somehow have to erase that self-doubt and that you know whatever and

when you when it does arrive you can you can handle it you know um the that another point you know thing it's kind of related to that is um sometimes like with my girlfriend it's like you have to get you have to vent sometimes you have to vent sometimes. You have to, you know, have emotions and this type of thing. You're trying to be so stoic, you know, and it's like you're kind of right. You know, there is a time. You're like, hmm. Women hate that so much. I'm like, what did you say?

Oh, man. Yeah, they hate it. But it's – I thought about that. I'm like, what? Because I try to address that like anything else. I'm like, what is she saying that might be right here? So I looked into it, and what I figured out was it's like a baseline. You have a baseline, and you can only take so much stress over that baseline.

That's it. Mental toughness is not you compared to me. It's you compared to you where your baseline is. You have a baseline. Once you get too far stressful out of that, you're going to break. You're going to start crying. You're going to fall down on the floor. I don't care what it is. If you put enough stress on you.

So all we're trying to do is just raise up that baseline to where regular things like traffic doesn't bother me. Right. And that way, when I really get into a stressful situation, like a fight against Roy Nelson, I can handle that. You know what I mean? And most people can't handle, you know, the, the day-to-day little stresses. Yeah. Shout out Robbie Ellis and Justin Lovato for putting me on game putting me on game for with breath work and it's really cool that when i worked with robbie when he was here we actually did that before we started training because he helped me with my back like a lot um but we did some breath work and like i started seeing some cool shit and then he's like all right

let's get going i'm like ah we needed like another like 20 minutes right here. But no, it was cool. The way this stuff that he showed us. Good, man. Yeah. I have a question about, uh, you're 40 years old, right? 39. Yes. 39 years old.

About to be 40. All right. Well, you know, you, when you were younger, you were like, you know, one 90 something now you're, you're a heavyweight, but you are a heavyweight that looks good. Right. You've been able to make progress. And I'm curious, like at 39, 40, how do you, like you mentioned that you look for different measures of progress earlier in the

podcast. You're like, I still find wins. I'm still making progress. I didn't think I could. So I think some people think like after 30, it's downhill. That's what people used to tell me all the time when I was younger. And I'm 31. I know I got a lot of grown stuff. I have a lot of aging to do. But I feel like I'm still heading upwards. I don't feel like I'm degrading. So what does that look like for you? How do you continue to find those wins? And how do you make progress?

Yeah. Man, yeah. I think you just got to kind of find it where you can get it. You know, I mean, like we were talking earlier, I'm not going to, you know, 360 dunk a basketball it you know i mean you're like we were talking earlier i'm not going to you know 360 dunk a basketball you know which you know earlier i would be like all right this time i'm gonna get get my vertical up higher on a seven foot rim let's lower that height a little bit hanging off that thing all day long exactly and um yeah where i can't make the progress in certain areas i'll make up for it somewhere like right now like i think that um you know i'm gonna go out of limb

and say that's where a lot of my success is is because i've taken my body and my skills as far as i can but i've taken my mind way further because i'm still you know i was able to you know advance in in wisdom. But, I mean, as far as how the body works, a lot of what you're talking about is just a belief. You know, and it's just a belief. And when society says that you're done at 30, it's really hard to overcome that. So, yeah, I had the same thing. When I was 30, I was like, damn, I feel old. I can't imagine what I'm for.

And now I'm like, I feel better now. I was like, damn, I feel old. I mean, man, I can't imagine what I'm for. And now I'm like, I feel better now. You know, that was all in my head. Yeah. You know, but obviously there are real, like aging is real. Trust me. You're going to feel it. You know, I'm sure Mark knows more about that than I do. Yeah.

I mean, when you're older, your body's not going to feel the same. I mean, I don't even remember. I mean, when you're older, your body's not going to feel the same. I mean, I don't even remember. Like, I don't recall ever being like ever having like an ache or a pain at all when I was a kid. I don't remember that at all. But, you know, as you get older, like you're just going to run into some of those things. Some of the stuff that you're doing with Robbie seems to be really cool.

Is he trying to, in some of your training that you're doing, is he trying to help build your mindset too by having you do things that are challenging but you're able to do them and accomplish them and then you build confidence from there? Because you're already so proficient as a fighter. So when it comes to most of that stuff, I'm sure you could pick a lot of that stuff up. With some of the movements that he has people do. Sometimes they're pretty challenging. Right. And so I imagine over time, you start doing some of these movements a little bit better. Helps build a little confidence and stuff like that. Well, if you watch a lot of the videos that he's posting, a lot of them are workouts that we do almost every day. And they're always different and they're always getting a little weirder.

And it's like, but that's because he it's he's trying to throw me off that's it you look at it and it looks weird it's like because i already did all the other 20 things leading up to that and now we've added in another element of it or now we're working on this and it's just you know there's just so many different ways to move or to practice your movements and stuff. So that's, you're always keeping that brain plastic and you're always trying to develop these new skills. Like it's occurring again. It's the stress, you know, the overcoming the thing. If I get the movement down and I'm nailing it, I can do it every day.

It's not helping me. I got to make it harder. Is that kind of what you're asking i mean that's i feel like yeah that's what he's always doing is just taking it to the end but not in a way of loading because i'm you know at this point we're not just loading it up exactly do some push ups in the pool and and um this is this that's a genius right there man that's a brilliant dude find your weaknesses whatever he thinks at that i'd be like you know what you need to try try to focus on your pinky toe right there too and then take two breaths when you come up and then yeah you

just made that up on the on the fly what you were saying in the gym uh sounded pretty interesting when you said like you know i might do you know these these various movements but still come back to like a core exercise or come back to a strength exercise. And, and you basically kind of said that like, if you went to do a movement and you felt really weak in it with a weight that you've done previously, then you're like, well, shit,

this seems like an issue I should address. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, exactly. There's things that you test, like, you know how you feel when you do a pull up,

it's your, your body, you know, and you, you got to take into consideration, am I 10 pounds heavier now or whatever too, but, but like a pull-up is something you can always gauge by you know so um every few days you jump on that pull-up bar do a few and see where you're at doesn't mean that you have to have pull-ups in your routine all the time same way you pick up the deadlift straight

bar trap bar whatever let's put a couple plates. Let's try three plates and whatever. Once a month, you know, because deadlifting doesn't seem like that's something that I need to do every week. I've got a lot of other things, you know. So those are things that I'll kind of test out. They're kind of safe. And what we keep realizing is that he'll have me do a deadlift. Let's do deadlifts. We haven't done it in a couple months and we're still just as strong like all the other things that we're doing or maintain it but let's

test it out with something that we've done hundreds of times before and we know how it's supposed to feel yeah am i weak or whatever you're like man all these different movements it doesn't have to be straight up and down always some kind of a turn or some kind of a movement to it and then when you get straight up you get straight your core is strong so it's almost easier so i made maybe i i do get weaker sometimes but i've been more i got more efficient so i can actually move more weight i'm sure in power lifting people aren't thinking they're just thinking about the strength part they're not thinking about the details of the movement and how to make that efficient because you can if you can be more efficient you can move more weight 100 i should teach powerlifting and teach people how to be a monk yeah yeah i mean well i i got i went through

that i went through that phase that's i'm out of that now. So it was definitely a time where I had to kind of reinvent myself in monk mode. But I'm back to the real world now. Are you reading some books and stuff like that? Because it sounds like you mentioned a couple times that you kind of would research certain things. Yeah, yeah. I've read a lot of books on mindfulness and meditation. Yeah, there's some really good ones out there. There's a, um, trying to think of the guy's name, but there's a book called the mindful athletes. This is a guy that is work with a lot of, um, a lot of the basketball teams and

stuff. And he played basketball in college. And I referenced that a lot because a lot of that i know about meditation come from that book but yeah i do i spend a lot of time reading or um i read a lot of stoicism philosophy type of thing it's just kind of you know i i found that like reading is hard enough as it is so it's but it's good for you no matter what you do. So it's like just find something that's interesting, but it's not necessarily a fictional novel. It's going to be productive because I like to read about religion and philosophy and things like that. So that's it. George Mumford.

George Mumford, yeah. This guy, he was a roommate with, I think, Wilt Chamberlain. Oh, shit. Someone like that. Someone like that. It was like in the 70s, like way back. And he became a heroin addict in college and all this. And he started working at this little place.

And at the time, they called it stress management. working at this little place and at the time they called it stress management i think what they used to call mindfulness stress management yeah it's the same thing it's literally the same it's a continuation of the study but i learned that from that book he's like he used to call it stress management and now it's called mindfulness that makes a lot of sense that would help a lot of people out if they just knew how all this is is related you know yeah being able to manage stress you know i i kind of uh use the analogy of like being able to sprawl you know if you just have some basic understanding of how to sprawl then maybe life doesn't take you down so easy yes you know so you sprawl against the stress of life and so not not not a crazy capacity that someone might need.

You don't have to be able to, you know, handle yourself against every single opponent all the time. But if you can handle the small stuff, there's going to be more room for you to handle the big stuff. Yeah, exactly. It sounds like we're saying the exact same thing. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time today.

Where can people find you? Just social media. It's pretty, yeah. Can we talk about the upcoming fight by any chance? Oh, yeah. Yeah, JDS. Yes. Yeah, March 2nd in Orlando.

I'm going to fight for the game bread belt. It was the first heavyweight belt. Yeah, man. Yeah, it's been fun. Yeah, this is a continuation of what I've been doing. But are we trying to wrap it up? No, go ahead. By all means.

Okay. Yeah, so it's a big deal. One thing I did want to mention on this is that something that's really on my mind a lot lately is how something I've recently kind of struggled with is that after I accomplished a lot of the, you know what I mean, accomplished like the bare knuckle belt, just because I set that vision a few years ago, once I got it, it was almost like I just, you know, all my work in my mind was just like I would just shoot down because I'm like, what's the deal? Oh, you got to set a new goal.

I see it more clear than ever before. So it's like if you, and that was almost my point earlier when I was talking about my background, is how it doesn't really even matter that much. Because the point is that any time in my life when I didn't have something that I was focused on, that's when everything was messed up. So that's what I've learned. Like a huge takeaway is that you have to have something, you know, and it has to fit you and your potential. You know, it has to be a little, and it needs to be a little bit outside.

Everyone has their thing, you know, whether maybe it's just somebody wants to make it to brown belt in jujitsu, like you, but for you, that's not, you want to go past that. Right? So it's like for them though, it might be impossible. And that's the right thing for them because it needs to be like a little bit, a little bit impossible.

So that's, that's kind of where I am now with this JDS thing. I'm like, okay, I got to win this belt. And then I got to figure out it's the next kind of impossible thing to do, you know? So March 2nd,

this is the picture you're talking about, right? And see, yeah, this is a day. I have a little three monk. And when you were. This is the picture you're talking about, right? And see, yeah, this is a day I have a little three monk. And when you were just talking about the monk, I was like, this is your Halloween costume. That'd be sick if somebody just put your, your facial features right there. What are maybe two or three things that Junior Dos Santos is really good at?

Junior, he's a good boxer. He has a good jab. He uses his right hand crafty. He can go up, over, straight down the middle, and he kind of keeps it there. He's the jab. I'm going to learn a lot more about him. But I already know so much about him. And a couple fights ago I started kind of talking about my opponents like on podcasts and stuff.

I'm like realizing that, man, I'm just going to tell you what I know about him because, like, I know what you can do. You know they're going to do it. I mean, yeah, I know what you're going to do. Does it matter? Maybe that he knows I know what I'm going to do. He's going to train harder, but I doubt it, you know. I'm picking you apart, Junior.

I know there are a couple little mistakes that he could fix that I wouldn't say. Okay. But, I mean, everybody knows he's got the jab. He kind of moves around. He's got to be expecting me to come inside. It almost makes the game more interesting if I can kind of tell you some things I'm going to do because then I can manipulate you.

I can lie to you and tell you what I'm going to do and then throw you off. I'm going to take you down, but then you're training for the takedown, but I come up top. There's a couple of things to think about, Junior. What's it like winning a championship belt? Because you won one previously.

I'm just picturing if I won one, I would go downtown Sacramento and just walk around without my shoulder for a little while. Maybe have a couple bodyguards with me or something. Make my own parade, I guess. I tried to embrace that a little bit because that's what everybody wanted me to do. I let my son walk around with it on. You know, he felt like my dad's a champ. That's amazing.

He had it on for a couple days. And he's not a little kid. He's 12 years old. But, yeah, man, it was definitely something. As a fighter, you know, doing as long as I have, this is the one. I won a couple belts before, but nothing like where I could say, this is a legitimate world championship. It's just kind of surreal to accomplish your goals.

I think since it was such an accomplishment, I was like, man, I made this vision. I made it happen. Then automatically after that, I started feeling that feeling where I'm like, man, I got to figure out something else to do to keep going. Again, thank you for your time. Appreciate it, man.

Thank you guys. It was a blast. It was a good combo. Strength is never weakness. Weakness, never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.

Awesome. That was great, dude. That was fucking.