The Joe Rogan Experience - #625 - Steve Maxwell

Episode Date: March 16, 2015

Steve Maxwell is an American fitness coach, physical educator, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instructor. He was named one of the top 100 trainers in the USA by Men’s Journal.

the Joe Rogan experience ladies and gentlemen Steve Maxwell fresh from Australia international man of mystery world traveler trainer of the stars you You're out there, buddy. Good day, mate. They call it Straya. S-T-R-Y-A. Straya. That's how they say it? I was checking out my Australian memes, you know, all the Australian slang.

Pretty funny, man. You can go online, Google this stuff. Some of the sayings they have are absolutely hilarious. So you were telling me before the show that you just started getting into THC, a.k.a. marijuana. You know, it's funny. I'm a child of the 60s and the 70s. And, you know, that was the huge hippie era. Right. And I was a wrestler.

I was like, you know, hardcore athlete, wrestled NCAA Division I. And for me at that time, I believed all the anti-propaganda. I was a pretty straight-laced guy. And so, you know, oh, it's a gateway drug, and oh my God, you're going to go to hell in a handbasket, and this stuff will destroy your brain, and blah, blah, blah. You've heard it all, of course. And what was that really funny anti-marijuana movie that they had back in the day? Reefer Madness?

Reefer Madness. Yeah, that was an awesome one. I actually, we had to watch that in health class when I was in high school. Really? Yeah, that was part of the school curriculum back in the 60s. So they showed it to you like as if it was real? Yeah, like it was real. We all believed that stuff.

Wow. Remember, I was from little Carlisle, Pennsylvania, you know. That's amazing. That's like a hick town. So, yeah, I just recently started. How recent? Just about maybe six months ago. What happened?

What started it off? You know, I just had so many friends that were into it. And it's interesting because I made observations. I've been in Brazilian jiu-jitsu now for, oh, my God, since 89. How many years is that? A lot. Yeah. 20-something?

Yeah. Okay. 26? What is that? 26? Well, almost every BJJ champ that I know was totally into marijuana. They used it to relax because it's such an intense sport. I mean, if you think about it, it's such an extremist thing.

What do you do? You go out and try to hurt someone as much as possible with joint locks and so forth, or you choke them to sleep. Of course, that being said, I had way more injuries with college wrestling than I ever did with jiu-jitsu because you can always tap. But I just noticed that these guys, you know, it's an intense sport, maybe not as intense injuries with college wrestling than I ever did with jiu-jitsu because you can always tap. Right. But I just noticed that these guys, you know, it's an intense sport, maybe not as intense as MMA, but certainly up there.

And they all would light up at night and so forth. And, you know, they'd have their bongs or, you know, roll up a joint. And I could just never figure this out. It just would blow my mind. Right. And over time, I just got more and more curious so I had a lot of friends in Australia that were really totally into this also and I just decided you know what maybe I'm missing something here yeah now that I'm in my 60s I missed the 60s so

I mean my 60s so I'm gonna check 60s. I'm going to check this out. I started playing around. What I didn't like was the smoke. I found it really irritating. I tried one of those. They call it the vape. It's like a little square box with a little straw. It looks like a little kid's juice box. Right, right.

Adult juice box. They have a bunch of those now. They have pens that look like uh like some sort of a metal cylinder with like a lip on the end of it and you and you you pack it with either oil that you can buy pre um pre-filled little tubes of of hemp oil or thc oil and you stick it in there and it it has some sort of an element in there and it heats it up and you just breathe in vapor it's just a vaporizer, a portable vaporizer. So, yeah, I was just very curious.

And, well, I mean, you've been into this for a long time, very open about it. And I thought, well, you are really into your health and your body, and you take great care of yourself. And I figured, you know, if it's really all that harmful, Joe wouldn't be doing this. There's no way that you would do something like that. I was with you. I mean, before I started smoking pot, I was in the same boat. I really thought it was for idiots.

I thought it was for people that just wanted to escape reality. They were weak. They couldn't handle it. They just wanted to get drugged out. I thought about it the same way I think about pain pills today. I've had three knee surgeries. My first major one, my first ACL, was a patella tendon graft, which is particularly painful because they slice your patella tendon,

they cut a chunk out of your kneecap and a chunk out of your shin bone, and then they drill it all in place and screw it in place. It's good because it's a native piece of tendon, so it adheres to the body very quickly, and there's very little chance of rejection, and it's very strong. But it's very painful. And they gave me a prescription for Vicodins or some shit. I took one of them, one.

And I remember sitting on the couch feeling so stupid and foggy. And I said, I am done with this. My other two, um, surgeries, my, my other ACL and my other meniscus surgery, I didn't take anything. My knee, my nose, when I had my nose fixed, I had my, um, deviated septum fixed and my turbinates cut out my nose stretched out and they put tubes in it and everything nothing I didn't take anything just pot and I don't like I don't like anything that leaves me like cloudy and that seems like that's what I thought pot was I thought pot was something that left you stupid or cloudy and it's really just it's the opposite it tunes you in I was shocked I was utterly shocked the first thing I noticed was my vision improved I've been nearsighted most of my life and I

basically found my eyes were getting worse each year getting stronger prescriptions I finally read this book take off your glasses and see And I just basically threw my glasses in the trash and started doing eye strengthening exercises. What kind of them? I'm going through that right now myself. They improved a lot. There's a lot of different exercises you can do, but the name of the book is Take Off Your Glasses and See. And this guy was a disciple of the Bates method of eye strengthening. But when I was at the summit of the breath masters in Moscow, they had a bunch of guys there that were using breathing and eye exercise and all sorts of stuff

for the improvement of vision. One was a former specialist sniper. So I guess he knows a thing or two about vision training. And he was showing some of the exercises he does, you know, real simple stuff. And it was like, wow, this works, but only to a point. It got really good to the point where I can drive during the day. I'm still a little reluctant to drive at night. I mean, I could, but I can't read street signs at night. During the day, I can actually see signs, but I'm a little reluctant. but I'm a little reluctant.

And what I noticed when I would take the THC, I was using one of those vaporizer things. It was like my eyes would start to really clear, which leads me to believe that it has something to do with muscular tension. I noticed that my digestion would improve. And instead of getting foggy, like I would be on my iPad maybe doing an email or something, it's like somehow my fingers would just glide over the keys and just magically find the letters way faster, or at least my perception of how much faster.

I don't know. It was just a very interesting experience. Well, one of the things that people use it for with jiu-jitsu is not just to relax after training, but before training because it focuses you in a very tunnel vision sort of a way. When I roll, when I smoke pot and roll, I feel like I'm better at jiu-jitsu. I really do. I feel like – More relaxed. Not just more relaxed.

I feel like I'm more sensitive. I'm like more in tune with what's going on. I'm also – I love stretching on it. That's one of my favorite things to do. I love eating one of those things, those also, I love stretching on it. That's one of my favorite things to do. I love eating one of those things, those jumbos I just gave you. That's interesting. I haven't tried eating it yet. That's an all organic edible THC, you know, marijuana little cake thing. And it's all with natural honey and all natural ingredients. It's like probably the healthiest of all these edible ones. Because A lot of these edible ones are using processed sugars

and high fructose corn syrup and stuff. It's not good for you. This guy who created these, he decided there's got to be a market for an organic version of these marijuana edibles. That's much healthier for your body, but it's really strong. Be careful.

I'm going to be very careful. I have not uh in truth taken it before i've trained but i read uh about the guy in colorado the triathlete he's a world-class athlete um very elite and he he's been really advocating taking it before endurance training somehow it improves uh pain threshold your your tolerance to physical exercise pain not pain pain right but like exercise induced discomfort it changes the way your body reacts it changes the way your body reacts and any sort of when i work out with it if i lift weights with it i like i can feel the fibers or at least i feel like i'm feeling i feel feel the fibers of my muscles. I'm very sensitive to it,

which is one of the reasons why I really enjoy doing it before I stretch. And Terence McKenna, who is a late great psychedelic philosopher, it was his contention that yoga itself was really a how to use cannabis manual. And that the way to optimize your experience with cannabis was through yoga because all of those sadhus all those guys are just hash smoking freaks they're all like one that's like the dark secret of the sadhus he would say is what they really concentrate on is how many chillums can you smoke before you pass out and they you know you're not a man unless you can go deep deep deep into the rabbit hole yeah and these guys would smoke massive amounts of hash and do yoga. And, you know, I used to think, well, wow, that's kind of crazy.

Like, I guess they're just having fun and doing it. Until the one time I did yoga when I was high. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. It's like I can relax more. I can get deeper into poses. It's like I can relax more. I can get deeper into poses. And also I feel like I feel the resistance.

Like a lot of, Pavel talks about this as well. I don't know how to say his last name. How do you say his last name? Sat Soling. Sat Soling, who's one of the most famous advocates of the kettlebell. He talked about stretching being a big part of what holds you back is uh tension psychological tension not necessarily even flexibility but that you're worried your brain sets up that stretch reflex yeah when you're in an unfamiliar position so it's you know it's saying danger you're in a different position than you're used to being in yeah and for most of us that's

sitting in chairs or most people. Right. Yeah. That's the most common position, right? When your head's in between your legs and you're stretching your hamstrings out. Your body's a little threatened by that. Yeah, your body's like, what are you doing there, buddy? Tense it up. Tense it up.

What he was saying was that it's all about breathing, resist, and then relax. Resist, and then relax. But that resist and relax has enhanced, I don't know how many fold when you're on marijuana. I mean, it's amazing how deep you go into stretches and how good it feels afterwards. It's this weird state you reach when you do yoga or any type of deep stretching on marijuana. I'm a huge, huge fan of that. Well, listen, I'm a neophyte, man. Teach me, master. Never let it be said that Steve Maxwell doesn't experiment, you know. I really think that one of the secrets to aging well is to be open-minded and just to experiment and learn

new things try new things and don't be such a stick in the mud with with your belief systems you know yeah don't get so holier than thou with all all your beliefs because hey man you know if you think about it a lot of really high spiritual adepts they they all use some type of either, you know, hallucinogen or we talked last time on the show about ayahuasca and so forth. And, you know, the shamans using their mushrooms. And I think as you get older, I think especially when you have been around a lot of fools, you reach a certain point in your life where you don't want to tolerate any nonsense and you just like ah enough of this nonsense like what you

need is you know a night a good diet you don't need any supplements you don't need any who we in your life you don't need any BS just get out of bed and go out and do it just do it and that that sort of mentality serves you well but in having that mentality and meeting all these fools sometimes you can kind of develop prejudices you develop these ideas that aren't necessarily based on data it's more based on like sort of just your perceptions of the people that are around you like if you see enough losers that do something you say well that's for losers you see enough losers that are smoking pot you think well pot is for losers it's obvious like look at all these are smoking pot. You think, well, pot is for losers. It's obvious.

Like, look at all these losers smoking pot. And then you meet, like, BJ Penn. You're like, wait a minute. Hold on. BJ Penn gets high and does jiu-jitsu? Like, what? What's going on there? And then, you know, you find out that 90% of the Brazilian jiu-jitsu champions are smoking pot and rolling.

Yeah, they all relax with this stuff. Yeah. It's a performance enhancer. There was actually an article recently about ultramarathoners. Jamie, see if you can pull that up because it was – I forget what publication it was in. But it was a big article where people were really being – really shocked at these – the results and these guys that were ultramarathoners that were advocating smoking marijuana. And they were talking about should this be banned from ultramarathons. Well, Outside Magazine also

could have been outside. Oh, there it is. Fox News, right here. A bunch of different things. Marijuana has benefits, but is it ethical? Yeah, see, this is the thing. Goddammit, people, of course it's ethical. Are vitamins ethical? Is fruit ethical? Is caffeine ethical? It's a goddamn plant.

I mean, these people are all on caffeine, by the way. Here's the dirty secret about marathon runners. I have a buddy who is my friend Cameron Haynes. He's a fanatical runner. He runs 10 miles a day, sometimes 15. He does marathons. He's done an ultramarathon. I think he's gearing up for another ultramarathon.

He's a maniac. And he's always hopped up on the caffeine. Always. But he has a job, like a regular job, and he can't touch the pot. And I've been telling him about all this, and he's like, maybe there's another good reason why I should quit my job. Yeah. You know, there's another very interesting thing I've been experimenting with for years, and that's the theta brainwave meditation, where you actually – your brain produces different levels of brainwaves.

Your brain oscillates at certain speeds, and different parts of the brain produce different, you know, like alpha, beta, gamma, delta, theta. But theta is like the one that's most closely associated with that sort of between sleep and wakefulness, when the subconscious mind can be programmed. And there's a lot of really good programs out there that produces a beat and then your brain starts to adapt and copy the beat and you can slow the brainwave down that's what I did in the plane I just like I said I flew in from Sydney like 14 hour flight man and didn't really get that much sleep. But I did one of those binaural beats, theta brainwave meditation. Now, when you do this, you're wearing headphones? Yeah, yeah. I actually

was using Bose earbud noise cancellations and just sitting there with my iPhone and just, wow, zoning. And when you come out of it, you feel like you just had a refreshing sleep. Really? Yeah, it's very, very relaxing, speaking of relaxation. And so for those folks that are still a little leery about maybe trying something like THC, you can do this with the theta brainwave meditation. All the brainwaves have their benefits. The alpha is like what we're in right now the alpha and the uh the

beta like while we're awake gamma is like when you're in a real deep sleep like a real deep dreamlike state the theta is like that twilight you know when you're this is when when people meditate they go into a theta brainwave uh state but by, you could meditate like a monk your first time out, man. Wow. Yeah. It doesn't require any special breathing or postures or anything. You can just literally sit or lie down comfortably, and you just go into the zone. And if you do practice visualization, or if you practice any kind of affirmations or subconscious mind programming, it's a great time to do it, man.

So you're listening to a program. What is the name of the program and how do you get it? Well, there's a whole bunch of different ones. You can go to Amazon or iTunes and just look for Theta Brainwave Meditation. I'd recommend maybe people just go on, just Google it and look at the different, I mean, there's so many different companies out there now. You can get CDs, you can get MP3s, you can download it in iTunes. I have it on my iPhone. That's great. About a dozen programs. And it's really handy for guys like us, because you do your fair share of travel. When you have to adapt to a new time zone,

and it's pretty hard to sleep in some of these planes sometimes yeah it's hard for me to sleep on planes it's also hard for well you know if i'm tired i can conk out pretty much anywhere i can lie down on the floor it goes but um it's hard for me um when i have to do something like three hours and i know well i could take a nap right now for two hours good luck luck. Yeah. It makes you feel worse than if you didn't take it at all. Yeah, I lie there and I go, come on, go to sleep, come on. I usually can't get there. Well, you slap the earphones on with your binaural beat.

That's just like one of the programs. What does it sound like? Well, sometimes they use music. You can hear like an underlying beat. It's just underneath the conscious hearing. But you can kind of hear like this little rhythm going on and sometimes they'll have beautiful kind of angelic you know music uh sometimes they just have like sounds of the ocean you know like ocean waves incredibly relaxing and you just find yourself zoning and when you finish the program, you really do feel like you had just a very nice, refreshing sleep.

And you feel quite excellent. So they vary in the sounds, but the beat stimulates the same part of the brain. Yeah. There's a couple of different techniques. One of the techniques, they have a different rhythm going in each ear. Wow. So the right and left hemispheres have to synchronize with each other. What if you're bipolar?

I don't know, man. Probably not a good idea. Maybe it'll sort you out. I'm not a brain scientist, but I have been doing this for a bunch of years with good results. But I don't know. Maybe if you have a mental illness or a bipolar syndrome. But they do claim that it regulates your hormonal levels. Really?

Yeah. And there's even... even to the point of producing growth hormone and so forth. Have you ever messed around with any of those... do you know what a Turbosonic is? It uses sound waves through the base of a platform you stand on this and it and it takes you through a bunch of different cycles i have and it's sound but you don't hear it it's like you're you're standing on a yeah you're just getting like shaking you're just getting vibed i love that thing i have one of those things in my house and it's supposed to like do all sorts of things as far as stimulate the production of various hormones and aid healing and circulation.

But it makes you feel great. There's even ways you can just exercise and do vibrations and so forth. Trampolines are really good for that, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Taoist yogis and the Qigong practitioners have been doing similar things with their own bodies. I mean, obviously, the platform makes it much more convenient. Oh, it's 10 minutes.

You get on that sucker for 10 minutes and you're like. It goes through all these different, like you'll do like 10 seconds at one and then 10 seconds at another. And then very fast, high frequency and then low and slow and shaking and when it's over you're like god i feel so good fantastic yeah it's wild but uh like feldenkrais he was you know they have like a a bouncing shaking vibrational kind of thing and there's uh like i said the dallas yogis have a thing where they do this kind of stuff. When I was in Russia, they had like as part of their Slavic Russian health system, their mobility stuff, they would have shaking and vibrations and all the stuff that you just kind of do to yourself. And I read this guy, Alexander Lohan, he was like a psychiatrist that treated people with chronic mental problems with exercise and so forth. Really?

He was really big into shaking and moving the body and all these interesting patterns. It's very relaxing. It just gets a lot of the tension out. And I agree with you. I do believe it does help facilitate recovery. I think mental problems and relaxation are so often not connected with each other. Mental problems and exercise and exertion and the fact that a lot of people, a lot of their tension comes from not releasing energy and their body stores up

this energy like a battery and then it's leaking all over the place. It's just like they're short-circuiting. When you see people screaming in traffic and cutting people off, all this madness that really is like a form of madness. When you see someone screaming at someone that's not even anywhere near them in traffic. The stress levels just get so much. And a lot of that goes also back, and we talked about this last time too, about your breathing patterns. Most people, and I do seminars all over the world, and we test ourselves to see what type of breather we are. That's like one of the things we do first. And almost everybody in

the seminar is like a covicular breather. They're using the emergency apparatus of the upper neck and chest, shallow breathing. Panic breathing. And it's panic breathing. And all those emergency receptors are in the upper lobes of the lungs, and they're not bringing the O2 down into the lower lobes. So they're in a chronic panic. They're in a heightened state of vigilance all the time. That's exhausting, man. And it does all sorts of weird things to your hormones. And it's definitely, it's hard to be in a good mood and relaxed when you're in this panic state. Your subconscious mind doesn't know that there's not

like a threat looming over the horizon. So everything that happens is perceived as a threat. Every little comment, you know, someone cuts you off in traffic, people take it so personally because it's a threat because they're all caught up in the chest. And, man, I'm telling you, when you learn to do proper diaphragmatic breathing and bringing the breath down to the lower lobes of the lungs, it's incredibly calming, you know. You do that with – So what do you recommend if someone is looking into doing something like that? Is there a book that you recommend or a program?

Do you have a video or anything? Well, I get to one of my seminars. I do a lot of breath work. You know, well, Master Hicks and Gracie now, I mean, for years he never showed us his breathing system. You know, he'd be kicking our ass and doing this kind of weird

breathing. And I used to think, is he making fun of me? You know, that's kind of this weird kind of thing he was doing. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. You know, that's kind of this weird kind of thing he was doing. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. You know, Hoyce, Hoyler, you know, they all knew how to do this. And they weren't teaching us blue and purple bots at the time. But now he's spending a lot of time teaching.

I heard that Kron also is spending a lot of time because I think it's really, really important for combat athletes to, you know, learn to relax. And the way you relax in combat is through breath manipulation. But as far as actually being taught, I haven't seen it. The Sistema guys do a pretty good job with it, you know. But it's funny because, you know, I started really getting into this and reading a lot. But I wasn't reading stuff related to combat as much as mostly yoga stuff, you know, or Qigong. So yeah, it's kind of hard to find the information. Yeah, it is. It's hard to find information. It's hard to know, like, what's the best program for you. I guess you have to try a few different ones to find out what you enjoy or what seems to

benefit you. But I think when you're think especially when you're dealing with martial arts and you're dealing with training and especially competing, you're dealing with extremely stressful situations where your body's pushed at a very high pace, where you reach a point of exhaustion, and then you have to continue for three, four minutes while you're exhausted. Everyone who's ever rolled has experienced that you know you're doing maybe a seven or nine minute roll which uh means uh grappling sparring for the uninitiated and uh

a lot of times you're two three minutes in if especially if you're rolling with someone good and you are exhausted totally exhausted and you gotta figure out a way to get to a clinch and just... And try to bring your heart rate down and try to do just enough to defend and keep moving, but not enough to totally tax out your muscles. And also, don't let your mind get into that panic state. And the breath is what controls that. Yeah. Because if you can't breathe, you're going to freak. Yeah, I remember training with a guy who was like a real athletic guy,

a very strong guy, but he hadn't done jiu-jitsu before. And so he was really excited to learn it and just try to get into jiu-jitsu. And, you know, he's in there sparring, and he asked me to spar. And I'm like, okay, all right, you know, how long are you doing it now? He's like, a couple months and this and that. I'm just getting into it. I'm asked me to spar and I'm like okay all right you know uh how long you be doing it now he's like a couple months and this and that I'm just getting into it I'm just starting to spar I'm like all right let's go and uh so we start I I remember I got to a position I like mounted him and I could feel him just full panic his body locked up and I remember I'd never felt because I'm not usually rolling with someone who's that inexperienced. So to do a raw white belt, it's only been doing it for a short period of time,

he really didn't know what to do, and he was just locked up. And I'm like, just calm down. Just breathe. Breathe. Just breathe. It's not going to help you. This is definitely going to hurt you. You're going to get tapped out either way, but if you breathe in, you're going to be able to keep going

and you're going to be able to learn. I'll walk you through shit. I'll tell you what to not do, where to put yourself. But this, you can't ever let that happen. Ever. Even if you're going to lose, even if you're going to get tapped out, don't ever let yourself freak. You can't freak. And in a real

emergency, let's say some type of straight altercation where, I mean, maybe there's a lot more on the line than a trophy or a medal or, you know, like your life. Or your ego in class. Like your life. Yeah. Yeah, knowing how to breathe and keep calm is really, really, really important. Very important. Keep your mind clear.

But it takes a lot of practice, and you have to do it. And there's a lot of really cool breathing exercises that you can do, even just walking, jogging, you know, even with your exercises and so forth. Everyone can lose. Anyone, especially that's learning and developing, you can lose and you're probably going to lose, whether it's in sparring or whether it's in competition, when you come up against someone who's better than you. But there's a big difference between losing and losing composure and breaking, you know, that term breaking. When you feel a guy give up. We've all seen it.

We've seen it in fights. And some guys just don't break. Like, here's a perfect example. John Jones doesn't break. He just doesn't break. You know, he might take breathers but he is in his mind, he's the greatest of all time

he's going to figure out how to beat you it's a foregone conclusion he's not going to tap like when he fought Vitor Belfort Vitor Belfort caught him in a beautiful arm bar from the guard and had his arm completely hyperextended ruined his arm

John's arm was fucked up for like months afterwards. He had to take a gig on The Ultimate Fighter and coach for a long time because he wasn't able to train and he wasn't, he was not going to be able to fight for at least like six months to let that arm heal. But it didn't matter. He was not going to tap. Like, he was going to get his arm broken.

And he was going to still win. He was going to find a way to win. He is not breaking. And then there's other guys, the first moment where things go wrong, you see this look in their eye, they're like, oh shit, it's going wrong. They lose composure. And like these, these doors that you go into with your mind, you get real comfortable entering these doors. You get real comfortable entering these, these areas of the mind. And this can apply to all aspects of your life, I think. Well, like Jacare got, you know, when he fought Roger, that perfect example.

Perfect example. He won in the win. He took the damage to the elbow, fought one arm just to eke out the victory. It was... Yeah. Now, but I think... For folks who don't know what we're talking about, Haja Gracie, one of the very best black belts in the world,

and Jacare, one of the very best black belts in the world, and Jacare, one of the very best black belts in the world. Was it in the Mundiales? Yeah, I think it was the Open Finals. Yeah, it was a huge Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Championship, and Haja broke Jacare's arm. And Jacare just tucked that sucker in his belt and kept going. Kept going. He only had, I don't know, 30 or 40 seconds,

so he just basically played the outside edge of the mat because he had points. Yeah, he let him break his arm instead of tapping. It was crazy. Now, for your listeners out there, though. Don't do that. Don't do that. We're talking about hardcore professional athletes that make their living fighting world championships on the line. You know, thousands of dollars on the line you know thousands of dollars in the line but in class

yeah i'm one of those guys that like hey if you catch me you trick me uh you know fighting out of a arm lock or a triangle look the mistakes already been made you got me in the trap i made a mistake i acknowledge it you know i, I'll fight a little bit. But, you know, as soon as I feel like, no, this is just tap and just forget about it. So important to tap. The biggest mistakes I've ever made in training is not tapping. Especially when you're over 45 and these guys that want to. And that brings up another subject.

I've been really doing a lot of work with jiu-jitsu for a lifetime. You know, I like what the grandsons of Elia Gracie have been saying. Yeah, let's get that video, because you have a beautiful video that you sent me. And let's show what happened to Jacare's elbow, too, by the way. Jacare had surgery on his elbow, and they pulled these chunks of

bone that were broken off and cartilage inside his elbow. I never heard about the aftermath. I knew it was pretty messed up, but I never heard exactly what he had to do to repair that. Well, he did it recently. I heard it was bad, though. Yeah, he had it recently repaired. I mean, he had it repaired back then, but the damage, all the cartilage

and all the stuff that's broken off inside of his elbow was just swimming around in his elbow, messing with his— That's some serious— Yeah, I mean, oh, it's so painful. You know, you can't extend your arm all the way. Well, your body builds up, you know, bone and calcification around that injury, and you get those osteophytes, and before you know it, you pretty much lose range of motion in your joints.

Yeah. The surgery images he put online, and it was just, like, so disgusting. Bad news, man. I do love to avoid surgery. Yeah. Yeah, it was a five-hour surgery just to clean out his elbow. Look at this. And it's a good chance.

Oh, man, that is really nasty. But, you know, even after the surgery, there's a good chance it's never going to be the same again. Very good chance. Very good chance. I mean, they're finding out ways now with stem cells to regenerate cartilage like for the first time ever football players are doing it they're using it on older folk that have had bone to bone arthritis for years it's pretty amazing isn't it what we're in a great time we're in a great time yeah if we could just live long enough joe you

know just get replacement parts for everything grown from our own bodies, right? Yeah. Well, it's very possible that that is going to happen, but also very possible that they're just going to be able to regenerate tissue, that all your injured tissue, all your damaged areas are just going to be able to regenerate them. It's going to be like Star Trek, right? Where they used to take that little thing and just go over your body and you're healed now. Well, there's a guy in Germany, Dr. Peter Weller, who is the same guy who created that Regenequin process that all the pro athletes, they were flying over to Germany for doing to do it. And now they go to, there's a company called Lifespan Medicine that does it in Santa Monica and they do it in Dallas. And I believe they're opening up other offices as well.

They take your blood out, they spin it in a centrifuge and they heat it up and the reaction to the heat makes your blood produce this really intense anti-inflammatory. And I've had it done. A lot of people have had really chronic injuries have had it done and it works miracles. Well, he's developed this full body MRI machine, which literally just gets a map of everything going on in your body and once he went and did it he developed this and found out he had colon cancer well yeah he had no idea particularly aggressive type of colon cancer and caught it right away early on went into surgery now it's fine but I mean it's

like this is how amazing it is it's so amazing that it actually worked and benefited the guy who created it it's amazing amazing stuff nice to be the beneficiary of your own inventions yeah discoveries man well it's it's also a reward for being on the cutting edge of healing and science for this guy medical uh science but let's let's play this uh video that you have uh that you sent us because it's really cool. I really liked what you're doing. It's really exciting to see, and I want to talk to you about it. So we'll play that real quick. I've spent almost a lifetime in the grappling arts. I started out as a young wrestler when I was 10 years old.

Always was in love with the whole concept of wrestling and grappling on the ground. It was just one of the few things I was good at right from the beginning. Jiu-jitsu and surfing in tropical El Salvador. I love it. So for folks who are just listening and not watching, it's just Steve demonstrating a bunch of different jiu-jitsu techniques and now mobility training, which is a big part of what you do to keep healthy and keep your joints healthy and protect yourself from injuries, right? Absolutely.

I mean, if you think about it, it's probably the most fun two guys can have without a woman, man. I mean, you know, it's like rolling with your, you know, like wrestling on the living room floor in your pajamas with your brother, right? It's like incredibly fun, great mental stimulation. It's a fun game. Very fun game. As long as you can get over the tapping part, what we were talking about

earlier, just, it's like no one gets angry when someone shoots a ball in on them when you play basketball. And there's the dates there. Let's pull those dates back so we could see what the dates are. Tell everybody where they are. Yeah, there's 20th, 22nd in March. 28th. I'm sorry, that's...

Go ahead. It says 28th of November to the 5th of December, and then the 5th of December to the 12th of December in 2015. So this is a start a new tradition, it says. This is a new thing that you're starting to do. And what a great vacation. Have some fun. Go to El Salvador. Do some surfing. You guys have surf lessons. You're going to teach jujitsu. Teach different ways of increasing your joint flexibility and preventing injuries. And just how to stay with it for a lifetime, man. Like for guys that want to just stick with what they love doing.

You wrote an article about it recently. Well, yeah. I mean, like most guys, by the time they hit 40, they're not going to be doing it anymore. They're going to have to quit because they're going about it wrong. And I was on that path myself. I mean, when I was in my mid-40s, I'd be getting up in the morning. It was like, oh my God, I could barely turn around to back my car out of the garage. And I'm thinking, geez, what is it going to be like in 10 years from now? If I'm just in my

mid-40s already suffering this pain and stiffness and inflammation. So I started really investigating the different exercise systems, mobility systems. Of course, I've always been interested in diet and, you know, experimenting and so forth. And, you know, I've been doing this for a long time. And I discovered a lot of really good things I like to share with people so that you can continue to do what you love so we can all be like Master Elio Gracie and, you know, 95 years old. I mean, getting on the mat and still having fun with it. He was fanatical about his diet, right? He was fanatical about his diet.

But, you know, as you get older, you have to be. You've got to be more and more fanatical as the old aging process starts to set in. When I was young, I think I was just less aware of what was going on when I ate bad food. I think I was just less aware. I was like, oh, this tastes good. What a great cheeseburger. It tastes awesome. But I wasn't really, I wasn't as conscious about the actual effects.

Whereas now, I'm pretty aware of what kind of state my body's in. Like, it's very frustrating for me if my mind is in a dull place, like especially if I have to do interviews early in the morning. I just haven't quite woken up yet and do interviews early in the morning i just haven't quite woken up yet and i'm having conversations and the words just aren't coming out that good they're just clumsy and just frustrating so i'm pretty aware of like when i'm at my optimum state and i really notice now if i eat crappy food i really really notice. If I have something that's got a lot of bread in it or something that's

just unhealthy, deep-fried nonsense. It's two guys that do a lot of traveling. You're doing shows all over the place besides UFCs. Sometimes it is pretty hard to find good stuff.

But I always pack my own stuff. I always have like a – I call it my hobo bag. It's a bag full of stuff I get from, you know, various health food stores or whatever. You know, I load up on, you know, really good quality stuff. Like what do you pack in the hobo bag? Raw almonds? Yeah, I mean there's so many paleo places around now, you know, I'm not like a total fanatic about paleo, but they do have some pretty damn good healthy stuff, you know, different bars and different concoctions that are already sealed in pouches or, you know, different things like that. I'll get a whole bunch of things like

that. I love carob pods. Carob is just, like, fantastic. It's like raw carob right off the tree and fresh fruit. What does a raw carob bar look like? It's not a bar. It looks like, what do they call them, the acacia pods or whatever that you see on the ground sometimes. It looks like that? Yeah, yeah. But it's sweet.

You just chew it and spit the seeds, and it's absolutely delicious. Good fiber. It's known as a blood sugar stabilizer so that you eat this thing, man, you're not hungry for hours. So when you're on the road, it's just a good way to keep yourself from getting too hungry. I don't think I've ever seen it before. They're very popular in Australia. I used to get them in, yeah, that's it. Wow.

Very popular in Australia. They're delicious. Yeah. But when I was living in Redonda Beach area, my girlfriend used to go to this place called Rawsome. It was like a raw foods place. And they would sell them. But my God, they were like a fucking arm and a leg, man.

These things were like so crazy expensive. And one day I was in Marin County. I can't remember the little town. But anyway, this was back in my camper van days. I go to get out and go to this little coffee shop to get a paper or whatever. And I'm seeing these things in the ground. And I look up and there's a tree. And it was like hundreds of them just laying there, man.

So I got some plastic baggies, you know. You were sure that it was that? Oh, I tasted it. Oh, wow. It was like, holy shit, this is carob. It's a carob tree growing right here. Pull that video up again. Image rather. In Marin County. What's a carob tree growing right here. Pull that video up again. Image, rather.

In Marin County. What does a carob tree look like? I really don't think I've ever seen that. Like, if I looked at that, like that one that looks like a bundle of snakes, that third picture from the top. Yeah. Well, right there on the right. I was just utterly shocked. Because, you know, I had been paying a lot of money for these damn things.

And there they were. It's just like land. I had no idea that they even grew in California. How long does it last once you get it from the tree? Does it go bad and rot? No, no, no. They're like dried. I mean, they're like a dried pod that you could just keep.

For a long time? Probably years maybe. I don't know. Wow. I mean, they're really tasty. No kidding. Really nice little sweet. You know what? It's like? You know, white sugar, white granulated sugar is probably one of the worst things you can eat. Toxic. Yeah, toxic, right? But sugar cane

actually, you know, like from the cane field, actually has a lot of health benefit. Does it really? Yeah. It's sweet. It's fibrous. It has a lot of nutrients, minerals, and so forth. I mean, obviously, you don't eat a lot of it because it's powerful stuff. It's like one of those very powerful foods. But the carob pods are kind of like the same thing. If you do have a bit of a sweet tooth or whatever, it's a fantastic way to sate your sweet tooth. And, wow, the fiber is amazing. amazing really i really was not aware at all i always thought of carob as like something that you yeah like the processed stuff like chocolate yeah yeah it's just about as bad as chocolate

the way they process is it really yeah i mean maybe a little less harsh on your system because a lot of people have chocolate sensitivities. You know, you always hear about gluten or dairy, but man, a lot of people have a lot of sensitivity to chocolate. There's a lot of different things out there that have been overeaten for years and years and years that can give you food sensitivities. Well, some chocolate's really good, right? Like raw chocolate is very high in antioxidants. It can be, but some people are very sensitive to the acids and so forth in chocolate. And so there's carob and there's, how do you say it, cacao? Cacao.

Cacao. That's the raw chocolate. That's the raw chocolate. And that stuff is really good for you, right? It can be. Can be. But for some people it's not. It's like it's powerful stuff.

And if you overeat anything, you're going to develop a potential sensitivity. It's like the gluten, right? I mean, gluten in itself is not all that bad, right? But Americans have been just eating it like crazy, you know? Toast in the morning. With cereal. Yeah, with cereal. Sandwich for lunch.

Sandwich for lunch. Pasta for dinner. And dinner rolls. And it's just like they're getting inundated. Yeah, sandwich for lunch. Pasta for dinner. And dinner rolls. And it's just like they're getting inundated.

Well, my God, you could probably develop a food sensitivity to anything. Probably you could get eggs or chicken sensitivity or something if you just ate it, you know, three square meals a day. Yeah, I'm pretty certain of that. I went for a while, more than six months, where I just didn't touch any gluten. I said, let me see what happens. One thing, I lost weight. I was pretty shocked at how easy it was. My body thinned out. Lost body fat.

My face got thinner. I carry fat in my face. I'm like one of those dudes. I carry fat. If I get fat, I get love handles, and I get it in my face. Me too, man. I don't get it in my arms. I don't get it in my legs, but I get it around my belly and my sides, and I get it in my face. Me too, man. I don't get it in my arms. I don't get it in my legs.

But I get it around my belly and my sides, and I get it in my face. And all that went, what? My face shrunk down in my side. I was like, wow, this is interesting. It is interesting how the fat patterns just shrink up. Yeah. There's three major fat distributions, right? You got your depo fat.

That's like the love handles. Or with women, sometimes it's the saddlebags and the side of the thigh. Sometimes you see women in the upper back or the tricep area. With guys, it's usually the belly. The gray arms. Yeah, or the belly or the love handles for most guys, you know. Then you have internal fat. That's the dangerous stuff, the intra-abdominal fat, the gut fat.

That's what can kill you. Then you have subcutaneous fat. It's like the smooth fat underneath the skin, like an insulation layer. And then, of course, they've identified the brown fat also. It's like an active fat. It produces heat in the body. It's like part of survival mechanism. Back when our ancestors had to tolerate a lot of extremes in temperatures like cold. You have this brown fat that's like a metabolic active fat. And kids have it, but by the time you're like 12, it almost disappears because we have this regulated temperatures all the time. People don't expose themselves to cold. They're always bundling up and their homes are overheated. But what a lot of people are saying now, you can actually get that metabolically active fat, the brown fat cells going, which helps keep you lean and helps burn the other yellow fat.

So cold showers, cold water treatments, exposing yourself to cold, a really good thing for developing the brown fat. And it builds your immune system. And you have a much better tolerance to cold and much less likely to get innervated in cold weather. So you don't have a tendency to come down with colds or flu and stuff like that. Really? Brown fat? Yeah, brown fat. I'd never heard of that before. And what is it created by?

Some of it's in the peritoneal cavity. Some of it's up in the neck area. And it's just something that nature provided to help temperature regulation, help you tolerate cold. So is that like more common with Inuits and folks who live in... Oh yeah, for sure. They have well-developed brown fat. But you and I could do it, too, if we just expose ourselves a little bit more to the cold. Have you done any cryotherapy? Have you done any of that? Not as like the way it's been used. How long are you in town for?

Let's see. I'm going down to San Diego. I'm the keynote speaker for that Strength Matters Summit that's 20th through the 22nd, in san diego 17th 16th 16th i gotta take you to this place in la okay it's called cryo health care i gotta bring you down i love cold this this is insane 250 degrees below zero you go into like a meat locker i mean it is is crazy you put on a surgical mask you put on earmuffs you wear uh like socks that go up to your like knee-high socks and like those rubber crocs because you don't want to stand on the floor. Yeah.

And you also wear gloves. And you wear underwear. Very important, ladies and gentlemen. And you don't want to have any moisture in your body. You don't ever want to go there sweaty. Yeah. You go there for three minutes. Okay.

Three minutes at 250 degrees below zero. And it is cold as fuck. And all i do is i just concentrate on staying calm and breathing and i breathe and i count and that's what i do i go one two three and i try to count slower than a minute so that when they give you a timer you have one minute remaining so when i count that minute down i always want to make sure that i'm not one two three four five six seven i'm counting slower than the actual seconds. Do you build up? Do you like maybe start 30 seconds and build up each time?

You can. I did. I was just curious. The first time they did it, they put me in for two minutes, and I said, how, and they go, well, the first time, you want to try it, you know, don't go in too long, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I go, okay. What's the longest I could do it?

And they said three minutes. So I said, all right, well, I'll try your two minutes I tried two minutes I think I think it'll last another minute I go let's try another minute so then I went in again and I did three minutes and now what I do is I do three minutes I take um maybe five six minutes off and I get on an elliptical machine and warm up and then I go back in for another three minutes. It's amazing. Well, for years I did the dowsing. It's a Russian bucket treatment. Ice bucket challenge. Yeah.

Well, it's funny because I had been doing this years and years before. When I lived in Philly, I had a backyard that was pretty much secluded with a big wall. So I could basically, you know, strip down naked in my backyard and my neighbors couldn't see me. And in the back corner I had this big sp spigot and I had a five gallon bucket. And all year long, I would go and very slowly pour a five gallon bucket, starting with the abdomen, up over the head and down the back. And the Russians that had taught me this said that it creates like this artificial flash fever. It's not quite the same thing with the shower which is more prolonged because you're dousing yourself

with a sudden immersion it's kind of like plunging into like a cold lake it supposedly burns up any bacteria or germs whatever in your body all i know is that for the years I did it in Philadelphia, 15 years when I was a householder, I didn't get a cold. Really? I did not get a cold. People around me would have flu, they'd be sick, and my immune system was amazing. Well, the benefits of this cryotherapy, as it's been explained to me, and if you go to cryohealthcare.com, I think it is. I forget the website, but the name of the place in L.A. is Cryo Healthcare. There's a bunch of different styles of these cryo machines. One of them is from the neck down.

You stand in, and your head is outside, and you don't have to put anything on your face. I don't find that one to be as effective. It's good. It's certainly better than nothing. But the one we step into the meat locker, God, that's a motherfucker. They're going to have one of those down the street in Woodland Hills down the road a bit.

They're going to be putting out one of those within the next month or so. Well, that would certainly stimulate brown fat, both I would think. See, the meat locker one is the one on the left. See, they have that one. That one's fairly common, kind of nationwide. That the meat locker one is the one on the left see they have that one That one's fairly common kind of nationwide that one the one that you see on the left the meat locker. That's the mother I like that one man. Oh, I'm gonna take it. It's actually claustrophobic in that way, right? No, it's not claustrophobic

Yeah, the little one just looks like The little ones easy the little ones so easy It's not this is not the little ones hard if you've never done it before you go Oh Jesus, but if you've done it the the big one is like the little one That's that one right there. You just kind of you climb out of it You're fine, but the the big one has this amazing effect you get out of there You feel like you could jump over buildings. You're like whoa Once your body like realizes that you're not gonna die no one has

dropped you in the top of the moon and it's on a hundred really 250 degrees below zero that's literally the surface of the moon is 250 degrees below zero okay yeah in the dark wow the moon varies from like 250 degrees to 250 degrees below zero depending on whether or not the sun is hitting you or whether or not you're in the shade. Well, that's like how all these things work, even training, right? You know, your body, if training is done properly, your body perceives it as a threat to its survival. You know, you basically are tapping into your survival mechanism with these things. Yes.

And your body in its wisdom will say, hey, I'm not quite up to snuff here. I better adapt and get stronger so I don't die. Yeah. And that's training too, weight training or anything. You have to make it stimulating enough and difficult enough to tap into that survival mechanism so that if you're not, you're not getting the benefit of the training or, in this case, the cryotherapy. So your body, you know, like an adaptation response. Well, there's this new system that they've developed in Japan. It's

called Katsu. And I don't know the gentleman's name who created it, but I had a chance to try it out this weekend in Austin. And what it essentially is, is like these, they take these straps and they constrict the out, like your bicep, like right below the delts. And then you go through like a 15 minute routine, like 15 minutes of you do curls. You start off, you do pushups, you do curls with a kettlebell to failure. And all this is while your blood flow is restricted. And then you do, like, ropes. And you do sets of three for 15 minutes. By the end of the 15 minutes, your fucking arms are dead.

I mean, dead. Because you're restricting the blood flow. And then they release it and take it off. And apparently the response that your body has to the fact that your blood flow is restricted, it triggers all sorts of responses as far as your growth hormone, your testosterone, all these different, your body starts trying to compensate for the fact that it doesn't have enough blood flow. So it just over ramps everything up. And it's apparently fantastic for healing. It's fantastic for people that have injuries, recovery time from injuries reduces drastically. injuries recovery time from injuries reduces drastically like Bodie Miller the the Olympic skier he used it to get back in shape from surgery like much

quicker than he would have without it it's just one more one of these new methods much like this cryo thing much like many of these other protocols where they're trying to figure out ways to kind of trick your body into ramping up the healing process or ramping up the... So it's used for healing, not for strength training, per se. For both. Okay. For both.

I'd just be curious. It'd be interesting to see how it compares to just traditional strength training as far as, you know, actual general strength. Yeah, and the idea also is that it puts a strong load on your muscles but not on your joints because everything you're doing, like say if you're doing kettlebell curls to failure, I was doing it with a 35-pound kettlebell with two hands. That's not a lot of weight. It's not a lot of weight. You're just cranking out reps.

But because your biceps are tied off at the top. You're just getting that blood all pumped and trapped up into the muscles. Yeah, your arms. Because the flow is restricted, I get it. Yeah, they grow dry. They look giant. Your arms look giant. It sounds painful the muscles. Yeah, your arms. Because the flow is restricted. I get it. Yeah, they grow dry. They look giant. Like your arms are giant.

It sounds painful, man. Yeah, it's painful. It's painful. But I just fucked around with it yesterday for the first time. And apparently the results are amazing. And at Onnit, we're starting to look into this and trying to, you know, see what we can do to bring this to the mainstream, but to try to get more athletes involved in doing things like this, you kind of get these results where you start going, oh, okay, well, if you do that and this, what if you do cryotherapy and this Katsu method and also the breathing?

Also, what's the difference in the response to your body? What's the difference in how quickly you can heal how quickly you can get in shape and that's a big issue for mma fighters is the downtime from injury and then ramping your body back up to competition shape afterwards we you could tell i mean anybody who's ever gotten to a very good fitness level and then got injured it's so frustrating getting back to the gym and then trying to get back in shape. And a lot of guys never do get back because it's just such a hard road to come back on. It's hard for people to accept the state that they're in, you know, like especially that's one of the issues with younger athletes. You know, you're young, you're 20, your body heals quick,

you're just a wild motherfucker and you're doing anything you want, you're reckless. And as you get older, it's one of the things that I liked about your article that you wrote, you have to be smarter. You have to be smarter. You have to recognize that your body's going to take longer to heal. You can't be reckless with it. And also, you really probably shouldn't have been reckless with it when you were 20. But you could you get away with it to a certain extent. Now that you're older, you have to be wiser. Well, you know, everyone thinks they're bulletproof and they're going to last forever. You know, you just can't even imagine. I can remember going to a wrestling tournament.

It was in York, Pennsylvania. It was like I used to do the summer freestyle wrestling circuit. They used to have tournaments all over Pennsylvania. And I remember meeting a guy that was like 33 years old, and I was just blown away. My God, you're still wrestling. You're 33. Oh, man, you're my new hero.

I can't believe it. I want to be just like you when I'm 30. I just couldn't believe. I thought this guy was like ancient. You know, I was probably like 19 at the time. I could not believe that this guy was in there wrestling as well as he did at 33. Isn't that funny now? You would do anything to have a 33-year-old body.

Dude, man, 42-year-old, I was like still fantastic, you know, still feeling great. But, yeah, I mean, as my grandfather said, no one gets out of here alive. You know, father time will take its toll over time, no matter what you do, no matter how many therapies and so forth, you know. But you try to do your best with what you got, and you do try to preserve your youth and your vitality. But one of the major problems I see, especially in extremist sports like jiu-jitsu or MMA or whatever, is the overtraining. Everyone thinks more is better, and it's not. Better is better, is the overtraining. Everyone thinks more is better.

And it's not. Better is better, but more is not better. That's a huge issue with wrestling. Oh, terrible. Wrestlers are notoriously the most overtrained group of athletes there are, I think. But isn't that training with the overtraining, doesn't that develop this insane mental toughness that wrestlers are known for? Well, that's part of it.

The mental toughness is a huge part of it because that is a hard-ass sport. Did you happen to see the Foxcatcher, the movie? Yes, I did. It wasn't exactly accurate. At all. No. Mark Schultz put up actually a thing on his Facebook page, all the inaccuracies that are in that movie, and they're pretty substantial.

Pretty substantial. Yeah, it's actually frustrating and annoying. The guy's alive. He's an Olympic gold medalist, a world champion, one of the best wrestlers really pretty much ever. And they betrayed him in a very inaccurate light. Pretty much so. Yeah, I mean, they made him look like a dumb jock. The guy's brilliant.

The guy was brilliant. And a very articulate, very smart guy. And my college wrestling coach was the junior coach there at Fox Kedger. Yeah, Dale Bonsall. He's in the college... So he was there when all that was going on? He's the NCAA

Coach's Hall of Fame. So this was after you were in college? This is after I had graduated from college. I was still living in Philly. And Dale used to invite me to come on down and train now and again. And I took him up on it a couple times. Unfortunately, it was just a little bit too far away to be driving. I had a day job.

Wrestling is one of those sports that you pretty much have to have your mid-afternoons open because that's when all the universities train and that's when most guys train. So I was really, you know, Jones for some grappling experience, but it was really hard working a job. And at that time I was married and a householder with a family and all that. But I did go down a few times and I got a chance to tour the facility and it was really impressive. And had a clinic with, well, the guy they didn't even mention was that guy, Valentin Jordan, the Bulgarian guy. That's the guy that DuPont gave his whole fortune to.

When he died, his fortune went to this Bulgarian coach. Really? Yeah, yeah. The family's still fighting it. They're still contesting it to this day. Wow. Yeah, yeah. He really liked this guy.

And so I had a couple clinics with that guy one at drexel and uh because he you know he's making his way around the different colleges and learned a lot of awesome exercises and conditioning and wrestling and of course i met the great dave schultz had a clinic with him it's like wow he was definitely one of america's finest wrestlers ever. But even more than his physical skills was his mental skills. He just had an amazing mind. And I was really fortunate to have, you know, been able to travel in those type of circles and get a chance to see it. But this is after my college wrestling days.

So I was looking for that thing to fill the gap, you know? And that's when I discovered those Gracie Brothers, you know, around 1989, man. It was like, oh, shit, this is what I've been looking for, man. What is it about the Bulgarians and a lot of the Russians and, you know, there's a lot of those people from that part of the world that are such good athletes? There's so many tough people from that part of the world that are such good athletes. There's so many tough people from that part of the world. What is that? Well, you know, a lot of our best fighters come from the poorer sections of America. Kids come up in the projects and some of these inner city kids.

Look at like in Philly or Detroit. Man, you get some tough kids. They grow up scrapping. And it builds a mental toughness sometimes, you know, like Mike Tyson growing up where he did in Hell's Kitchen up there in New York. Or Brownsville, actually. Or Brownsville, yeah. So, I mean, those guys are just, you know, they grow up in a really tough neighborhood,

kind of like dog eat dog. And it produces like a really tough neighborhood, kind of like dog eat dog, and it produces like a really tough kind of minded person. And I think a lot of these Eastern European countries, you know, they don't have much. And, you know, they have a lot of time on their hands. There's not a lot to do for the kids. And, you know, they end up like most boys, you know, getting into trouble and fighting and doing all this kind of crazy stuff.

I think that's one of the reasons why this new urban playground gymnastics kind of stuff that the guys are doing has become so popular because, I mean, you know, that's pretty available. It's just equipment just sitting there. It costs very little to put it in. Did we play that video of you there last time we were here? Yeah, with the bar stars. Yeah, that was pretty cool. Yeah, that was pretty cool. Yeah, that was pretty cool, man. But in Eastern Europe, that stuff's really popular, you know.

And so, yeah, they don't have a lot to do. They don't have the same kind of basketball courts that we do, and they don't have the facilities a lot of times. But wrestling is pretty cheap, man. You know, it doesn't take a lot of equipment right it's anybody just wrestling really there's a lot of boxers right now that are coming out of the world as well sure i mean uh sergey kovalev have you seen him fight before i have not i have not i've heard the name but i i haven't had the opportunity to actually see him he's a

motherfucker man he beat bernard hopkins and then he just beat Jean Pascal the other night. Man, it's amazing. It is amazing. Such a good fighter. The way he moves, I mean, he really makes boxing exciting again. He's a killer. Just goes for the kill, like constantly, but super technical. Like everything about his movement is very technical.

His footwork, his distancing, the economy of his movements, the way he throws punches, just beautiful, beautiful to watch. But there's so many tough guys. Gennady Golovkin, all these tough, tough guys coming out of Russia, of that area, you know, that part of the world, the former Soviet Union. Well, I've traveled, like, into Siberia. I traveled to, like, you know, down around the Black Sea area. I've been to a lot of the Slavic countries, too, you know, Serbia and Slovenia. Man, the guys are huge, big, strapping guys.

And you just don't see the obesity either, man. They don't have the food to just, you know, they can't afford just to overeat like we do in America or, you know, and the rest of Europe or the U.K. or whatever, you see some real fatties. But, man, when you're there, wow, people are pretty lean and wiry and stringy. A lot of the younger guys are just like specimens. I don't know whether it's genetics or – It has to be. I mean, you think about the people that have lived and gotten through those harsh climates

and tough jobs and just had to work their whole life. Survival of the fittest. Yeah. And those are the people that bred and those are the people that have lived and gotten through those harsh climates and tough jobs and just had to work survival wasn't fitted yeah and that's those are the people that bred and those are the people that kept going we what you notice also about a lot of those people from that part of the world which is interesting enough it's not just that they're tough but that they're very technical there's a lot of really technical wrestling that comes out of russia and uh out of the former soviet union that area. Like those guys, those Russian nationals that went up to Montreal, that's a lot of where George St. Pierre learned how to wrestle. Never wrestled in high school, never wrestled in college, but became one of the best wrestlers in MMA. And that's part of the reason why.

I remember I wrestled, this is in the 70s, I wrestled in the Montreal Open Wrestling Tournament and this is just at that time when the Russians were making a big influx and they were starting to try to defect and flee to the western world the Soviet Union still existed and I remember I wrestled Victor Silberman in the finals

and got my ass handed to me and so I was trying to talk to him later because I was really impressed with this guy's technique and his skill and everything. And I was utterly shocked when he told me that he only lifted weights once a week. He lifted weights four times a month. And I thought, how is that even possible? I thought these Russian guys, like, lifted weights every day, twice a day.

And he says, no, no, no no no we we practice technical wrestling as the base of our training and then i was utterly shocked um i had a guy that was training with me in philly for a while it's five-time ukrainian national wrestling champion used to be on the the national team this was back when the ukraine and russia was all part of the soviet union and he was telling me that they would only spar really hardly twice a week because they found that the live wrestling was what was producing all the injuries. But when they would train, they would train like real slow motion, and they would gradually build their speed to the point where they were just going all out hard.

And they would just do this for long periods of time. And, wow, it is is unbelievably hard workout when you're shooting high crotch singles doubles and so forth at match speed over and over and over and over it's like holy shit and that was their main cardio it takes real discipline to do that discipline man most people that's in jujitsu as well it's very similar a lot of guys just want to roll just want to roll they don't want to go over drills. But they never get technical. That's the problem.

That is the problem. Yeah, drills are where you really learn how to have those movements become a part of your nervous system. And keeping the sparring limited, you don't get your muscles and joints as stressed, and you don't get the injuries. But I was very surprised to hear that, you know, because I had a complete different perception. Because in American wrestling, you just basically pound each other every time you go into the wrestling room. You know, it's just, you know. Yeah, that is the problem with the— Americans produce amazingly tough wrestlers.

Of course. What were we talking about? But the reason I think why we're not seeing Americans dominating the international scene anymore is like there's no damn money in it, man. You know, you graduate from college and, you know, maybe you have a degree or whatever. But what are you going to do with your wrestling skills? MMA. Yeah. The UFC opened up a whole new, you know, a whole new door for former NCAA wrestlers. Why the hell would you go to the Olympics and make peanuts when you can make fairly decent money, possibly, if you're good, if you're a tough guy? Yeah, that's what I wanted to know.

Do the Russians have that same issue with overtraining? No, no, because they don't spar as much as the Americans do. They're very careful not to overtrain. You know, they have like blocks where they kind of, you know, they kind of ramp up the training as they get nearer and nearer, like world championships or the Olympics or whatever. Some people call it periodization or whatever, but they're very careful not to overtrain and overdo it. Well, they're known for their mental toughness as well. Why don't the American wrestlers incorporate that into their workouts, or have they started to do that? Well, I think they probably are. I've lost a little bit of touch with the wrestling community, but our wrestling coaches are fantastic. They're smart guys. So I'm sure they're taking a hard look because the Russians have been really successful, as have the Iranians, as the Turks, the Bulgarians, you know, all these countries that perennially put out like world champions.

Azerbaijan, you know, the Mongolians are really starting to dominate judo. And, you know, they've always been tough as shit in wrestling. So I think that for sure you can learn a lot from their their basic programs they're pretty simple programs really they're they're they don't have a lot of sophisticated equipment and so forth but what they make they make up they make up for a lack of uh and sophistication with equipment and facilities and all that with technique. They're real technicians. That is the most important part of any martial art.

The most important part is having that technique down to just a razor sharpness. A razor sharpness, man. You've got to hone those skills because, you know, MMA, jiu-jitsu, judo, wrestling, it's all technique. I really wish you had watched this past weekend, this UFC, because, man. I'm going to have to catch it on the replay now. You've got to watch Anthony Pettis versus Rafael Dos Anjos. That must have been a hell of a matchup.

Ooh, Dos Anjos beat the brakes off of Pettis. Is it up on the internet yet? I don't believe so. Have they loaded it? I don't believe so. How long do they wait before they're loaded up? I mean, what site do you go to to fight, fight pass, UFC fight pass?

Yeah. I don't know. I don't believe it's up yet. Okay. I'll check. I don't think it is. I mean, I know it's on pay-per-view.

It might be available on fight pass. Okay. Yeah, I was just curious how long, but I'll go, I'll definitely give it a check. Fight pass,

that was pretty much everything. But I don't know how, I think they do show some pay-per-views. They have live events. Hey, why don't you bring the clip up? I'm going to run the men's room real quick. I'll be right back in just one second.

Go ahead. I'll try to find it. We'll see if we can find some highlights of it. But what I'm going to ask Steve about it after he gets done using the little girls room. What was incredibly impressive was not just the skill level that Dos Andros showed, but the pace and the fitness. And Steve, he doesn't want to toot his own horn, so I'll toot it while he's out of the room. He's so knowledgeable.

And he got Diego Sanchez into probably the best shape of his life when Diego challenged BJ Penn for the belt. And Diego wound up getting beaten pretty badly by BJ when BJ was in his prime. BJ's like an all-time great and just one of my all-time favorite fighters. But he was in incredible shape for this fight as well, which was always like kind of his Achilles heel. He was so talented, but he just never really was able to continue that sort of strength and conditioning program that got him into the shape that he was when he fought Diego Sanchez. And what we were talking about with Steve being that the technique is so important.

It is so incredibly important. But MMA is so unbelievably grueling. but MMA is so unbelievably grueling. I had a conversation with Chael Sonnen about it, who's a former UFC fighter and has fought for the title several times, a great fighter and also a very open guy, very open as far as his own limitations and his strengths and weaknesses. And he was just talking about how the time that you spend inside the octagon, the competing for 25 minutes, is almost impossible to really do.

It's almost too much time. What I was saying was that, Steve's back, what I was saying that the amount of time that you spend in the octagon fighting in a championship fight is so insane. It's almost like you're sprinting for 25 minutes it's brutal and very few people figure out how to get in the right shape as well as work their skills and there's that weird so hard man because like endurance is a skill but then there's also the skill of making the other guy use up his energy more than yourself and i mean that energy you know uh controlling and and managing your energy system in the ring

and on the mat is such a skill unto itself i mean not let's just take out the striking skills and the grappling skills and all that stuff just that that energy management, that's huge, man. And a lot of guys don't pay enough attention to that. Well, dealing with pressure is a big one. I remember from my days of competing that when guys were, like, really aggressive and I was backing up a lot, trying to move away, I'd get so much more tired because you're always thinking. You're dealing with this guy attacking you, and you're backing up, which is kind of an unnatural movement. I mean, a lot of people run, but very few people run backwards.

And you got to realize that when you're going backwards, you're kind of using your muscles in a different way. Way different. Yeah. It's exhausting, man. Yeah. And very few people do that. Like Muhammad Ali used to run miles backwards because he was always backing up and then

moving forward, backing up and then moving forward, backing up and moving forward. And one of the most beautiful things about him when you watch him, like in his prime, like the Cleveland Big Cat Williams days before they took his title away because he didn't want to fight in the Vietnam War, his footwork and movement was just magical. And his ability to back up, I mean, you really couldn't catch him. He was just backing up and moving forward, backing up and moving forward. And that's something he had to work at really hard. But three minutes in a boxing match is so much different than five minutes with wrestling and leg kicks and elbows and the clench.

And God, it's one of the, so I'm curious to see what you think after you watch this fight. Because one of the most impressive things about the fight, as far as Dos Anjos' performance, was his cardio. It was insane. It was insane. Some of his guys are just like something else, man. I mean, he just attacked from the moment the fight started. He just went after Pettis and just never let up,

like literally never let up. It was amazing. It really was amazing. Here's maybe a sore point. But what do you think about the use of the performance-enhancing, like, stimulants? Like what? Like mask fatigue and so forth. Like which kinds?

Oh, I don't know. There's so many different ones these days. I'm just curious. Are they testing for this stuff now? Are these guys using various stimulants to keep them pretty much hopped up? Well, they're testing for everything. Everything. So guys are getting popped for a lot of different stuff.

Hector Lombard. Is this a strict testing now? Oh, yeah. Especially California. I mean, I've given this guy credit, but I'm going to give him credit again. Andy Foster has been the director of the California State Athletic Commission for a few, I think a couple of years now. But he's a former fighter, a longtime martial artist, and he's very smart, very diligent about this. And I've had some, I had a conversation with him when the UFC was in Los Angeles.

And one of the things that he said, he goes, first of all, we're going to test everybody tonight. We're not just testing the guys in the main event. We're not just testing the people that are involved in the pay-per-view. We're testing everyone that competes tonight, blood and urine. Wow. Urine before the fight, blood after the fight. Fantastic. That's a beautiful thing.

It's so huge. I wish they'd do that for regular jiu-jitsu, although it's probably cost prohibitive. It's very cost prohibitive. It's like $40,000. I mean, depending on what lab you go to, I'm sure the results vary, or the price varies. Well, at least the place winners, you know, the first...

Anyone on the podium needs to be tested, man. Yeah, for jiu-jitsu, jiu-jitsu does have a real epidemic in it. It's a real issue, and unfortunately a lot of jiu-jitsu guys that have come over to mma have pissed hot too yeah um but because strength is so it's such a critical factor in in forcing positions you know i mean technique is everything for sure but strength endurance man it's goddamn huge and there's some guys we all know some guys you try to hit singles on them you try to like try to do an arm drag and it's like trying to pull a wall like a wall you know

some dudes like look at husamar palhares is a perfect example that damn dude is so strong he's so ridiculously strong do you see guys like john fitch tangle up with him i mean john fitch is an elite wrestler elite took him down and cranked on his leg in the first round. I mean, John never got out of the round. He just couldn't get out of the round. All of a sudden, he's leg locked and just didn't know what to do and got his leg hyperextended. But these performance-enhancing drugs they're catching guys for, some of them I've never even heard of. Oh, they're getting so sophisticated and stuff now. There's so many new cocktails that

fall kind of just within the borders of legality. People are always discovering some new way to hop up. I was just curious what your take, because you're around these guys all the time. Well, I think there's a lot

of guys that are taking things when they don't think they're going to get tested you know when they they need to recover just for the training you know just to get through yeah the training and also to recover from injuries that's a big one and not just injuries that you know about like surgeries but almost everybody's tweaked you got a bum knee or your elbows bothering you or something's going on with your neck everybody there's no almost no way of avoiding it. Yeah, exactly.

You cannot engage in an extremist sport like MMA and maybe to a lesser extent jiu-jitsu and judo and wrestling at that competitive level without the tweaks. Yeah, I don't think there's a way. It's virtually impossible. You cannot do a combat sport without paying the price to the body. But I wonder if a protocol will eventually be established, the most intelligent protocol, similar to what you're getting with these Russians that are developing this program for wrestling, where they're just doing a lot of technical training, not nearly as much sparring, but a lot of technique, a lot of repetition and drills. I wonder if that will slowly work its way into MMA and be established as this is the way to do it, the way they're doing it, say, in Russia.

Yeah, well, I think it's going to have to at some point because, you know, the career window for a lot of these guys right now is like, what would you say, like two years maybe? Well, nine years seems to be the magic number for everybody. That's the limit, right? Yeah. But don't you see a lot of these guys pretty much burning out within about two and a half, three years? It seems like there's a lot of guys that you know flare to the top and then they're they're gone yeah there's also the issue with their they're kind of forced to keep

competing on a regular basis once they become successful especially you break into the top 10 and you want to keep competing and winning and so you win a big fight and say okay we're the UFC calls you up on Monday hey we got blah blah blah, blah, blah in four months. You're like, fuck, okay. And you think, you know, man, I would really love to rest this knee. I'd really love to, you know, get some therapy on, you know, this elbow or whatever issues you have. And oftentimes that's not an option. They have to go right back into training camp, and these injuries become chronic.

It's a brutal way to make a living, man. It's a very brutal way to make a living. And some guys, I don't know how Randy Couture did it. I don't know either. He got through, and it was late 40s with no surgeries. Of course, he was an anomaly. I mean, he was like, I mean, one out of thousands and thousands. You just don't find guys like him.

Yeah, I don't know how the hell he did it. I mean, I really have no idea. It's incredible. I wonder if he's suffering now at all. Do you know him personally? I do know him personally, but he seems fine. Is he? Yeah, he seems fine.

And no dementia or anything? No, he was just interviewed recently. He was walking down the street with a girl who looked like she was about 20 years old. Wow. And he's got to be about 50. Okay. walking down the street with a girl who looked like she was about 20 years old. And he's got to be about 50. And she looked like she just hopped off a porn set, put on a T-shirt, and strutting down the road with Captain America. Wow, man.

As my Australian friends would say, good on you, mate. Good on you, mate. So, yeah. Yeah. He, I mean, he seems fine. But the point being that they asked him questions about Laila Ali. Laila Ali is saying that she wants to fight Ronda Rousey. Oh, right.

I heard that little flap-a-doodle about that stuff. Yeah, I think that's just – Because one of my heroes was, of course, the great Dan Gable, probably one of the greatest wrestlers not just in America, but the world has ever produced, man. He was amazing. I mean, he went through the Munich Olympics. What year was it?

It was like 72, was it? Munich Olympics? Or was that Montreal? 76 was America. Where was the Munich? Was that Los Angeles in 76? Or was that 88? I don't remember.

It was the Munich Olympics. It was that year. 88 was Seoul, right? Where they had that tragedy with the terrorists. But anyway, he walked through that tournament unscored on. How is that even possible at the elite level not to be scored on? Incredible. Jesus.

It's like, wow. I don't think anyone's ever done it before or since. No, he was an uber-dedicated monster. Just a different guy, man. But wow. Double hip replacement. I don't think anyone's ever done it before or since. No, he was an uber-dedicated monster. Just a different guy, man. But wow, double hip replacement. I don't know whether he's had knee replacement, but I saw a video of the poor guy, man. I mean, I suppose if you'd ask him, was it worth it, he'd probably say, hell yeah, the glory.

His mind is fine at least. He just looks like he's in such utter pain the way he shuffles and moves around. He just beat himself to death basically with those crazy marathon training. And that's one of the problems with a lot of the young guys. He was the role model for a lot of us young guys coming up. And, you know, that approach, that kamikaze approach to training, it really ages the body. Yeah, it really does. And when you're in your 20s, you're notaze approach to training, it really ages the body. Yeah, it really does. And when you're in your 20s, you're not seeing the big picture, man. You've got to live with that body for a good number of years after you hang up your wrestling shoes.

Yeah, and I think what you said, like if you asked him, he probably would say it was worth it because you can't take away history. I mean, that guy has amazing memories of being one of the greatest wrestlers of all time but his mind is okay at least yeah he's a very intelligent guy yeah but he doesn't have dementia or anything no well at least in wrestling you're not taking that the the brain trauma yeah mark coleman uh first ever ufc heavyweight champion his body is uh starting to fail him he had one hip, and apparently they have to replace it again. He had a massive infection when they went in to look at it, and he's in the hospital now.

And there's a GoFundMe. I'll retweet the link later today after this podcast is over for folks who want to help out Mark. But his body is just all banged up from the years of wrestling, high-level wrestler. And then from there, all the years of competing in MMA, he's getting his hip replaced, too. I believe both of them need to be replaced. So that brings us back in full circle to where we started with the, you know, jiu-jitsu for a lifetime. I really do believe there is a way that you can train and have a lot of fun with this

stuff, but you've got to keep it really light. Like the grandsons of Elio Gracie, keep it playful, keep it fun. Don't be so concerned about points. Some guys will bleed from the eyes

not to have their guard patched. It's like, dude, it's not even a tournament. You're getting cranked up on your neck and you're taking all this abuse for what? Right. Let your guard be passed and then work on reclaiming guard. Yeah, and just get good at defense like Master Elio. He was a master at defense, man. You couldn't do anything to the old man.

And that's one of the things that Hickson always preaches, like defense is the most important thing. The most important thing is defense. Be safe. Always safe. And I think you can extend your grappling career well into advanced age. I think of all the martial arts, you can pretty much

do jiu-jitsu and submission wrestling, if you're smart, well into advanced age, unlike a lot of other things. Well, it's ironic that you say that because Hickson himself is very banged up, like really badly banged up. He has eight herniated discs. He's got a lot of muscle atrophy. If you look at his body, he's got a lot of pain and suffering. And he talked about it pretty openly when he was on the podcast.

And then afterwards, we discussed it i mean he doesn't look physically anything like he looked like back when he fought quite quite a specimen oh yeah man he's 200 plus pounds very thick muscled and just flexible and his movement was amazing but all those years of getting cranked and cranked also constantly training constantly in there, constantly rolling. And being slammed a lot. Yeah, that's a big one. I mean, you can see in some of the old videos where he's getting smashed down to the ground pretty hard. That Zillow fight, you know, he's basically throwing himself backwards on top of him.

I mean, that's a big, heavy guy. I mean, that wasn't just that. Like you said, it's the training for that stuff yeah it's ironic when you think about him being one of the masters and one of the the real originators of that whole breathing system you know he brought that yogic breathing that fire breathing to uh to the practice of jujitsu and here he's all just really banged up he really can't train anymore i mean he kind of like goes over technique and i think maybe he does some really really light rolling with people he knows perhaps but well it happens to everyone eventually yeah you know i'm

very picky myself now i'm in my 60s it's like but hickson's 10 years younger than you yeah yeah and probably the consensus all-time great all-time great. All-time great. Yeah, if you ask people, like, who's the best jiu-jitsu? And, you know, he's a guy that tapped Mark Schultz. I asked him about that on the podcast. Him and Mark Schultz, like, Mark Schultz had never really rolled with a jiu-jitsu black belt before. And he said the guy was an incredible grappler, incredible grappler. But Hickson caught him, like, in, like, 30 seconds with a triangle.

Like, he just had no idea what it was. You you know he really didn't know what he was doing as most wrestlers and especially at the time most wrestlers now give him like six months yeah yeah well I mean one of the things that mark was disqualified for one of his key matches was he got a guy in a kimura and used it to uh used it in a way that's illegal in wrestling and you would use it all the time like that in mma but he locked it up and rolled the guy with it and just ripped his shoulder apart ouch i think the guy was from turkey um pull up the video see mark schultz disqualified wrestling, but it's a classic double wrist lock. Yeah.

Catch wrestling, double wrist lock. Catch wrestling. And he uses it to flip the guy over and just destroys his arm in the process. And he went on to learn a lot of submission techniques. Oh, the guy was an absolute frightening animal towards the end, wasn't he, after he learned those submissions? Oh, he's so physically strong too and a lot of the early catches catch can wrestling submissions were all part of it i'm reading this fascinating book let me get the exact title here um

right now one of it's the history of brazilian jiu-jitsu and this guy did an amazing job on putting this putting this thing together I don't know I don't have it here I think it's called so here's a thing he gets the guys trying to get a single so he's got his legs in between he's got Schultz leg in between his legs Schultz locks up the double wrist lock and drops and rolls and just destroys his arm. Just destroys it. It's really interesting. I saw Kimura on one of those old black and white pre-World War II judo videos.

Did the same exact takedown with the Gi. Oh, yeah. He locked up the Kimura the same exact way and threw the guy. Let me see that one more time. I love watching that. That's absolutely brutal, isn't it? Yeah. He was disqualified for that? He locked up the Kimura the same exact way and threw the guy. Let me see that one more time. I love watching that. That's absolutely brutal, isn't it? Yeah. He was disqualified for that?

Yeah, I believe so. I'm pretty sure. Watch how he does this. Crank! I mean, that is just... My shoulder's gone, dude. Oh, yeah. Look at the guy.

You can just see the guy. He just collapsed in agony. Ow. That's very similar to when Frank Mir broke Minotauro's arm. Yes. Yeah. I remember that match. That was like, whoa.

Didn't want to tap. And Henzo got his arm broken by Sakuraba. Yeah. Yeah, Sakuraba. It was almost the same type of situation where it was a standing Kimura, and he was trying to throw him. And I think Henzo resisted by straightening the arm, but there was enough torque that it popped.

I believe Henzo had his back and just got a little relaxed because I think Henzo was winning the fight. Henzo had Sakuraba's back. And, you know, Sakuraba, when you had his back, that's when he would lock that up. And he said, Henzo talked about it recently. He said he was just really surprised at how strong Sakuraba was. Oh, he's a strong little dude, man. Because he had been rolling or fighting, rather, with much larger guys. Like he fought Conan Silveira in the first UFC when he fought in Japan and was a 98 maybe. And he was, you know, 190 something and Conan is like 250. And he tapped

him with an arm bar, if you remember that. And it was like one of the first times we ever saw a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt get tapped. We were like, whoa, this is crazy. That was the introduction of the world to Sakuraba. Well, you know, it's funny. When I was a kid, York Barbell was like the mecca for strength training in those days. And Bob Hoffman, the father of American weightlifting and weight training, he had this system called the heavy light system, where you would use heavy weights during one session and then lighter weights the next. But the lighter weights weren't that light.

They just felt light because you had used heavyweights before. And sometimes even the same session, you would hold a really heavyweight, and then when you go to your normal weight, it felt ridiculously light. I used to do that in wrestling. I called it my heavyweight system, and I would spar with all the heavyweights on our team, all the big boys, and then when I went with guys of my own weight, they felt like toys. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, the heavy light system.

And I've talked to a lot of guys that had experience wrestling with big guys, you know, in jiu-jitsu and stuff for them. It does truly make guys your own weight feel like nothing. I would imagine so, but it's also like really bad on your joints. Well, you got to be careful, man. You got to really, really, really be careful. That's a young man's technique.

I would not use the heavy light system anymore myself, man. Have you ever seen that video of the really old judo master rolling with all of his students? It's a black and white video. Yes, I have. It's amazing. What was that guy's name, Ed? I don't remember. Jamie, see if you can find it.

Old judo master tools young students. I mean, it was black and white. He had that floating throw. What is it called? The floating drop or valley drop throw. Man, he was just like tossing these guys. Yeah, and you could tell. I mean, he was just like tossing these guys. Yeah. And you could tell.

I mean, this was not like some sort of a kung fu demonstration. No, no, no. That was like real. This is it. Yeah, this is the guy. Look at this old dude. Wow, this guy's good here, isn't he? Man. No, Jamie's on the ball.

Mifumi. Mifumi. I mean, how old was he? I mean, I believe he was in his 60s at the time. Does it say it in the description of it, Jamie? See if it says it in the description of it, Jamie? Let's see what it says in there. No. No?

Well, he's no spring chicken. Yeah, I believe he was in his 60s. I mean, he's all gray hair, but look how relaxed he is. Yeah, he's so relaxed. And he's so frail. Wasn't Judo beautiful? Yeah, look how he moves. Look how beautiful he moves.

You see how he checks in with the hip? Mm-hmm. And he's a little guy. This guy's huge. Yeah, big difference in size, like maybe like 30% or 40% at least. But look at that. Yeah, he's just kind of going with it. He checks in with the hip.

He just does enough to have to get thrown. I mean, it looks like they're dancing. It's amazing. It's a beautiful thing, man. Yeah, every time this guy tries to manipulate them. They're all wearing white belts, so that's kind of cool. There were no belts. That was even before there were belts.

Is that the case? Look at that. Boom! Yeah, it was like, what, during the 60s or whatever, they started coming up with the whole belt system. Really? During the 60s, huh? It was pretty late.

It was late in the development, yeah. So judo all throughout? Elio Gracie told me that in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, there was one belt. When you became, after you trained for five years, you put on a blue belt. And that signified a senior student. Really? One belt. One belt. That's it.

And then when the Judo started with their belts, the Jiu-Jitsu also did around the same time. So when did the black belt get introduced? That was when the colored belts were introduced. I believe it was during the 60s. No kidding. I know pre-World War II there were no belts. Look how beautiful and effortless that throw was. That was just gorgeous.

Effortless. This old, frail guy just using perfect technique, just so much knowledge. So much knowledge. Look at that. Look how beautiful that is. The guy tries to do to him what he did to him. And this kid is going for it, too. I mean, he's showing respect, but he's trying to throw the old man.

There's no doubt that he just knows. Yeah, he's not trying to bully him. He's trying to use technique. But look at that. Oh, my goodness. It's amazing. I just love watching that. I love watching that.

And there's really a difference in this in comparison to striking arts because, you know, if these guys were kickboxing after a few leg kicks. Well, as long as you know how to do your breakfalls, you can. Oh, God, that's so beautiful. Yeah. But, yeah, there's no. Yeah, I mean, I find that with the grappling arts, you can pretty much keep going for much older. You're certainly much older than sparring with striking.

But, you know, it's – I was telling you about this book I'm reading about the history of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And they're talking about, like, the Japanese when they first came to America. It was the first clash of cultures. The judo men were finding that they couldn't stand up to the american catch-as-catch-can wrestlers the americans were bigger stronger faster heavy they couldn't take them down with a lot of those throws a lot of the wrestlers won't wear the jackets that's where the guard really became developed they found that if they could pull them into the guard they could dispatch them with arm locks triangles sometimes they insisted that the they could pull them into the guard they could dispatch them with arm locks

triangles sometimes they insisted that the wrestlers wear the jackets in these fights like like Maeda and then of course they could set the choke pretty easy on these guys very fascinating book it's really fun I bought it off Amazon I have it on my Kindle I'm halfway through it right now I'm just to the point now where my ada starts teaching carlos gracie wow but the history of the sport is absolutely fascinating that's incredible have you um been paying attention at all to metamorris oh yeah well my son of course zach that was a tough match for him yeah like he doesn't do no geek that's not his game at all he's always only doing yeah and i said holy shit for your first professional black belt match, Gary Tonin, jeez.

Yeah. Could you have picked a harder guy? Yeah, Gary Tonin's coming on this week. We're going to have him on the podcast this week. I really questioned, you know, like, wow. He just said, you know what? I just wanted a challenge. I just really want to fight the top guy.

And Gary Tonin, anytime you talk about no-gi submission wrestling, that name's up there with the best, man. Did you see his match with Krohn? Oh, my God. Amazing. I don't even know how Krohn pulled that out, man. I mean, you should have seen how tough Krohn is, right? But, yeah, it's like, so, yeah.

So, Metamorris had Dean Lister versus Josh Barnett. Josh Barnett, of course, representing catch wrestling. Josh Barnett even came out like an old catch wrestler, in little bikini shorts and wrestling shoes, and tapped Dean Lister. With a headlock. Yeah, with that judo headlock from side control. All you guys out there, you blue belts and purple belts,

don't forget to practice your headlock escape, man. Yeah. Because, you know, in jiu-jitsu training, no one uses the headlock because it's usually pretty easy to escape from. Also, you give up your back kind of. Exactly. When you get out of a headlock, you're in a pretty crappy position, right? But if you don't practice it, man, you can see what happens. I mean, you get a high- athlete like josh barnett who is

ridiculously strong yeah and he slaps it on you by surprise even a professional like dean and i mean dean probably knows a hundred escapes from a headlong but man you get caught by surprise get locked up in that thing man you know that same position i was actually giving a seminar for the united states secret service i used to go down they were just a 90 minute drive from my gym You know, that same position, I was actually giving a seminar for the United States Secret Service. I used to go down. They were just a 90-minute drive from my gym, Philadelphia. And I got to know some of these guys through Pavel. And I used to go down and give self-defense seminars as well as conditioning and kettlebell seminars.

So one of the guys was an ex-wrestler who got me in that position that Josh got got dean i made a big mistake man the guy says well how do you get out of this position you know and so i lay down and leave him do it to me but the sound of a gun cranked me with it and popped both of my ribs and i was crippled for eight weeks wow yeah it was a pretty jerk thing to do of course you know typical herkyjerky type of wrestler. I was one of those guys myself at one time. But I just realized how dangerous that position is. That's how Mark Coleman beat Dan Severin to win the first-ever UFC heavyweight title, that same exact position.

And I'll tell you, man, it is a power move, but man, if a guy knows how to do it right, it freezes your diaphragm. It can dislocate your ribs. It can even cause some spinal damage. It's just horrible to be caught in it, and you go into an immediate panic. But, yeah, you can really get hurt with that, not just neck but ribs. It's a power move, but isn't it guillotine as well? I mean, there's a technique to it. There's a technique to it, man.

You certainly have to have some strength to pull it off. If you're wrestling anybody your own size or a little bit smaller, and in Josh's case he was bigger than Dean, hell why not, man? Not much bigger than Dean. Dean's huge now. Dean's a pretty big boy. He's really big now. He's way

thicker than when he was fighting at 205 in the UFC. I don't know what he's walking around on, but he looked to me to be like in the 240s or 230s at the very least. I wouldn't doubt it. Yeah, he's very thick. But Josh got him in that position. He couldn't escape, which is amazing when you consider how much experience Dean has.

And I don't think he'd been tapped in competition over a decade. He's a hard guy to tap, man. Oh, so hard to tap. His skill level, his skill set. But hey, both guys are fantastic. And, you know, that's grappling, right, on any given day? I love also the different approaches, that Josh has a different approach. And you see that different approach, that cast wrestling approach can be just as effective.

If he gets you in one of those positions, you know, and it might be something you're not accustomed to, so you haven't trained to get out of it. I remember one of the first pro grappling matches. Maybe you remember this. It was in one of the Carolinas, North Carolina or South Carolina. I think it was called the Pro-Am or something. How long ago was this? Oh, man, back in the 90s maybe.

No. It was real early, like late 90s maybe no it was real early like late 90s was this the one where frank shamrock uh wrestled dan henderson and they did like a pay-per-view thing and john peretti was the no it wasn't a pay-per-view but they were paying cash prizes to the guys it was like one of the early attempts to do submission wrestling as a pro sport okay and i And I remember Salo was at the house. He was training with me. Salo Ibarra? Salo Ibarra.

And he was wrestling supposedly like the number one catch wrestler. He was living down in North Carolina somewhere. And I had seen this guy in other tournaments, and I warned him. I said, hey, this guy will give up his back to go for that twisting toe hold. You know, like when you go, they loop over the toe hold and kind of flip upside down and go for your foot. And I said, the guy's good with it. He's really good.

And wouldn't you know, Salo takes the back and the guy does it and pops his ankle. But Salo won't tap. He said he would have died before he tapped it as a catcher wrestler. And then because he didn't tap, you know, the guy over the face because the guy was trying to hide the chin. Basically just put the guy out, man. But mangled his ankle? But mangled the ankle. So he won.

But, oh, my God, that thing turned as black as his microphone, man. It was like he was in such pain. God, did he need surgery? No, he didn't he's man i'll tell you sol is another one of those guys that just like one of the toughest dudes i've ever met him and his brother shanji are just like so tough but man he limped around and was hurt i don't know whether the ankle was ever the same but that's one of those deals right with the catch wrestlers you gotta watch those guys are tricky as all hell. They're doing different things.

Knees, the feet, man. Yeah, it's guys doing different things and getting really good at those things. That's a big part of it. It's like if a guy has a foot lock or something like that, he just has down. He just knows how to do it, and that becomes his thing. I mean, some guys just have certain positions that you're not really well versed in, and they go to it over and over and over again. Like Eddie Bravo, before he got famous for doing the twister,

one of the things I remember in Jean Jacques, Eddie Bravo would do a toehold. He was a toehold guy. And he would get toeholds on guys all the time because a lot of people weren't good at toeholds. So he would dive on toeholds. He was always catching people with that. And people don't know how to defend them, man. Yeah. It's a smart move.

And sometimes moves are so old they're new, you know what I mean? Like you'll see things go in trends, and then people get good at stopping them and they kind of go away. Right. And then some older move will come back in, and you see these waves. It's funny. I was sort of anti-Barram Bolo and some of these inversion techniques. Maybe I'm just jealous because, you know, my spine is a little bit too old and stiff to do it.

But the guys look like they're having a good time when they do it. Right. But I was talking to my son. He says, well, Dad, he says, you've still got to learn that stuff. He says, even if you don't want to use it, you've got to learn it so you know how to stop it. He says, because for sure, if you don't know it, you're going to get tapped. The guy's going to catch you.

So you've got to at least practice it a little bit to be familiar with it. And that being said, I was in New York City, and I was wrestling with Gianni Grippo and Mr. Barambola. The guy's so much fun. He's one of Marcello's black belts. This kid is so good with that. It was really fun playing with him with that thing, man. He could just flip upside down and roll and invert. The next thing you know, the little sucker's on your back.

He's like, how did he do that, man? Yeah, it's really interesting when guys get super sharp at one particular technique. And if you're not aware of that particular technique, it could become really dangerous. You know, Braulio Estima is famous for having that very bizarre guard as well, where he'll, you know, do those reverse triangles or inverted triangles. And he gets himself into a position where, to the outside observer, it looks like, well, this guy is on his neck here in this weird position, and then all of a sudden he's got a triangle on the guy, and he's tapping people.

Just so good at that position. He's good at all positions. All positions. But that one position he's been particularly successful at because it's such an unusual thing to defend. Very few people are that scary with it. And it's like some people like criticize certain techniques. They go, oh, you know, I played around with that, but that doesn't work. Well like a point where like an Anthony Pettis has it or an Anderson Silva has it and it becomes a real dangerous weapon in your arsenal. Crow Cop, perfect example. Crow Cop drilled that damn head kick to the point where he could throw it out like another guy could throw out a straight punch, a standard straight punch. That's how good and fast his head kick was and still is. And

when you discount a technique simply because you don't have the proficiency in it you can really really get caught because you you really can sort of define the world in an inaccurate light and then you see a guy like maybe this guy or eddie bravo with his twister or you know there's a million different techniques that you're you're starting to see emerge in MMA that guys have discarded. Like the front kick to the face. Nobody was worried about the front kick to the face. Nobody.

And then all of a sudden Anderson knocks out Vitor. And you're like, holy Jesus. What the heck is going on here? No one would ever expect it. But, see, that's just the thing. I mean, you can't learn everything for sure. You know, you've got to have your certain arsenal. But it certainly pays to be familiar with these positions. And at least learn the rudimentary basics. So you understand it, what it is,

you can recognize it. Because recognition is the first step to protecting yourself against this stuff. So even if you never want to use it, it pays to at least learn it and be familiar with it. And actually learn it offensively. There's a mistake that people do, especially wrestlers that are learning jiu-jitsu. They decide, well, I'm just going to learn defense. I'm just going to learn jiu-jitsu defense. You will never learn correct jiu-jitsu defense unless you learn jiu-jitsu offense. That's right.

Because if you don't know how to cinch up a choke, if you don't know how to cinch up an arm bar, you're never going to know exactly what you can get away with when you're defending. And once you get adept at offense, then you'll truly understand defense because you'll understand what would I be trying to do to me if I was in this position and how do I stop this guy from doing that. All those little details, it's like so, so important. Well, it's one of the most beautiful things about jiu-jitsu is there's so many techniques. It's almost like, you know, you see. It's never-ending. Yeah, and you see certain guys who have a very small wheelhouse of techniques that they utilize,

especially like attacks. Like Marcelo Garcia is, of course, one of the best of all time. But he has a very, if you look at his, if you took all of his jiu-jitsu matches that he's won and look at how he won them, it's a very small number of chokes that he's used. I mean, it's almost all, I mean, Rico Rodriguez, I think he got him with a leg lock. Most guys, he got Jake Shields with a wrist lock, I believe, in one of those, and I remember Rico Schiaparelli had a professional jiu-jitsu tournament thing that he was doing in Los Angeles. Jacare competed against Randy Couture, and Marcelo competed against Jake Shields. And I believe he got Jake in a wrist lock, which is, you know, he's got some crafty shit in there.

Really crafty. But most of it, guillotines, north-south choke, rear naked choke. It's almost all necks. Almost all attacking the necks. Jiu-jitsu is such a complex sport. I liken it to, like, I liken wrestling, being a former wrestler, more like checkers. And jiu-jitsu to chess, but not just chess, three-dimensional chess. It really is.

Maybe submission wrestling would be more like regular chess, and then jiu-jitsu with the gi, with all the different ways you can manipulate the cloth, almost like three-dimensional chess. It's just such a huge variety of stuff. Yeah, the only problem I have with the gi is that I think a lot of people get brainwashed into thinking that you need to learn the gi to be good at jiu-jitsu and MMA. And Eddie Bravo in particular is very adamant that that is a ridiculous idea.

He's like, that's like saying you have to be really good at racquetball to be good at tennis. Yeah, it's two different sports altogether. Well, there's just so much to grip. And you see so many guys that are world champions or that compete at a very high level with the Gi. And then they fight in MMA and everyone's sweaty. And they have gloves on and they can't grab things, and they seem lost. It's very sports-specific, man. You have to develop the specific skills towards your fighting conditions.

But, you know, one of the most elegant definitions of jiu-jitsu I ever heard, and it came from Helsing Gracie. It was at a seminar in Atlantic City. This was, like, one of the early Gracie seminars. And this is back in the day when you never knew what kind of wacko was going to walk in through there. Sometimes you'd even get people that wanted to challenge in the seminars. And there was this guy that came in, I swear to God, with flowing robes, like this kung fu guy with this big red sash. with his big red sash. And in the middle of the seminar, he interrupts,

well, Mr. Gracie, sir, could you give me the definition of your philosophy of jiu-jitsu? And we're like, oh, boy. Because, you know, Helson, his English wasn't the most, it was hard to understand sometimes, you know, plus he mixed it with the Hawaiian slang. But he says, win the fight. When I know I can win the fight, I can pretty much, you know, be that nice guy and kind and, you know, loving and all that towards other people. Because, you know, I had that confidence with myself that I know I can protect

myself. I don't have to be insecure. So the guy says, well, could you expound on that? Of course, first we have to explain what expound means and all that. And we're thinking, man, what's he going to say here? And he says, Jiu-Jitsu, if you do this, I do that. And if you do that, I do this forever. And we said, whoa, that is some deep shit. Let's get a three-by-five card. And I actually had that in my school. I actually wrote that and put it on the wall.

If you do this, I do that. And if you do that, I do this forever. And it's like, wow, it does. It goes into infinity, man. Especially when you're constantly moving one step ahead of the guy. I liken it to having a conversation. If you have a conversation with someone who speaks very broken English you could really kind of

talk circles around them if you're an articulate person especially you could make them look really silly you'd be like what? what are you trying to say? you're trying to say nothing you don't even know how to talk my language stupid you know and you could just literally just rattle and attack them I think they call it sophistry sophist like a lawyer

yeah well some guys you know be aggressive and rude and attack them. I think they call it sophistry. Sophist, like a lawyer. Yeah. Well, some guys, you know, be aggressive and rude about it, but some guys can do that with jiu-jitsu, where you kind of have to think yourself through every step and you're not kind of aware. I mean, that's how I always feel when I would roll with guys who are, like, at a really, really high level. It's like, I'm not prepared for all the steps that you could take

to counter my step You know, I will do a move and you will do your move But you also have all these like you you're already anticipating to counter this I've got to do that So I'm gonna stop this by putting my hand on your knee here and putting my foot on your hip here and now You're gonna have to try to get out of it But I'm not gonna let you get out of it because I'm already anticipating that is I'm already so far Yeah, like Hicks and Gracie always used to say about guys he's not going to be able to keep up the rhythm not going to be able to keep up the rhythm you know that like you're

gonna i do this and you do that i do this you do that how long can you keep that up how long you keep that really long how long well helton had another go into it it was amazing because the guy was pretty profound in his own very simple way, the way he'd explain things. It was pretty amazing. But somebody was complaining how easily he was catching him. And Elson says, look, I know everything you know and everything else. I was like, yeah, absolutely. He says, maybe, maybe if I got sick or injured and was in the hospital for like three years and didn't train, maybe if I came back, you might have a chance.

But it's true. But it's true. Why wouldn't it be true? I mean, the guy's done it his own. I mean, Ronda Rousey's essentially. Born on their mats. Yeah, Ronda's been saying that about female opponents. She was like, listen, what's going on now is I've been doing this my whole life,

and these girls are just not going to catch up to me. And that's what you're seeing when you saw that beautiful arm bar that she landed on Zingano. I mean, Zingano attacks. Unbelievable, wasn't it? Tries to throw her. Ronda adjusts, winds up on top, recognizes the position where the arm is. I mean, I was talking to George Gurgel about it at the last UFC. He's like, that's when I bowed down to Ronda.

And that's how he said it. I mean, you know, George is a black belt as well. And he was like, you know, I saw her arm bars. I was like, yeah, she's got good arm bars, but sometimes she does things that I don't agree with. So maybe her knees are a little too wide apart. Even though she's catching these girls, maybe she's catching these girls because they're just not that technical.

He goes, but when she hit that armar on Zingano, 14 seconds in, he's like, look, I got to bow down. That's some high-level technique. High-level technique, man. And just the ability to adjust. And, again, that language that she has in her head. She's so articulate with the language of submissions. In her case, armbars.

You know, just so good at armbars. What a talent, huh? Looks like she has quite a budding movie career as well. She's not a bad-looking gal. Beautiful. She's a monster. I saw the swimsuit issue or whatever. Man, she's a good figure, pretty girl, tough as shit.

I saw a very funny interview where this guy was talking a little trash, and she judoed through him. She landed on him and broke his ribs. On a Harwood 4, yeah. It was like, oh, man. She broke the guy's ribs. Yeah, she judoed through him and launched herself on top of him. On top of him, man.

She knew exactly what she was doing, too, by the way. Are you all right? Are you all right? But you don't trash talk to—you just don't trash talk like that, man. I think it was kind of planned out in advance. What did he think? What did he think? He wanted to get attention and make a video.

You put on a gi and then you trash talk the girl? Like you're not going to. Yeah. Well, people got upset when I said that I think she could beat a lot of men in that weight class. I don't know why they would. Well, because they don't know. They've never rolled with a girl who's really good. I mean, like, in the natural world, right, a lioness can sometimes beat a male lion.

If they're the same size. Yeah. You never know. And if she has cubs, she'll risk her life. And maybe he could beat her, but her incentive is way higher than his incentive, so he figures it's not worth it. Well, technique is, as we said before, is paramount. And her technique is so laser sharp. physical strength and the inherent, the benefits of being a male, whatever advantages that he may have, aren't necessarily going to counter the technique that she has when they're the

same weight. Now, if you're dealing with a guy like, you know, she's, she competes at 135. Okay. If you deal with her versus a guy at 170, like Johnny Hendricks, like Jesus, of course, that's a mismatch. Johnny Hendricks is a powerful, big, strong man, and he most likely would beat her up. But you're talking about a guy who's her weight,

and then even if he's physically stronger, maybe he can hit harder, but how much of a technical advantage does she have on the ground? She could easily catch you in something in a scramble. Easily. One, two, three, four steps ahead of you. For older guys like myself, actually, the women are some of your best sparring partners. Like the more advanced women, they're fun to train with. Because they're not going to try to muscle out.

Usually, it's rare, occasionally, but usually women won't use power. They do think differently than men. They have a different logic, and they surprise the heck out of you with some of their attacks and the way they put their game together. It's really fun. And usually women are pretty flexible, so their guards are a nightmare to get. Some of these girls with their De La Heves and spider guards are like, wow, controlling those feet is a nightmare.

Yeah, and you think about someone's guard, someone's legs have to carry their body around, say if they weigh 140 pounds like Rhonda or 135, and you're carrying 135 pounds around all, by the way, she doesn't really weigh 135. She weighs 135 on weigh-in day, and then I would imagine she rehydrates up to around 150, close to it.

She carries a lot of muscle in that frame. She's thick. She's not a skinny girl by any stretch. Yeah, she's not weak by any stretch of the imagination. Oh, my gosh. She's very strong. So you're dealing with someone who knows how to manipulate their body, and they have these legs that are carrying around all of this weight all day long.

Your legs are amazingly strong. It's amazing endurance. And when you factor that in, if you've gotten, like, I remember doing drills with my friend Felicia. Felicia O is one of Jean-Jacques Machado's black belts. Yeah, I know Felicia from the old RKC kettlebell. Yeah, yeah. She's a kettlebell wizard. She loves that. But I remember doing drills with her and, you know, armbar drills. And she locks an armbar up on you, man, and you're dealing with legs. Oh, yeah. Legs are strong, man. Even a small woman has very strong legs.

Well, the difference between male and female legs is a very small percentage, you know, in studies that they've done. Upper body, there is a significant difference. But with a trained woman, she can close that gap. And I'll tell you, for you older guys listening out there, you know, you guys over 40, or if you're a guy that's been injured, start seeking the girls out for sparring partners, and you will have a wonderful technical spar session. You also look like a little bit of a creep.

Yeah, well, man. Heads up. Just don't be afraid to tap. Yeah, that's a big one with guys tapping to girls. Oh my God, some guys want to bleed from the eyes before they'll tap to a girl. Have you ever tapped to a girl? Oh, hell yeah. I haven't.

Ha ha. Oh, well. I would though. I didn't say what content. I would though. I mean, I'm sure Ron could probably tell you. Nah, man. If I get in a bad position, I don't care who it is.

If it's a child, I'll tap. Now I'm to the point where my days were fighting out of stuff. If I make the mistake and I get in the submission, I have to assume that if it was a person of equal skill to myself, I'm submitted.

He got me in this position. Fighting out of it isn't really technique as much as just strength or whatever, you know, pain tolerance. Right. I agree with you. I mean, there are technical escapes. Sure, yeah. But, you know, like, you know, the joint's straight. Right.

Okay. Especially when it's fully locked in. Exactly. Perfect. Okay. He got's straight. Right. Okay. Especially when it's fully locked in. Exactly. Perfect. Okay, he got me straight. Or the choke's set. It's just pain tolerance and or whatever. It's also the price you pay just to keep your ego healthy.

Like physically, I remember my friend Brent got me in a Kimura, and I didn't want to tap, and I fought out of it. But I couldn't do chin-ups for months. My elbow was so jacked. I couldn't do chin-ups for the long. And I just remember every day I would be at the gym when I was lifting weights going, why the fuck didn't I just tap? Because I would be fine right now.

It was the same thing happened. I've tapped him before. He's tapped me before. But I just would not tap. And I'm like, ah! Yeah, you're just in that mindset But you got to treat it like it's basketball. Yeah, someone scores on you in basketball It's not the end of the world

You got the ball and you go right back in or you're playing softball and you pop fly out in the outfield or you get thrown Out at third base. So what? Okay, you'll get another chance at bat But a lot of times like like you said, even though you do fight out of it You are successful, the injury's already occurred. Especially with the neck. And you might not even feel it at the time, but then it's like, oh, shit, this really hurts, man. I didn't realize it was as damaged as it was. Maybe you're a little bit adrenalized.

That's why I love the saying that the, like Henner and Huron, keep it playful. Keep it playful. That's a great way. It's a great philosophy. And it's a great way to teach. You know, those guys have really done an amazing job with that. I met those guys when they were just like little tiny boys. They're so enthusiastic, too.

It's very contagious. They are. They are very enthusiastic. Those Gracie breakdowns that they do, they go over the techniques that guys use in fights to win fights. It's like, it's very, it really makes you want to train. They're great assets to jujitsu.

They're great ambassadors. I think so too. I love the whole street fight thing that they do and they show like the right things that people do and the wrong things. I mean, they get some pretty intense street fights on there sometimes. So you're in town for how long and you're doing some seminars around here?

Yeah. Actually, I came here just to see you. And then I'm going to be in, I don't know whether I should even mention it on your show, but Loveline with Dr. Drew. Why shouldn't you mention it? Oh, I mean, you know, it's kind of a, isn't it like a competition podcast or something? Oh, no. No, I don't think about it like that at all, ever. No, no, no, no. I have a lot of friends doing that.

That's an old school radio mentality. Yeah, well, I know, you know. I support everything. Yeah, so yeah, that was a weird one, man. They just called it out of the blue. Apparently the guy's been following some of the anti-aging stuff, doing the, not Dr. Drew, but the... Mike?

Yeah, the comedian guy that's on there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, no, I've never done anything like that before. That's like, whoa, that should be interesting. Yeah, it'll be fun. Tell him I said hi. I had no idea, you know, like what to expect or... Tell him that you're getting into pot. Yeah.

He's actually come around about pot. Him and that Sanjay Gupta guy from CNN, they're all coming around. Man, if I came around, you know. It's like now that you're seeing it get legalized. But, yeah, I was a little concerned because, like, I wasn't sure. Is it going to be like a Howard Stern thing where they try to make you look like an idiot? Right. No, no, no.

No, I understand. It's actually a pretty cool show. So I'll be doing that Strength Matters Summit in San Diego. That's 20th through 22nd March, San Diego. I'm teaching a body weight workshop. Where can people find all of this stuff? On my website, maxwellsc.com, www.maxwellscforstrengthandconditioning.com, and all the upcoming things. And then, of course, the El Salvador Lifestyle Jiu-Jitsu Training Camp, show you all my anti-aging secrets.

Nice. Hopefully, you know, mobility and conditioning and jiu-jitsu. mobility and conditioning and jiu-jitsu big emphasis on the self-defense aspects of it but also we'll have some other young guys there for competition stuff and then i just came out with the five pillar workout system for kettlebells i have a move like a movement based exercise i had a one with the body weight now I came out with the kettlebell five pillar movement system, just released that. And I'm going to be making one with a barbell five pillar. So nice. And here we go. This is the, the website here, maxwellsc.com. And you also custom tailor workouts for your clients through the internet, right?

I discovered a long time ago, about 15 years ago, that a lot of people, they don't need someone to hand-hold them through workouts. They have the incentive to train. They just don't know what to do. So I do diet programs, fat loss programs for people, helping wade through all that huge information. I've had my own personal diet wars with myself, and I pretty much figured out a way that you can keep lean year-round.

So I help people with diet, fast loss, and, you know, what to do. There's so much information and misinformation. How do you put all this together, you know? Yeah, it is difficult. It's difficult to come up with a time to do all the research yourself. And it's all based on goals, by the way. There's so many different ways to crack the nut, so many different systems, and they all work more or less. It just all depends on what it is that the guy wants.

So people really need a lot of help just sorting that stuff out. So that's what I do. And extensive questionnaire. I analyze photographs for structure, you know, postural stuff. And then you get a custom workout program, and you send me training logs, and I review them and send the information back and do progressions with people and so forth. Well, I can't recommend you highly enough. Well, thanks. I appreciate it.

All the years that we've been friends, I've just gained a tremendous amount of information from you and all the times we worked out together. We're working out tomorrow, too. Yeah, man. Damn, Joe, those guns are... Very excited about that. So anybody who's interested in any sort of strength and conditioning workout, if you want to mix it up or just want to just tap into the database of knowledge, that is Steve

Maxwell, maxwellsc.com. And all of these upcoming seminar dates are all available there. And you can all check out on Twitter. It's Maxwell SC on Twitter as well, right? Steve Maxwell SC on Twitter, right? Alright. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it, man. Always a good time. We're going to do this more often.

You're a traveling nomad, though, man. You're all over the world. We got him here for a little bit. Alright, folks. We'll be back tomorrow. Take care. Bye-bye. Awesome, Joe All right, folks. We'll be back tomorrow. Take care. Bye-bye. Awesome, Joe. Thanks, man. That was fun.

Thank you.