The Joe Rogan Experience - #546 - Mike Dolce

Episode Date: September 8, 2014

Mike Dolce is a fitness trainer and was named the 2013 MMA Trainer of the Year. Check out his latest book "3 Weeks To Shredded" out now.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Fitness guru to the stars, Mike Dolce, my friend. What's up, brother? Good to see you, brother. Thanks for coming back here. Cheers to you. Thanks, Joe.

Thanks for coming on, man. I got a lot of questions. Got a lot of questions. Diet questions, nature box questions, granola, quinoa, chocolate granola. Let me check that out, please. Yeah, please do. See what's up with nature box. Let me check that out, please. Yeah, please do. See what's up with Nature Box. There we go.

It's yummy. I'll tell you that. It's yummy as fuck. You don't have to check that out. But I want to talk to you about a lot of people who don't understand mixed martial arts or maybe they're casual fans. They don't know that there's a lot going on in MMA. And one of the things that's going on besides the fact that it's a very dangerous, very, it's a highly charged sport with a lot on the line for the competitors.

But one of the things that's on the line that a lot of people aren't aware of is a thing that we call weight cutting. And so I can fill people in that may just not know much about MMA. If a fighter is going to fight at, say, 145 pounds, that's one of our weight classes, they probably don't really weigh 145 pounds. It's very rare that you get a guy like Frankie Edgar, who was the lightweight champion, who lightweight in the UFC is 155 pounds. That's what he actually used to weigh. He was really fit, and he walked around at 155. He didn't cut any weight to weigh in for the weight class and he was always smaller than almost anyone in his division. He still won and beat some of the best guys in the planet just because he's really tough and very highly skilled,

but that's the rarity. The only division where that doesn't take place is in the heavyweight division, which guys don't have to cut any weight at all, generally speaking. There a few exceptions like tim sylvia in his heyday used to be a little bit bigger or brock lesnar might have cut a little or uh alistair overing when he first fought in the ufc cut a little but for the most part those guys get to eat whatever the fuck they want for everybody else there's essentially there's two different events going on there's the event where there's a fight where you're training to compete against the best mixed martial arts fighters in the world. But then there's also the weigh-in. And the weigh-in is an event in and of itself.

It is a huge thing because you get guys like a perfect example of extreme examples is Gleason Tebow. Sure. I don't think Gleason's missed weight. Has he ever missed weight? Not that I know of. He figures out a way to do it. They get it done. But Gleasonison is fucking enormous he fights at 155 i weigh in the high 190s and he's bigger than me so i don't know how the fuck he does it i really don't know how the guy does it suffers

he suffers and he gets down to 155 for a very brief window of time and then rehydrates the shit out of himself yeah and that's the goal. Ultimately, what we're trying to do is trying to be on weight for the shortest time possible to minimize the ill effects of being at that weight. A guy like Nick Lentz, 145 pounds, and you brought up 45s. So Nick Lentz, he does most of his training camp around 175 now. Whoa, that's so crazy. Massive.

And we want to touch down at 45 and be there for really under an hour. I want my athletes still kind of dripping that last sweat when they step on the scale so they can just graze the contract weight and immediately we hydrate them right back up again. And when you say Nick Lentz walks around at 175 pounds, for folks that are listening to this, you go, oh, he gets fat. No, he does not. No, at 10% body fat. Okay, that is so crazy. How is it possible that a not. No, at 10% body fat. Okay, that is so crazy. How is it possible that a guy can be 175 at 10% body fat? By the way, I'm a fat fuck.

I'm about 17% body fat. Oh, you look leaner than that. I don't know. I may be a little self-deprecating. Maybe 15. Let's be nice. Say I'm 15% body fat. So this guy is 5% less body fat than me, and he's going to cut 30 fucking pounds.

How does a guy do that? It's through the multi-stage process. So when I back up, when I talk to an athlete or when I talk about weight cutting, I say, number one, it's not the best case scenario. Weight cutting is something that unfortunately has to be done by a lot of athletes in order to minimize advantage as opposed to gaining an advantage. But the weight cut should start 52 weeks before competition, which means this should be a lifestyle. These athletes, and this is what they need to understand, and hopefully we can spread this message, is they need to be training and living and eating and breathing like professional athletes 365 days

out of the year so they can minimize the downside of the weight cutting practice. They need to be eating the proper foods, training intelligently, resting completely, so their body is able to endure the grueling practice of cutting weight. So with Nick Lentz, he's fresh in the mind right now. I was just with him in Connecticut last week. He made weight 146, Charles Oliveira, his opponent. He missed weight by four pounds, which was absolutely ridiculous, unprofessional. But there's a saying that the first fight is with the scale.

So the athletes, when they get to the fight week or when they get to the location, they're focused on the scale. They don't even think about the fight for the most part. Is that a good thing? Does it keep them from getting distracted about the fight? Yeah. And that's actually one of the positive benefits of it is that they're not focused on the fight, they're not burning, you know, all you fucking care about is what you eat. You don't even care about me. I'm not even the most

important thing to you. And just have like the most crazy, narcissistic, psychotic relationship. And girls should have ridiculous guys. Let me check your phone.

Let me check your phone. Who's fucking texting you? Your fucking trainer's too comfortable with you. That actually happens. I'm sure it does. I'm sure it does. For men it does for men and for women right now that we have a lot of women in the ufc i bet it happens for them more sure i bet guys are more

psycho with their popular star women girlfriends it's those fucking weird guys that are in the background that aren't famous and they have famous girlfriends ew mean mugging all the coaches all the reporters. Creepers. Creepers each and every one of them. Not really. I don't give a fuck. Do whatever you want to do.

Okay. But the point is that this is a genuine issue. Absolutely. And it's a genuine physical issue as well as a genuine psychological issue. Yeah. An amazing training camp,

eight-week, 12-week training camp can be blown during fight week or in the 24, 40 hours, 48 hours before they step in the octagon or in the competition because they blew their weight cut. And then even if they do make weight, typically most athletes, a large majority even at the high level, they blow their rehydration. They step on weight. They think, oh, my God, I made it. And they grab a sandwich from the deli or they go and get pasta, fettuccine alfredo from the local Italian restaurant and they eat food that they haven't eaten

in weeks or months before. They totally screw up their digestive system, body goes to shit, and they're a shadow of their former self. Well, I know Chris Lieben talked pretty openly about how he did that. In one of his weight cuts, he ate a bunch of gummy bears

and he went into shock. His body literally went into some sort of a sugar shock because he just couldn't help himself. Yeah. Lieben. I've known Lieben since 04 when I started working up at Team Quest in Oregon. So I was his coach for a long time. Worked with him for a few fights. Not many of the fights recently.

The Vanderlei-Silva fight was the most recent fight I worked with him. That was one of his most spectacular victories of all time. It was. And that's when he was so motivated. And that's the Chris I would have loved to have seen in all of his fights because he was lean he was sharp he was ready he was confident he chased away a lot of the demons and uh quick lieben story so we you know back up to a fight previous you know years before that and i had lost contact with him hadn't seen him in a while and i'd see him i'm with another athlete

in the casino i I see Lieben. And he's partying. And this is right before the fight. I'm like, bro. How many hours before the fight? It's like the day before. So he's drinking? Well, he's freaking of it.

Yeah, I'm partying and whatever. When was he going to fight? God, I don't know. And hopefully by the end of the show, I'll remember who it was. And I think he actually won the fight, which is insane. I mean, I got multiple leaving stories. But I was like, Chris, what are you doing? And he's like, Dolce, sometimes you just got to dance with the girl you came with. And I was like, motherfucker.

All right, all right, Chris. High five, good luck. And I'm pretty positive he did go out there and win that fight. I would imagine he did. He's a wild motherfucker. For real. That's a great quote from Lieven, because that is literally how he got there. He got there being a wild man.

That's exactly what gave him his edge and what got him to the top, yeah. Yeah, it's just a weird maturing process, isn't it, for some fighters where they got into fighting because they were so wild and reckless. And somewhere along the line, they have to be cautious and calculated. They have to really think of themselves as pro athletes and i i say that not just about their training and diet but also about their approach to fighting itself you know i think i'm a huge forrest griffin fan yeah i love forrest just as a person and i'm a huge fan of his as a fighter but i think that one of the best and worst things that ever happened to him was that fight with that that like i would say it's one of the greatest most important fights in mma but the

fight with stephen bonner in the finals of the ultimate fight of the first season which was such a crazy fight people don't realize how bananas this situation was spike tv was a new network it was like some fucking country music channel or something before that right wasn't it the country station or some shit it became spike which was like a the the guys channel and then they put on this thing the ultimate fighter and then you know people watched it it was a good show but in the finals stephan bonner and forrest griffin went on it one at it so hard that the ratings went through the roof like they can monitor the ratings while the fight's going on and it went from you know like a million people watching it when it first started to like 10 million people at its peak which is insane which they can track is directly

related to people calling each other up and going dude You got a fucking see this turn on channel 248 These motherfuckers are throwing down and then people started calling each other and and then they see through the fight as the it was a Wild fight it was because you got two guys who knew each other super well trained together for you know The six weeks they were in the house and then went went to war. And they were so evenly matched that there was no winner in that fight. At the end, Forrest Griffin won. He got the decision. But it was so close that we actually talked about it inside the cage.

I said, why don't you give both these guys a fucking contract? And they talked about it, and Lorenzo and Daniel were like, let's give both these guys a fucking contract. And then, boom, they both got this big six-figure contract with the UFC but that kind of style was so rewarded that it became how Stefan Bonner fought sure and I think he's he's you know he still kind of fights like that um but Forrest Griffin I think that it turned out to be his downfall in a lot of ways, like this face forward, charging, aggressive style. And that's how he lost to Keith Jardine. And that's, you know, I believe like the more strategic Forrest Griffin was the one who beat Shogun.

You know, he made some calculations. He made some adjustments in his career. But that style that he learned how to be this wild reckless motherfucker because that was so rewarding exactly you know yeah and it's hard for an athlete sometimes to change their natural instinct i think and you see that in the gym where an athlete either they're very tentative and calculating when they first get into the gym and they kind of have to bring out that monster a little bit and learn to be a finisher and they tend to look a little bit boring and maybe like an underachiever or you get a guy like Forrest or Lieben that goes out there and they just go balls to the wall throwing big shots

and sometimes they get knocked out and sometimes they get their hand raised and uh you have to walk that fine line and you know unfortunately they're playing with their brains you know they're putting all they're going all in you know every every fight they're going all, and they don't know how they're going to walk out of it. It's really interesting. It's interesting to see how far the sport's evolved. Every couple of years, the sport evolves to a brand new level. You see these young kids coming in now that are better equipped and better skilled than the champions of 10 years ago. They're not even contenders yet.

They're not even. They're outside the top 20, right? Yeah. Yeah. There's guys that are just coming up that are 21 years old that have a better skill set than world champions of 10 years ago. Yeah. It's amazing.

It's insanity. It is amazing. One of the issues when it comes to weight cutting and rehydration or dehydration, rather, is head trauma. Yeah. And it's one of the reasons why rehydrating with an IV is so critical. Yeah. Because if you look at boxing,

the majority of the instances of men suffering in-fight brain damage, Gerald McClellan, Duck Kukim, like there's a lot of these cases and almost all of them involve someone weight cutting. And because of that boxing and now mma has adjusted its schedule where the fighters weigh in the day before where they used to weigh in the day of the match old school boxing matches you would see them weigh in the day of the

match they and they would still cut weight and then they would try to rehydrate and they didn't know what the fuck they were doing back then and guys guys had dry brains, I mean, literally. And because of that, made them more susceptible to cerebral hemorrhages and brain damage and all sorts of different things. Very few heavyweight fighters suffered from brain damage in an actual fight. It was usually years and years of repeated head trauma that got them, but not like one event like a Gerald McClellan event. Sure. And for folks who don't know what Gerald McClellan was, he was one of the great light heavyweights

of, well, he was a light heavyweight and he was a super middleweight as well, wasn't he? I believe so. And he was one of the guys who was eventually going to fight Roy Jones Jr., fought Nigel Ben in an epic contest, had been really badly hurt. They collided heads, and he was all fucked up. And he went back to his corner, and he took a knee and wound up bowing out of the fight and then immediately went into a coma and had some horrible, horrible brain injuries because of that. And that was a fight that changed a lot of people's ideas about

weight cutting and about the dangers of head trauma because before that fight gerald mcclellan was thought to be like an invincible destroyer i mean people had seen him he was just knocking everybody out he was one of the cronk stars cronk boxing being emmanuel stewart's team that produced tommy hearns and, you know, so many great, great fighters came out of that gym and they all were just assassins. And he was one of the best. Gerald McClellan was a fucking vicious, vicious killer. And, uh, everybody had to watch that. And, uh, you know, and he's still alive to this day. He's blind and he's all fucked up and sad shit said directly related to dehydration, right? Dehydration. I would say so.

I mean, it certainly contributed, right? It assisted in the damage. And that's something that I pound my soapbox when I talk to athletes, when I talk to anybody, is about health. You've got to be healthy. If you're not healthy, you can't perform. You can't compete. If your body is healthy, then you can do absolutely anything. It'll do anything you ask of it if you maintain its health for a long period of time not just fight week not just start

eating organic and green fight week when you start cutting weight or two three weeks beforehand it has to be before training camp even starts you have to be eating a lot of food the proper food at the right times consistently get your body weight down to a you know a your body weight down to a, you know, your body mass down to a solid ratio. Somewhere around that 10% range if you're a male mixed martial artist. For females, anywhere between 18-20%, let's say. What if guys dip below 10%? Is that dangerous? It's not, but that's really for competition time.

Because, like, with Lentz and all my male athletes, I try and keep them right around 10%. The bigger guys, maybe we get a little closer to 12%. The littler guys, the leaner guys, maybe, you know, between 8 and 10. But right around 10 is The bigger guys, maybe we get a little closer to 12%. The littler guys, the leaner guys, maybe between eight and 10, but right around 10 is the sweet spot. So we keep them around 10. That means they have weight to work off because they need that for the first few phases. When I work with training camps and such, we break the training camp down in the multiple three-week phases so we can actually go through the proper training protocols and then peak towards the very end. So we can deal with the rigors of the training, the bumps, the bruises, the bangs, the slams. We have the extra body fat to kind of insulate us so we can keep our joints and ligaments strong and pliable.

So extra body fat actually does that? It does. Absolutely. It does. It's just another layer of insulation when you're constantly grinding on guys and being wrenched against the wall and picked up and slammed 50 times because you're drilling whatever move. You need that little bit of insulation. The leaner you get, the drier your joints get, the more susceptible to injury you become.

Is that a scientific fact, like your joints get drier when you're leaner? When you're leaner, absolutely. Huh. How does that work? Is there fat in between your joints? I don't think I can speak intelligently enough to break down the true science of it, but it's something that certainly remains. I know when I was a power lifter, we would increase our body fat in order to increase the leverage points within our joints.

So you can have, you know, when I was a power lifter, I would intentionally increase my body fat to like, you know, 15 to 18%. And my numbers would absolutely go through the roof. I would get less joint pain, less injuries. So call it, you know, bro science. If some people like to throw that term around there, but you just feel better, feel stronger. And the leaner you get specifically when you start heading into the peaking phase, which is now mild dehydration, as we get closer to fight week sets in the entire body becomes drier. So there's less elasticity within the muscles you're more susceptible to those um injuries overuse injuries and such bro science is a very tricky

word right it's yeah absolutely it's fucking it's it's very limiting like they they hit you with that bro science and they gotcha as if it's an accusation but i don't it's almost a it's a it means experience. Unless you're just throwing shit at the wall. But there's a lot of throwing shit at the wall, too. I think more than experience, you know, there's certain, like, things that you would say maybe would be bro science that turned out to be, like, legit. Like, things along the lines, like, we want to talk about experience, things like ancient training methods that have turned out to be the right way to do it. All those old school Rocky methods.

Remember when Rocky was training in Siberia and he was running through the snow and dragging logs? A lot of times people would, if it wasn't for all the data that we have now, people would consider that kind of bro science. Because that's like, you know, you don't fucking have to chop logs, you dummy. Actually, it's a really good way to exercise absolutely

You know but for the longest time that most people thought no you had to use a Nautilus machine And you had a fucking yeah, you know do everything I go Drago with the fucking heart monitors and all that stuff The computers hooked up to them, but bro science is a nice way They can shut you down and make you look stupid I know it's fucking pisses me off because I get this shit all the time You know everyone's always Because you're a bro. I'm a bro. Even a bro.

You could call someone a bro and you limit their... Anything that they have to say, anything they have to say about culture, anything they have to say about society, any opinions, any thoughts, any philosophies they might have, you're a bro. You're a bro. And I will wear that proudly. But we're evidence-based. they might have, you're a bro. You're a bro. And that's, I will wear that proudly, but it's, we're evidence-based. So we can say evidence-based bro science that, you know, we don't do anything unless it's been proven. If we have a concept or idea and I, you know, obviously in my office, I have a team that works with me. So it's not just me in the black and gold shirt running around.

I have a team. I have, you know, employees that have degrees, masters in exercise physiology. I have registered dieticians on staff. So it's a complete team within the Dolce Diet that puts this information out there and looks after the athletes. So it's not just me running around on my stopwatch and my clipboard handing people bottles of water. So it truly is a scientific process. But it's also based upon the experience. And I've been doing this for 25 years, since 93, professionally getting paid to do this.

And I have tremendous amounts of data. I have almost all the data I've ever had collected on athletes and students and clients that I've worked with. Anecdotal data as well. Athletes telling you how good they feel after, what makes them feel bad. Yep.

What did they eat today? What did they weigh today? What were their bowel movements? What was their training systems like? When did they get sick? What were their bowel movements? What was their training systems like? When did they get sick? What's their sense of humor like? I mean, I speak with the wives. I speak with the husbands.

I speak with the coaches. I speak with the training partners. I know everything about the athlete, the time they wake up, the time they have that bowel movement all the way through the day. I know the intensity of the training. I know the volume of the training. I know the amount of rounds that they put in. I know their caloric breakdown.

I know their lean mass ratios. Oftentimes, I know what their of the training. I know the amount of rounds that they put in. I know their caloric breakdown. I know their lean mass ratios. Oftentimes, I know what their blood work looks like. We have a lot of data, and based upon this data is how we come up with our methodology and how we continue to evolve. Because every time, I mean, it's like every week you see me at the UFCs quite often. Well, that's not just, I'm not throwing shit at the wall. I'm taking what I did on Friday, Saturday of that week, and on Sunday, I'm looking at the numbers, and I'm retooling it because Monday,

I'm going to another fight week somewhere, and we're continuing to evolve this process as we move forward. It's evidence-based scientific principles that's also battle-tested and proven viable with experience. There's a lot of science out there that the guys in the suits and the lab coats the lab coats they're going to point to and say that's the way to do it but they've never actually done it in the human element they've never actually seen it work they just sit in the classroom and they talk about it and they pontificate on it but it's never truly been proven in the real world and that's what we do also so we have the benefit of that plus we have the benefit

of all the scientific evidence that's out there also. And that's kind of what we roll into this. Also, the stakes in MMA are so much higher than the stakes in any other sport when it comes to proven concepts in the real world, in quotes. Because the real world in MMA, your fucking consciousness is on the line. Your health is on the line. Your body is going to get hit by things that would ordinarily like if you were in uh any sort of a real life situation and someone kicked you in the head that person would go to jail meanwhile in this scenario they're rewarded for being able to kick you in the head they get a

bonus they get a fucking head kick bonus yeah they get a ko of the night well that's it's performance of the night now but um do you think and this is a really touchy subject but i think it's an important one to bring up do you think that a lot of our ideas about what's physically possible when it comes to training and when it comes to fighting are distorted because of performance enhancing drugs absolutely absolutely i think performance enhancing drugs drugs have set the bar in all sports in in a culture whether it's looking at the movies, looking at the magazine cover. Track and field. Track and field everywhere.

Golf, NASCAR, anywhere you look that there's money on the line or you get rewarded for performance, there's some sort of ancillary good or commodity being used or purchased or consumed to improve your performance. It's very evident in the world of mixed martial arts because these guys and girls are getting punched and kicked in the head and they're losing consciousness and they're breaking bones and getting limbs torn off. So now you have these advanced superhumans out there able to rip joints and punch brains and do all these other things. out there able to, you know, rip joints and punch brains and do all these other things. So it does, I think the odds are much greater, you know, for the risk is certainly much greater for anybody who competes. Yeah, that's where I took exception to a lot of people saying like, who cares if someone juices, you know, I don't give a fuck. I'm going to kick their ass anyway. You know, like Chris Weidman said that about Vitor Belfort, and I appreciate the fact that he thinks that way,

because he's a champion, and that's how a champion feels. But the reality is, there are punches that can be landed when you are on EPO and test and jack to the fucking gills and whatever the fuck else you're doing, that you wouldn't have the energy to land in a normal scenario. It's very rare that a guy can do what TJ Dillashaw does and go balls to the walls for five fucking rounds. TJ can do it as a natural athlete

because he's got a fucking tireless work ethic, he's unbelievably dedicated and focused, and he's 145 pounds. That's another big factor. It's huge. The difference between that and a guy like ovareem yeah who alistair ovareem came into the ufc against brock lesnar he was 265 shredded to the tits looked like a fucking superhero out of a comic book pissed hot and

has never been the same guy again yeah and that's the reality is now he's being tested, he's shrunk, he lost body mass. It just seems to affect a guy's chin as well. The thing about taking performance-enhancing drugs is it doesn't just seem to affect your cardio, but it seems to also affect your ability to take a shot. We saw that in Mark Hunt versus Bigfoot. Bigfoot, Silva, and Mark Hunt had one of the greatest heavyweight fights ever. As far as from a fan's perspective, like watching an entertaining fight,

what a fucking war. These guys went to war. And Bigfoot absorbed everything that Mark Hunt hit him with. One of the greatest knockout artists in the history of kickboxing and in MMA. Mark Hunt's awesome. He's a monster. Bigfoot absorbed it. They tested him after the fight and

he had apparently he tested before the fight thought that was it i don't have to worry about this anymore and they jacked him with a fucking giant hit a like they took a fucking big gulp full of test and just shoved it right in his ass and he was just fucking just completely juiced up when he fought his his levels were through the roof after the fight yeah and because of that he was able to absorb i mean i'm speculating as to why he was able to absorb those shots but i've got to think that it has something to do with it it definitely increases aggression it increases tenacity it brings out that killer instinct and maybe an athlete in that state they can walk through punches more because they have

more of that primal urge and instinct and those elevated hormones pumping through their body because that's really what testosterone does and god knows what else is out there i mean i don't even think we're aware in this room of all the drugs and performance enhancers that are truly out there and these you know evil geniuses around the world are creating and sticking into the athletes and putting them back out there to see what the effect is. No, and Bigfoot got popped on a simple urine test, which is quite fascinating because the UFC has taken a lot of flack about their stance on performance-enhancing drugs

and people's like, oh, it's just lip service. The UFC doesn't give a shit. This is how much the UFC give a shit this is how much the ufc gives a shit they've tested all of their best athletes with blood tests in a way that has fucked up a lot of performances like they have stepped in and it costs more than forty thousand dollars every time they do this so every single athlete they're doing this outside of the jurisdiction of the athletic commissions so the athletic commissions has their own specific protocol for how they test a fighter then the ufc steps in

and brings in like the the highest most stringent olympic testing that they can find they bring in the best guys that not only that they have a chain of command they have a chain of uh evidence rather of um uh possession where like say if you if mike Dolce comes to the gym and you test Jamie, you fucking carry that shit on a plane to wherever the lab is. Like, you have it in your possession. It never leaves you. When you take a shit, that fucking suitcase sits right in front of you. Nobody can come into your hotel room, grab it. No.

It goes directly from your hands to the lab. And they are very, very, very specific about that. The reason being is because there's no shenanigans with these blood tests. And because of that, a guy like Chael Sonnen got popped for EPO, elevated levels of tests, human growth hormone, all this. I mean, he's been popped for a bunch of different things. Actually, the elevated test was the urine thing. bunch of different things the actually the elevated test was the urine thing but when they got him with the blood they found him with all they got him with some anti uh some thing that they use for fertility yeah he was uh he was on clomid which is what you uh you take when they take you off

of human growth hormone or uh testosterone to try to restart your body system like it's it's everyone's a fucking chemical factory it It's crazy. It's crazy. It's not everyone. Obviously, it's some. It's some. And I think it's a smaller percentage than a lot of the articles and interviews come out with. A lot of athletes,

oh, there's 90% of the guys or 50% of the guys. Well, Vitor Belfort says everybody uses. That's what he, one of his famous statements after he got caught, he's like, everyone's using in camp. Everyone. It depends on which camp he's talking about. Because there's's i know that there's there's a ton of great athletes out there ronda rousey's one of them you know lifelong drug-free athlete johnny hendrix is one

of them nick lens is one of them bj penn is one of them um there's john fitch john fitch is one of them so there's a there's a lot of huge list of top tier athletes that are clean and lifelong clean and we have no reason to suspect otherwise. Right. And they beat the piss out of a lot of the PED users. But, you know, to the guys and girls that are using PEDs, maybe they wouldn't be a top 5, top 10, top 20 even. Maybe they wouldn't even make it into the UFC, if not for some sort of enhancement. I would love to go back to Pride, the Pride days.

I'm a huge Pride fan. Sure. Don't get me wrong some of my greatest moments as a fan as an mma fan absolutely watching the just the best fights of pride fedor versus crocop where he's just absorbing every shot crocop hits him with and plowing forward and blasting him fedor beat crocop in a fucking kickboxing bout so a lot of people don't realize and fedor was the first guy that ever made me want to be fat. He made fat sexy, didn't he?

That bald bastard. He's beating the fuck out of everybody with this floppy gut. And I'm like, this motherfucker. He was kicking everybody's ass. And he looks like he just stepped out of his fucking station wagon and waddled onto the beach to play volleyball with some friends. He was much bigger, actually, early in his career. And then as he got older, he lost a lot of body mass, a lot of muscle mass.

But, man, I would love to see what those guys were actually doing. And in Pride, I mean, that's almost a gentleman's agreement that you're agreeing to compete on drugs because that was in the contracts. When we saw that pretty recently, and I had known some guys back in the day that had said that's in the contract. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Well, Ensign came on the podcast. He read it off to us.

Insanity. But in that case, if you're going to sign that contract and then you're loaded up to the gills, I'm not going to sit here and judge morally because you're agreeing to those rules. It's like kicks to the face on the ground, okay, if you're going to agree to it. But in the UFC here where there to those rules, right? It's like kicks to the face on the ground, okay, if you're going to agree to it. But in the UFC here where there's unified rules,

it's a whole other ballgame. Well, when Jason Chambers was training at Tenth Planet, he went over, he was fighting in Japan. I won't even say the organization. But they wanted him to fight at 185. And Jason's like, I walk around at like 170. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, I want to fight 155.

Like, no, no, no, no, no. You're going to get on steroids. Much larger. Oh, wow. They wanted him to get on roids. They literally told him to get on roids. And is that legal over there? I mean, is that just culturally it's not an issue?

I don't think they give a fuck about that. They just looked at him. You know, Jason's a handsome bastard. And they say, like, this fucking beautiful bastard. We need some muscles on this motherfucker to sell there you go sell sell sell you know you can't have a guy looking like nick diaz kicking everybody's ass with a normal athlete looking body you want a kevin randleman looking fucking jason chambers with kevin randleman's muscles jesus christ how much can we sell that damn put that guy on a fucking cover put a put a banana where his dick is. Stuff it in his underwear.

Super athlete. Super. Yeah, but they literally told him. I mean, from his voice to my ears, they told him. And we're friends. We still are friends. They told him to do steroids. So they do. I mean, and there was always

speculation. Like, we would look at Vanderlei and we'd go, how? How do how how are you built like that how is that how can the guy be built like that and go to war for 10 minutes a 10 minute round and just never get tired yeah like how is that possible it's not right it's very rare those are the outliers that are able to look like that and compete like that and i've spent some time with Brian Stan, and he was telling a story about how when he went to Japan and fought, was it Japan or China, and fought Vanderlei. And he's like, I'm flying on a flight. I'm sucked out.

I'm dehydrated. I'm cutting weight. And I show up, and I see Vanderlei. And he is just fucking jacked and veiny and, like, smiling and just spitting piss and vinegar. And he's like, that's when I knew. I knew he was fucking gassed up. And, you know, and then you go out there, and the fightitting piss and vinegar. And he's like, that's when I knew. I knew he was fucking gassed up. And, you know, and then you go out there and the fight goes how it is.

And it was, they got fight at performance at night, fight at night, whatever, you know, and Vanderlei had a very good chin on that night because Stan, you know, hit him with big shots and back and forth it went. And, unfortunately, Stan was the guy to fall down first. Yeah, it is that thing. Your ability to absorb punishment actually changes Depend upon what you're on seems to be it seems to be I mean, we're talking we're kind of speculating Obviously, we don't have the evidence in front of us bro science. Yeah, we're bro science and shit out of this

Well, but Stan recently accused Kung Lee of being on performance enhancing drugs after he fought Michael Bisping Yeah, and that's you know no evidence no evidence other than a photo but that photo yeah was pretty fucking interesting it well it's interesting because kong lee was is 40 but you know in kong's defense he said that he had had a series of aggravating injuries and this was the first camp where he had had surgeries he'd fixed up all those injuries and he went on a pretty rigorous strength and conditioning regime sure for that for that training camp like you can't definitely say that he was on something and he

didn't piss piss hot and that's it so i mean i don't know and it's it's a tough call because then we're just kind of being haters like oh look at that dude he looks fucking great at 40 and like well i don't look that good so he must be on juice and there's that you know human element to it yeah but if he doesn't piss hot i mean how can we accuse and blame you know him of doing something wrong when he didn't and it didn't affect his performance in a positive manner anyway because bisping went out there and beat his ass beat his ass god damn bisping look good in that fight. That was the best version of Bisping we've ever seen. Bisping's a tenacious motherfucker.

He's a mean motherfucker. He's just tenacious as shit, man. He's just still in the mix, still believing that one day he's going to be the champion. He's just going to keep fucking chipping away. He gets beat. He comes back. In his defense, everyone that's beaten him has essentially been popped for steroids.

Dan Henderson, who knocked him out, wasn't popped for steroids, but he was on a legal version of testosterone replacement therapy before they outlawed that stuff, which I think is a good thing to outlaw. This is coming from a person who takes testosterone. I'm 47 years old. I take testosterone every week. I used to take a cream this is coming from a person who takes testosterone i'm 47 years old i take testosterone every week i take a i used to take a cream now i take a shot it seems to last longer it seems to work better but why do i do it first of all because i'm not competing against anybody and it makes me feel better um it worked my body works better when i take it i mean that's

what testosterone replacement's all about but when it comes to professional athletes doing it, man, it's very tricky because on one side, an athlete can take it and it can make them feel better and they can perform better when their career would be over. Like you take a guy like a Roger Clemens, and I don't know whether or not Roger Clemens did anything, but most people believe he did. And's a baseball player and then deep into his 40s all of a sudden the motherfuckers he's still throwing 95 mile an hour fastballs and he looks fantastic he's built like a brick shithouse what's going on there well most likely he got on hormone replacement so the idea being that when you're getting older you're getting wiser and you have

accumulated all this experience and all this knowledge but your body does not perform the way it did when you were younger it just doesn't

the hormones they go away your body's preparing for death I mean essentially that's what's going on but it isn't bullshit because it's kind of the way the world works

sure you know I mean we're only here for a short amount of time otherwise fucking aristotle be sitting right there you know he'd still be around love to hear him on this show he'd probably be a boring bastard i don't understand his language either yeah no i'd love to hear him just kidding but you know you know i'm saying it's like everyone has their time and when you're time this is obviously hypocritical coming from me because i just admitted that i do take testosterone, but when you're a fighter,

there's, there's the guys that they've gone through all this experience, their bodies started to fade off and then they get on it and then boom, all of a sudden they're world beaters. The best example is Vitor, right? Vitor Belfort. I maintain that TRT Vitor was one of the most spectacular fighters in the

history of fighting his knockout of luke lock luke rockhold his knockout of bisping i mean his knockout of dan henderson i mean he was a fucking destroyer when he was on test yeah he would show up with muscles on his fucking eyebrows i mean literally he had muscles on his gums. His whole body looked like a muscle. It was insane. And he was so aggressive and so confident. It was a completely different Vitor than the Vitor that fought like Sakuraba when he fought in Pride, which was a decade earlier. I mean, it's crazy to see something like that happen.

Yeah. And on one hand, I love it. On one hand, I want to see Vitor fight like that. I want to see a destroyer. I'm a guy who likes watching entertaining fights. I like watching spectacular performances.

But on another hand, I want to see, I want to see someone fighting someone where it's just will and determination and discipline and focus

and you work towards something and then you achieve it and you do it just And you work towards something and then you achieve it and you do it just by hard work. Sure. I don't want it to be a goddamn pharmacy competition. Yeah. You know?

And that's high-level sports. It is quite that. And kind of a moral conversation. Let's skew this a little bit. So you look at stem cell research cell research now is that a performance enhancer yeah it's gonna be reattaching an acl from somebody else is that a performance enhancer sure it can be right i mean well it certainly can fix a bad body and that will enhance the performance of that person so it can be it's an interesting and i've heard vitor say this before

and i'm not defending i'm just say that yeah yeah i don't know he's performance enhancing that i think he was making a reference to weidman who had gone over to germany i believe and had some sort of reginokine i don't know yeah well i've had that he's wrong when it comes to that doesn't enhance your performance it just makes your inflammation go down. Okay. I mean, Weidman has mangled knees. I mean, he's had arthritis in his knees so bad that he can't even get his foot to touch his butt. Like, he lift his heel up like this, like I'm doing sitting right here. He can't do that.

He couldn't get his heel to touch his ass. His knees are so arthritic, and yet he still beat Anderson Silva twice like that. With those knees? With those knees. Yeah, because he's a fucking monster. Yeah, he's a beast. Weidman's a monster. He because he's a fucking monster yeah he's a monster it's not even 30 yeah yeah he's a monster um but what he did was not it's not gonna make him like me it'll make his knees work better but just there'll be like normal knees it's not like he's gonna get to a point where he has like you know like when you saw Vitor's muscles

that shit wasn't normal, son. It was above average. Yeah, like an average 16-year-old kid who works out, you know, once or twice a week has better knees than the middleweight champion of the world. That's the point. It's the actual pliability of his joints itself. I mean, does that increase a mechanical advantage when the knees work better? Yeah, but it only makes it like a normal person.

It's not like you know what you can get if you're tested up to the gill so i don't see how you can make that comparison yeah ethically and where is the where's the line on medical intervention to performance enhancement or supplementation supplementation is a good one because that's yeah creatine well i remember bj something that's simple bj was shitting on um and i'm a huge BJ Penn fan, will be to the day I die. But BJ was shitting all over GSP. You know, hey, you're taking a test. You know, you're taking GH.

Tell the truth. What's going on? And then while you watch BJ working out, and he had a fucking, he had a counter filled with these different supplements. There's a bunch of shit that they would give him after every meal. It was all legal. It was all like, you know, glutamine and things along those lines and, you know, fish oil and all these different various supplements. But those various supplements, that's not food.

That's food that has been broken down and they've isolated very specific components that they've shown to enhance performance. So you're taking performance enhancing supplements when you're taking anything. I mean, the reason why you take multiminerals and multivitamins is you want to enhance the performance of your body, period. That is what's going on. It's just going on at an edge level as opposed to a jump. Like when you're tested up like vitor tested they caught him before this is what made them cancel um testosterone replacement in nevada i mean they

had already had issues with it but they started testing guys um off like just randomly like come here like pee in that cup that's how they got overe's how they got Overeem. Vitor tested an average person. It's like an average male's because 300 to like 800 is like a high level. Vitor was 1,475. That's insane. It doesn't exist in nature. It just doesn't exist in nature. And that was one of the reasons why they were like, okay.

And this is not idle speculation coming from me, by the way. This is me talking to people that are in the know, people that were actually there. The whole conversation that went down, I was privy to a lot. And it was very tricky because you have to find out what's ethical. I mean, they louded in the first place because doctors were saying, my client has low testosterone and he has an issue. Gonadism or whatever, hypergonadism, whatever the issue is. My client has low testosterone um i as a doctor believe that he has a medical issue that needs to be addressed we're going to supplement his testosterone so the athletic commissions allowed this but they didn't totally understand

what they were allowing because they didn't know that you could take testosterone and if you took testosterone and then got off testosterone your natural levels crash so then you show up at the doctor and you say hey man test me i feel pretty weak and the doctor says you have low testosterone i'm gonna write your prescription for testosterone then you bring that to the athletic commission my doctors allowed me to take testosterone here's my blood work and they go all right it seems pretty good go ahead take it i mean that was going on that's what happened with nate marquardt that's what happened with Nate Marquardt. That's what happened with a lot of people.

That was the issue with when Nate Marquardt was pulled out of his fight with Rick Story at the very last minute is because the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission tested him, and he was jacked through the roof. And they were like, what are you doing is dangerous. What was his number? Do you remember? I don't remember, so I won't say it. But it was Vitor-esque.

It was astronomical. It was very high. It was not a number that exists in nature. And that's the issue, is that these guys were doing the same as Mark Hunt. It was not a number that exists in nature. These guys were taking hyper levels of testosterone. When they give you testosterone, unless you are going to the doctor, and that doctor is the only one who administers testosterone, and they do it right in front of you, you can put as much in as you want.

Sure. You know, if Mike Dolce gets a prescription for testosterone, and you go to your doctor, your doctor's going to give you a fucking month's supply. And you can say, I'm going to put the whole month in right now. See what's up. Boom. Look out. And then you're just fucking running through walls like the thing from the Fantastic Four. Just, ah!

It's very weird. You know, it's very, I mean, like, if you're on anything else, if you're on any other kind of medication, they'll give you, you know, you take two pills in the morning, you take two pills at night, and here's your pills. Take those pills. Yeah. But you could just decide to throw, and here's your pills. Take those pills. Yeah. But you could just decide to throw the whole bottle down your throat if you're fucking nuts. The only way you could prevent that with testosterone is by restricting access and making that access only through that medical provider that does it right there.

Everyone knows. And so they decided to just stop the testosterone replacement there was no way they could regulate it there was too many ethical concerns there was too many concerns but the thing is they started it and they let these people get on it and then they got them off of it and when you get people off of it their whole endocrine system just crashes and there was no transition period none you need a long transition period like this vitor weidman fight is going to be spectacularly interesting from that perspective because vitor's previous performances have been some of the best performances i've ever seen in all my

years of watching mma he just looked fantastic and if there was no concern whatsoever if uh there was no issue with testosterone he wasn't on anything he was just fucking training like a wild man and putting in you know if he was younger and this was all going on if he didn't have like a noticeable dip and rise and change of his body anatomy he would be like one of the most heralded contenders ever but everybody looks at him sideways. Even to this day, like Weidman is a huge favorite coming into this fight. I mean, I don't know what the numbers are, but I remember the last time I looked at it, it was a pretty heavy favorite.

Maybe you should look it up, Jamie. Find out what Chris Weidman over Vitor Belfort is. If you look at how Vitor destroyed Dan Henderson, you look at how he destroyed Luke Rockhold, you look at how he destroyed Bisping, you would say, how could anybody be a favorite over this guy? And the reason is, is because of the testosterone. Sure. It's 100%. No one wants to bring it up.

I mean, the UFC's probably upset that I'm talking about it right now, you know, because they don't like bringing it up. Like when I do those countdown shows, we don't talk about testosterone. Sure. I would like to. I would like to talk about it. I would like to bring in experts. I would like to, I would like to talk to a guy like you. I'd like to talk to an endocrinologist. I'd like to say what, what, what is the recovery process? How can a man bring his natural levels back up to where Vitor was, you know, is it possible? That's going to be difficult. Not knowing what his blood work or how bad off he was, you it possible? That's going to be difficult. Not knowing what his blood work or how bad off he was going into the TRT program,

he's going to come out worse off. He said he was at 180. That was what he said, which is really low. And I would believe that knowing a lot of the Brazilians, a lot of those kids get on in their early teens because it's a social medicine over there. You walk into a gym and that's what the coach hands them and i i've heard this story from dozens of brazilians and it's nothing against the culture it's just something that's normal well it's legal there it's legal it's like

walking into a gnc and getting some protein powder yeah it's not like it is over here when it's over here you got a bit get your you know if you're going to go to a gym and become a bodybuilder and you want to get testosterone or steroids you're going to have to a gym and become a bodybuilder and you want to get testosterone or steroids, you're going to have to do dealings with some shady people. Brazil, you go to the pharmacy. Go in and you get it done properly, but unfortunately. You open at 4-1, that's almost 5-1 now. 5-1. That's big.

Over Vitor. The Vitor that destroyed Dan Henderson in the first round. The Vitor that wheel kicked Luke Rockhold into oblivion. And someone's a 5 to one favorite over him. That's incredible. And that's because of that. Yeah. It's amazing.

Everyone remembers Vitor when he fought Randy when he was 240 pounds and looked like a lion. Absolutely. And those are the days I think that have caught up with him and caused the issue.

Well, that was back when he was training with his friend Curtis who was his bodybuilder friend who's dead now. Guy died from steroids. Oh, that's right when he was training with his friend Curtis, who was his bodybuilder friend, who's dead now. Guy died from steroids. Oh, that's right. I remember that.

We used to call him Garden Hoses. Because we would work out with this guy. He would be at the gym. And he had garden hoses for veins. I mean, he would stand there like this. And there were just garden hoses all over his body. He was so big. He was so big you couldn't believe that he was a human being it's uh guys

like that from the the 90s era bodybuilding days they're all fucking dying now yeah i've been seeing that mike montarazo just died yeah crazy nasser that big uh somebody he's dead he died those guys were just just redlining the body and redlining the capabilities. When the sports, so we think of bodybuilding, like the golden era, like the Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Franco Colombo, the Pumping Iron Days,

and the bodies didn't change that much. 70s to 80s, they were kind of similar. And then the early 90s, that's when Dorian Yates came and just exploded onto the scene. Then Ronnie Coleman followed up in these 260-pound mass monsters.

5'6". 5'6 five six yeah fucking insanely crazy rip three percent body fat garden hoses running everywhere and it wasn't as much from what i i understand i've been working on a mass building strength building book now so i've been researching more of the bodybuilding side and i'm coming across all this information where they're talking now about it was like insulin and igf1 and like growth hormone when those things came into play in those early 90s that's when the bodies changed but now you see what's happening 15 20 years later these guys in their 40s and 50s are dropping dead of terrible terrible conditions yeah almost directly related to that where you see guys like like Arnold and Franco, you know,

still walking around, knocking on the door of 70s. Arnold's back on the spike. You see those muscles? Yeah. He's pretty fucking big now. That Hollywood money, man. Come on now, right? Maria took everything.

I have to get bigger. There you go. Yeah. But he is, but you know, Dorian, in all fairness, is fine too. Right now. Yeah, right now. you know, and that's the thing he seems like a smarter guy Just knowing a little bit actually when we were in Birmingham. I swung by Temple Jim. I didn't get a chance to meet him I was historic, you know meet that guy fucking crazy But we'll see and hopefully, you know, you don't want to see anything bad happen anybody

But you know, those guys are are on death watch to a degree. What fails when they do that? What fails in their body? Yeah, what fails? All these guys, it seems to be heart-related. Their hearts are just exploding on them. They're enlarged for starters, and then they're just some sort of shutdown, breakdown, and they're just exploding for lack of a more technical term. But it's almost all cardiac related.

Like that's what Matarazzo, he was waiting for a heart transplant. Oh my God. He wasn't even 50 years old yet. Wow. You know, he's a Boston guy, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I remember when I was just a kid at that time and that's, I was a father and I was watching these guys like, you know, that's what I want it to be. And I was like, well, maybe a couple of them. So naive, take steroids. But like, no, he's, he's. So naive, take steroids. But like, no, he's using muscle tech and he's using EAS creatine

and that's, I believe that, never Flex Wheeler and Flex had a fucking kidney transplant. He did? Yes. Don't quote me

on the kidney transplant, but he had kidney failure and that's what took him out of bodybuilding at his absolute prime. I'm 90% sure it was a transplant. But isn't that

the kidney thing due to cutting weight? They would dehydrate the shit out of themselves massive prescription diuretics So it's cutting weight is one thing using a very powerful pharmaceutical diuretic that's like water and fucking you know Rubbing alcohol as far as you know putting that into your body And that's what like Mohammed Ben Aziza and I think Andres Munzer,

some of these famous older bodybuilders were just huge into those prescription diuretics. And they just fucking blow their body up from the inside out. Look amazing on the outside. And then guys like Paul DeLette, you know, I'm kind of really, you know, going back 20 years in my remembrances of bodybuilding. I remember these guys collapsing and just thinking like, oh, you know, they didn't, they look like such specimens. Why are they so unhealthy? And that's really, I think what turned me into what I am today. So I saw that, you know, and take my story back even farther. And I touched on it, you know, years ago where I saw my father

collapse, massive stroke. And I was an eight year old kid and he was like really in shape. He was a third red horse trainer and he just fucking had a massive stroke and i was like how the fuck like spun how is this even possible and then all the doctor's visits and all this shit for years well he was burning his candle at both ends fucking drinking coffee in the morning not eating till late at night working like 16 20 hour days really you know hard hard working days you know sitting back kicking some beers and Burnt his body out from the inside. Family history of heart disease, hypertension. Didn't take care of himself.

Boom. Fast forward, I see this bodybuilding shit. And it really fascinated me. I was fascinated as a boy all the way up through. I was fascinated. And as I continued, and I was a 280-pound powerlifter at some point. Brought my body weight all the way up my mid-20s, 280 pounds. And one day I go to the doctor for a basic health test, wellness test. High cholesterol,

high blood pressure, hypertension, sleep apnea, get hooked up to a halter monitor, had heart palpitations. Doctor's like, what are you doing? I don't fucking know. I'm trying to be big. I'm trying to be Arnold Schwarzenegger over here. And she's like, yeah, this has got to change. And that's when my mind spun. I just saw it for what it is. I pictured my father. I was like, I've got to fucking change this immediately.

And that's when I was performance science based. Lots of supplements and lots of micronutrients and protein ratios and all that bullshit, that bodybuilding bullshit. And then spun it. And that's when I became this fucking organic, like pseudo hippie health longevity dude. And when I focused on that, I mean, lost 110 pounds, you know,

through my own personal experience. And when I was always working with athletes, you know, even like when I, since I was 17 years old, first of all, my training business, I was always working with athletes and I took that performance side and I went

to the longevity side. And what I saw is once we all started focusing on longevity protocols, as opposed to performance protocols, everybody's performance went through the roof. They're lean mash. So when you say longevity protocols, what do you, what do you mean? I mean, real food, getting rid of all the supplements, getting rid of all the pseudoscience, getting back to what's most natural, you know, and I use the term earth grown nutrients because I used to say whole foods and people thought that meant go shopping at the supermarket. No, eating food from the planet.

That was like really the first step for me. And I don't care as much about micronutrient ratios and weighing because I used to weigh my food. I used to sit there and I would spend a half hour every night and program all my meals and come up with all these different, you know, training cycles. And I was, you know, that dude, that insane dude about making these performance enhancements. If I ask this fucking ridiculous, just need to focus on eating real food extremely nutrient dense foods from the planet as fresh as possible as live as possible and all the science that's out there shows that that's the healthier way and all these different cultures that eat like that tend to be much healthier perform at a higher level for a much longer period of time longer

age you know a longer, and a high utility. And that's really the difference. Not only do they live longer, they have a very high utility while they're living longer, 50, 60, 80, 90, 100 plus years old, where they're still able to go out, fish, swim, do all these different things. That's what really turned my mind. And this is back 15 15 probably 15 years ago now and then I started implementing that with my athletes whether it's the powerlifters the

wrestlers or the grapplers and then you know early 2000s it was the NHB athletes before MMA that's like kind of how I got the start into uh you know and the MMA world was through Team Henzo Gracie on the east coast guys like Kurt Pellegrino and Dante Rivera when they're fighting for that ring of combat you know NHB you know titles focused on, you know, those guys. And it was all real foods. And it was like, everyone was like, what do you mean? I don't have to take my, my cytosport and my protein powder and pop all these fucking pills. I was like, no, you know, it was like almost like a leap of faith that for a while, for a lot of athletes to buy into, like, you mean I have to eat salads and fruit and make a smoothie and

just like you know now that we talk about and the culture is a little more advanced i think the science is out there and it's it's been proven for you know a decade plus that people realize well that's the better way to go now but going back you know 10 15 years ago that was like everybody was living out of fucking jugs you know protein powders and gncs and all that shit that was the big rage in the late 90, all the way into the early 2000s and such. So spun that, switched it, focused on the real foods. And that's what we've been doing with the athletes since. So going back to the longevity, when I work with an athlete like a Tiago Alves or a Ronda Rousey or whoever else, my goal is not for them to win a world title.

My goal is not about their weigh-ins. my goal is not about really anything sport related within the next five years my goal is for them to be 120 years old healthy fresh vibrant showing their great great grandkids photos of back when they won the ufc world title and all these great times that's possible 120 years old is that really has that ever been done it's possible now if we focus on it now because we're talking that's 80 years from now. And with the medical advancements that are happening, with the way science is continuing to evolve, it's possible if we don't fuck it up early. And this is where I talk to the athletes about the weight cutting starts 52 weeks beforehand. If we don't fuck everything up now, science is going to advance to the point to keep us healthier longer, offset some of these issues at a later stage of life. Instead of having a Mike Matarazzo, needing a fucking heart transplant when you're 40, instead of, well, maybe when you're 80, it slowly starts to give out because you've eaten fucking great, highly nutrient-dense foods your entire life.

You've been resting your body completely, not burning your nervous system out. and dense foods your entire life. You've been resting your body completely, not burning your nervous system out. You're training intelligently enough to stimulate progress, but not enough to shut anything down and break anything down. You're living a rewarding, happy life surrounding yourself with positive people. And that's something that you talk about here all the time. And that's almost the most important aspect is being a very well-adjusted, happy, positive individual. And this is something that when I work with athletes, a lot of people think, oh, it's just this fucking diet dude, or I'm just making eggs for your hand and my athlete's water.

I think that's the least of what I do. The most of what I do is I try and get inside the athlete's head and help them focus on their life and what they want out of their life, setting up goals and helping them develop action steps and eliminating this negative energy around them so they can truly realize their full potential. And that's, you know, I call it, we put a bubble of positivity around the athlete, especially as we get closer to the competition, because that's when it's most important. But it's really, we will try and keep that around them their entire life,

give them the tools, teach them the lessons now that they can carry on. So will we all live to 120 i don't know but i've read scientific research that assumes or believes that there's humans being born right now on the planet right now that will exceed 200 years old now will that happen who fucking knows jamie look at him it could be it actually could be he's fucked maybe he's fucked he's gone. He's going to get more pussy. Oh, that? I know. There you go. Yeah. But you bring up some really important points about stress and about surrounding yourself with positive things and positive energy.

You can tell a difference. Like, if you have some bad shit in your life, you have some conflict, you'll feel bad about that conflict. You'll feel. And the key is to resolve that stuff as much as possible and then figure out a way to make peace with the rest of it and move on with your life. And just the less you put out battling it,

the better you'll feel about it. When I was younger, I would argue with people about everything. I was constantly involved in conflict. And then I realized as I got older, the less conflict I have, the better I feel. And the more I resolve conflict and not get in it, it's better for everybody. It's better for that person. It's better for me.

There's certain shit that's unavoidable. But all these people that are running around suing people all the time, those are the motherfuckers that die of heart attacks. Those are the motherfuckers that have stress because they're constantly involved in battle. And not the right kind of battle either. Not like a competition. constantly involved in battle and not the right kind of battle either. Not like a competition, you know, but just trying to lash out and then dealing with people lashing out at you and all your day is spent thinking about it. And if he says this, I'm going to say that.

And then if she says that, I'm going to tell her what the fuck is up. And that kind of shit wears on you, man. You're grinding your gears all day. Eats you alive. And people don't think of it. You don't think of that as being a stress. They think of stress as being bills. They think of stress as being traffic. No, stress is every, all those things are stress. Relationships, friendships, work, conflict. When you're at work all day and you hate your job, that's stress. That is stress. That grinds on you yeah that feeling like when you get out of work at the end of the day and you

have that huh weight lifting off your shoulders that means you're in a bad job you got to figure out a way where you don't have that if it's possible if it's possible find that way that was me ten years ago I was a municipal tax assessor in a state of New Jersey. Amazing. It was the... Just saying all those things together make me want to fucking jump off a roof.

Dude, on Friday, I would literally get depressed on Friday because I knew Monday was coming. Yeah, I know that feeling. Fuck it. It was goddamn hell, but I was making a shitload of money. My mom was so proud of me.

I had the 401k and the six weeks off vacation. I was living, quote, the American dream. I fucking hated myself. God damn. I sat around around i remember this was the turning point for me i sat around a boardroom table and i was a lot younger than my closest peer and i'm looking at all these older dudes and we're all sitting there in suits and like we're so fucking important you know being those dickheads and they're all overweight they're all they all have red faces and they're all talking

about how they're gonna fucking you know sneak off to the bar before they go home because they don't want to deal with the fucking family and the kids and all the fucking bullshit i gotta get the fuck out of here i have to get the fuck out of here or i'm gonna fucking die like this i gotta change my life and that's what we did and i kind of threw that away resigned from the position took the job as the strength coach team quest up in portland Oregon, moved across the country for fucking minimum wage to clean toilets and left that job behind and I fucking loved it. I loved

scrubbing disgusting shitty gym mats at 5 o'clock in the morning and not sitting in a beautiful corner office for X amount of dollars per year because I was doing what I loved and I gave myself the opportunity and a chance to do something with my life and get rid of the stress.

I think that's why I'm kind of veering off. That's what it was talking about. I was so stressed out, and I was riding my bike. I remember it was freezing cold fucking raining, and I'm riding my fucking stupid bike because I had one vehicle. My wife had to go fucking work.

I'm riding my fucking bike six miles to the gym, and I fucking loved it. It was such a pure, crisp, cold morning, and I was just so alive in life. Everything was brand new everything was brand new again i was in my you know mid-20s at that point mid later 20s at that point it's fucking cool shit man oh yeah man taking chances and branching out on your own when it works out and rewards you it lets you know that the universe rewards risk it rewards calculated risk and passion. It really does.

And if you don't live your life like that, you're living your life afraid of risk. God, man, you're not going to get any reward either. You're just going to be stuck. You're going to be stuck in this bland, boring-ass, grinding existence. And then it's over. Then it's over. Yeah, it's not like it lasts forever that's the number one thing everybody wants to stay safe and comfortable yeah shit this doesn't last this is not gonna last you got to be uncomfortable i'm uncomfortable all the fucking time i don't like

90 ship 90 of what i do i don't like in some ways you know whether it's the exercise or writing or even performing or but just but i i hate editing my i just had to edit my comedy special today i fucking hate staring at myself i don't like it it's uncomfortable you gotta do shit that's uncomfortable you get over it and you you get but you don't like certain aspects about it you gotta figure out what don't i like about it what's not good what's what can i make better and then you make it better and you keep pushing and working and the more you do that the the more exciting it is the more you you get a little bit of a reward little bit of juice out of accomplishing something then you're on to the next thing but your life is constantly

fun this is filled with exciting shit things going on all the time you gotta assess and move on and move forward and move forward. And if you don't do that, you're just stagnant. Stagnant. You're pond water that you can't drink. You're fucked, man. Festering, that's it. Wait and die.

And what drives you? Have you ever kind of analyzed what drives you to get your ass out of bed, make yourself uncomfortable yet again on another day that you can just fucking put your feet up and lay by the pool and enjoy the sunshine? Mental illness. That's what drives me There you go. That's wrong with me. There you go But I don't feel like I ever deserve breaks the only time I ever feel like I have to have a fucking Brutal day where I can enjoy television, but if my bird days brutal enough, I like alright bitch

You can sit down and watch a little TV, you know. That's the only way I'll allow myself those rewards. But if I do do that, I can really enjoy it. I can really enjoy a nice foot up, relaxing, sit there, have a cocktail, watch some television. I can enjoy that. But if I don't, I can't enjoy it. I think a lot of people, they're giving themselves rewards all the time, but there's no risk. And then there's also, there's no sacrifice that led up to that reward. And you've got to enjoy the sacrifice.

You've got to enjoy the grind. When I say that 90% of the shit I do I don't enjoy, I enjoy that I can do it. Who the fuck wants to lift weights? No, you want the reward of lifting weights. And the only way you get a strong body is if you do shit you don't want to do. When you get to that third rep, you're like, I'm good. But you're not good, stupid. You got seven more to go.

And if you don't do those seven more, you're going to feel like a fucking loser when you put those weights down. You're like, I'm a bitch. I should have fucking kept going and I stopped. If you stop, you're missing out on the whole point that is the grind that is the keeping going the good kind of grind the working towards something grind it's like people ask me they're like dolce do you cheat or can i cheat or do you have a cheat day and i always retort why are you going to cheat like have you earned it and that that's the what we use is an earned meal it's not a fucking cheat meal it's not a cheat day it's an earned meal have you earned it? And that's what we use. It's an earned meal. It's not a fucking cheat meal. It's not a cheat day. It's an earned meal.

Have you earned it? And they're like, well, I don't know. Well, then you have it. Like you. When you fucking kick your own ass, you're totally spent. That's when you reward yourself with your earned TV time or whatever it is, your cocktail. Same thing when it comes to health and fitness. And this goes to the accountability side.

If you want to be successful, you want to set yourself up to succeed, well, you have to be accountable. I can't fucking do it. I can't do it for you. I wish I could. There's 7 billion people on the planet. I can't do it. I can barely do it for my own self, let alone every other fucking person out there. And each one of us, we are entirely alone 100%. We're surrounded by all this stuff, which is just a facade. It's all bullshit. It's here to kind of amuse and entertain and often distract us. But if we're going to be successful, it has to be because it comes from the inside, that driving force to make us successful. So the people that want to cheat on Saturday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, they go to the gym, they do their little thing, they eat their chicken and rice, you know, Monday through Friday, maybe they're kind of okay. They cheat just a little bit here and there.

They go off menu, let's say, and then Saturday's my cheat day or Sunday's my cheat day and football's on. And what happens Monday, They look fucking exactly the same. And then they do the same basic workout for the same basic reps and they do that. You know, the same, it's just the fucking same and they're on that rat wheel. So if you really, you know, talking to people out there, if you really want to break out, you really want to be spectacular, you really want to start to fulfill your potential, you have to make yourself uncomfortable. You have to challenge yourself and then you have to earn it. So with my athletes, with myself, our earned meals are maybe once or twice a month.

And what is an earned meal? I don't know. Maybe it's my wife's birthday. Maybe, you know, just going to see a fucking movie or something's coming out. And then what is my earned meal? My earned meal is typically a little bit more food that I normally fucking love anyway, because, you know, our recipes are fucking delicious. I'm not going to eat some shit burger outside when I can make a kick-ass grass-fed fucking burger

with baked sweet potato fries. I'm going to eat four of those motherfuckers instead of just eating my traditional six or eight ounce one. So that would be a basic earned meal. No Krispy Kreme donuts. Oh, God. I would love to. And the former Dolce would.

I would fuck. I was the former Dolce. Former dude. 282 pounds. Dolce. You know, Once upon a time I was the dude That would

I'd get a whole pizza And I'd put a half pound Of provolone cheese on top Eat that whole motherfucker Half gallon of ice cream Big king size Snickers bar And something colored To finish it down

Colored beverages only Like high C What high C Fucking crush Hawaiian punch If it was colored It had more calories I was fucking drinking it Yeah Oh hell it was colored it had more calories fucking drinking it Yeah, oh hell yeah grape soda root beer in the summer and was that a cheat day or was that that was that all the time

Performance science that was me trying to hit 10,000 calories a day so I could squat, you know, 700 800 You know plus pounds and deadlift, you know, six seven hundred pounds That was when I was only goal oriented performance oriented tons of fucking protein powders weight gainers creatine you know zma and fucking hma those weight gainers like you see those tubs is that just calories and sugar garbage it's all fucking garbage man um unfortunately they're all it's all preservatives it's all chemicals it's all coloring it's all additives and it's very little of the nutrition you're actually purchasing it for. It's such watered-down components of what is on the front label, just enough so they can legally put it in there and not get fucking sued,

and it's a shitload of everything else. So your journey to becoming this MMA fitness diet guru, you've kind of like changed your own life in the process. You've sort of figured out what makes you happy what makes you consistently perform well and in the process you've sort of become this guy by trial and error and education and application and now now here you are in this position where i mean fucking 90 of the guys that i see that are doing well in MMA, I see the guys with these Dolce Diet shirts on. I mean, you have so many athletes that follow your protocols,

and whenever someone is in trouble and they have a hard time cutting weight, they come to you. How did all this start? Like, how did you become this guy? Was it through, like what you said, Kurt Pellegrino, and then someone, Kurt, told other people and that kind of shit? That was like 2002, 2003. I was working with guys on team henzo gracie i was you know started training with under henzo and i'd been a power lifter for years before that and i was a amateur wrestler for years

before that so i've been cutting weight since i was 13 years old i was a varsity captain you know as a freshman so four-year you know varsity letterman captain of the team and i was just since i was eight years old father you know, varsity letterman, captain of the team. And I was just, since I was eight years old, father, you know, fucking massive stroke. I dove into bodybuilding and weightlifting at that age. And I was just attuned to it. I was like honors, sciences, biology, mathematics. And I just had that type of analytical brain. And I would analyze everything and all this shit.

So, you know, won't get too deep into that. As I went through, I was always cutting weight, always trying to get bigger. I was trying to get stronger. I was rather short. Had no money. Family I went through, I was always cutting weight, always trying to get bigger, always trying to get stronger. I was rather short, had no money, family was broke, wanted to go to college. How the fuck am I going to go? Poor kid from fucking New Jersey. How am I going to go to college? Only way I could do it was through a scholarship.

There's no cash. Mom's working three jobs, and there's no heating on in the fucking house. So there's no extra money for this kid number three to go to fucking school. And that became my focus. I had to focus on that, and I had a shit wrestling team. Loved the guys, and they made me who I am. But we were a parochial school. I started on the team.

It was the second year. The team was even in existence. Our coaches were great dudes, but they didn't have the high-level experience. None of my teammates did. How am I going to advance? It's not through technique. It's not through experience. It's not through grinding steel on steel.

It's just being in better shape than everybody. I had to be that guy, and that's the guy that I actually became. And that's what really started more of this focus on the strength and conditioning. Do you work with guys on strength and conditioning as well as working with them with diet? How do you balance that out? Because I talked to Steve Maxwell maxwell about this and maxwell who's uh you know really really well uh respected guy and a very very uh knowledgeable guy when it comes to uh strength and conditioning and athletics and he believes that you should do all of your

strength workouts and your conditioning workouts like kind of building up to a camp and then when you're in camp the majority of your work should be spent doing the actual sport itself. Without knowing his entire protocol, I agree on principle. And what I do and how I work best is not just overseeing the nutrition, the diet, and the weight cut. I call it the peaking program, and I bake it out into the traditional Western periodization program. When I talk about 52 weeks, it's a 12-month periodized program. When I started working with Tiago Alves in 2010, we came up with a seven-year program for him.

Now, unfortunately, he had some injuries along the way, but it's transitioning him from the body that he once had and the bad habits that he had once had to slowly rebuild, regenerate, and continue building him all the way through until he's 35 when he plans to retire and the specific goals that we have set. So a guy like Nick Lentz, I took over five or six fights ago when he was a 55-pounder. It'll be a little long-winded, but to kind of help explain your answer to the question here, took him over and he was doing a

lot of the wrong things, training really hard, totally overtrained, overreaching syndrome constantly, malnourished, couldn't understand why his body wasn't losing weight. He's walking around in the mid 160s, could barely make fucking 55 without damn near dying. Said, will I work with him? I said, yes, but only at 145. And he's like, are you fucking crazy? I told you I can't make 55. I said, you'll be a world champion at 145. I do believe that. You're undersized 155 pounder and you're not training properly. What I want to do with you is I want to add 10 to 12 pounds of muscle and grow you into the 145 pound class. Blew his mind. It didn't make any sense to him, but to his credit, he said, okay, and just

gave me the reins. So from that point on, I looked at, you know, multi-month cycles, you know, three-week cycles, three-month cycles, you know, and then a 12-month cycle to put on lean mass. cycles, three-month cycles, and then a 12-month cycle to put on lean mass. And what we did, we took him from 163 pounds to 175 pounds. We dropped his body fat from probably 13 to 14 down to right about 10%. And then he's able to make 145 consistently now easily. So using Steve's methodology in the off season, it's much more volume. It's more strength building. It's more muscle work. Not exactly hypertrophy because I don't really believe in that, but we're always staying anabolic. That's the goal. We always want the body constantly regenerating, regenerating, regenerating. Because once we stop regenerating, then we're breaking down. And once we start breaking down, everything goes to shit.

So with Nick, using him as the example again, build him up in the off season. And that's where I start to break down these three week mini cycles, three weeks before the fight. That's the peaking phase. That's when everything, the volume drops dramatically, the intensity goes up, but it's safe intensity. You're not sparring your fucking hardest those last three weeks. You're sparring your most intense and most precise without that bone-on-bone collision. Weeks four, five, and six in the middle, that's a little bit more medium volume maximum intensity that's when you're really getting your hard hard goes to build that um you know uh ability to withstand the damage that's going to happen in the fight to callous your body over and also to

callous your mind you have to go through that the three weeks before that so that's you know seven eight nine that's more of a balance your mind meaning you just you resolve like mental toughness mental toughness i mean toughness. I mean, we see guys, unfortunately, that they get into the octagon, they get put a bad spot that they haven't been in before

and they fold because they haven't been there. You have to go to those spots, unfortunately, but you have to do it in a very calculated fashion because you go there too often, you'll break in training

and you'll give up in the fight. You don't go there enough, you'll break in the fight and again, it's going to be the same result. So you have to touch it just enough, and this is where that periodization comes in. So I help oversee the overall training program. I help the athlete. Usually it's spar less. I try and pull them back because a lot of these athletes are sparring two and three times a week, and I try and only have them spar once a week, really

from six weeks out. One good, hard spar, proper spar, and one tech spar is really the methodology that I push. Save the brain, save the body. Let's get more precise. And then hit the other hard drilling in certain phases. And then as we get farther out, it's more skill building. We're looking to just add tools and see what tools fit the overall game. You know, throw 10 different techniques on the ground and see what fits. And as we get a little closer, we take the 10, we put it to five. As we get a little closer, maybe the athlete's only going to keep one or two usable techniques that will actually show up come fight day. We're not trying to add new techniques six weeks out, three weeks out for sure. At that point, it's just fine tuning and perfecting, but that also comes into their physical

preparation. What's their body weight like? What's the health? Again, health is everything. It's mental health. It's physical health. That's what allows them to perform at their ultimate. So long-winded way of saying I agree with Steve quite a bit. Strength building, that's off-season stuff. We want to keep that type of strength, that explosive strength, that absolute or maximal strength that we build in the off-season. We want to keep that, but now we want to turn it into a different type of strength, like a strength speed or speed endurance as we get into the specific competition. And that changes depending on what the sport is. What happened with Charles Oliveira?

Charles Oliveira and Nick Lentz were supposed to fight this past weekend. They did not fight because Oliveira showed up heavy. And then the day of the fight, they pulled him. They said he was sick, apparently. Yeah, it was. So I'm going to. Normally, I don't really pull back the veil veil but i think because this is such a public um situation and oliver and his team they've already spoken on and unfortunately what they

said was incorrect from what we saw so nick and i this fights on friday nick and i we get there on monday and we're already in the system nick gets to town at 164 pounds he's fighting at 146 that's the official weigh-in weight and that's actually lighter than Nick normally is, but we tightened up his diet just a little bit for Charles specifically. We knew Nick was going to overpower him. We wanted Nick to be just a little bit lighter, a little bit leaner, a little bit faster for this fight and better condition in case it was

a three-round dogfight. Charles called Nick out, by the way. So Charles asked for this fight after they had had a no-contest years before. So Monday, Nick and I, we start doing our thing, cutting weight. Now, my athletes don't work out. I strongly suggest fight week. They do not work out.

A lot of coaches... At all? At all. What do you mean? No, we don't put on the fucking gloves. We don't grapple. We don't hit mitts because we're now... All that work's done. We're preparing for competition. We're pulling the weight at this point. I want to feed the athlete as much as possible, hydrate them as much as possible, keep them as strong and healthy as possible so they can endure the process of cutting weight,

or as I like to frame it positively, as purification. We're purifying the body as we go through this Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, step on the scale Friday phase, where the body's completely clean, pure, and we can just put the best possible nutrients back in. When you say no working out, you mean nothing? I mean nothing. I mean the most that we'll do, and I talk about that in three weeks to shred it, what I do with Tiago Alves. This is a great, maybe we should talk about this next. Tiago's last fight, he weighed in at 171 the night before weigh-ins using this new protocol that we're using because they're fucking

healthy we're not tearing them down during fight week we're actually i build my athletes to the scale everybody else tears themselves down to the scale i build my athletes to the scale and it sounds counterintuitive and a lot of people think i'm fucking lying or whatever you know bro sciencing out but no this is this is the real fucking shit. So with Nick, what we're doing, we don't work out. We're going downstairs to the hot tub and we're just hanging out. He's playing his fucking, you know, whatever video games, because he's a tech head. He's playing his fucking games. We're fucking chilling out to music. We're just shooting the shit like you would do with your boys. Just hanging out in the hot tub for a little bit. Kamosi's coming down

and hanging out with Ben Rothwell a little bit. We're just shooting the shit down there. Charles and his coach are in the fucking sauna on Monday in plastic fucking suits and sweatpants all goddamn day long. Nick and I were in the hot tub for a half hour just to break a sweat drinking water the whole time. Eat beforehand. Stay hydrated during. Go upstairs and eat again. This is what we do, and that's what we did typically twice a day during fight week. Every time we went downstairs to the spa, which was beautiful at this hotel um foxwoods charles was in the fucking sauna

plastics on in the sauna and they would pick him up carry him out and just fucking let him lay on the floor and then they like cover him with towels so archaic and this is what a lot of athletes do charles was an extreme example now they're doing this on monday they're doing this on monday man fucking monday if you're doing that maybe maybe i can see athletes doing that like the night before in the morning of they're doing it fucking monday and tuesday and wednesday now we waited on thursday on wednesday and this is fun so we're watching him just break this fucking kid he's laying there in the sauna i mean just not moving you know and he'd get up and you know he'd do and he'd kind of like give

us a thumbs up he was a nice kid nothing bad was a nice kid. Nothing bad to say about Charles. Nothing bad to say about his coach, but what they did was wrong. They broke him in the fucking sauna. Nick and I saw it and we're like, you know, high five. I mean, it makes our job a hell of a lot easier because Nick's fucking great. And, you know, Nick's there at one point, Charles comes in, sits in the hot tub at the very end and he's looking at Nick and Nick's just sitting there drinking water, you know, shooting the shit.les over there dry mouth just sucked out big dark bags under his eyes after being in the fucking sauna for god knows how long and just kind of laid out on the wall so wednesday comes in this is actually funny wednesday comes middle of the day charles's

coach they drag him out of the fucking sauna they're just sitting there i took a photo of it i was going to tweet it like what not to do. And I was like, ah, that's fucking bad. Maybe I shouldn't do that. Maybe I should have. I don't know. He comes over and he's like, hey, guys, I have a proposition for you. And I think, oh, this fucker's not going to make weight.

They want to catch weight. I have a proposition for you. What's up? He's like, what you're doing right now, this is not going to work. He's like, you're not going to lose weight like this. In the back, I have salt and I have alcohol. And I want to pour it in the tub for you. So that in 30 minutes, you'll lose the same amount as you'll lose in three hours doing what you're doing right now.

I'm thinking, are you fucking kidding me? Salt and alcohol in the water? Salt. And I'm assuming he means Epsom salt and rubbing alcohol, which a lot of athletes use. And I have the data on that. There's not a discernible difference. And there's actually negative effects from doing that. We can touch on that in a second.

So I say to him, I'm like, no, we're good. I mean, Nick's losing a pound every 15 minutes and we're replacing it the whole time because again, I'm a data head and I track all my athletes. I know Johnny Hendricks, you know between 195 and 185 pounds. He lose 1.2 pounds of fluid every 15 minutes I know Nick Lentz loses a pound on the I'm gonna stop you right there. Sorry. I'm confused as fuck you you Make him lose weight and then you put it back on know what we're doing is we're just training the body

To sweat to sweat to just have the water purifying. We're purifying, pushing out the toxins. Are you giving them, is it distilled water? Is it regular water? No, it's regular purified water. Do they ever drink distilled water? No. There's some sort of a theory behind that, right?

That you drink a lot of distilled water and it forces your body to release all of its electrolytes or something? And it leaches your body of all these healthy minerals, electrolytes and such, the distilled water. We don't do that because we're trying to preserve health. Again, we're not trying- So how do you get them to lose 30 fucking pounds? Speed up their metabolism through proper eating, proper meal size. They eat small and often.

Usually it's written down for everybody in the fucking world to read. It's small and it's often and it's meals that we've targeted based upon their physiology from the weeks beforehand, meals and ingredients that suit their body. Um, and they just eat consistently. We play with, you know, carbohydrate, um, carbohydrate timing. We play with the protein ratios. We keep our fat levels really high. We keep carbohydrates in the diet all on fight week. You know, we keep sodium in the diet for the most part, most of fight week, we elevate and then lower, but we never drop completely. A lot of people, they just pull the carbs and they pull the salt and then they just fucking drink the distilled water. So how do you get Nick?

He weighs in the week he shows up. He's 164. He's got to get down to 145, 146. How do you get him to lose that amount of weight in a week? We speed up his metabolism, which matters quite a bit. So he gets to 10 at 164. So you change his diet the week of? We change.

Usually it's 10 days out. What we do is 10 days out, we increase sodium, but not a dramatic amount. What I tell the athletes is add more salt to your foods, but not so much that it tastes bad. Just add more than you normally do. So let's say you're taking it the week beforehand. So 10 days out typically should be your hardest training session. Because any more than 10 days out, now we're too close to the competition beforehand. So 10 days out typically should be your hardest training session. Because any more than 10 days out, now we're too close to the competition time,

you might not be fully recovered and you're not going to perform at your best. So right about 10 days out, usually the Tuesday before the fight of the following week, that should be the hardest day. And then everything else we start to pull way back. Light and medium workouts, much shorter intensities. Start to increase your sodium just a little bit.

So you can taste it, but it's nothing that you don't like. Never too much that it's not good. Add a little bit more to your water. And we add pink Himalayan sea salt. Love the Onnit brand actually for that. That's the one I use almost primarily to the water while they're training. Just add a little bit more. So we increase their sodium content just a little bit. And then usually, depending on the athlete, Saturday or Sunday, sometimes even Monday morning, we pull that back. We don't add any more addition. We don't add additional salt. So we rise the sodium up, then we pull it back down to normal levels, probably anywhere between one to 2000 milligrams, depending on the athlete, depending on their lifestyle. And we really focus on feeding them similar, a similar caloric content, but more often. So it's basically the

same, you know, let's say 2000 calories a day, but instead of five to six meals, now we're eating eight to 10 smaller meals all day long. The metabolism speeds up. We're also focusing on more fiber, cleaning out their digestive tract. A lot of times athletes will step on the scale with impacted food matter still sitting inside of them. Two, four, six pounds, who knows?

Is that real? That's real, absolutely. Four to six pounds of, that's a lot of steaks. If you looked at six steaks, slap six steaks down, like boom, boom, boom, six T-bones, 16 ounce T-bone steaks. That's a lot of fucking weight. And the fluid that food absorbs as it comes out. Is that much in a person's bowels?

Where's it all fit? I would estimate, they say John Wayne had like 20 some odd pounds. That's all bullshit. True or not. That's not true. True or not, I don't know. But I estimate somewhere up to three pounds of impacted food matter depending on when your last meals were. Or when your high protein, your harder to digest meals were.

I had heard that that's bullshit. The amount of, like, it's like one of those common myths. The amount of impacted food the average American male has in their gut when they die. Have you ever read that shit? There's like a Snopes thing on that. Hold on. I'm going to pull that up. But please keep going.

So we speed up their metabolism. We increase their digestive efficiency. We make sure they are completely clean. And then what we focus on is these small sweats. We keep the body sweating. We allow them to be used to sweating, but we keep rehydrating them. So it's easier for them to keep sweating. And these athletes sweat a shitload during this time. The only time is when we stop adding water is usually the night before the day before. Wayne's are on Thursday. We stopped somewhere midday Friday. We pull the

water out and then we'll use what I call the step method where it's a very simple way to not break the athlete, to keep them sweating properly. And the weight again comes off and it's all through hot tub, hot bath. It's never in the sauna, my athletes. So we don't train fight week. We ain't going to the fucking sauna. We don't put on plastics unless it's like that last minute it's freezing outside. We need to pull off another few ounces on the way to the venue. Then we'll throw some plastics on. And how much actual dehydration is it? The day of, when he wakes up on Friday morning, if it's a Saturday fight, what does Nick Lentz weigh when he wakes up? Nick cut three and a half pounds on the day of weigh-ins.

That's it? Yeah, that's it. He woke up the day before 12 pounds over. We ate three meals that day. I think he drank almost a gallon of weigh-ins. That's it? Yeah, that's it. He woke up the day before 12 pounds over. We ate three meals that day. I think he drank almost a gallon of water that morning. And just by drinking the water so frequently, it pushes the water out. And then we cut.

So he woke up, so 146. I think he woke up around 150. He woke up at 158 the day before. He floated two pounds off by the time we got to the tub later on that night, he went to bed at 150. So we lost about six pounds, and that's usually half. And that's a good estimate. The day before, we want to lose about half the night before.

You're going to float one to three pounds typically while you sleep. And then the next morning is usually two to four pounds. So it's very small, controlled elimination of weight weight and it's water weight. And he's still eating. He's never not eating. He's still picking. He's not having these big meals, but we go from meals to, you know, kind of snack size to now it's handfuls just to keep his metabolism moving, keep his body processing the food, keep pulling the nutrients, keep his blood sugar stable, keep his brain on, keep his mood elevated so he doesn't feel like shit. According to Snopes, John Wayne did not have that much impact in his body.

But Elvis apparently had a lot because he was taking drugs. He was impacted. He couldn't. He was all fucked up. He was constipated from the painkillers, right? But I've heard that too. That's why I wanted to look that up. Apparently, you would be in such incredible pain if you had that much food from the painkillers, right? But I've heard that too. That's why I wanted to look that up. Yeah. It's, uh, apparently it's like almost,

you would be in such incredible pain if you had that much food impacted in your bowels, which makes sense. So if you were to eat, you know, how many pounds of food do you think the average person, dude, eats in a given day? 200-pound guy. You know, six pounds, eight pounds,

maybe 10 pounds of food. You wake up at 190, you go to bed at 198 or so there's fluid in there but you've you know pissed and shit out some do you um account at all for biological variability like this nick lenz have a different diet than say tiago alves does he it's and how do you know like like what to do for each individual guy so we stick with prince the principles never change and that's really the scientific base the principles never change but the individual application almost always does and it changes with the same athlete from fight to fight because the athlete is never the same

no matter what we're doing in this camp three months six months from now it's a different athlete it's a different physiology it's a different training pattern it's a different mood it's a different lifestyle at home so give me an example like tiago alves so with tiago what we did in the beginning you know he missed weight with john fitch in 2010 i started working with him two days later brought him down fought john fitch and john howard and his weight issue was gone so and then he had some injuries he had his knees fixed he had his shoulders and arm fixed he was on the shelf for two years uh 25 months actually we came back back, and he fought in Orlando in April. The new and improved Tiago had been on the meal plan almost the entire time,

was eating properly those 52 weeks out of the year. He does his Sunday fun day, and he has a little barbecue, but that's controlled, and that's okay. We allow that to a degree. But he really followed the meal plan from about 12 weeks. When the fight was offered, he went on, and he didn't break. He didn't go off. So when I got to him three weeks before the fight, and Tiago is one of the few athletes I actually travel for, for an extended period of time anymore. And I went and

stayed with him and he was 196 or 198 three weeks before the fight. Jacked probably, you know, 8%, 9% body fat. Wow. And he's fucking looked awesome slowly, but surely I tightened up his diet. You know, I tightened the wheels and the switches just a little bit, really made sure he was getting enough food to fuel, but not enough to spill over. And we were able to slowly bring his weight down to the lower 90s. So if he's 8% body fat and you're lowering his body weight, are you causing atrophy? What are you doing? To a degree.

To a degree. With him, we're trying to eliminate a little bit of muscle or reduce some of the muscle volume that he has and that's it's all water weight Because you can tell that he definitely looks slimmer when he thought Seth Pazinski. He looked great. He looked awesome fought great He had a great gas tank I mean he looked really good in that fight But that was I found it fascinating that he weighed so little a day before the fight Yep, when he entered into the cage, what did he weigh 194? But I found it fascinating that he weighed so little the day before the fight. Yep. When he entered into the cage, what did he weigh?

194. So how are you doing that? So pulling him down, the same exact principle, different foods for Tiago than what Lentz ate. Tiago is much more of a protein and fat metabolizer. Nick Lentz is much more of a vegetable and produce metabolizer. They perform better while their analytics are much better when they have those type of foods and that just comes through experience working with these guys so tiago was more heavy it was you know chicken and steak and eggs um avocados you know different types of oils and seeds to really bring him down

anytime he has you know the heavier carbs outside of the the breakfast bowl oats and such berries first thing in the morning he tends to blow it up and really hold on to that water. So we slowly eliminate that. So no pastas for him or things along those lines? I think we did pasta probably two weeks out where we do what's a refeed. Every once a week we'll do a refeed where we go really high carbohydrate, but we'll stage that with a lower carbohydrate either before or right after. So we'll do the refeed definitely once a week, sometimes twice a week, depending on how close

we are. And what's the benefits of a refeed? It's to refill the body of lost glycogen to make sure that usable energy is available. And it's also a mood elevator because a lot of times the athlete starts to get a little, you know, shitty if they're not getting more carbohydrates and the brain runs on carbohydrates also. So you can see the mood kind of deep decrease just a little shitty if they're not getting more carbohydrates. And the brain runs on carbohydrates also. So you can see the mood kind of decrease just a little bit. And also performance. I'm working with Manny Gimburian right now to drop him from 45 to 135.

Got him on the first program, the initial program. And it was just a little bit too low carbohydrate. And he's like, ah, his mood was down just a little bit. He didn't feel that snap in practice. And we really just brought him up about 100 extra carbohydrates per day. And he's like, ah, his mood was down just a little bit. He didn't feel that snap in practice. And we really just brought him up about a hundred extra carbohydrates per day. And he fucking felt amazing. So it was really trying to find the line that is exactly what they need without spilling over. And once we got that, we got him feeling good for 10 days. We're able to stage it down just a little bit and he feels even better. So now we're slowly

into that last three week phase, the peaking phase, and he's now 148 pounds yesterday, which his last fight for him to get under 155, he felt like he was going to die. So now he's training at 148, feels fucking amazing, fully fed, six-plus meals a day, but everything's kind of perfectly controlled. Wow. So this protocol that you make,

you make a specific one for each fighter and you sort of work with them same principles what happened with bj penn because bj penn was upset with you after his fight and you know said a lot of shit in the press and just really wasn't happy with it yeah he said his exact quote was without the iv you're Like he, he wanted to not use intravenous fluid retention. He didn't want to get an IV to rehydrate. Yeah. He, the IV was available and ready and the doctor was on call and he didn't want the IV. Why didn't he want an IV? He didn't say, well, no, that's not true. Days before he had said he'd never used one before. He was worried about how he would feel. He said he would play it by ear if he did feel like he needed one.

But he didn't cut any weight. And that's why I didn't disagree with him. Now, he runs the show. He's the boss of the camp. Period. The end of story. And that was very clear. He didn't want the IV.

And I didn't disagree with him because he didn't cut an ounce. He was eating and drinking on weigh-in day, walking over to weigh-ins. This is not an athlete that was dehydrated. It was not an athlete that was suffering. It was an athlete that looked amazing, was bouncing around, talking to everybody full of energy. Did he need an IV? I'm not a doctor, but he didn't want the doctor to come to administer it.

I have to rely on the athlete. It's his body. It's his choice. He but he didn't want a doctor to come to administer it. And I have to rely on the athlete. It's his body. It's his choice. He said he'd never used one before. He didn't want one. He felt great is what he had said. Perfect. Well, here's a shitload, a house full of food and fluid and everything that you need to consume. So enjoy. Now that same fight card i worked with ronda rousey ronda rousey didn't use an iv either and she cut over 10 pounds she never ivs she had never used one before a little nervous to use it chose not to use it didn't use it and went out there and looked like ronda always looks because she's just never had it before now if she had used one maybe she would have looked even better or maybe it would have thrown her off. Well, in all fairness, her fight

lasted 10 seconds. I know. When she fought Misha Tate, her fight lasted into the third round. Right. And Misha's a very well-conditioned athlete, one of the better-conditioned female athletes in the game, and Ronda looked amazing. And that was a scrap. Yes, it was. Not at one point did Ronda look like she was at a loss. And she had no IV in that fight.

No IV in that fight. And how much did she cut in that fight? She cuts about 10 pounds. She gets in, she fights at fights at 35 usually she'll get down into the lower 40s just that day before i mean she's gets in the fight week usually between 48 and 50 and she does most of her training in the low how did bj get down to 145 pounds bj is a guy who fought at 170 because he didn't like making 155 yeah so all So all of a sudden we see BJ training and getting ready, and he looks so thin. Yeah. What did he do?

He was, back when we filmed The Ultimate Fighter, he was 162 pounds. He was in the low 160s back then. And then they broke off communication with me. After The Ultimate Fighter was over, I didn't hear from anybody from their team, their camp, until the very end of May, which is just a few weeks before Fight Week, and they were in a bit of crisis mode. Now, I didn't get to Hawaii to first actually be a part of the camp and the team until June the 9th, which is less than a month before the fight.

the 9th, which is less than a month before the fight. When I got there, BJ had said he weighs, I said, wait, what do you weigh champ? 157 pounds. But I went out last night with Dominic Cruz and we had some pizza. I weighed 157 today. And I'm thinking, fuck, why do you need me to be here? You know, the fucking, you know, Dolce Diet dude. If you're 157 pounds, I mean, you're 10 pounds over what the weight class is after eating some bad shit. You're probably closer to 55, 54, I'm assuming. So it was kind of, it was an anomaly. It was really an odd situation. How did he lose the weight? You know, just eating a little more, he's paid more attention to his food as he got closer to the fight those last couple of weeks I was there. I didn't prepare any meals for him. I stayed in a completely different location. He stayed in one area. I stayed a few

miles away in another area. It was a weird situation. It was one of the oddest training camps I had ever been a part of. And I was there for less than two weeks physically in Hawaii and had very little influence, unfortunately. And I made some very strong suggestions and I made very strong observations to members of the team of what I saw and what I am accustomed to and what I think would really benefit. What did you have issue with? It was the training, you know, frequency and just the... Training frequency? Yeah, I don't believe it was enough. It wasn't training enough that for all the other athletes that I work with, train much more often.

And how often was BJ training? that I work with train much more often. How often was BJ training? Once a day, but not quite every day. And the type of training was less. There was no... And we'll just compare it to Frankie Edgar's team. Now, Frankie Edgar has Mark Henry there, who's a world-class striking coach.

He has Steve Rivera there, who's one of the top wrestling coaches in the country. And then he has Carlos Meira there, who's one of the top Brazilian jiu-jitsu coaches, practitioners in the world and then frankie's got a shitload of you know ufc level guys that he's training with on a daily basis and bj had none of that he had a coach who's a nice man who from my understanding has no experience in boxing or coaching you know professional athletes certainly not the world-class UFC, MMA level. There was no wrestling coach there.

And the only, the top-level jiu-jitsu guys, of course, BJ, who's very accoladed, but his brothers were there and it didn't seem like they had any influence as far as technical proficiency or strategy or game plan or training. And it was minimal. The only training camps there of training partners there of value

were the two guys I brought in at the last minute, which was Nick Lentz and Mursad Bektik. Now, Lentz left very, you know, he got there and he left because he didn't want to be there. He didn't feel like it was going to be a good training environment for him. So he left early. And then Mursad stayed, but Mursad's a young, tough kid. Mursad was actually a great training partner for BJ

and really tried to do his best to mimic what Frankie was going to do. So it was a tough situation. Is it one of those situations where, in all fairness, BJ, who's a great champion, who's a real MMA legend, is almost too strong of a personality to be coached because he's been so successful and because he's been such a destroyer at points in his career that he has something in his head and who the fuck are you to tell BJ Penn what to do? That could be. That could be. It was very, I don't know why there was no coaches there that were able to truly make influence. The suggestions that I made were, and I made them officially officially and they were accepted but

not responded or reacted to and it was just a matter of you know this is that's the direction he's choosing to go and he's either going to win and look like a fucking genius or he's going to not win and he's going to make the odd makers look like a genius in all fairness there's other issues besides diet there was also his upright boxing style that confused the shit out of a lot of people no one no one understood he had this narrow stance and he stood completely straight up it was very odd and uh when he was uh asked about it he said that it was very effective for him in training and that uh it had been uh they came up with it to somehow or another reserve energy so by not lowering his body weight body meaning by not

lowering his stance and pushing off of his legs more by standing up straight he would extend less energy it would be less difficult for him to do. I found that incredibly bizarre. And the last thing you should ever be thinking about if you're about to fight Frankie fucking Edgar is conserving energy. I mean, goddamn, you better be ready to go balls to the wall for five fucking rounds because Frankie is going to. Frankie's going to.

When we were on the Ultimate Fighter set in October, Frankie was training twice a day himself, and then he was training twice with the athletes on the show. Frankie was seen at every gym in Las Vegas training with their best and top guys, and he was surrounded by his coaches the entire time. I mean, that's who Frankie is, and that's who I knew BJ was going to be competing against. BJ was at his best when he was at the Sardine Revue, but it was with the Marinoviches. Agreed.

Agreed. Marinoviches and Jason Perlow was working on his striking, who was Bisbank's striking coach. And they were able to really put together great performances. Sean Shirk and Diego and Joe Stevenson. That was amazing. I don't know why there was the dramatic shift and change in training protocols

and style and style you just see what's what he wanted to do i guess and that's he's he's the boss yeah it's just it's so hard when you're a fan of a guy like that when you know you almost want to just be able to like get inside of his head and just says you know man if you had a like a matt hume type coach someone that you could completely listen to, someone that you trusted and respected enough to run your entire camp. This is the guy who's going to tell you what your strength and conditioning protocol is. This is the guy who's going to tell you what kind of sparring you're going to do. This is the kind of drilling you're going to do. You're going to do all this stuff that this guy says.

A guy like BJ Penn would almost be unstoppable absolutely it's hard man it's it's it's it's really a fascinating sport in that this sport has evolved before our eyes and we've seen the training like change and move and adjust and it's one of the reasons why i brought up the idea of whether or not people have unreal expectations because of a performance enhancing drugs, because it's very confusing in a lot of ways. People, everyone's sort of imitating the successful behavior that they see around them. You know, this guy uses ropes. He swings ropes around.

I got to get some ropes. You know, this guy likes to fucking use a tire and a sledgehammer. Fuck, I need a tire. You know, it's... They're everywhere. Yeah. I i mean that's what we see we see everyone sort of imitating what's successful and what people have done successfully before them and then there's guys like fedor that confuse the shit out of everybody

because he's throwing rocks and fucking you know there's throwing punches with little hand weights and that's basically all you ever see from them yeah you know it. It's a weird sport. And then it's not like pro football, where you go back to the Jim Brown era and you change to today, you've seen 50 years of evolution and it's all sort of culminated in the last couple of decades. And you see science and nutrition and strength and conditioning protocols have all sort of adjusted. But with MMA, it's not just running. It's not just moving left and moving right. At the same time, you're learning the 1,000-plus possibilities of any jiu-jitsu match. You're learning the 500-plus possibilities of any combinations in kickboxing.

You're learning so many skills, the combination of wrestling and judo, the combination of jujitsu, sambo, catch wrestling, the combination of, I mean, there's just so many variables. There's so much shit to learn on top of all the strength and conditioning. So it's not as simple as, this guy needs to learn how to squat 500 pounds and fucking push that sled.

No, there's a lot of other shit you have to do too. And if you do too much of one and not enough of the other, you won't be at your best. It's this combination of the strength and conditioning and of being a guy who understands all the variables of mixed martial arts as well. Absolutely. It's almost like no one really knows how to do it yet. It's still young i mean we're still evolving you know as a sport though people have been fighting for years never like this never at this level never with so much on the line you know multi-millions of dollars

available now for the top dog so there's a is a race and that's obviously what brings in the peds but it's also what pushes athletes like a ronda rousey forward to constantly evolve and work on her striking more and find new ways to diet and do her strength and conditioning better and use her mental visualization approaches to really make sure she can be at the top of that cresting wave. So she's not getting stuck behind it. She's really at the forefront in athletes like that. It's a crazy time when it comes to these things. It really is a crazy time. And the thing about the performance enhancing drugs, I mean, they

exist in all sports, of course, but in MMA, it's almost like there's not enough time in the day to do everything. There's so many different things that you have to be on top of that an athlete almost doesn't have the time or the physical resources like their body can't do all the work that's required and that's where periodization comes in that way you're able to segment what we're going to be working on for this three-week phase and then we're going to work on something different but synergistic on the next three-week phase and we're slowly going to be the best possible version of ourself at that time when we step into the octagon or step into the competition circle and then it all starts over again and we look to add more tools one of the

other things that bj's camp said was that you kind of restricted the amount of food that he ate the day of the fight it's not true there's a lot a lot of the things unfortunately that said were factually incorrect and i chose not to comment this is the first time i'm even commenting about it and i i went on i go beyond the underground day, and a lot of the people on the underground seem to have a pretty good take on what the reality of the situation was, and I didn't feel the need to personally comment. And what I'm going to say is that he had a house full of food. I personally brought over tons of amazing food that was available.

He was two minutes from a whole foods next that was right down the street from him you know there's his house had you know shit 10 gallons of water in it and a gallon of coconut water and a running faucet and there's sea salt everywhere and you know just you know a big i brought a huge vat of the power pasta with grass-fed beef and you know all the organic what is that power pasta it's it's a brown rice pasta so it's it's a higher carbohydrate content food and it was i made two 16 ounce boxes of it which would basically feed like a family of four really fucking big dudes or you know the family of six or so two pounds of uh grass-fed ground beef was mixed up in there and just i make like two I think two red peppers and two green and two red onions and just really high-quality nutrients.

A full fucking smoothie, massive handful of kale, handful of spinach, handful of red grapes, handful of blueberries, handful of strawberries. So you don't restrict their calories at all the day of the fight? I don't restrict anything. And again, I had very little influence, little influence and that's that's clear i i was more like a i was a chef i would bring some really delicious food and you know some things would get eaten and some things wouldn't it was nothing i was saying don't eat this or don't do that and everything was available so who was saying that you had restricted his food because that was one of the big things that was going around.

I know. A lot of it's just internet hearsay and somebody hears things and they create a thread. It was people in his camp, wasn't it? It wasn't anybody in his camp. It was people that seemed like people from his area or information was fed to them by somebody. And I'm not really going to speculate because it's not worth my time to comment. And I don't want to turn it into anything bigger. Right, right.

I understand. But it was factually completely false and incorrect. And I spoke with very high-ranking members of his team, and we've had the factual conversations. We're all in alignment as to exactly what happens, which is a really nice thing. But it's kind of the public conversation that just continues on, and it's just not correct. So do you think that what happens is after a fighter loses they i mean it's an interesting thing that happened with travis

brown um travis bound to this interview and i really love travis i think he's an awesome guy and i think he's a great fighter but he's also super honest which i thought was really cool and he said that after he lost to fabrizio verdum he he said, he goes, I went through the whole process. I blamed myself. I blamed everybody around me. I blamed, you know, I took turns blaming people. He goes, I fucking cried. I did the whole deal.

And then I figured out, all right, what do I need to work on? What do I need to change? What do I need to adjust? He's working with Edmund, Ronda's trainer on his striking and trying to tone things up and change some things and learn some new skills and learn some new variables that he could add to his fight game. But what I love about the fact that he was honest about

how after the fight there's this instinct to sort of blame. Yeah. Blame himself, blame others, rotate, you know. No, fuck it, it was everybody else's fault. It wasn't me. Yeah. And after the bj fight i kept hearing all this shit about you know blaming mike dolce i'm like man how much

fucking impact can a guy who's telling you what to eat have on how you fight because what i saw in that cage was a guy getting overwhelmed by a guy with a fucking incredible gas tank with a better strategy. By the number two guy in the world who has two wins over him previously. So, you know, there's just bad matchups. Right. And maybe that was one of it. Frankie's been more active. He was the number two guy in the world at the time.

BJ was coming off of a massive layoff. And we knew it was a very uphill battle. I was as shocked. I mean, I was really hurt when I heard the first comment and I saw the things being said and kind of the finger being pointed my way because I know what happened and I know what my influence or lack of influence was. And I will go down with a fucking ship. Any athlete that knows me, that I work with, knows the type of person I am.

And I think I've built a solid reputation within the industry. And it was just uncalled for. It was unfair. And I kept my mouth shut because I wanted to be a professional. And I didn't want to say anything because BJ's got a lot of fans. I'm a fucking huge fan of the kid. I still am a huge fan of the kid. And I understand because I've fought before, I've lost before, and I've been hurt before. And I've wanted to blame, and I still couldn't blame. But what is that going to get? And with my, you know, defend myself here for a second, I know what I did. And I think I was probably one of the only bright positives with true world-class experience that was around him.

I didn't have to be a part of that camp. Is that a part of just because he's isolated, he's on H you know it's very difficult big island it was very very difficult when you're the most famous fucking person and you got people showing up at your house knocking on your door to get an autograph things are it was it was it was difficult it was the very hard situation it was he has people knocking on his door yeah trying to get autographs yeah i mean i feel bad for the guy that's you know luckily there's not that many people after a couple hours you're done you're done it was the whole town anywhere he goes people are honking the horns at him he's a superstar specific i mean here

he's a superstar there he's just you know he's like the king over there right and it was it was hard for a lot of different reasons but you know for to see the things said and basically the the way that they were, man, you know, you look at the fight, you look at what happened, that had nothing to do with food. It had nothing to do with body weight.

There's, you know, we posted a video of him two days before weigh-ins. He woke up at 148, fully fed, fully hydrated, saying it's the best he fucking felt in his entire life. And then, you know...

I understand what you're saying. I found it incredibly fascinating that you said the athletes don't work out at all the week of. And one of the reasons why is because I happened to be at Uriah Faber's gym this past weekend when TJ fought and when Danny Castillo fought. And when I got there, Danny Castillo was working out yeah the day of the fight he was hitting mitts with duane yeah and uh you know they put in like a good fucking 20 minute workout i mean he was hitting mitts man i mean he wasn't just he wasn't going like 10 speed like just moving his body around he was working out yeah footwork drills you know combination he looked great yeah you know and i was kind of shocked and i asked why and he said well when he rehydrated he felt a little bloated but he always does that he always gets in a workout this was after wayans

when he rehydrated no this yeah after wayans rehydrated then the day of the fight okay he worked out the day of the fight and i do agree with something along those lines day of the fight to get the fluids moving every athlete's a little bit different we do with that with nick lenson he's the one who gave me the fucking black eye on friday before charles canceled the fight we put him through usually you know abbreviated three rounds just to get him moving and make him feel good again just we i approach and a lot of the athletes we i work with we approach fight day like another fucking day okay it's like a hard sparring day so oh i see what you're saying so you treat it like as if he's just going to do some hard sparring that day so when you have him work out to get the fluids moving as it were what what's the idea behind that is that like the the

rehydration process the iv and everything that? You want everything moving through the body? To make sure everything's working properly so there's no surprises. But we're not overworking the athlete. We're warming them up and then we're just cooling them right back down again. Making them, a big part of it is also it's building confidence. Because they go through the weight cut process and sometimes you feel a little shitty and you're like, fuck. Do I still have it? I felt like shit yesterday. I felt weak yesterday. God, he looked so big yesterday. And you get in there and they're like, fuck, do I still have it? I felt like shit yesterday.

I felt weak yesterday. God, he looked so big yesterday. And you get in there and they feel, obviously Nick weighs in at 46 and he was probably 46 closer to 65 the very next morning and felt like a fucking machine. And he left that room with a smile on his face like, I'm going to fucking kill this dude. What do you do when it comes to guys like heavyweights? Most heavyweights, in my opinion, I'm not saying that they should cut weight but they should all be fighting somewhere between 10 and 12 body fat the chubby heavyweights with the fat belly

that's a lazy athlete what about fedor fedor could have been better i believe he could have been god forbid he could have been better what about kane? Kane looks a little fat. I know. But he's a monster. Look at Daniel Cormier. Yeah. These guys, just because you compete in an unlimited weight class or nearly unlimited weight class, doesn't mean you can have an unlimited body weight. What's the proper body weight for performance? For most athletes, it's somewhere between 8% to 12%.

Is there a proper body weight for a heavyweight as far as like when you get too heavy you're dealing with gravity you're dealing with mass that needs to have blood pumped through it because isn't the one variable that's not very different in people the size of your actual heart that the heart tends to be similar in size slight variables more similar in size so like a guy like bigfoot silva yep or brock lesnar's better example because bigfoot actually has gigantism is a real issue um but brock lesnar an enormous giant and then a guy like say chris carriazo who's fighting for the flyweight title yeah their heart is probably way more similar in size than any other part of their body i would agree with maybe the cock i don't know about that i just throw that out there for some reason chris is

bigger probably. I don't know why I said that. Maybe he's got a giant hog. Jesus. Kid's got balls. Tell you that. Bum bum. Tough guy, Chris Carioca. Interesting fight coming up.

But my point being, is there a number where a heavyweight shouldn't, a lot of people think the most effective weight is somewhere around 240. For a heavyweight?

And I agree. I think they think that because that's what Kane is. That's what Kane is. But Kane eating properly. He's the fucking dominant champion of the world. So I'm not saying he should do anything. But there's no reason why any professional athlete should be walking around with excess non-functional weight. And a lot of what's floating around Kane's midsection are athletes like Kane,

and he's one of the better conditioned. But without that 8, 10, 12, 16 additional pounds, how much faster would he be? Force production would probably be very similar, unless he really sits down on a single punch or one single blast. But he'd probably be faster. He'd probably be more agile. He'd be more capable of scrambling. He'd be able to do a few more things with no loss in strength. So you think if he got down to about 230 and lowered his body fat to about 10%,

he'd be even better than the best heavyweight ever? I believe so. I mean, I don't know if Kane's the best heavyweight ever, but in my opinion, it's between him and Fedor. There's two best heavyweights of all time in my mind, and they're Kane and Fedor. There's two best heavyweights of all time in my mind. Yeah, and they're Kane and Fedor Yeah, look at Tyson add 20 pounds of fat to Tyson what happens to Mike Tyson? He no longer becomes one of the most dominant heavyweights in the world. Is that true though? I mean, I don't know about that man. Like the Tyson that knocked out Larry Holmes. He put on 10 pounds on him

He's still gonna fuck Larry Holmes up put 20 but is he still able to cover that distance? Is he still gonna have that that fast twitch movement for eight ten twelve rounds first three rounds everybody looks like a fucking monster you know in in boxing we're first five minutes in mma first round everybody can move really quick but then as time goes on that weight starts gravity starts to pull on you but okay in in response to that the two guys that we were talking about, both Kane and Fedor, are both guys that had high body fat who are known for their high output and their long fights with incredible endurance.

And they could have been better. Is that really true though? I believe so. Is it possible that carrying around a certain amount of fat aids your endurance? Is that possible? Absolutely. But what would that line be just

and me visually i'm not in their camps i don't know so we're just kind of throwing shit at the wall right now i say and all the athletes just experience we're gonna throw some bro science out there right now eight to twelve percent body fat for the heavyweights closer to twelve percent not down to eight percent you know for the lighter guys eight percent or so makes more sense when fedor was at his prime yeah what do you think his body fat was? He held a lot of fat in his belly, but there's some fights where you could see veins running through his shoulders and arms. He had rather skinny legs, so he was kind of ass-heavy and stomach-oblique heavy, and that's where he was carrying a lot of the weight. What was it?

Probably 14 to 16. Did you ever talk to him? Did you ever find out what his diet was or anything? No, I would love to. I'd slide a fucking Russia to find out what's going on with that guy. I think he's just a tough prick. Well, certainly the skill involved. I mean, he had tremendous judo, sambo skills.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. Without a doubt, he had incredible mental toughness and his ability to perform under pressure was fantastic. There was a lot going on there. But I would also like to know what his actual training protocol was. I mean, you got to see those highlights when he did Strike Force of him working out and stuff, but you don't know what the fuck that is. I know what that is.

A lot of times guys would just tell you, all right, hit the bag for our promo, and you'd have them fucking throw casting punches at the bag. You don't really know. What is he actually doing? What's his actual training? And most of that stuff on TV, it's mostly fake. Most of the athletes, they don't run with the fucking parachutes. They don't do a lot of that type of training.

I call it sexy training. It looks awesome on TV, but that's not really what they're doing on the daily and the higher level athletes really train very Basics, they focus on the basics Then, you know, they get really good at the fucking basics and they start adding some higher level technique Same thing on the strength and conditioning side. Well, matt brown does a lot of really wild shit, man He does a lot of really wild strength and conditioning shit. Do you work? Do you work with him at all? The immortal brown? Yeah, no, I don't, unfortunately. We've played with it

and we were cast members on the Ultimate Fighter years ago. We're still buddies, but I haven't worked with him specifically. I'd love to down the road, though. I think that'd be a fun part of my career. Yeah, he's a guy who I've seen some of his workouts.

They're fucking brutal. He does a lot of really unorthodox stuff, a lot of crazy lifts, deadlifts, and all kinds of... Obviously, a very thin guy, but obviously very physically strong he's we've trained together you know even after the show matt's strong as hell he's a lot stronger than he looks he looks like that thin lean guy he's got he's fucking strong when he gets his hands

on you he's like granite yeah i mean as we're talking about this and talking about different styles and different people's training um it's it is interesting that there's no one answer. Like, this is what you have to do. In order to do X, you have to start out with Y and put in W. There's no answer, right? It's like everybody has to figure out what works well for them. And when you see guys readjust and rebound and try to reassess their career, like Overeem is a perfect example. Overeem is now at Jackson's, and he just fought against Ben Rothwell and got knocked out in the first round.

Looked great for a little bit until he got clipped. But he was doing things a lot differently, throwing those oblique kicks to the knee, which a lot of people don't like. They're upset about that. I don't like those either. Yeah. It's a weird technique because you're not supposed to attack the knee itself, right? Isn't that what the story? What the rule is, I think it's like within an inch or two of the knee, depending, I forget the exact rule now, but. But nobody calls you on it. I haven't, yeah, seen it. If you throw an oblique kick an inch over the knee, no one's going to say, hey, don't attack the knee. Nope. Especially when you're lying on your back and you're throwing up kicks. People throw them right at the knees and no one says a word.

Yeah. You know, like when Funaki and Hickson Gracie fought. Yep. You know, remember that? Hickson fucking blasting him right in the knees off of his back. It's interesting, man. it's interesting man you look at like eddie's style of jiu-jitsu versus the gracie style or just or lat bang muay thai versus you know duke rufus you know it's like different philosophies different approaches but they all fucking work really well and if you speak with duane he's

gonna say no this is the system right and you're gonna say well that he's got it and then you'll watch pettis fight you know like no duke rufus say, well, he's got it. Right. And then you watch Pettis fight. No, Duke Rufus has got his own system. He's got his own. And that shit fucking works, too. Fucking works real good. Strength and conditioning, I think, is very similar. And the athlete is really going to gravitate towards what suits them.

But it's all, like I said, the athlete changes, which is why we have the principles. So the principles don't change. Dwayne, let's say, throw a punch with your right hand. Left hand has to be blocking. I think Duke would say the same thing. But the individual application, that's where it changes on the individual basis per athlete, per time they compete, or on different athletes. So the principles are always the same. But we always have to evolve the application.

I'm sure just like Eddie's doing every night he goes in the gym. He's like, oh, shit. I saw this fucking white belt do something that just totally killed the black belt's move. Let me fucking try that. There's variables in jiu-jitsu that don't exist in striking, but there's also striking variables that don't exist in jiu-jitsu. Like the idea of throwing things at like a 50% or 60% output instead of 100% with each technique. Whereas some guys,

like Jeremy Stevens, perfect example. Jeremy Stevens is a fucking murderer. He throws everything designed to knock your face into the dirt. I mean, everything he throws is 100% on it.

And he just works hard to be able to do that. But his volume is much lower than, say, a guy like Nick Diaz. Yeah. Who Nick Diaz will come at you

and he'll throw, like, many punches at, like, 50%, 60% and put it on you and then throw some hundreds in there. Yeah. You know, dig to the body with a hundred, go upstairs with a hundred and then more 50, 50, 50, 50.

And he just puts volume on you. Yeah. So you don't see that in jujitsu. You very rarely see guys like hit moves at less than a hundred percent. You know, when you're, when you're trying to guillotine someone, you don't try to guillotine them at 50%, you know? Sure. You lock that bitch up, you're squeezing with everything you got. So it's a fascinating thing, the different approaches for different body styles. Because some guys also, like Dominic Cruz, great fighter, great athlete, great champion,

does not have that sort of one-punch Jeremy Stevens power. He just doesn't possess it. He doesn't have the body for it you know just this is what the universe has given him they've given him a you know he's a high volume high output high discipline excellent condition that's important it's imperative for him to be able to put on the kind of performances that he puts on yeah whereas some guys just go out there and try to pa Daly it, you know, excellent technique, but everything's designed to murder you. Absolutely.

Yeah. It's an interesting growth and evolution of the sport. And it's really cool to see the different athletes, different body types and see this new generation now coming out there because what we're seeing guys like Cruz and Dillashaw, he's the champ now, but he's part of, you know, a younger generation, but there's another tier below him now. That's going to be coming soon and make Dillashaw look a little you know not one-dimensional but a little slower let's say you know two three years from now there's some fucking kid in the

middle of nowhere that's going to come out i can't imagine that but i know you're right it's gonna happen right remember when gsp came out and we're all like god damn this dude is like an olympic gymnast and look at what he's doing yeah, you know, you have a guy like Dillashaw coming out, moving the way he does, putting his wrestling together, all the feints that he's doing, hitting with power, you know, kind of like what you were saying about Diaz, where they're able to off-speed their punches and their strikes and really change angles.

That's awesome stuff. Yeah, and you've seen the level of the wrestlers and athletes are just coming in. They're just off the chain, too. Like, guys like Hendricks. Yeah. You know, guys guys like cormier just like when cormier fought henderson you're like what the fuck who the hell's ever done that to dan henderson yeah cormier's got him flying through the air he's hitting him with trips as he's moving back he's doing like a lot of crazy shit that you very rarely see that's when i think i realized how high level cormier really is. Oh, yeah.

No one's, like you said, no one's ever done that to Dan. Dan's lost a couple fights, but no one's ever been able to do that to Dan fucking Anderson before. That's also, interestingly enough, Dan off testosterone replacement. He was one of the first guys that we've seen compete on and now off. And he had competed off before against Rashad Evans, lost a decision against Rashad Evans, a very close fight, right? And that was because they were fighting in Winnipeg, and Winnipeg's athletic commission didn't.

That's right. But I believe Dan when he says that he takes very little. I believe him. I believe Dan, too. Yeah. I mean, he was on it. But a lot of these guys also, one of the reasons why they test low is because they're overtraining. Absolutely. guys also one of the reasons why they test low is because they're over training absolutely and that's something that people need to take into consideration when they discuss training protocols

is that what's happening with a lot of fighters is they're going through the same sort of thing that they went through in wrestling practice and what wrestling practice is fantastic for is developing mental toughness i believe there are no tougher athletes in the world than someone who goes through high-level wrestling camps, someone who goes through Purdue like a John Fitch. When you go through these fucking camps, you go through Iowa, you go through these high-level wrestling camps, amateur wrestling, college wrestling camps,

those people are fucking animals. They have a level of mental toughness that if you don't understand it, they're going to wake up 15 minutes earlier than anybody else because they know that no one else is awake. They're going to run an extra mile because they know no one else is going to run it. They're going to do all these different things because they pride themselves in being uncomfortable and in grinding it out. And there's good in that, but there's also bad in it. And the bad in it is the the physiological reality of the body's ability to recuperate and that if you tested any of these high level professional wrestlers or amateur wrestlers rather at their highest level when they're going through

camps i guarantee you a lot of them are going to have low testosterone absolutely i would agree and it's just because their body's being broken down and it's just the sheer dogged determination of their own mind that allows them to get up every morning and keep doing it. Yeah. Look at Hendricks. He, when he fought Robbie, fractured shin, torn bicep. He had a fractured shin too? Fractured shin.

During the fight or from the fight? From training. In training, he was fractured shin torn bias partially torn bias that would tore all the way during the fight and uh didn't even blink didn't complain one time the only way i found out was just kind of like in passing he was just joking about it you know any other athlete most of the other athletes they're canceling that fight they're pushing it back three months six months you know then that's, and then Johnny goes out there and is able to get a win because of that mental toughness. And that's one of the things that makes Johnny so fucking great

is that physically, I mean, he's a really strong dude, but he's not tall. He's not long. He's got fast hands, you know, he is fast, but his feet aren't very fast. He doesn't cut angles and move his head movement too well. It's his brain. It's his mentality. He's got that championship mindset that's just been ground into him through a whole lifetime of wrestling. Well, he taught also his dad's a fucking psycho. That's fucking awesome.

You know, it's funny. Well, he had two options or three options, wrestling, wrestling, or wrestling. That's awesome. Well, you could wrestle, or you could wrestle, or you could wrestle. And, you know, like how he made him do push-ups and sit-ups and chin-ups and shit when he was a little boy. He was doing fucking 500 push-ups. I mean, he just had that kid as a youngster with a very high tolerance to work and just this, this drive. He pushed them so that everything else would be easy.

I mean, he made it so everything at home, all the training he did, all the wrestling practices were so fucking hard that everything else would be easy. Yeah. And look at him. UFC fucking middle welterweight champion. And should have been the first time he fought GSP.

Agreed. In my opinion. I mean, he got the title with the Robbie Lawler fight, but I thought he beat thought he'd beat gsp yeah and the only people that disagree that i've talked to were people that were like in that henzo gracie camp that were a little bit biased and thought that george won like round one which i didn't understand i i think damage is more important than anything and i think johnny without a doubt did more damage in that fight like they pointed

to the the guillotine attempt in the first round, but I didn't think that was a successful attempt. I thought that was, you know, I thought it was never close. It's like, did you see Scoggins versus John Moraga, this last fight? The first guillotine was very close. The second guillotine locked it up. George never had a guillotine like that. You know what I'm saying?

It wasn't like one of those where it was like Scoggins barely got out of that first guillotine where Moraga locked it up, but he was in deep shit. And then he caught him with the second one. That's not what the kind of guillotine that Hendricks was caught in, in that first round. So I didn't understand anybody saying that they thought that GSP won. A little biased. I think, you know, sure, but I'm biased towards Hendricks and I i'll admit that but watching and trying to be impartial i think hendrix clearly won and i believe george and some of his team i think they know because the two athletes when they walk out you know if you kind of won or lost and i think that one and it felt their mood their energy and just the way that they you know we interacted afterwards very professional respectful but I think they knew that Johnny had won that fight truly.

How do you tell a fighter to stop? Is there a time where a fighter should be told to stop? Because if George was my friend, I would tell George to stop. And the reason why I would tell George to stop is because we did some sort of a fight metric thing where we calculated all the times he'd been hit inside the octagon and he had been hit in the head 880 something times over the course of his UFC career yeah and I'm like what what's the number where a guy can walk because if you talk to George now he's lucid you know he speaks well but I know that he was having migraines I know

that he was having memory issues yeah and um and I think there's only a certain amount of times a guy can fight. There's only a certain amount of blows a guy can take. And George, if he stopped now, could he have another fight? Yeah. Yeah, he definitely could. Could he come back and be great? Very possibly. But could he come back and take some damage that five years from now we're going to see a much compromised George? And it's, there's a risk to reward. And

you know, anytime an athlete, whether you're an amateur or you're making millions of dollars, there's a risk. And what is the reward? Is it some sort of personal challenge? You're trying to, you know, scare away a demon. Are you trying to provide a college, you know, education for your daughter? These are things that they get put on the scale and they become intellectual conversations to have. And then you say, all right, is this worth the risk? But a guy like GSPA, I mean, he's proven everything.

He's a legend. Yeah. You know, without a doubt, he, he really has proven everything he can prove. I mean, he can come back and beat other fighters,

but is he ever going to elevate the status of his legend? He's one of the greatest of all time. If not the greatest welterweight of all, it's him and Matt Hughes. Yeah. Those are the two greatest welterweights of all time yeah and you know matt is from a slightly different era their eras overlap but you know in my opinion matt it was a game changer you know so i think he still goes down as possibly you know it's in the debate for who's the greatest sure but george

he's not gonna ever elevate where he's at where he's at is a fucking all-time legend. He's more of an all-time legend. I'll have one more fight, he'll be another all-time legend. No, he's an all-time legend. There you go. I mean, as far as I know, he's very wealthy. I know he had to give a lot of money up to his fucking former manager, though. Ouch, yeah.

And there's a lot of grossness involved in that, man. Yeah. I had spoken about managers recently and it kind of got spun the wrong way. I don't know if you heard anything. No. What'd you say? Talking to Ariel. I said, and then quote, so I hope nobody out there is going to quote this out of context was athletes need to get rid of their, you need to fire their managers and hire attorneys. And it wasn't meant to be that every athlete needs to get rid of the manager. Cause I said, there's some great managers out there.

But there's some managers out there that they have their hand too deep inside the athlete's pocket where the athlete can't excel and can't develop themselves as a professional because they're spending 20% and 30% of their purse and all their earnings going straight to their manager. And then the athlete has to pay for an attorney to come in and do contract review. Then they have to pay for an agent to come in and do contract review. Then they have to pay for an agent to come in and bring in sponsorship. Then they have to pay a striking, jiu-jitsu, wrestling, strength coach. Then they have to pay their income taxes. Then they have to put food on the table for their family. And at the UFC level where these contracts are much more strict,

and that's really what I was talking about. It was during the Calvin Gastelum comments. At the UFC level, there's not a lot of negotiation room for most there's it's more of contract review legalese and you know some of the managers came out and they said yeah you know they were pissed at me and i asked all all of them specifically i said how many of your clients have come to you because their manager fucking sucked and they're like oh shit a bunch that's what i'm talking about well maybe you're awesome but at the same time these athletes they need attorneys to really look at the paperwork. Yeah, there's a building phase

and you're getting them notoriety and such to get to the UFC level, but because you get them there doesn't mean that you should stay there. A guy like Mike Pyle, he fired his manager a few fights back. He talks directly with Joe Silvey,

does all the negotiation. He gets to keep all of his money. He makes more money now and he hires an attorney to come in and do the contract review and such on a per hour basis or a per contract basis he speaks very openly about this he's one of the guys who's in the ufc and he's one of the higher paid athletes yeah out there doing it well you know obviously i love the ufc obviously um it's a huge uh it's a huge honor for me to call the fights and to be a part of the organization. But I think the only way that the UFC is ever going to satisfy the athletes, I mean, the only way the athletes are ever going to be in a situation where they're completely,

totally happy with what they get paid is if they're at the top of the heap. I mean, the only way the athletes are ever going to be in a situation where they're completely, totally happy with what they get paid is if they're at the top of the heap. I mean, when people compare it to Floyd Mayweather, like, Floyd Mayweather made X amount of money. Do you know how many fucking people are Floyd Mayweather? One. It's Floyd Mayweather. Period. And everybody else who fights him, they take a drastically reduced purse and they're super lucky that they get that. Like, whatever Maidana got for that first fight, a million bucks or something like that biggest payday in his career yeah and by the way

that's not what gsp get for fights gsp got a lot more money than that like and gsp as big as he was is never the draw that floyd mayweather is floyd mayweather is a draw like internationally nationally he's gigantic i mean the the, and he's also the promoter. I mean, he's got a lot of shit going on. Unless a fighter becomes a part of a promotion, I mean, it's just not the same thing. You know, if the UFC, like when Oscar De La Hoya was Golden Boy Productions, and, you know,

when he was fighting as well and making insane amounts of money in that. Sure. There's, again, there's only one oscar de la jolla and there's also the ufc like it or not and i love it they're essentially the number one game in town and it's not like there's a close number two yeah whereas bob arum golden boy you know there's there's all these different promotions the team. There's a lot of different promotions when it comes to promoting fights. Whereas the UFC is like there's Bellator. Bellator is not bad.

They're on Spike TV. They're doing real good. I'm a big fan of Scott Coker. I'm a big fan of Spike TV. But the reality is there's a goddamn huge – who the fuck is the UFC heavyweight champion? Cain Velasquez. Who's the Bellator heavyweight champion? I don't even know who he is.

I don't even know either, yeah. I don't know who it is. I know, was it used to be Cole Conrad? Was he, no, maybe not even. He was, but he retired because there was no money. Ben Askren used to be the welterweight champion. Who's the welterweight champion now? No idea.

Is it Lima? Is it Douglas Lima? God, I couldn't tell you, man. He's world class. I think he won on leg kicks, right? Was he the one? Maybe he did. I mean, I know he wins a lot.

He's world class. Lima could compete with, in my opinion, everyone else in the world. But Ben Askren kind of ragdolled him. And Ben Askren now is fighting for one FC. So it's like the difference. Okay, there's Shlemenko. He's the middleweight champion. Sure.

But someone from his fucking camp talked him into fighting tito ortiz hope he got paid for just that was like i mean it's like a grown man fighting a guy who is in high school that's what it looked like i mean tito was fucking enormous in that flamenco's probably truly a welterweight inside the ufc right yeah in my opinion yeah and somehow or another he's fighting tito when tito got, I'm like, this dude is not getting off the bottom. Tito has very underrated submission skills as well. He's good. Yeah, he can knock them.

But huge disparity. Yeah, just giant. And then, I mean, that's your middleweight champion. You just saw your middleweight champion get choked to sleep. Not good for anybody. By a guy who could fight at heavyweight. Like, what the fuck are you guys doing? And they did that just to sell a pay-per-view.

And the whole thing was just preposterous. And I think that, you know, unless that changes, the amount of money fighters get, like, it's not going to be the level that you're going to get in boxing. Until boxing in the UFC, I mean, until there's a, I mean, maybe it'll be one of the new champions. Maybe it'll be Ronda Rousey that gets your first or her first $50 million. Cause she kind of has that transcendent appeal. I mean, she really is

sort of transcending the sport. She's the biggest star right now in an MMA. Sure. And it's because of what she does outside of the octagon as much as she does what she does inside. And that's something I try and talk to athletes about, the athletes that I have the ability to influence. And that's what I see other athletes do, a guy like Alan Belcher. Alan Belcher makes far more money running his gyms and online training business than he does when competing as a professional athlete inside the UFC. And he makes a good payday inside the UFC and the athletes, they need to understand that they're as big or as good as they want to be. And they can certainly build their brand in areas like yourself. You find areas that you enjoy and that you're good at and where you're not good at yet,

but you want to be good at. So you bust your ass to push your way into that field in that niche and athletes they have more than enough time to do that whether it's flipping real estate like bristol marandi's doing right now and he's making bristol marandi bristol marandi was uh fought in ufc a couple times fought for strike force he was on the ultimate fighter a couple seasons back um he's flipping real estate in las vegas there's an article came out about him recently he makes a shitload more money doing that than he does fighting when he's fighting because he enjoys fighting You know Alan Belcher what he's doing what Ronda's doing priming Ronda's outside the octagon money is gonna eclipse what she makes inside the octagon She's such an anomaly though. I mean how many hot chicks can beat the fuck out of dudes? I know but she's going with what she has and there's a lot of athletes out there that can

Go with what they have. They all have something. Look at what Ludwig did. He went from being a high-level fighter. At the end of his career, he transitioned into a coach. And he'll be much more successful financially and business-wise as a coach. Growing his affiliate system, building his brand that way. And he made good money as a fighter, as a top-tier fighter.

Knocked out Jen Pulver, won the K-1 Max North Americas. I mean, he did some really good things inside the sport. So just taking that concept. And I'm not shilling for the UFC here, but I'm saying if athletes are sitting home and they're looking at their paycheck at the end of the year, saying they're not happy with it, there's a lot of other ways that they can monetize,

that they can use their brand, they can use what they do to get out there and build. And it's not sitting back waiting for sponsors to just hand them a check To put on a t-shirt or to hold up, you know, a energy drink. There's other ways to go out there and take care of it Yeah, it's it's tricky for fighters to find that and sort of explore that while they're also trying to improve their skill set Improve their conditioning and and also to have the energy to do it. People are fucking exhausted after they're done training. At the end of the day, they're just like, oh, Christ.

Absolutely. It's hard to think of. I mean, I don't know how the fuck Ronda does it, but that chick never runs out of energy. I mean, she's just a dynamo. Yeah. And that's also one of the reasons why she's so damn successful. Not just outside the UFC, but as a fighter. Absolutely.

Because she has that fucking rah fucking whatever it is inside. I don't know why I did that. She's got that. It's more like whatever it is. It's a monster. It's a monster inside her that comes out like legitimately. She just happens to be hot, you know, but it's all those other things that make her who she is, you know, and it's hard for people to find that.

She also has that sort of personality that that polemic, you know? And it's hard for people to find that. She also has that sort of personality, that polemic, you know, sort of like... She's a controversial figure. Absolutely. She's, you know, naturally, you know? She's naturally a fuck-you bitch. Like, that's her. Like, all that shit she did with Misha Tate on the show,

people are like, she's fucking crazy. Yeah, yeah, guess what? Everyone's great. It's crazy. They're all crazy that's when john jones and cormier when they had their uh their mics hot and they didn't know it and they recorded that he's like hey pussy you still there like that's the that's the you you guess what that's what you get yep that's the kind of you want to you want a guy who's a fucking destroyer

like john jones you're gonna get that guy yeah that's what you get that's those are the type of guys that win world titles those are the type of guys that become the youngest ever ufc champion there you go those john jones type characters i mean they're not they're they're naturally controversial absolutely they're not like the rest of us yeah fortunately or not that's what makes them special i agree but i don't know why John is not more loved or popular than he is. I don't understand it. Because in my opinion, I will never miss a fucking John Jones pay-per-view. Hell yeah.

And I would think that anybody who, like, I've heard people say, oh, he's cocky. Oh, he's this. And I wonder what the fuck is going on with that. And I'm going to throw this out there. I'm just going to say it. I wonder how much of it is racism. Oh, wow do you went there i did bam i did oh you know why because i think they look at him as this cocky black guy okay and i think a lot of people have an issue with that and i think that if he was a white guy and he was doing the same thing

a la chael sunnan i think he'd be way more popular and chael was never the the successful athlete that john is but i think that chael was way more successful as a promoter than john is and john has not been nearly as cocky or outwardly uh braggadocious as chael was but somehow or another when chael did it first of all ch, Chael is very entertaining, very articulate, best shit talker, bar none, in my opinion, combat sports has ever seen. Absolutely. I've said he's better than Muhammad Ali. And people are like, you're crazy. I'm like, I'm not crazy.

I'm telling you the truth. I think he is a better shit talker. As a fighter, no. No, not the best fighter. But as a shit talker, I think he's one of the most articulate, funniest shit talkers ever. I mean, I really do believe that. Do you think people, Chael resonated with the public

because we all knew or felt in the back of our mind that he wasn't truly serious? Maybe. And we were appreciating his art, his skill of doing it, where with John, we think... Yeah, maybe.

He's serious about this, isn't he? Maybe. And I'm a fan of John, like you. I'd love to watch that kid fight, guy fight, you know what I mean, maybe. He's serious about this, isn't he? Maybe. And I'm a fan of John, like you. I'd love to watch that kid fight, guy fight. He's a superstar, and I think he goes through a couple more wins and beats some tough guys. If he beats Cormier,

he will become the Ali of our sport. He has that type of young, brash, outspoken outlook, and I want to see the next chapter two, or the second act of john jones and then the third act i'm really excited as just a fan of this sport to follow his career follow his arc and you know i'm friends you know with cormier of course also so i'm not going to pick a horse in that one but it'd be really interesting to see how john goes it is without a doubt i just

find it i always found it odd when everybody would get upset at him and say that they didn't like that he's cocky or that he's like he's 25 and he's the ufc light heavyweight champion he's the youngest ever ufc champion he destroyed shogun to win the title and i mean destroyed he threw a flying knee and hit shogun on the chin five seconds into their fight. I mean, Jon Jones is a motherfucker. Period. He's a motherfucker. But for whatever reason, people have had an issue with that.

I know I'm going to get a bunch of hate tweets. Fuck you. You're fucking bullshit. You're fucking. What do you got, white guilt? Calling out racism. That's okay. I'm still reeling from the fucking pro wrestling fans mad at me for

the last episode not really folks doesn't bother me uh pro wrestling fans are really mad at me because i was my friend tony hinchcliffe was on i was mocking him and joking around about pro wrestling i really don't just for the record i don't hate pro wrestling at all and i loved it when i was in high school when i was in high school i was a fucking huge pro wrestling fan me and my friend steven arduino we would get together and fucking he we're on the wrestling team together we'd always joke around about being super fly off the ropes you know i was a huge wrestling fan but i was 14 you know do i watch it today no but i understand appreciate it i was busting my friend tony's balls because it made for a fun podcast, but the fucking wave of misspelled hate tweets that have come my way.

Holy shit, folks. Relax. There's other things to be upset about, okay? I'm not really mad at you. Settle down. But I'm probably going to get an equal amount from the Aryan race. There you go. Mad at me for defending Jon Jones, the cocky Negro.

I really think there's something to that. I think people want a guy who is so physically gifted and young and brash and black and rich. They want him to have more humility or fake humility, as it were. And I think Jon's trying that a little bit. That's one of the reasons why Cormier was like you are so fake like you're so fake Yeah, like cormier was saying that to him because they think he's trying to counteract how people feel about him It's got to be hard to be that young and successful and still emotionally Developing I don't want to say immature, but he's still yes learning to be a man right in his own skin

and to have that type of success So he does he deserves to be fucking cocky for what he's accomplished. No doubt. What's going it's it's inevitable that he's cocky If it's it's almost impossible not to be at that age and at that level of accomplishment I think everyone is evolving I mean you evolved to you die you change and grow and learn if you're not you're you're you know you're stagnant and you're rotting away because i think i'm a better whatever i'm better at now i'm better than i was a year ago and if i wasn't i'd be disappointed and i'm 47 i mean when i'm 48 i guarantee you i'll be looking back saying

whatever i do whether it's podcasting or comedy i'll be better at 48 than I am at 47. And when I'm not, then it means I'm fucking dying. It means the gears stop turning. The nootropics stop working. The testosterone replacement's failing. Fucking, there's going to come a wall. You're going to hit that wall. I haven't hit it yet.

When I hit it, I'll know I hit it. But I think that when a guy like John Jones is 30 and looks back at who he was when he was 25, yeah, he'll have said some things that he didn't think he should have said. But the trials and tribulations of being that guy are almost unimaginable. Just the stress and the pressures and all that jazz. Absolutely. You know? Shit. you know shit with now the scrutiny that's on a guy like that with all the social media available all the you know cameras in his face just the attention at a 25 year old yeah all of us

everybody listening at 25 we're all fucking idiots and if you're 25 right now you're gonna look back 10 years and be like jesus i was an idiot yeah you know so it's fun to watch you know what john's going through and i would love to see him just go straight heel fuck you all you know double fingers up in the air i'm the best in the fucking world fuck you and not try and play not pander to the the comments anymore not try and be the christian dude not try and you know make people happy i think that's real though i think is a part of him look he has the fucking biblical tattoo on his chest i don't think he put that there for a show. I think there's part of him that really feels like that, but there's also the part of him that's this remorseless warrior.

Sure. You know, there's both. There's both of those things. It's a constant conflict going on. I mean, I think he definitely tries to be a good person. I think he definitely tries to be a good father. I think there's definitely. But he also is the guy who choked Lyoto Machida to sleep.

You know, he's also the guy that submitted Vitor Belfort. He's a real destroyer. So when Chael was fighting him, I was helping Chael for that one. And John wouldn't look at Chael. And there was a photo. And I made a comment on the photo. Like, Jones must be scared. He's not even looking at Chael.

Just some hype in the fight. And John saw me backstage. And he's like, man, what the fuck? he's like why are you saying i'm not scared of him like was you know in my face a little bit i'm like goddamn champ like no it's just hype in the fight bro right and then you know i see him like you know a week or two later and he was just such a sweet guy he's like man i'm sorry about that he was like i was hyped up at the fight i know you're just kidding around he's like i was just in that zone so the dichotomy of character you know in my face like you know fuck you and then remorseful afterwards not far around he's like i was just in that zone so the dichotomy of character you know in my

face like you know fuck you and then remorseful afterwards not far after he's like man if you're really bad about that dolce you're a good dude like blah blah blah blah so yeah and i think that's real i don't think he was just doing like some sort of pr no it was we were alone yeah there's nobody around nobody watching both times yeah it's not only it's damage control i think you know it's a look the the unimaginable pressure of being that guy yeah you know and knowing there's rumble johnson's out there that are rising up putting people to sleep you know rumble johnson dude man he's the scariest in my opinion he can do things to you that other guys can't do absolutely that fucking fight with him and phil davis opened a lot of people's eyes that was terrifying to watch phil davis just in this full defensive mode that we've never seen him in before phil didn't get

him down once did he no no he didn't even come close that's a scary man right there yeah and rumble connects on anybody it's 99 what he did to fucking little nog man whoo i mean people have beaten little nog but they haven't beaten the fuck out of him like that no he beat the fuck out of little nog and put him to sleep i mean that was terrifying yeah he's a terrifying guy absolutely it'd be fun to see started out he's a perfect weight cutting example he started out fighting as a fucking welterweight weighing 230 pounds, dropping down to 170. Insanity. And we spoke multiple times about the possibility of working.

And I told him, no, I don't think it's good. And I think you should move up. And he's a good guy for anybody that doesn't know. You just know the persona of Anthony Johnson. He's a really good, smart guy. And he felt committed to 170 for anybody that doesn't know. You just know the persona of Anthony Johnson. He's really a good, smart guy. And he felt committed to 170 for whatever reason at that time. But going to 185, 205, and he's had success in heavyweight also, right?

Yeah. Yeah, success in heavyweight. 205, I think that's where he's just a killer. I obviously couldn't make 85 against Belfort back in the day. 205 is just a nasty weight class for that dude. And he's not a young, he's not an old guy either. No, he's 30. Yeah, he's 30.

And he's also emotionally very mature now. He's a different guy. And he's not, you know, he would get overwhelmed in fights like the Koscheck fight or some of the high pressure fights that he had before. But I think also having the failure, the losing his position in the UFC, leaving, going somewhere else and then deciding to fight all the way up at heavyweight yeah fought andre alofsky and fucked him up as a heavyweight he's a monster man he's a fucking monster rumble johnson and it's again he's gone through the journey and he's become a better man because of that journey and talks openly about it i mean after he fought little nog and i i interviewed him he thanked the the UFC for cutting him. That's awesome. He's like, it's one of the best things that ever happened to him.

It made him wake up and realize what he was doing wrong. And he was saying, yeah. And I said about the weight cutting thing, he's like, yeah, don't cut so much weight. He was open about it. He's a fucking big guy, man. He's a fucking big dude. He's a big guy. I would see him in between fights.

It was unimaginable that guy can make 170. Yeah. He said he would go in the sauna for an hour just to lose a pound. Like back when he was making 70. Oh, my God. Just killing, killing, killing his body to get it done. His body failed. One of the fights, Vitor, or one of the fights where he didn't make weight.

Vitor. His body failed. Like his legs stopped working. Yeah. Like he couldn't walk. You know, I mean, he was on death's door. Literally. Yeah, literally he couldn't walk, you know, I mean he was on death's door Literally, yeah, literally. That's fucking how about Burrow? Look, we were almost out of time here But that's a perfect example of a guy who's fucking up cutting weight the day of the weigh-ins. They change

Opponents he gets pulled out of a fucking title fight because he can't make weight and he falls asleep He blacks out getting out of the tub and bonked his head it's a comedy of errors right there not to point fingers i think the whole team has to accept responsibility for that taking the fight way too soon pushing for the fight taking the fight the kid had you know was concussed in the fight against the first fight against delishaw he's fighting three months later he should have been out for six months before they even scheduled, even thought about scheduling a fight. We all know that. I agree 100%.

And then to have to cut all the way back down again, there's no way we can expect his body to respond. I'm not sure how they cut weight, but I know those guys, they don't cut weight in the healthiest manner. They really struggle and sacrifice to get down. We see them all the time. So they just tortured this poor fucking kid. And then you don't let an athlete, just from experience, you don't let an athlete stand up. Athletes, if you're in the bathtub, you roll out of the bathtub onto the floor and you slowly stand up. You use hand grips.

You have two people in there to help you stand. Never should a coach's hand be off you and whatever cream allegedly they put on them. That stuff, Albalene and stuff, doesn't work. I have the analytics to show it. I'm not bashing any companies. Well, Albalene is not designed for weight cutting. No, it's not.

It's a moisturizer. It's a moisturizer. And it's a lot of these old wives tales. That's the Epsom salt and alcohol, rubbing alcohol, like I was talking

in the story before about Oliveira. So you put alcohol in the tub and what that does, those fumes, they create respiratory distress. They, tons of headaches.

Chris Camozzi was like, what the fuck, man? They came in, they put alcohol in the tub. He's like what the fuck man They came in they put alcohol in the tub He's like now I got a now I got a headache because of what all of errors team did downstairs in the spot at the fucking Hotel is they poured it in the spa at the hotel where everybody else got in there. Yeah deal with that. Yeah Just like insanity. What world is this? Come on? You're well epsom salts is good for you. It's a natural source of magnesium It's good to take epsom salt baths. It's one of the best ways for your body to absorb magnesium. It's one of the added benefits of sensory deprivation tanks because the salinated

water is Epsom salts. Your body actually absorbs magnesium. It's a great way to get it through your skin. Excellent. It's not going to make you lose additional weight. And that's something we can argue back and forth and people listening, or I do that all the time. Try to do the same tub with the same temperature in the same physical state with and without the Epsom salts and watch what you lose. It's going to be almost identical. And you have all this documented? I do. Well, that's the difference with you and a lot of

these guys that are, you know, these weight cutting guys and these people that people get brought in is the amount of documentation that you have and the amount of just raw data just from dealing with various athletes yeah it's it's all everything we do is database it's database experience days it based it's research based i mean it's it's proven and then it's it's never perfected but it's always evolving what worked last time against you know with everybody well that's what we're

sticking with and if something was an anomaly well we consider it and we look at to look into it we research it but we don't add it to new protocol. Is there any failure that you've had? Like, is there any one fighter that you worked with you're like, man, I wish I could go do that one again? I've never had an athlete miss weight other than myself freshman year of high school in the state wrestling tournament. I don't think that counts. I'm not going to take you back to freshman year of high school wrestling. So no athlete under my watch has ever missed weight,

but the one I would like the redo, I mean, the Hendricks one in Dallas, I would have loved to have made weight on the first time with that one, but there was a whole comedy of errors. Well, also, you've got to stop to think about the fact that he's pretty seriously injured. Yeah.

Torn bicep, cracked shin, pretty fucking crazy in the first place. Absolutely. Medical checks in the middle of the day. We had to stop cutting and then start cutting again we left the scale this is our fault for leaving the scale on a close and open the closed or open gym sorry with a bunch of knuckleheads jumping on his scale so there was quite a few things in looking back that we could have done better i would have loved to have rewound that one um you know i should have got and had another

commissioner come over and check the scale again when the first commissioner called him at 171.5, which he wasn't 71.5. He was 70.5, and he had his underwear on. There was quite a few guys who had issues with that scale, in all fairness. There was a backstage scale that weighed very different than the onstage scale, which can happen occasionally, and it's a real issue. People are calling for calibration, for recalibration, and they're like, we can't recalibrate that does happen certain commissions and time to time it's really it's tricky you know it's tricky it's all it varies with commission a lot of folks don't realize that like when you see uh like a few fighters miss weight it oftentimes is because the backstage scale is different like they thought they were wrong they were fine and they get on

the onstage scale and it's a different weight. Absolutely. And we've seen, I've been at events, I won't say the promotion where the scale got dropped and then you step on, you get on the scale at the early day pre-way ends, the scale got dropped somehow, you know, between the venue and the, you know, the hotel. And now all of a sudden it's got a crazy reading, like you're saying right now, um, their last minute, the scale gets switched because it gets you know goes to the wrong place or it doesn't get through so i've seen almost every odd issue i've been at you know i don't even know how many weigh-ins now and it's not as easy to weigh in properly when you're trying to keep the athlete as healthy as possible you're not just trying to get the athlete to 170 pounds and just leave them there for four

hours you're trying to minimize that period as much as possible and really just skim the top of the weight and let them bounce right back up because we're trying to preserve their health, which is going to increase their ability to perform to the best of their ability. So, you know, like with Hendrix and the weight, it was a matter of get him out of here,

get him calm again because he's freezing cold. It was so cold in that place. He's freezing cold, shaking. I'm on the scale. The chaos begins. Title fight on the line. Let's get him out of here. Let's calm him down and then let's get the weight off of him. Let's keep him healthy. Let's keep him confident. Let's keep him happy

and get him back on. So that's what I would like to redo. When you got a guy like Hendricks that has a torn bicep and a crack shin, how close were they to not taking that fight? There wasn't even consideration. Even if the arm was completely useless, he was going to just fight with his left? He was going to go and fight with one hand.

Fuck. That's fucking Johnny Hendricks. That's why I love the kid. There's no quit in him, no matter what. There's just no quit in him. That seems ridiculous. If you have a torn ACL and you can't move, you fight anyway? If it were up to me, I wouldn't let my athlete fight in that one and that's either good or bad we could debate that also i'm not going to put an injured athlete

out there to get his bicep torn off and possibly ruin or possibly lose his only opportunity to fight for a world title let's say robbie went out there won that last round or johnny had the default because he tore the bicep and couldn't lift his arm right ref saw that judge saw that medical you know doctor saw that call the fight on this on the stool crazy things happen and then he loses his bit and now he goes to the back of the line he's got to fight three four fights against its stack division maybe he never gets there again so that would be one consideration but a guy like johnny man two-time ncaa division one national champion he goes out there and he knows how to get it get it done and that's ultimately he's the boss that's the mental toughness that comes with that amateur wrestling background that we were talking about it's really

a it's a real thing it's real they are all of them all the men all all amateur wrestling champions are fucking mentally strong they're special special breed of human absolutely and it's crazy it's like there's you know we're talking about how you should rest and you should train smart and you shouldn't overtrain. But it's like the overtraining is what made them so mentally strong and that becomes one of their biggest weapons. Yeah. So it's such a catch-22. Yeah. I think that the genetic superiors rise in that area.

I think a lot of, I mean, not many guys actually make it to that, the top of that podium. I mean, not many guys actually make it to the top of that podium. And the genetic superiors make it to the top where they're able to be the anomaly, the outlier, where the rest of us were just not able to. We break somewhere along the way due to whatever reason. But it's not in their best. I don't think it's part of the proper longevity protocol. You know, you see a lot of wrestlers in their 50s and 60s and they're kind of fucked up fucked up dan gables fucked up but they got olympic gold medals and they have some things that some of us will never have so it's the risk reward well mark coleman's like what 48 49 he has a hip replacement already yeah it's crazy yeah it's crazy still wrestling with it he's a

crazy son of a bitch right he's an animal it's the same thing what we're talking about that just the tough motherfuckers um this i don't know if this is real or not um is or i have a question is there is like a piece of protein um like say like uh 10 ounces of fish versus 10 ounces of lamb yeah or some lamb or elk or game meat. Is there a higher quality protein? Is some protein more effective to some animals? Do they have more energy? I mean, is there more energy in a grass fed piece of beef versus a corn fed piece of beef? Yes. And this is now my opinion based upon a lot of scientific research. There's other research that says the opposite so now we're just going to throw it up in the air so my philosophy the dolce diet principles number one is earth-grown nutrients and that's eating real food from its natural

source in its natural habitat raised and bred in the natural way you cannot beat that when it comes to nutrient quality nutrient density and that's what we always go after. So I want line caught fish, salmon primarily. That's one of my top choice. Line caught salmon. Excellent. Grass fed beef. And when I say grass fed beef or meat, I want that roaming in the trees somewhere. And I want to take it out myself with a bow or with a bullet where it doesn't even know any humans within a hundred miles. That's the best possible. So there's no anxiety. There's no cortisol. There's no stress state.

There's no, you know, it's eating the exact food it's supposed to be. It has no illness, no injuries, no, you know, disease, no chemicals. Same thing, really anything with your vegetables, with your spinach, with your blueberries. The most natural cannot be beat. And that's what really, you know, defines my – that's the number one principle. If you're only eating earth-grown nutrients, real food, and you don't pay attention to the time of day, you don't pay attention to the quantity, you're going to be much better off than most of the other people. But is there more energy in, say, like a piece of elk than there is in lion-caught salmon? Is there more energy in grass-fed beef than there is in lamb?

Is that quantifiable? I don't believe so. And what we do is we eat as much of it in moderation as we can. So I want the elk. I want the salmon. I want the lamb. I want the chicken. I want the turkey. I want all of it. I don't want to have just the beef every day and just the eggs every day. So you like mixing it up. You have to mix everything because each one has a different nutrient profile. And I want all of those nutrients to cycle through my body, not just one type because you can build up some sort of allergy. Or you can create a deficiency. So as much of everything as possible, whatever is local is best, whatever is in season is best because that, again, has a higher nutrient quantity.

So whatever is seasonal, that's what we typically cycle through. Have you ever had to work with someone like a Jake Shields who tries to fight as a vegan? He's sort of vegan. He eats eggs. Yeah, I speak with Jake. We've toyed with it a little bit, never worked together officially. Do I work with any specific vegans? No, I do.

I mean, not professional athletes, but in our normal business that we do, we have some vegans and that's pretty easy. A lot of my recipes are vegan centric, which is easy to do. But if you're a combat athlete, it's really hard to excel. It's possible if you're an outlier, but it's very hard to excel without that animal protein. And most vegans agree with that. It's very difficult unless you're dogmatic about your sourcing of nutrition. It becomes a full-time plus job in order to eat the right foods at the right time. And you have to go to the market and you always have to have that supply. You can't miss meals because your body's just constantly breaking down. And is it harder for them also to

get a high enough calories from their proteins and things like those? Yeah, it's harder for them to get, they have to have what's called complementary proteins. You have to get multiple nutrient sources in order to get all the amino acids. Like pea protein and hemp protein and rice protein and all these different powders and stuff that they mix in. So vegans need a very diverse diet in order to make sure they're getting all the proper nutrients. It just becomes a lot of work.

And Jake has said that. It's just a lot of work. And Jake has said that. It's just a lot of work. And even then, is it 100% what you would get if you were eating elk and steak and chicken? I don't believe so. I think it's, I personally, and I've never lived a 12-month, I've lived for three months as a vegan, and it was very difficult. I leaned out. I lost a lot of weight.

I lost a lot of power output. My endurance went up. I mean, my blood panel looked awesome. So it was definitely a give and take. I didn't do it for a full 12 months, which I think I would really have to go through all four seasons to truly understand and feel it. And, you know, so... I know Fitch tried it for a while,

but then he went back to meat. He said he feels much stronger, much better. Yeah. You know, so many vegans were like tweeting Fitch tried it for a while, but then he went back to meat. He said he feels much stronger, much better. So many vegans were tweeting Fitch. They were loving it that he was vegan. Like, love that you're a vegan, man. It's amazing. And then afterwards, he's like, fuck, this sucked. It's hard to do.

I lost weight. I'm not as strong. I don't have as much energy. He goes, and now I feel much better now that I'm eating meat again. They're like, sad face. Sad face. Vegans get bummed out if you're not a vegan anymore. When they lose one of theirs, they get fucking bummed.

They love when they get one, but when they lose one, man, it hits them hard. It's tough. It's tough. And I do believe that there's a life force also that comes from certain foods. I do believe that. Maybe it's a placebo effect. I think it's true. I think I've had this philosophy,

which is total bro science on my part, but my philosophy is that things that run quicker are better for you. Yeah. Because that's why there's a reward for getting them. That's why before people figured out nets and hooks and lines, it's really hard to catch a fish.

And if you caught a fish, it's fucking strong protein. You catch a salmon, it's very high in protein. High protein, high in essential fats. A piece of elk has less cholesterol and more protein than the same piece of chicken that weighs the same amount. You can catch easily enough. Yeah.

Yeah. I agree with that. And bro science, absolutely. Maybe, probably. But until science- Maybe cheetah's the best shit for you. Maybe we should start eating cheetahs. Could be.

It could be. Maybe. Well, I know they until science- Maybe cheetah's the best shit for you. Maybe we should start eating cheetahs. Could be. It could be. Maybe. Well, I know they eat mountain lion. Mountain lion, everybody thinks they're like hunters that kill mountain lions or assholes. But first of all, you need to control the mountain lion population. Otherwise, they kill all the deer. They kill all the pigs. They kill everything.

Mountain lions are motherfuckers. But also people eat it. They eat mountain lion. It's supposed to be really delicious. Huh. I never had it. Never had it either. Is that a Colorado thing?

No. You know, places, Colorado for sure, Utah, places where they hunt it on a regular basis, they choose mountain lion over pig in a lot of places. They really like it. Yeah. It's supposed to like the back straps, the loin from mountain lion, it's supposed to be delicious. We ran out of time, my friend.

If people want to get a hold of you, how do they get a hold of you on Twitter? That's the dulce diet.com, the dulce diet on twitter and facebook and all the places that you normally and is that your book that you have there that is that is for you my friend it's three weeks to shred it our new book that's out right now it's it details the tiago alves weight cut and also the one i had done previous so it's the original and the expanded version dude we could do about 15 more of these i'm sure sure. And when more things come up and more issues nutritionally or exercise-wise, let's do it.

Absolutely, brother Joe. Thank you very much, my friend. Really appreciate it. Mike Dolce, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, sir. You know how to get a hold of him. Thanks to our sponsors. Thanks to Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com and enter the code word Joe. Squarespace.com. Enter the code word Joe for a free trial and 10% off your first purchase.

Thanks also to LegalZoom. Use the code word Rogan in the referral box at checkout. Save yourself some money, my friends. Money, money, money. Speaking of money, you also save some money with NatureBox.com forward slash Rogan. Go there. Get 50% off your month's first box of nutritious and yummy delicious shit okay we will be back my friends many many podcasts this week tim burnett from solo hunters

is here on thursday joe de rosa will be here on wednesday until then big kiss have fun take care see ya