The Joe Rogan Experience - #650 - Nick Curson

Episode Date: May 20, 2015

Nick Curson is a strength and conditioning coach known for working with UFC World Champion Rafael Dos Anjos and Russian boxer Ruslan Provodnikov. http://www.speedofsport.com/

We're good? We're live. Is that echo thing going on anymore? We killed that. We're good? Nick, how are you, buddy? Pretty good. What's going on? Thanks for coming on. So you got this hat on. Nick Kurson, am I saying the last name correctly? Kurson. Kurson, yeah, like Kurson Ave, yep. You train Hafez Osanjos, Ruslan Provodnikov, and you've got his hat on, Ruslan's hat on. Right. And it says, what does it say again? It says, Ratsy Borats. And in Russian, I believe that translates to something like young warrior or young fighter or something like that. That's funny because I ran into a couple of Russians the other day and asked them if they knew what it meant.

And they didn't even know. They just knew the last part was fighter. And they didn't know what the first part meant. So I don't know. That guy is a character. Provodnikov's one of my favorite fighters to watch. Because he can't be in a boring fight. He doesn't have it in him.

I mean, that guy fights like the most exciting style of fighting in boxing today. He just comes at you. You know, he's just an animal. Unfortunately, he takes a little too much punishment, though. Yeah, well, he's almost too brave. Yeah. You know, almost too brave and too tough. But fucking that fight with Matisse, oh, my God.

That was insanity. Oh, my God. That was what everybody was hoping Floyd Mayweather would be. Mayweather Pacquiao. That's what everybody was hoping it would be. I was like, you guys are out of your mind. You don't know what you're about to watch. You guys are spending millions of dollars.

It's going to be like the biggest gate ever. And what you're going to watch is a Floyd Mayweather exhibition on movement and jabbing and straight rights. Lead right hands. Clinch. Get out of the way. I mean, that's what you're going to see. And that's exactly what it was. But Provodnikov, God.

How do you think the guys tuned into the Chavez Jr. fight that night and missed the Matisse-Provodnikov fight? They were silly. How do you think they felt right now? I watched both. I mean, that's the beautiful thing about DVRs. Right. Chavez Jr. looks like he's phoning it in.

Yeah. He just does not look like the same guy. Yeah. Like when he was younger and much more exciting and just looked like a real promising future champion. He just doesn't have the volume anymore. It doesn't look like he's in shape. Fighting much heavier, right? Yeah. That Matisse and Provanico fight was something else. So you're a strength and conditioning coach. And one of the reasons why I wanted to call you in here is because i am absolutely fascinated by the marinovichs right the guys who uh taught you a

lot of uh what you know and um i'm also fascinated by just the boundaries of human potential when it comes to strength and conditioning because as as an analyst as a guy who sits there and watches fights and i've seen i don't even know how many fights, but I've probably professionally called several thousand fights at this point. I don't even know how many it's been, really. It's been at least 1,500 or something of the best fights ever. Right. Right? And you start seeing things over and over and over again.

And occasionally there's these outliers. over and over and over again. And occasionally there's these outliers. And these outliers are guys who just have way more gas than anybody else. Guys who have way more ability to push deep into the fourth and fifth rounds. And you wonder how much of what we're seeing in terms of what a fighter can do inside the octagon or inside the ring, how much of it is how much endurance they have. And I maintain that it's a significant amount.

Absolutely. I think it's everything. It might be 90% of it or something. At least. Because it seems like everybody is pretty skillful once they get to the upper levels of the UFC. When you're dealing with a Pettis or a Dos Anjos or, you know, all across the board. When you hit those high-level guys, they're all very skillful. Some are better at certain aspects of fighting than others.

But it seems like the ones who can win and win the way Pettis and Dos Anjos went down, the way Dos Anjos just dominated Pettis. Right. You have to have a fucking gas tank absolutely um i don't know if you've seen my instagram and seen some of the videos i did yeah yeah i'm fascinated by it so yeah rafael when he first came to me this was after the serrani fight he tried several other strength and conditioning coaches and after he came to me about two or three workouts in he's like wow this is already amazing I feel the difference and that's when I began to assess like like a long-term plan So like when I first get a new athlete, I don't just look at the immediate fight I look where I want to want him to be about a year from now

You know six months from now and three or four fights from now, whatever But I kind of knew like some things that were holding him back and areas that weren't trained properly that we needed to rectify. What do you see when you start working out with a guy? How do you analyze it? First of all, you know what I'd like to do? This is something that the Marinoviches did with BJ Penn. First thing they did was they got a heart rate monitor on him. And then they put him through sparring to find out what areas taxed him the most.

And then that's what they would kind of design the camp towards. So, you know, if wrestling taxes you the most, then that's the energy system we need to train the most for you. So, you know, like with BJ, he never had any problem with his long-term aerobic. It was always his anaerobic energy systems. So it was always sprinting. Yeah, exactly. It was always the big bursts.

Yeah, short bursts and long bursts. Exactly, the entire amount. So the issue was the recovery from short bursts? Absolutely. And, yeah, exactly. So if your anaerobic systems aren't trained properly, you won't get that recovery in between the bursts. And some guys will go their entire career without ever correcting that. And you're always going to be in this weird limbo state where you're scared to push it too hard.

Exactly. this weird limbo state where you're scared to push it too hard. Exactly. Now, you take a guy like Rafael Dos Anjos that had beaten Donald Cerrone. So when he came to you, he was already world class, one of the best fighters in the division. I think he was ranked 10th when I started with him. So he's a good fighter. And that time we began training for the Rostam.

He was scheduled to fight Rostam Khabib. Exactly. And we did pretty much a fullostom. He was scheduled to fight Rostom. Kabilov. Exactly. And we did pretty much a full training camp. We did six weeks of training. And then Kabilov pulled out, I think, two weeks prior to the fight with a hurt finger or something. And so then we had a break for about three weeks in between. And then he got the news that he was going to fight Khabib. So he did another full training camp.

And prior to the Khabib fight, I actually left four weeks before the fight. So we stopped strength and conditioning four weeks. So he missed the complete peak training phase of the conditioning program. Do you think that's one of the reasons why he lost that fight? Partially, yeah. I feel a little bit of a responsibility for that, sure. Also, you have to admit, Khabib Nurmagomedov is a fucking monster. He is.

He's a monster. He's a good fighter. I think, and I hate to make excuses, but I think if people understood what Rafael went through before that fight, they would be a little more accepting of the fact that he might kick Khabib's ass the next time they fight. You know, a lot of people are already saying Khabib's the new champion. Rafael almost had his freaking eye gouged out. The whites of his eyes, like this was during the training camp, so he had to take another couple weeks off in the middle of the training camp. The whites of his eyes were literally hanging down from a guy's fingernails where he, they

were sparring, the guy poked his fingernails into his eyes and the whites of the eyes were strips of it were hanging down below his eyelid oh god yeah and then so what'd they do to fix that i guess they just trimmed it off and just yeah yeah i just trimmed it off and then let yeah wait a minute you could trim the whites of your eyelid apparently oh god yeah rafael's a Like, people don't understand. Is it because the guy had fingernails? Yeah, fingernails, exactly. And there's farring, and he went to push him back or something,

and two fingers went right into his eye. Jesus Christ. So, you know, obviously he's not going to put that out there on the Internet and show people, hey, look at my fucked up eye. He should. He should. Well, now, have you seen his ear? I don't know if you saw the picture of his ear But recent no this is the same thing leading up to the khabib fight prior to that his ear was ripped off in the cage

So his ear got stuck in between a couple of the links on the cage I've seen that picture and his ear was hanging on by a thread yeah Jesus Christ, so this is. I can't remember. Yeah, there it is. Jesus Christ. So this is all going on during training camp. Wow. One thing after the other. And then I leave four weeks out.

Not to mention, he switched to a vegan diet. What? Yeah, for that fight. Why did he do that? I have no idea. Who told him to do that? I have no idea.

Do you have any response? I just ate vegan lunch, by the way. So I'm talking shit. I eat a lot of vegan food lot of vegan food i talk a lot of shit about vegans but my my my diet consists mostly of vegan meals and murdered animals i combine those two that's pretty interesting i just i feel like you can't get it's very difficult to get everything you need from just vegetables but i feel like you really can't eat enough vegetables i think vegetables are super important for you. I think that it's one of the main issues that people suffer from when it comes to health

and nutrition. Even a lot of vegan people, they eat too much breads and pastas and rice and things along those lines. I think you need a lot of vegetables. I think it's super important for you. It changes the way I think and feel have you ever tried a supplement called dim what is it d-i-m yeah no what is it what does it stand for diendol methane and it's supposedly like a concentration of all the cruciferous vegetables but it helps lower like estrogen levels it's got phytoestrogens really so it helps helps your body metabolize estrogen. And I tell you what, it actually works. It gives you gnarly gas, but it works. I don't know if I'm willing to make that trade-off.

No, dude. It's worth it. Take it on an empty stomach. It's that bad? Clear out the room, yeah. Whoa. Jesus Christ. Easily, yeah.

Don't tell certain people that I know that enjoy blowing farts on folks. The other night, my fiance and my baby woke up. Oh, no. I got a two-year-old. You woke the baby up? Oh, good Lord. He was laughing. Da-da-poopa.

Da-da-poopa. Oh, no. It's very funny. Oh, no. So who talked Dos Anjos into going vegan? You know what? I don't know, to be honest. I don't remember.

I think he just kind of, something he wanted to try on his own. And if you notice in that fight, he looks quite a bit smaller, too. Like, his shoulders look smaller and he looks... Lost some muscle mass. Yeah. Well, you know, there's some health benefits to eating a lot of vegetables. I just don't, I don't think there's enough evidence to promote veganism. Right.

I just don't think it's worth, I think the the trade-off is too significant right And I think your body. I mean we're omnivores It's just the way it is and especially when you're dealing with high-level athletes that are Blowing down a lot of muscle tissue on a regular basis There's a lot of recovery that needs to be done if you're just a regular person Going through life without any significant stress on your body, you probably can get through fine with it. But I think for high-level athletes, it's very difficult to find a vegan high-level athlete,

especially in explosive combat sports. Right. So you don't have anything to do with the diets of your fighters? If a guy needs my help, then yeah, I'll do it. But a lot of these guys now have nutritionists, so that kind of takes a lot of work off my back, workload off my back. It's funny because fighters have a short window of time to be the best, right? I mean, a fighter's career, like somebody pointed it out once, I think it was on mixedmartialarts.com,

that there's like a nine-year period where a guy can really fight great. Right. And then after that, the wheels just sort of start to fall off, and just the body can only take so much. Fighting great. Do you think that's a mental thing though? Do you think they get too comfortable and they lose it? It's possible. That's what I think.

Do you really? Absolutely. I think so. Like GSP quit at the right time. You know what I mean? He's got all these like GQ magazine things coming up and I don't know how much money that guy's worth now, but he doesn't need to fight.

Right. And maybe the same thing happened with BJ. Maybe he quit a little too late. But, yeah, I think once they get too comfortable, I think then it's over. It is possible. I think the mental strain of camps is absolutely brutal on these guys. I mean, you would know as good as anybody. You know, I've been to high-level training camps.

I've watched guys go at it. I've watched guys do their strength and conditioning routines. And it's fucking ungodly. I barely can get through a fucking yoga class. You know, these guys are doing two-a-days and strength and conditioning in the morning, beating the fuck out of each other at night and going home and exhausted. And one of the things that BJ said about training with the Marinoviches was it was just too much. Like his performances were legendary legendary so was was the training really

too much red BJ had enough that's the question I would ask it's a good point you know what I mean here by the time the Marinoviches got ahold of him he'd already had a 10 plus year career exactly yeah you look at that Diego Sanchez fight I maintain there's very few people ever that fought at 155 that could fuck with BJ when he was in that mode. God damn, he was a killer then. Exactly. It's funny because I just talked to Gary Marinovich

about this the other day. Just to clarify what happened with those guys. And it came down to what Gary explained to me was they'd reached a point in training where they were doing their strength training in the morning and the sparring was going on in the afternoons and PJ approached them and you know he wasn't like a dick about it or anything he's totally cool like hey like you know how would you guys feel if we did the uh the strength training

on another day so I can do my sparring you know and I'm fresh for sparring and I think Marvin Gary took that as you know he wasn't ready for that. He wasn't at that level yet where they're ready to back off of the conditioning training, and they don't do that. So, I mean, there's a method behind their training, and it's very rational. So I think the fact that he was questioning them at that point was just like enough. Maybe there's some other stuff going on, I don't know.

But I think the questioning of their Abilities as trainers at that point like as if they didn't know what they were doing It was enough to turn them off and kind of well I think what fight the the mindset of fighters when it comes to strength conditioning versus Versus skill work is that it's very important to stay sharp with the skill work It's very difficult to do that if you're already exhausted from strength and conditioning. So how do you find that balance? Is it smarter to do the skill work in the morning and then the strength and conditioning later on in the evening?

How do you find that balance? Are we talking about in general here? Are we talking about what I would perceive for BJ? Either or. Okay. If I was the Marinovichs. You can get closer to Mike. If I was the Marinovichs, I probably would have done the same thing. And maybe toned down the sparring a little bit.

BJ's already phenomenally skilled. Maybe one of the most skilled fighters we've ever seen in the UFC. I was a fan of his before he was even in the UFC. I told people, this dude, when I saw him at tournaments as a blue belt. I don't know black belt in Jiu-Jitsu, by the UFC. I told people, this dude, when I saw him at tournaments as a blue belt, I don't know black belt in jiu-jitsu, by the way, but, uh, so I've seen these guys from the start. I said, this kid's gonna be friggin' phenomenal.

I said the same thing about Nick Diaz, too, years ago. When he was a purple belt, I'd see him at tournaments, was a blue belt even. I'd be like, this guy, when he gets to you watch, he's gonna be a fighter, and he's gonna be phenomenal. Like, tear these guys up. So, BJ's skill has never been in question. Right there, that tells you conditioning has always been the issue with BJ.

I've never seen him outclassed skill-wise by anybody. It's always been strength and conditioning that's cost him his fights. What did you think when you saw his last fight with Frankie Edgar, when he adopted that very strange style? I was blown away at how stupid that was. I mean, that was just ridiculous. Like, why would you? Freddie Roach, I just had this conversation with Freddie Roach about a month ago.

He told me BJ Penn was one of the best boxers he's ever trained. Really? Like, even out of the boxers in the gym. BJ Penn was one of the best natural boxers he's ever trained. Wow. For folks who don't know what we're talking about, BJ had adopted this very strange style that I'd never seen before, where his feet were very close together, and he was just moving really weird.

Standing upright, like a giraffe almost. Completely straight up. Instead of the classic style of a stand-up fighter. I mean, there's variables when it comes to stand-up fighting for MMA, because you have a more squared off stance, because you want to have your hips in place for takedown defense. But the classic stance is shoulders are up high, hands are right by the face, you know, head movement. BJ did this weird thing where he looked almost like a guy playing,

like pretending to be a fighter. Like he was doing this weird... And he had said afterwards, which really bothered me, he said that he did it to conserve energy. He felt like that conserved energy. There it is again. I thought he said because his trainers felt that he generated more force that way. There's no way.

That doesn't make any sense. That's insane. If your conditioning is there, you don't need to worry about conservative energy. Right. Okay, so what was the consensus that made them part ways? Because the performances that he put on when he was with the Marinovichs were legendary. They really were. Some of the best. How many fights? They did Florian, and then they did the Diego Sanchez fight,

and then they left about five weeks out from the Frankie Edgar fight. Really? Yeah. So five weeks. This type of training needs to be done pretty much up until the day of the fight. So they did train him a little bit for the Frankie Edgar fight. I think three weeks, maybe four weeks at the most. And what happened?

That's when they had the discussion about changing up the program like uh can we do the conditioning on different days and so they just decided to walk away yeah wow i just felt it wasn't going the way they wanted that was a fight too i i think yeah i think they were they respected frankie edgar this guy's gonna be trouble this guy's coming to fight he's got a gas tank he's has no pushover, you know. He's a motherfucker. Yeah. He's a relentless motherfucker, which shows you how goddamn good Uriah Faber is.

Right. Because they, you know, Uriah's fighting one weight class up. Right. You know, usually he fights at 135. He's fighting at 145. And they, you know, they went five rounds. And, I mean, Frankie won a decision, but there was no point in the fight where he was going to finish Uriah.

No point where Uriah was in significant trouble. You know, they were pretty much going blow for blow. But Frankie was getting an edge in basically every round. I think Frankie is one of the best condition guys. And I would love to find out what he does for his strength and conditioning because he's never fucking tired. He's always able to push that same pace every round. He's never fucking tired. Right.

He's always able to push that same pace every round, and that seems to be what separates the greats, the truly greats, from everybody else underneath them. You know, it's funny. A lot of people are talking about the Los Angeles Pettis fight, but between me and you and the rest of the world, in my opinion, Rafael was in better conditioning, better shape for the Benson Henderson fight. Really?

Yeah, absolutely. This fight he was injured. So three weeks out, he injured his knee in a sparring accident, and so we had to change things up. We couldn't do any more field work. We couldn't do any more running or anything like that. So we had to kind of modify it, and that's when you see I got him doing the sprints on the Airdyne bicycle.

Pretty much something safe, you know. Right. But I had him at like 12 000 feet elevation gradually built him up to that so we're at high altitude the the benson henderson fight was incredibly impressive because he was the first guy to ever stop benson with strikes and you know benson is just notoriously durable unbelievably tough big for the weight class and and dos anjos just jumped all over him yeah destroyed him it was a big fight it was a big like like whoa yeah this guy's on another level

right now that's why it kind of blew my mind like why people i hate to keep reminding you but it closer oh sorry sorry it sounds good to us but the recording will be like weird i got you sorry do i need to repeat anything no no it's fine okay like I said I think he was in better shape for the for the Benson Henderson fight you know I don't know why people couldn't see this coming you know like getting good since just so good right Pete me look at how he'd handle that right you know Brandon that's just fucking huge right and a killer that kids big yeah see how big that is in real life he's fucking big he's a big

he's he's a good size 185 right and as a 170 he's fucking huge and Benson handled him yeah so I think people just thought hey this is a great fight I mean I didn't I didn't necessarily count Dos Anjos out uh-huh but I certainly didn't think he was gonna stop him the way he did really he just fucking beat his ass yeah I thought he was gonna thought it was going to be a really good fight. That's what I thought. I mean, Henderson, former champion, been there with some of the best ever. Right. You know, I thought this was going to be a great fight.

Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't. I kind of knew, like, at the end of the training camp, the difference we'd made in that training camp in terms of speed and power and his stamina i just knew like i knew where he was before and i knew where he was after and i said he's just going to destroy him like i hope i almost wanted to go five rounds so he could show like what he was capable of wow yeah well that's pretty crazy that he you know when we found out after the pettis fight where he won the title and just won by just dominating the champion

and a guy who Dana White had been pretty public saying he thought was the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. And, you know, I didn't agree with that necessarily, but I certainly did think the kid was spectacular. I mean, the way he stopped Donald Cerrone, the way he stopped Joe Lozon, I mean, he was capable of just unleashing these kicks out of nowhere to put people away. He's just fucking good. The way he armbarred Benson. And the way he caught Gilbert, too. He caught Gilbert in a guillotine.

He's fucking good. Do you think he caught Gilbert in that? I'm not saying the fight was rigged or anything, but Gilbert made a terrible mistake. He's sitting on his knees with his head up. He'd been tagged. That's all it was. He'd been hurt. If you watch that fight, I watched it several times,

Pettis had caught him several times with some pretty hard shots when Gilbert was coming in because he knew Gilbert's strategy. It was no secret. Gilbert was just going to, you know, stay on the outside a little bit, press him up against the cage. It's the Clay Guida strategy, essentially. Yeah. Which was his first loss.

I mean, that was Pettis' first loss in the Octagon. Yeah. You know? When he first came to the UFC, he, you know, was the WEC champion, and Clay Guida beat him, and everybody's like, well, welcome to the UFC, dude. Right. And everybody kind of knew, okay, well, this guy, at least at this stage of his career, is vulnerable to something like this.

Yeah. But Gilbert just didn't have the same tools that Dos Anjos has. Dos Anjos is much faster. Much faster. He's a fucking, he's a dangerous, dangerous guy. Right now, yeah, he's extremely dangerous. And his conditioning was off the charts. And now when you tell me that his knee was hurt three weeks out.

Right. And he couldn't do anything but airdyne sprints. Yeah. That's incredible. I mean, that's amazing. Yeah. Well, they're at high at high altitude too so that's pretty uh how's he doing it at high well i have the i have an altitude simulator i have the hypoxic altitude simulator not the little velcro masks but this is the actual one that thins the air and changes your blood oxygen levels so i mean it takes time to build up to that i wouldn't like recommend anyone go try it

at 12 000 feet right now. You're going to have, like, a seizure or something. You know what I mean? Maybe an aneurysm. I don't know. But it took probably three weeks to get him to that point where he was able to sprint on that thing. So, I mean, we've been building up for a while. And, man, there's things, obviously, I can't tell you on the air because I don't want to give away too many.

Damn. Secrets of people. But I tell you, it was rigorous. And there was times when I can't tell you on the air because I don't want to give away too many damn secrets of people but I tell you it was rigorous and there's there was times when I would watch and uh I'd want to pull the plug and be like hey you know what I mean but you gotta listen to your gut and uh just keep pushing them and know what they can take is that a factor a big factor when you're working with an athlete that you have to know what this athlete is capable of where are you going to break them. I think that's probably the most critical factor. I think you hit it right on the head.

Because it seems like you're dancing that line, man. You're dancing. It's a thin line, man. And that's the way you get a guy better, right? Exactly. You got to get him right to that fucking edge and then pull him back. Have you seen the movie Whiplash? Yes.

That basically sums it up right there. That teacher was so good at what he did he brought out the best i got the wrong movie in my head you're talking about the the drama movie yeah no i didn't see that dude i'm not gonna tell you it's don't tell me about it but i saw the ads you're screaming and yelling at somebody i was confused i'm like how does that factor in i was thinking a totally different movie but it is it's the uh i was thinking a crash that's a totally different movie i'm like how the fuck is he gonna make this analogy yeah right no but that's it the intuition and the eye i believe the eye is the most important in what you see and what your athlete's doing you see the speed deteriorate then you've gone too far

you need to know how to get your guy to peak in every exercise and then cut it off. And what's the variability as far as recovery? Does everybody, I mean, people must recover at different rates. Absolutely. It also depends on their past, like, conditioning, too. You know what I mean? So, like, if a guy's never had a certain type of anaerobic training in his career, of course it's going to take a few more days to recover.

It's going to take a lot longer to develop. That was one of the things that Uriah Faber said was one of the reasons why his team, that Team Alpha Male, has so few injuries. It's like there's some camps that have amazing records as far as their fighters. The fighters win great, but they have a giant amount of injuries. But his camp, Team Alpha Male, occasionally guys get hurt, like TJ had to pull out of the head and brow fight because of a broken rib. But those are just bones. You can only take so much. Your bone is like, Benavidez said it best, he's like a rib at the end of the day is just a rib.

And it can only take so much. And when it breaks, it breaks. But those guys are always in shape. And Uriah was saying that it's like a lifestyle thing, that they never get out of shape. They're always training very hard. They're always in peak condition. So it's not about having to get into shape. They're already in shape. Well, I'd also wonder what kind of strength training they're doing in two to stay.

I mean, if they're doing heavy weightlifting and you're doing that year round, you're going to get fucked up. It's just going to happen. It destroys the muscular equilibrium. It's been proven. So if you, if you got a good program and it helps maintain the health of the athletes and it's, you know, that's something. Now, when you say that heavy weightlifting destroys the equilibrium of the athlete, what exactly do you mean by that? So what I mean by that is, let's say, let's say you're doing bicep curls, for example, and you're doing a heavy weight lift, you're doing heavy bicep curls,

you're shortening that bicep, right? We know that as the muscle gets bigger, it gets shorter because of the cross-bridging. So when you shorten one muscle, you lengthen the opposite muscle, and that puts the joint and the tendons and ligaments at risk for injury. Hmm. So if you do, like, say, if you're doing something along the lines of bicep curls, it must be critical that you do tricep extensions or dips or something along those lines. Can it really work? Absolutely. But what's even more important is to engage the tendons and ligaments, But what's even more important is to engage the tendons and ligaments, the elastic components of the connective tissue. So the muscular tendon unit as a whole.

And now that's a whole other level. That's like it requires a certain amount of eccentric overload. Eccentric would be like the movement coming downward. Like when you do a bench press, the negative portion of that, that's the eccentric portion of the lift, portion of that that's the eccentric portion of the lift has to come down with approximately 40% greater force downward than it goes up to maintain muscular equilibrium how do you do that well biometrics like plyometrics are a perfect example of that so like uh do you you would not just incorporate bench press you would do like a plyometric bench press how's that work uh i don't know if you have video or anything like that. You can probably see it on my Instagram.

You've probably seen BJ Penn doing it too. So plyometric bench press. Yeah, as opposed to a traditional bench press. And what happens with that is, I can describe it if he brings it up. Or I can describe it now if you like. Do you see anything on Instagram Is it a speed of sport yeah? Yeah, Instagram speed of sport, and then if you scroll down you might see one I hope I hear here go plyometric ballistic bench press. I don't know if I use that one to be on no

Why I don't know let's check it out Is that somebody else? Yeah? That's not me. No, no, no. Okay. Let's see this guy. He's throwing it. A little too slow on the way down. You can type in speed of sport on YouTube and you can find it too. Okay. There we go. If you click on that one right there.

There we go. You'll see a couple of them. Marinovich Training Systems. Yeah, you'll see a couple of the guys. Whoa. Some serious fucking jumps. Yeah, that a girl Yeah This is a dude with crazy hair. Yeah, I was like, that's the most badass chick of all time

Jump like that. Yeah, that's like the Ronda Rousey of box jumpers, right? Yeah, that looks like a girl. Yeah up until you you know wait. What has she been doing? Yeah with her endocrine system Exactly Jesus Christ These are crazy jumps man. Yeah These are this kid came to me. This was about five weeks after a grade two ankle sprain So you can see this heels don't even touch there. It's just all balls of the feet the toes So this is similar to what like an iso Excuse me a plyo plyometric bench press would look like but we're doing with the feet, the toes. So this is similar to what like an iso, excuse me, a plyometric bench press would look like

that we're doing with the feet right there. So these jumps, like you're big obviously on explosive movements, plyometrics. So this thing is, I've seen this on the BJ Penn training things. This kid is sitting with his back, he's lying on his back rather, but his butt has a bounce ball under it. And then there's this padded thing above him that he keeps kicking up. And what's the philosophy behind that? Well, this is, first of all, you learn how to control your limb better. When you're upside down like that and there's no load, you get greater control of your limb. At the same time, you can work the full extension of the foot which is crucial in uh pretty much

every sport so he's catching these he's got these things for arms too now and he's so there that's that's like a plyometric movement right there for the upper body right there so it's explosive now what's interesting is that these other than this particular exercise those are machines right and a lot of people right here this one joe. Okay, so this is the bench. Yeah. Okay, so you catch it with your hands. There's pads. So he's throwing it off. So he's maximizing his contraction as it comes off.

He's not shorting his reach. He's got to produce a great amount of force to throw that off his fingers. That last thing he did was crazy. His balance ball thing. This is nuts. That's some incredible movement. He's a three-time national champion for Taekwondo. Jesus Christ. That kid is ridiculously flexible.

Look at that fucking leg. What's that kid's name? Ryan Tucker. Wow. Where is he out of? Torrance, California. And he's a national Taekwondo champion? Yeah.

Taekwondo has its faults, but god damn, when it comes to leg dexterity, some of those guys have the most unbelievable leg dexterity. And if you could teach them all the other skills, Muay Thai, wrestling, all that stuff, they have such a weird advantage with their legs. Right. Like, looking at that guy,

how many fucking people can do that? Not many. That's nuts. Not with that kind of range of motion. And he's doing it with ankle weights on is that what's going on there yeah how many how much pounds probably like two and a half pounds just very light yeah just enough to get a stretch out of the muscle okay so that's what you're trying to do yeah the whole method here is a stretch shortening cycle so you want to stretch the the muscle before you shorten it so stretch it before you contract it so like plyometrics do the same thing. They put the tendons, ligaments, and muscle on stretch,

and then it snaps back with greater force. So that's called the stretch-shortening cycle. So now the benefit of that is it trains fast twitch at a speed also that's relevant to the sport. So if you're not training at the speed of sport, you're training any slower than that, you're training slow twitch. You're doing a detrimental exercise for your sport. So any time you're doing like a heavy lift that's slow, you think that that's bad for the sport? Absolutely, without a doubt.

That's interesting. Well, it is, but it makes sense. The best athletes are the ones that have the highest rate of force development. The ones that can produce the greatest amount of force in the least amount of time. Okay, so that means like a guy that can, you know, I don't know, jump and touch his head on the ceiling versus a guy, you know, in a split second versus a guy would take him three or four seconds to get up there. Right. So that would be the comparison between a plyometric bench press like I just showed you on the video there as compared to like a 225 250 pound bench press so you're a big fan of doing everything just exploding absolutely absolutely that's interesting because there

is a school of thought uh especially along with jujitsu guys where they like a super slow training yeah where they do like a chin up and and each chin-up takes like 15, 20 seconds. Have you seen that? Yeah. What do you think about that? That's just pretty much that's an isotonic contraction. I don't see how that even helps jiu-jitsu at all either.

Well, the idea is that if you get someone's back and you're working the choke, you know, like your arms might gas out, but this way they won't. Man, I'll tell you right now, as soon as, the whole thing with BJ Penn opened my eyes to so many different things. And what I felt when I was training with him was there was no strength. His technique was so precisely timed that he needed absolutely no strength, literally no strength. It was more about timing and the speed at which he moved. And so if you're squeezing a guy, maybe you need to brush up on your technique a little bit.

You know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Like, you train with John Jock, I take it. Yep. Okay, when I started jiu-jitsu, I started with Hickson Gracie. I was there for three years. I got my blue belt from Hickson. And then I went to the Machado School in Redondo Beach.

And I went there at a time when you show up on Saturdays, John Jock, John, Hegan, Hodger, they're all on the mat there training with the students. Plus, you have Bob Bass, you have Rick Williams, you have all these great black belts underneath them who are there training with all the students. Def. And so, dude, how can you beat that? I mean, that's like, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's awesome.

You show up and there's like, these guys have these red things on their black belt. You're like, what the heck is this, man? Like, I don't even know, like, what planet is this? Are these guys good? You know what I mean? Fuck. Yeah. Dude, but you've trained with John Jock.

You feel how he just... Effortless. Whatever you do, it's like you do it to yourself. You know what I mean? It was the same thing with BJ Penn. It's like I was a decent black belt. I was okay when I first got my black belt. And then after training with BJ and those guys, man, being in that training camp, it completely opened my mind to, fuck, I've been doing everything wrong for the last 20 years.

How so? Forcing things. I was forcing everything. My workouts, I was forcing everything. I was pushing myself to the limit. I was lifting heavy weights. I could squat 425 pounds. I could bench 305.

I weighed 168 pounds. So people can talk to me all they want about weightlifting, but I tell you right now, I am far stronger than I've ever been. I might not look it, but... You look great. Don't be hard on yourself. Thanks, man. You don't think I need a nose job or anything? No, you look wonderful.

You're a handsome man. Thank you. But it's the way the body moves as a unit as compared to weightlifting, which actually fragments muscle groups. So things along the lines of bench presses and curls and things along those lines. Absolutely. In a sense, it's detraining the body. But what about guys who want to bulk up?

Like Mackie Shillstone, when he trained Evander Holyfield to get him up to heavyweight. Right. And he had him do all this crazy weightlifting stuff. What do you think about that? A lot of that's genetics. Really? Yeah, absolutely. A lot of that's Mexican supplements.

It could be. It could be. Very well. But I think genetics play a huge role in that and what your frame can handle. There's an optimal size for your frame. You know what I mean? Like, guys, I've seen all too many times guys have put on more muscle than their body can handle and their performance deteriorates. Sure.

You know what I mean? Evander was a fairly big guy already. Yeah. And so he can handle it with his frame. Plus, yeah, you have to look at the genetics of the athlete, too. But if you take a guy like, perfect example, maybe like Michael Jordan. When Michael Jordan was playing against the Pistons, one of the things he realized, like, Jesus fuck, I'm getting pushed around, I'm getting my ass kicked. I gotta bulk up.

When a guy wants to bulk up, there's very few ways to bulk up other than lifting heavy, right? I would say, no. First of all, let me say this. I think there's too much of an emphasis on getting bigger. And it might have been more advisable to train your body. Maybe there were certain weaknesses in his hips or his feet or lower back or obliques that were making him weaker. I've seen plenty of guys whose bodies are working as a unit, like with the type of training that I offer, whose bodies are working as a unit, like with my,

with the type of training that I offer, uh, that can, that can literally bully like guys that are way bigger, more muscular. And it all comes down to the efficiency of the movement. Right. You know what I mean?

But a guy like, here's a good example. A guy like Brock Lesnar, you can't get that fucking big unless you're throwing some really heavy shit around. Yeah. Or taking Mexican supplements. A little bit of both. A little bit of both, right?

Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, there is, there is, but again, it. Then again, there's a guy like Cain Velasquez who beat him with more or less the BJ Penn approach. Exactly. When you look at Cain, when Cain's throwing a punch, you never see like. There's no tension. And that's the efficiency Penn approach. Exactly. When you look at Kane, when Kane's throwing a punch, you never see like... There's no tension.

Yeah. And that's the efficiency. Yeah. Okay. That's actually a good point because that's been proven that repetitive bouts of absolute strength training, which is like your maximum strength training, like maximum bench press, the heavy lifts,

will deteriorate a boxer's punching power and accuracy. Really? That's been proven by the Russians. Deteriorate? That's fascinating. And it can last for up to several months. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, so say if a guy goes through your conventional strength program,

deadlifts, bench press, that can deteriorate his punching power. Because it deteriorates the speed-strength qualities. There's different types of strength. Speed-strength is one that emphasizes speed. It would be maybe like 60% speed, 40% strength, if I had to put a ratio on it. The emphasis is primarily on speed. Every sport is won by a fraction of a second, just about.

You know what I mean? Even like a basketball team that's dominating the entire season, there's something about every play that might be one thousandth of a second faster than the other teams that's making them better. And then at the end, it's cumulative. It all adds up and it compounds on top of each other. So at the end of the game, it's a mismatch. Wow.

So even the pettis fight was closer than people think it was a fraction of a second difference between rafael striking and pettis's strike every time every time and that compounds and compounds and compounds that's a funny way to look at it but i think you're right you know when he landed that straight left in the first round yeah crack and you see Pettis' head snap back, I was stunned, first of all, by the speed in which he threw that shot. Right. I was very impressed with his speed,

but also that, you know, he was able to keep that speed up through the fourth and fifth rounds. I mean, when he nailed him in the first round, I mean, Pettis said from then on he was having a hard time seeing out of that eye. He was getting pretty much fucked from then on. That was super impressive because if you go back and watch his earlier fights, like go back and

watch him against Jeremy Stephens early in his career where he lost by knockout the The Stephens highlight reel, he just was a different guy. Different fucking human being. I mean, very few guys when you look at their early UFC career and then look at their peak performance, which Dos Anjos clearly is in his peak. He just won the title against one of the best guys ever in that division.

But he's a different human being all around. The funny thing is, I don't really read too much on the internet, but I had to this one, you know, with people saying PEDs and all this shit and I see comments there's no strength training program that can do that but if you look it's been going on for a year you know we've been building it up so if you if you compare like I said like his fight with Cerrone he's really stiff he he told me himself by the third round he was like gas he was fatigued and so this isn't like one training camp i mean this has been going on for a year of really good training where he and

i are training like three four times a week i mean you know granted except for the times in between fights when he's got his downtime but i mean he's been very consistent with it and uh you get after about three months of this, is when you see the tendons, ligaments, and everything really start working as a unit, and that's when it really, the power and everything really come into play. So, say if you took a guy, like, let's just pull a guy out of the roster. Let's go with Matt Mitrione, big heavyweight, fast guy, moves really well for a heavyweight. What would you do with a guy like that?

First thing, the guy comes to me the first day, I'm going to do muscle tests on him and find out what's going on with his body and find out if there's any types of weaknesses like in his feet and the rotational power of his hips, lower back, especially a big guy, lower back and lower abdominal cavity, flexibility in his shoulders. I can't stress that enough. For punching power, there's an optimal range of motion where you produce the greatest amount of shoulders. I can't stress that enough. For punching power, there's an optimal range of motion where you produce the greatest amount of force in all of your joints. So that is pretty easy to understand, right?

So if my shoulder flexion or my shoulder flexibility is here, I'm going to lose speed. If it's tense. Yeah, exactly. If it's too short, you're going to lose speed. Too long, you're going to lose speed. If it's tense. Yeah, exactly. If it's too short, you're going to lose speed. Too long, you're going to lose speed. Too long? Yeah, there's too much slack in the muscle.

So how would a guy get too flexible in his shoulders? Some people are born with that. You know what I mean? That can be a genetic thing. Or swimmers tend to have a lot of flexibility in the shoulders. But I mean, for their sport, that's okay because they're kind of dragging that resistance, that slower resistance. But for a snap in the muscle, there's got to be just the right amount of tension in order for that muscle to activate as quickest. So if it's too long, imagine like a rubber band.

If there's slack in the rubber band, you can't get the snap out of it. Oh, okay. I see. I see. And then is that, does that make one more prone to injuries as well? Uh, absolutely. It can cause joint instability, um, impingement, all kinds of stuff. I've heard of that with knees. Absolutely. And that goes back to the muscular equilibrium thing I was talking about. So let's imagine you're doing heavy front squats every day for like three times a week, you know, 80% of your one rep max or whatever. And you're doing your maxes on one every other week or whatever. You're developing those quadriceps at the expense of the hamstrings. It's not even a running movement, really. Just a front squat. That's just a movement up and down. That's good for like putting groceries on

the top of a shelf or something like that. Mm-hmm. Okay So yeah, you're gonna shorten those quadricep muscles You're gonna you're gonna you're gonna build them and make them bigger and shorter and what happens with the hamstring it gets longer and weaker So now you got an imbalance between the two So if someone was gonna do front squats They would have to do something to compensate for that like maybe some sort sort of a deadlift, straight leg deadlift or something that hamstring oriented? Again, then you're training the hamstring. You know, let's put it this way.

It depends on the sport they're going to do. But if it's a fighter, I'm not going to have them doing that. No squats? No. It's not practical for the sport. One of the most vital elements for fighting, in my opinion, and is neglected is the feet. Like you hear Marv talk about the feet, and I talk about the feet all the time. The strength in the feet and what it does for the nervous system are crucial for athletic performance,

and yet it's like one of the most neglected areas. The feet, like the neural impulses, so the sensory and motor nerves are very highly active in the forefoot. Okay. And this can actually help speed up your reflexes by hyper-training the feet on different planes, like balance exercises and stuff like that. We'll actually speed up that circuitry between the reaction between the foot and the spinal cord. You speed up the neural impulses. Speed up the neural impulses by strengthening the feet.

With reactive exercises like balance exercises on slant boards and discs and stuff that force the feet to stay reactive. For example, that reaction can kind of relay into the whole body, you know, can affect the entire body. Like, if you've ever been ice skating or something and you slip, like, your hands are already like, well, you know what I mean? They're already reacting before your brain even has time to think. It's because it's processed in the spinal cord.

It doesn't even get processed in the brain. Your reaction from your lower limbs can actually be processed in The lower portion of your spinal cord and right back out to your limbs so you Mechanism I see so your body has sort of a failsafe actually exactly so it's like hey There's no weight on the feet put your fucking hands out dude exactly okay, okay? But your brain doesn't even know that's going on too late right it would if it did it would have that okay? I see so by hyper training the feet you keep the body in sort of a ready state for reaction and you know it's

like manipulating the safety device to increase sports performance the guys at the on it gym were telling me the cub swanson does virtually all of his workouts on a balance board he does either a balance board or a balance ball like everything he he does. Yeah, and he's extremely athletic. Yes. Yeah. So when you're doing these heavy lifting, it deadens that impulse. It slows it down.

And not to mention, you're neglecting the forefoot. All these exercises are pretty much done on the heel. You know, when I was squatting, I remember, you're taught to press through the heel, deadlifting, the same thing. So you're, you're, you're training over and over these movements that are not practical for a sports movement, which pretty much every sport is played on the forefoot. Yeah, that's true. Like you never really in a sport, you very rarely push off the back of the, of the foot. So you're kind of moving forward when you're punching the back heels off the ground. Absolutely.

And so knowing that, it's kind of like, why are we doing this? It's improper training. I mean, it really makes sense. Like, Marv's been preaching this for years. And people just kind of scoff at it. And you see, no, I've got to get my heavy back squat in. Yeah, that's fine. But maybe this can help you with it. Start training the feet, looking at what we're talking about here and the sequence of muscles that you're going to start finding when you do

start training the feet. Like, how's this? A better option for squatting would be a front squat. And now let's say you take a couple of 45 pound plates and you put them under the balls of your feet So now you're engaging more of a sports movement You're on the balls of your feet and you're loading up the front instead of the back which is Back squat is technically a lower back exercise. It really hits the lumbar and hits the lower back a lot The front squats gonna hit more quadriceps more muscles required for jumping you know what I mean as well as the core and stabilizing the spine with the abdominals and everything. So that's just a thought.

Like maybe you can do that. You think like start thinking in that process where you're training from the feet up, the forefoot up, not just the heels, but the forefoot up, and you'll start connecting different muscles required for sports movements. We were talking before the podcast that I'm really getting into yoga recently. The last couple weeks I've been into it. And one of the things that is really shocking to me is how much my feet hurt. Yeah.

Like all the balancing. My feet give out before a lot of other stuff. But I do so many things barefoot. I lift barefoot. I kickbox. Jiu-jitsu, all that stuff is barefoot. Right. But for whatever reason, like just standing there, holding your foot up in the air and stretching out,

my foot is the one that's having the hard time dealing with all that. Really? Yeah. That's pretty interesting. Well, obviously I have weak feet in some weird way. Yeah. It's just, it was never tested right before now the problem with that is when you do have weakness in the feet other things start to compensate like your hips your hips start

to compensate for the weakness in the feet i'd say a lot of guys have flat feet they have poor hip abduction and adduction or tight hamstrings flat-footed guys almost always are a little hamstring dominant when they're sprinting. They're good at, like, the acceleration phase, but the top speed is lacking. I have flat feet. Do you? Yeah. Do you get tight in the hamstrings?

Not really. No? No. That might be the exception to the rule. We'll have very flexible hamstrings. Probably the weed. Weed? Yeah.

You think? It's my hamstrings? No, I'm just kidding. No, I just grew up doing Taekwondo. Yeah. So I think I have a lot of hamstring flexibility. Yeah, right, right, right. So for whatever reason, I don't have tension back there.

But I definitely have flat feet. Kelly Starrett, you know Kelly? He wrote that book, The Supple Leopard. Is he the CrossFit guy? Yeah. Yeah, I know who he is. He wrote a book called The Supple Leopard. He doesn't even believe in flat feet. He thinks it's like you're sort of almost like learning from people around you to walk and stand a certain way.

And it's almost like a laziness of the posture of your foot. That could be. To paraphrase him. Well, I don't know. I'd have to read it thoroughly and see what it is. He thinks that you could retrain someone to have a high arm. Oh, you can. Absolutely.

Really? Yeah, I've done it. Really? What do you do? So me a guy like me cuz we're a guy like you like I said like the the balance Balancing type exercises we have and the foot strengthening modalities that we use well definitely Man, I I challenge you to try this okay, if you try like a calf raise like or you can go on like a Seated seated leg press and don't put any weight

on there just do a few with your shoes on okay then take your shoes on and try a few without your shoes and really accentuate the movement in the toes to the tip of the toe not just just to the pad of the toe but to the tip of the toe and see the difference you feel on your achilles and your calves okay and i guarantee you it's going to blow you away. Tremendous difference when you just use that little bit, that little extra inch of your toes, and you feel it all through the arch of the foot, and you feel it all the way up through the calf. It's really something else. That's where I always have pain, in the arch of my foot. Yeah.

It's always like I got pain there from skiing. I get pain there from sometimes hiking. Yeah. It gives me some pain there. Yeah. I get pain there from sometimes hiking. Yeah. It gives me some pain there. Yeah. That's fixable. Interesting. Okay.

We'll talk about me later in that. But a lot of people have issues with that. A lot of people have issues with flat feet. Do you find that fighters ever have issues plotting? Like say if you get a guy and maybe he's kind of lumbering. We all know fighters that just don't move well on their feet. For example, Ruslan has the flattest feet I've ever seen in an athlete. Really?

Actually, maybe top three. And so, but surprisingly, after this training camp, he had a little bit more strength, and I noticed less of a drop in the arches of his foot. And so that says something about what we were doing. And there were points in the fight where you can see him bouncing around on his feet, and he looks pretty quick. I think even like the 10th or 11th round, he was popping around on his feet. And the announcer said, what is this?

He's bouncing around on his feet. He looks quick. What's he doing now? Is this some kind of strategy or whatever? And so we made incredible gains in like the strength of his feet and his calves. You know, unfortunately, he fights flat footed. He comes at you head first. That's just his style.

Yeah, he was coming on in the later rounds. Matisse was cracking him early in that fight. That was a war. That guy might have the best chin I've ever seen. Could very well be. He did get hurt. He got hurt in one of the rounds and it slowed him down. It's hard to not.

Matisse throws bombs. Yeah, he was really pleased with his conditioning, though. He actually came by on the way to the Pacquiao fight. He flew into LAX and he stopped by my gym and he wanted to give me a bonus. He's like, I've never felt like that in a fight. Even though I lost, like, that's the best I've ever felt. That's awesome. And I said, you know, I looked at his manager's match. I was like, maybe we should just wait until you win, and then we'll accentuate.

We'll take care of it on a winning day. Did you see the urine sample that he gave? Yeah. Whoa. Tasty, huh? Yeah. For folks who don't know, if you look on Provodnikov's Instagram page, there's a photo of his urine sample looked like Coca-Cola. Yeah.

We've showed it a bunch of times in this podcast because it's so fucking crazy. Yeah. I've heard of that before. Guys who do like ultra marathons. My friend Cameron Haynes, he's done an ultra marathon. He said you'd pee like Coke. Yeah. Breaking down muscle and dehydration and all that.

Kidneys. Kidney problems. You know, who knows. So that fight was just that fucking brutal it was insane i'll tell you what when the first i mean first of all i have so much respect for both of those guys like matisse and ruzlan are both in my top five top 10 fighters you know like matisse's punching power is freaking ridiculous ridiculous i remember i was in there and i was like where am i going to sit i you know i was going to be originally going to be a corner

and then i ended up getting a seat ringside. And I turn my back, and there's a first round, 10 seconds in. I'm already hearing the punches behind me. I'm like, oh, fuck, I've got to run around and get my ass over there as quick as I can because this might not go another round. I mean, you know you're in a good fight, and you can hear those punches landing. It's just ridiculous, like the power that they generate. Matisse is a monster, but so is Provodnikov. Provodnikov's

a monster. The way he fucking keeps coming and bombing and moving and throwing bombs, like, Jesus, what a fight that was. Well, yeah, and the cool thing about that was I like Ruzlan, but the last, the fights prior to that, you know, he had a tendency to fade

after three or four rounds, and whatever that was, you know, focus or conditioning, I don't know. But even if it's mental focus, you need to condition that as well. And so this training camp, I really dedicated a lot of time to learning how to push him into the later rounds and getting to bring it more and more as the fight progressed. Now, Freddie Roach trains him as boxing? Yeah. And what was, like, Freddie's assessment of, like, the difference in his performance

from training with you? Like, what he can get out of him in the gym? His sparring looked great. Everybody was pleased with his sparring, like, this time. They said this is the best he's ever looked in sparring. Like, phenomenal. And Ruzan's kind of like a robot. Like, whatever he does in sparring, he's pretty much going sparring, like phenomenal. And Roussan's kind of like a robot. Like whatever he does in sparring, he's pretty much going to do in the fight.

And so even in sparring, he would come on a little slow and then pick it up towards the later rounds of sparring. And so I don't think it surprised anybody in the performance. Like Freddie even said in the beginning, you know, it's a 50-50 fight. Like I don't know who's going to win this. And to be honest, that fight went down exactly how I thought it would. Exactly. In the dressing room, before we walked out, I pulled the ref aside and I asked him,

you know, hey, look, what happens if he gets headbutted in, like, first or second round? Shit you not. I asked him that. Wow. And I said, are you going to stop the fight? Are you going to have him check it? Are you going to let him keep fighting if there's blood? You know, I just wanted to get some things clear because I kind of had this weird feeling.

And sure enough, second round. And I had a feeling Matisse was going to win by decision. Sometimes you just get that weird feeling. There's an aura. And you can put all the work in you want, but you know if it's not your night, it's not your night. And there's just something there. Now, Provodnikov, what kind of diet does that guy follow because I've read some crazy shit about like until he was like yeah he'd only eaten raw meat no he still

eats raw meat really yeah not when he's here here he has a he has a nutritionist here but where does he eat raw meat like when he's in Siberia yeah what is they sell it like in his town I guess they sell it in restaurants and shit like you can go into a restaurant and just go hey i'll have a moose heart with a side of bacon really yeah so they're just they all they're all used to eating raw meat yeah they're like eskimos you know what i mean they're really they're really uh ahead of the times well there's something to be said for those genetics i'll tell you that yeah because those are some fucking stout human beings and that diet has got to be like incredibly nutrient dense protein absolutely if you're as long as you're eating you know game animals and not

predators you know you can pretty much get away with that they're eating bear you obviously couldn't eat it raw but eating a caribou or something like that raw is fine. You ever eaten it? I've eaten caribou before. Yeah, it's delicious. Is it? I love it. Yeah.

I'd be interested to try that. It's reindeer. You know, when you see reindeers, like Santa's reindeer, those are caribou. Yeah. Elk's delicious. I've had raw horse in Montreal. I had horse tartare. Yeah.

They ground up this raw horse and served it with egg on it and everything, raw egg on it. It was amazing. Yeah. There's this place called Joe Beef in Montreal. Is that fresh? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it has to be. So how do they do that?

Do they kill the whole horse? I don't know. If it's fresh, you'd think they'd kill the whole horse and someone would spoil, or do they just take off limbs at a time and then like... That's a good question. I don't know. Recessitate the thing. I don't know.

When you buy most beef that you buy from the store is fresh. Right. I mean, they're not freezing your steaks for the most part. Some fish is frozen, but almost all beef you're buying has been killed fairly recently. Some of it's dry-aged, but this, this horse was, you know, I guess actually they killed the horse in America, but you can't sell it in America in stores, but you can kill them in America and then they export them to, to Canada. It's very tricky, you know, because people have like very strong attachments towards them as animals, as pets. Yeah. But, uh, delicious.

Although weird. You know, I don't have a horse. If I had a horse, you know, I'm not about to eat a dog. Right. But if I had a horse, it might trip me out. Yeah. What's with the cats? I think I saw a picture of your cats or something.

You got cats? Yeah, I have cats. Is that bad? I have little girls. I've always had cats. I have a 19-year-old cat. Do you really? Yeah, I've had her since she was a baby.

Yeah. Is that bad? No. Something wrong with me? I've had her since she was a baby. Yeah, it's a bad No, it's just different I'm balanced man. Come on. You gotta get in touch with the feminine side touch with my feminine side I like little dogs too. Is that okay? Yeah, it's great. What if I have a little dog in a purse and I carry Chuck Liddell does. Does he? Chuck Liddell is a little tiny chihuahua you used to take with him everywhere.

Yeah. Nobody said it shit. Exactly. Ice man. Yeah, I like cats, man. My daughters love cats. Yeah. They're cute.

Oh, you got daughters? Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I saw a show of yours. Which one? A comedy club in Hermosa a few years ago. Oh, the Comedy Magic Club? Fucking phenomenal, dude. Oh, thanks's right. Yeah. Yeah, you know I saw a show of yours which one a comedy Comedy Club in Hermosa a few years ago. Oh the comedy magic fucking phenomenal. Thanks. Like I never saw it before I remembered you from the was it the sitcom news radio news radio

I thought you're pretty funny there and then I saw you at the thing my buddy got us tickets now It's just like blown away. Oh, thanks for the thing about the daughter sticking her hand Yeah, she's like i don't want to go to bench mad dog me that was a total true story i had to figure out how to react like this is you don't want to freak out about this because this will then she'll know that you can get a rise out of you that's the other day i made a mistake i swore in front of my kid he's it's gonna be two in a few weeks and i said that i was frustrated i was tired i want to get in the shower and i'm holding him in one arm and i hit the the dimmer on the light switch it doesn't work properly so you're always messing with it to get it to work i said fucking lights i just said it

under my breath dude i look at my son and i'm trying to get this thing to work my son goes fucking light okay that's great. So then, now everything. No, it's still going on. This was like a month and a half ago. It's still going on. Fucking Uncle Rudy. Fucking garbage cart.

You know, as soon as you give it a response, then it's like, oh, their eyes light up. You don't have to say anything. The minute your eyes just kind of latch on his like oh, dude Did you just say that? So two days ago mommy and me class kids are singing twinkle twinkle little star I shit you not fucking lights fucking lights Dude, I'm such I feel like such a bad dad. No yeah, don't let those people fuck with you Yeah, I'm not who cares you're a grown adult. You're you're a man. I said fork and knife. He said fork and knife. Oh, there you go. But don't even lie about it. Yeah. Is there anything wrong with saying those words today?

Right now, you and I together. No. Two grown adults. Nothing wrong. Absolutely not. Right? So, stop. Everybody stop. My wife always says that. My wife gets mad if I swear on the kids, you know, she's like, stop with the language. I'm like, listen, bitch, how the fuck do you think I make a living? I make a living with this language. This is called English. It's called American English. And occasionally we say fuck. Yeah.

Jesus. Don't say it at school, kids. All right. My three-year-old, when she was three, rather, we were skiing. I took them skiing from the time they were really little. Like my kids have been skiing since they were two. And when she was three, we're packing all the stuff up. We're getting ready to leave.

You know, we're leaving the trip. And we're in the hotel. And, you know, she's got her little bag zipped up. And my wife goes, we forgot to put the helmet in the bag. And the little kid, she's three, she goes, shit. And my wife looks at me and her eyes light up. And I had to fucking turn my face and run out of the room. Because I couldn't stop laughing.

Yeah, you gotta laugh. It was the funniest, but I didn't want to like... She finds something that's funny. She loves being funny because I'm a big laugher. So when she says funny shit, I just fucking fall over laughing. So I had to be real careful about that one when she was three. But it was just something funny about it. She wasn't even doing it like to get

attention or anything she was just looking at her suitcase my wife has the helmet and she realized the helmet's not in the suitcase she goes shit little tiny person saying shit is fucking hilarious like an adult yeah exactly like if we were it was just you and I

and you forgot your helmet you'd be like ah shit and that would be normal and that was normal to her. Yeah, I just I don't buy this. It's something wrong with kids swearing It's fucking stupid. Yeah, dumb. Well. There's a certain age when it's okay. What's that age is it 19? Is it when they start fucking is it when they drink when when is it okay to swear like we're babies with our fucking language? And it's so dumb because it's all just by television It's all like the censorship that we've imposed upon ourselves with television is the same censorship That we bring into the household and you expect from kids at school like I don't give a fuck about language I will I appreciate how people treat each other right like how do you how do you talk to me?

Are you nice are you friendly if you're friendly and you say, fuck, I feel good about talking to you. You know? If you're a rude person and you don't use bad language or you're uncomfortable or you're not kind or considerate, then I feel gross about talking to you. But if you're a normal person and you say, fuck, what kind of a weirdo cares about that? But we've imprinted it into our brains, and the same retarded shit, we pass it down from parent to child and parent to child. When does that stop? When do we

stop giving so much power to these stupid fucking words? It's dumb. As a parent, it drives me fucking crazy. It drives me crazy. Because I know that it's not... When people are alone, when they're comfortable, when they're together, when they're out drinking, when they're comfortable when they're together when they're out drinking when they're at You know at a bar a restaurant they swear and it's fun. It's free. Yeah, it's liberating

But you're in an office everybody's dressed like a fucking penguin some weird stupid outfits You know it's it's dumb doesn't make any sense It doesn't mean it's it's a weird habit that we're stuck in that people think is like oh You've got a lot of class with your language. Fuck you. Just shut up. This is stupid It's a dumb way to express yourself Doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah, I don't really think that much about it Drives me nuts. Yeah, it drives me nuts man because I've had like people come on my podcast and It drives me nuts, man, because I've had people come on my podcast, and someone will say it was a great podcast except for Rogan's language.

And my language. He asked great questions if you get past the language. It was a great conversation. What if you say it in a foreign language? Yeah, right? The word French, French word for fuck. It's just silliness. It's infantile. It's just, it's a silliness. It's infantile.

It's like, it's self-imposed infantile behavior. And when you're the adult, when you're a grown person, you're a fully grown adult, you pay your own bills, you feed yourself, the whole deal. You decide when you go to bed. Like, the idea that you are imposing this stupid language restriction. The only language I care about is language that expresses, like... Human interaction. Yeah. I care about is language that expresses like human interaction. Yeah, I Care about derogatory language. I care about offensive evil language racist language that kind of stuff bugs me But just saying fuck like the type of people that do that the good thing about that is if you find someone who cares about

That you know you're you're around an idiot. Just avoid that dummy I Got a little excited. Got a little carried away with that thought. We got off track. That's called- this podcast is- we should change the name of it to Off Track. What are you showing? Have you ever seen this store on Sunset? Pinches Tacos? Yeah, do you know what that means? No. Fucking tacos. Really? Yeah. Good. It's on Sunset Boulevard. I love it. Good. Good. I hope somebody protests. I hope some social justice warriors have it closed down because it's racist or something. I hope white people own it. I don't know.

Fung-gu. Yeah, I don't know, man. I just think we're very childish when it comes to language. That's not the point of this podcast. The point of this podcast, I have just so many questions for you. I have to get back to this because it's really fascinating. What do you think when you watch those countdown shows

and you see guys doing the battle ropes and there's a bunch of very specific things that you see. You see guys pushing sleds. That's a big one. The weight sled. Pushing that fucking sled. You see all these different

ways of training what what is like the biggest mistakes that you see or what you have you feel are biggest mistakes obviously the exercise modalities like i don't know how pushing a sled is even relative to like mma i mean if we're talking about mma here pushing guys up against the cage. What if you get a clinch on a guy? Are you pushing him or are you holding him? Well, if you're trying to push a guy up against a cage. Say if you get in a collar tie and you want to push a guy up against a cage, you want to work your muay thai. You want to work

knees to the body. I think it would be more about leverage of the leg, the placement of the leg and the leverage and the power of the foot, which I take it, which we go back to the strength in the feet. The strength of the foot cannot be understated. They've done studies like on Olympic weightlifters that show that the foot actually produces the greatest amount of force in the Olympic weightlifts.

Really? Yeah. It's the actual foot. If you look at the leverage of the joint there, it's just such a short lever. So the pushing off the ground is like for clean exactly That produces more force than the quadriceps even even the hip. That's amazing. Yeah so are you opposed to cleans and presses and things along those lines? I don't have my guys do them and I'm not gonna say they're terrible

I think if you start going too heavy then yeah, you're overloading your spine and you're doing a disservice to the rest of your body. Like what's too heavy? I think something that you can't do quickly and incorporate the stretch shortening cycle. Like I said, plyometrics, in my opinion, are the king for strengthening the body. So box jumps, those type of exercises where you're doing the descending bench press and catching it anything where the muscle is being put on stretch and then firing back at a at a faster rate so you can even do that manually like to exercise for the

hips you can do that with a hand throwing the leg down and and work it in different angles so imagine strengthening every muscle in your body plyometrically then you've got like a fast twitch animal that's that's highly trained can you take a guy who's slow yeah and you can make him fast absolutely there's a there through the stretch shortening cycle again which is the neural neural impulses uh that go through one muscle and the stretch shortening cycle actually like let me give me an example of this So imagine you go to the doctor and you're sitting in the doctor's chair and he comes up and he hits you in the knee You know he does the patellar test the kick test. That's a stretch shortening cycle and what he's doing He's testing for any kind of abnormalities like that might be in your spine or it might show up in your nervous system

It could be some other kind of disease or whatever. But what it's doing is it's sending a neural impulse through the tendon, okay, all the way up through the muscle into the spine, and then it inhibits the hamstring. So it switches the hamstring off, okay? And that's why your leg jerks without you even having to try to do anything right there. Really? You know, you just sit there. You're not making a kick. So that's what's going on?

Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, you just sit there, you're not making a kick. So that's what's going on? Exactly. So if you, exactly. So if you touch, if you hit the hand, if you hit the right on the patellar tendon, your leg kicks, it's actually switching off your hamstring simultaneously. The same time it's activating the quadricep.

So you get a greater, you get a greater contraction out of the quadricep without even trying. That's where the efficiency that you've been talking about comes in. So by training the stretch shortening cycle, you can duplicate that throughout the entire body as long as you're training every muscle like that. So do you have like a standard MMA fighter protocol that you follow or does it vary depending upon what the athlete brings to you in the first place? Do you try to get them to a place and then work from there? Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, we start with muscle testing to determine weaknesses like the feet and the hips. How do you do this? Manual testing,

like for example, I'll hold your toes and I'll have you try to push me back and I'll feel like it's like a manual muscle test, like something a chiropractor might do or a physical therapist, looking for weaknesses. And then the hips, you can test the abduction and adduction. You can turn the person over and you can test the rotation of their hip here, which is all these things play into the mechanics of sporting movements. So the rotational muscles of the hip, if you've got, let's say, your right-handed and you've got weak rotational muscles in the left and your left leg that's gonna affect your left hook mm-hmm right same with the right hand straight right hand if you got a

weak glute and ham contraction you're gonna have a weakness in your straight right hand if you're punching from the hip I'm assuming you're punching with good mechanics right and so all these these factors play into where we want to get them so like like first you would remediate the weakest link first so 99 times out of 100 it's the feet and the hips with the guys and then like usually the lower back and the shoulders so you can like watch the video i remember um gary i think is explaining it when he trained bj pen like you know first we fixed his feet and then his hips That's the same strategy for remediating weakness

Like you want to you want to strengthen all these weak links first to get the kinetic chain working You know all the way through so so if you get a guy and say the guy has a lower back issues Really common with BJJ players absolutely jiu-jitsu guys that work the guard Especially a lot of them have lower like Eddie Bravo, right? He's a serious lower back problems. What would you do to a guy like that? first of all, I probably want to turn him over and feel what his spine feels like and feel for For what the vertebrae is lined up like in his hips and I and then I do like a visual assessment It was lower back and tested. He's extremely an extremely flexible guy, right? In some ways.

Tight hamstrings, though. Tight hamstrings. Yeah, he's a guy that's all fucked up. I can probably fix him up, no problem. You think so? Absolutely. Really? Guaranteed.

Eddie Bravo. Yeah, where you at? Call Nick. Let's go, Eddie. I think I trained with him a long time ago, man. Yeah? He used to wear like the headgear and like a wetsuit thing on his head. Yeah, he did.

Oh, it must be John Jocks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was probably like 15 years ago. When he had really long hair. Yeah. He used to tuck his hair in a wetsuit thing on his head? Yes. Yeah, he did. It must be John Jocks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was probably like 15 years ago. When he had really long hair. Yeah. He used to tuck his hair in a wetsuit. Yeah, yeah. He was a pretty cool guy.

Yeah. Yeah, he's awesome. He's a character. Yeah. But his flexibility is very unusual. His leg dexterity is very unusual. Right. His hips, his ability to, you know, like what he calls jailbreak.

Like say if you have him in side control, he can pick his foot up without even grabbing with his hand Yeah, bring it across like that. Yeah, get a deep butterfly hook and then turn and face you. Yeah, it's amazing Yeah, that it's an amazing dexterity that yeah, no I guarantee I can fix it I've fixed NFL players backs and those guys have the worst backs So save you guy you get a guy who's got some bulging discs, a bunch of shit going on. Bulging discs, that's kind of sketchy. I don't want to be sued for anything, you know what I mean? But there are some

traction stretches you can do, like some manual therapy stuff that I've learned from a very well-respected neurologist and physiologist, crazy Russian guy, scientist. And so we've implemented a lot of that stuff to for the health of the spine and Yeah, there's some stuff you can do to relieve the pressure there

Because back and neck those are really common with grapplers So I know so many wrestlers who have fused discs like Tito Ortiz. I think he's got three fused He's got one his neck fuse and I think he's got two in his back. One in his lumbar, and maybe one thoracic or something like that. Yeah, I had to have the steroid injections in my neck. Did you? Yeah, I herniated five discs. Five? Yeah. Jesus. I was getting pretty

aggro back then. So I had the... Cortisone? Yeah, exactly. They put you to sleep for that? Is that the cortisone? I don't know. Yeah, they put me under for it man And it was it was it was I couldn't sleep for three weeks before I had the shots I mean I was up in so much pain my arm atrophied. It looked like a wet noodle Yeah, so you had a pretty good one. What happened to your neck?

I got thrown into a wall in Jiu Jitsu, and I just it just crunched But I think it was more like years and years of building up you know and then they found there's like a bone spur in there that like irritates the nerve and so do they have to go in there and take the bone spur out probably will one day but not yet I have so many friends that have atrophy issues uh with the neck where their arm shrinks yeah boss rooting he had having his neck fused. He actually had some significant neck problems for years. And then he was on, I think it was on Sons of Anarchy, one of those shows,

where he was doing a stunt and they threw him on his head. And it just cracked. Oh, man, yeah. And his arm just went, and then it shrunk up where he calls it baby arm. He's got one arm. It's still to this day. It hasn't regained. Oh, wow, really?

Yeah, he had several operations. He had his disc fused in his neck. He had the nerve opening. They go in there and they sort of carve it out and clear the opening to relieve the pressure on the nerve. Yeah. And even that, like he probably did it all too late and his arm had been atrophied for so many years that it just uh it's a long process to rebuild the nerves man i know about that is that for you yeah well i was in a car accident too where i was actually rear

ended the guy was going about 100 miles an hour yeah so shattered my pelvis broke my hip i've got a plate in there now, like a steel plate. Whoa. Yeah. And so I was in a wheelchair for like six months. Jeez. But the nerve, like apart from all the muscular, you know, rebuilding the muscles and all that, the nerve pain from the recovery was the worst.

I mean, I still have it. Like right now I can feel it on my foot. This is like 10 or 12 years ago. Wow. And I just felt like animals were eating my toes off, man. I remember waking up one night like screaming in pain. Like, fuck, dude, my foot is something's eating my foot. And I look down there and the toes are kind of moving on their own.

And that was the nerve waking back up. Wow. And it was excruciating. I mean, even like I said, even to this day, I still feel it, you know, get some issues in my toes with that. That's why a lot of guys that have back pains and women as well, obviously, they get really hooked on pain pills. It's like it gets to a point where... I got hooked on them, man. I'm not going to lie.

Did you? To the point where I would take my pain pills and then I would take a laxative because the shit makes you constipated. So, like, I was taking a lot of those things, like, on a daily basis. You're doing that for four or five months man you're gonna get hooked how'd you get off my will I think that was it

yeah I think I'm weird like that like I don't get addicted to things but like when I go too deep if I feel like something bad is gonna happen to me like emotionally

I can snap out of it but yeah self preservation but man I got, you know, and I think when I used to think about taking them, I get that taste like under my tongue, like candy, you know what I mean? Like that.

Yeah, I mean, it was. Brennan Schaub said the same thing. Schaub didn't even realize he was hooked on them. He was taking them every day for like three or four months. And then his friends apparently intervened and said, hey, dude, you're fucking whacked out all day Yeah, you got to get off these pills where the pills they went to his house cleaned out his Bathroom cabinet and said enough dude. We just did that with my buddy like two weeks ago

He had a dirt bike accident his fucking bone Okay, can I tell you a quick story please okay? You know what those razor things are have you ever seen a razor? It's a little scooter thing yeah with a cage around them. I mean they're built to crash. Oh no oh Can I tell you a quick story? Please. Okay. You know what those razor things are? Have you ever seen a razor? Those little scooter things? Yeah, with a cage around them. I mean, they're built to crash. Oh, no. Oh, fuck. No, I think I'm looking at a different thing.

It's kind of like an ATV, but a little bigger, and two guys, like a dune buggy, like a miniature dune buggy with a cage around it, and guys go up hills. Like, you can see all these fucking guys in the south love them. And, yeah. So, you know where I'm going with this song. It's fucking gnarly. So, this guy, a couple of my buddies buy a brand new one they're like come on out it'll give me a great weekend man let's go fucking riding this weekend whatever uh long story short these guys ended up in the

hospital they flipped the thing and one guy busted his scalp open he's got a hole like the size of a golf ball broke his arm my other buddy broke his arm in like four places just had surgery so our third friend who went with him he called me He's like man these guys have been an accident the next day He said someone sends me a text of him laying down with a bone popping out of his fucking Indian burial ground dude what the fuck is this shit? Like always getting out maimed yeah, it's a great weekend guys thanks But one of them got really hooked on the pain meds.

And he went from being a super active guy to just staying home all day, being hooked on pain meds. And we were like really worried about him. Like he was calling us like crying, like, dude, I'm going to do something bad. I'm going to fuck him. Oh, man. And we got this thing called bro chat on Facebook. A bunch of, a group of our old buddies got together and we started a group chat like

probably like two months ago. Every one of us has practically been kicked off facebook for it for one reason or another sending pictures you can imagine the shit we're sending there but man we all got together on bro chat and we saved his life dude wow bro chat saves it saves and it pisses off wives because i swear to God Every one of us is on there till like 1130 at night just laughing our ass off while the girls are putting the babies to sleep You get off the fucking phone man. You gotta get a girlfriend or something Well said hey, honey. I'll give you a blowjob if you get out the phone. I fuck Wow hilarious, so hmm bros before blowjobs. Yeah, I'm like yes So not me I mean I'm like yes, not me

I just come in there to save you man. That's it. I've had several friends that have had like serious pill issues It's it's it's weird how prevalent they are and how easy it is to get them Yeah, you know I had my nose fixed I had deviated septums that cleared it all out cut the turbinates out stretched open the the the openings like put splints in there and shit and actually It kind of widened the physical look of my nose It kind of changed a little bit because it was like a little more sucked out I had like nasal breathing anyway point is it wasn't fucking painful really I mean it was when it was over it was See, I need that. It's great.

I have a deviated septum. This is one of the best things I've ever done. I didn't do it until I was like, I think I was 39 or something like that. But once I did it, it was like, I get this break. Rafael just had that done. Did he? Yeah. Because of... I don't know if it, you know, I think it had been going on for a long time.

Like, he had it so bad he couldn't even breathe out of one of his nostrils. Junior Dos Santos did as well. Huh. Interesting. Well, it's been going on for a long time. Like, he had it so bad he couldn't even breathe out of one of his nostrils. Junior Dos Santos did as well. Huh. Interesting. Well, it's just fighting, you know. Yeah. I had my nose broken for the first time when I was five. I fell down a flight of stairs, and it was always kind of crooked.

Like, the bone's kind of weird in it. It was inside. It was always fucked up. But then years of just getting smashed in the face. Uh-huh. It just gets awful. To the point, like, you remember Vandelay? What Vandelay's nose used to look like? Yeah. Flat to his face. Yeah. a point like you remember Vandele what Vandele's nose you slow. Yeah

Flat to his face. Yeah, just smushed down. No cartilage at all Everything just mushed and every time it talk you do Anything come out of the nose Good fight. They're for good fight. All right He he had his fixed and he went deep the other way Yeah, I got like an extra big nose so he could breathe better. Like, they constructed a nose out of his rib. Looks great.

Yeah. How dare you? How dare you? I see you're being sarcastic. Well, I mean, for practical purposes, you want to be a fighter. Yeah, absolutely. Smarter what he did. Shows a lack of vanity.

It does. He didn't try to look fucking pretty at all. He cut out all his scar tissue in his eyebrows. You know, because he was getting that. There's another thing that fighters get is that sort of relaxed eye thing. It impedes vision. Absolutely. Some guys have it so bad that you can see their lids.

Yeah. Because I guess it's from punishment, from getting hit. Repetitive scar tissue. Yeah, the repetitive scar tissue and also like the relaxation of the muscle. Deadening of the nerves probably, yeah. So it starts to fall over the eye and it actually gets in the way. That's Vandelay, but that's Vandelay before he got fucked up. That's Vandelay in probably like 2003.

That's the early days of Vandelay. That's Vandelay when he was the pride champion. Labeled nose number one. Yeah. Well, you got see Vandale and that's what he looks like now. I mean, his eyes are different, but that's not what he looked like right after

the surgery. That's his face which kind of relaxed. Yeah, I remember. It was kind of like Catwoman after the surgery, right? Dude! He came onto the scales at the UFC and he was cornering somebody. and he stepped up to the cage like that's him you see where the pink tape on his gloves that's him in his his best yeah that's before his nose was fucked up that's when that's probably him in 2001 or something like that I mean

that was uh that was Vanderlei in his prime I want to say that looks like he was right before Rampage Jackson or something like that. 2001, 2002, his nose was fine. And then if you see like Vanderlei versus Chuck Liddell, I have a poster on my wall in my gym at home of Vanderlei versus Chuck Liddell, and Vanderlei's nose is just smashed. It's just like flattened to his face. And that was like that one where his arms are up in the air, Jamie.

See that picture up there? Click on that go go large on that you could see in that one i think that's that's it seems like after the kung lee fight that's tough to tell there but for a lot of the fights like his nose was just useless he couldn't breathe out of it so he went the other way and he got this fucking crazy nose job where they gave him a bigger nose so he could breathe out of it yeah so you see like nose number three like that image right there yeah look at how much bigger his nose is but that's smart it's like he did that so he could breathe out of it better it's a lot bigger like the bone or the cartilage you could see it like goes lower like when you're talking to him yeah it went lower to like so like he has a big accentuated

cartilage there That guy has taken some fucking punishment. You want to talk about a warrior? Yeah, it's Christ. I mean that guy has Been in fucking wars like down there. You see all those images Look at that one where he's got the white tank top right there to the right of that, right below that. Yeah, right there. That's where you could see. Eh, tough. Nah, it's not even at his worst. It's not even at his worst. At his worst was right before he got the operation. I think it was just

completely fucked. Is that after the operation right there? I don't think that's That might be photoshopped. He was Jimmy Durante for Halloween. Ha-cha-cha-cha! Boy, that's a dated reference. There, right there, that black one in the black shirt. Oh, man.

Yeah, his nose is pretty smashed there. But that might be after a fight. Yeah, I mean, that's not even at the worst. I mean, that guy has taken some fucking insane damage in his career, and we've watched his face alter because of that damage. Out of all the fighters in the UFC and in pride and in MMA in general his face has altered the most because of punishment Minotauros probably second close yeah but I've had no lace more than anybody because he's the one who got it fixed

he's the only only one of those guys that got it fixed Nick Diaz had some stuff done to his eyebrows to use. He had so much scar tissue and he actually had his bone shaved down too because the edges of his bone were quite sharp. Yeah, that'll cut you. I got a couple guys I train in the Philippines like that. They're pretty susceptible to cuts. You want to see some boxers, man.

Did you see the Gennady Glovkin and the Chocolatito card? People told me, dude, you want to go see Gennady Glovkin this weekend at the Forum? I said, no, I want to go see Chocolatito. Chocolatito is a bad dude. One of my guys fought him in Japan about maybe six months

ago and did a hell of a lot better than the other guy. The ref kind of stopped it short. I don't think we would have won. We probably wouldn't have won that fight either way. You know, Chocolatito is amazing. But these lighter weight divisions, 112 division and the 108 division right now are like exciting divisions. And I'm just stoked that they got some coverage in the U.S. like on HBO. Yeah, me too.

Because it shows like, I mean, it's really stacked. If you really look into it, the lighter weight, man, it's really stacked. And there's a lot of action, like a lot of knockouts. As long as they have short referees, everything looks okay. Like a jockey doubles as a ref. That'd be sick. If you have a 108-pound fighter, you've got to have a little tiny referee. Right.

Maybe lower the ropes a little bit, too. Good move. I would. I really thought about that the last fight. You see better. But I got a guy who i train in the philippines donnie nietes donnie ahas nietes he's the longest reigning filipino champion of all time and this guy is such an exciting fighter he moved his nickname is ahas which in tagalog means snake

whoa so he moves like a snake in the ring like his head movement his speed and timing are just on another level but he's got one punch knockout power. For a 108-pound fighter, it's ridiculous the power this guy generates. Whatever happened to Nonito Diner? I'm actually going to be seeing him in a few weeks in the Philippines. Yeah? I worked with him for one fight, and I actually ended up having to leave maybe three or four weeks before the fight. You know, some things, whatever.

I think my personal opinion, I like the guy. As a person, he's a fucking great guy, dude, like a really cool person. Seems very cool. He really is. But I think when he got that fighter of the year thing, maybe it went to his head a little bit. Nonito, I'm sure you're probably hearing this. Sorry, dude.

But I think it went to his head a little bit, and maybe the ego got in the way, and he kind of stopped listening to the coaches. And it was evident in the Walters fight. He even said, like, I stopped listening to my dad. I should have been listening to my dad on the corner. And look what happened. And I said this in the training camp to some people in his entourage. I said, you know what? He's not listening to me.

He's coaching his dad, like, how to train him. Like, you know, this guy could potentially be one of the best boxers we've ever seen if he just listens. At this rate, something's going to happen. He's either going to get knocked out or he's going to get hurt. And then everybody's going to snap and they're going to say, hey, we should have fucking done this or we should have done that. You know what I mean? And now he's doing it.

He's back and he's dedicated. Is it too late? How old is he? No, he's 30. I think he's 31. But at a really light weight. He's fighting a 122,. Is it too late? How old is he? No, he's 30. I think he's 31. But at a really light weight. He's fighting at 122, I think now, right? Yeah.

Is that right? I think so. He will kill the guys in his division. He'll destroy them. Yeah, he's 32. It seems like at that age, at the lower weight classes, if he was 32 years old and he was fighting at heavyweight, I would say, oh, he's in his prime.

Yeah, keep going. Yeah, I mean, those, it seems like heavyweights mature later. Do you agree with that? You know, I don't know, to be honest. Maybe. I was wondering about that. That was actually one of the things I wanted to ask you about. Is it because, like, a guy like Vladimir Klitschko, who's just this massive person,

I always wondered, like, does it take longer to develop efficiency of movement and the ability to move your body better, to understanding your body, if you have more of it to learn? You know, if you're, say, if you're dealing with a much larger frame, much more body mass, is it more gravity? You're dealing with more gravity. You're dealing with the influence of that gravity. It slows you down.

You're obviously slower than a lighter weight person. Is it more difficult to develop mastery of skill? Yeah, I think, you know, that's a good question, Joe. I think there is maybe some truth to that. Like the length of the limb requires, you know, the leverage that you get on the muscles is going to be a lot greater. Like the torque you need to generate out of the smaller muscles to control the larger limb, of course, that's going to play a big role. So the length of the limb can determine, you know, how much force you can produce also.

So it'll play a role in the mechanics. But I think, yeah, I think it is maybe a little bit harder for some of those big guys. Just strictly, like, on the, I don't know, maybe it's the relative strength. You know, I don't know. I really can't answer that. I don't know. I always felt like they're just dealing with more gravity. Like it seemed to me like lighter weight guys,

especially back in the kickboxing days, I had noticed that the lighter weight guys seemed to learn quicker. They seemed to pick up the skills quicker they're obviously always faster it could be a higher degree of relative strength to like your strength to body weight ratio you know I mean so so it could have something to do with it because the other thing is you never see a guy at heavyweight that can move like Mighty Mouse right like they just don't exist. No.

I mean, you look at, if you watch Mighty Mouse, Demetrius Johnson, the UFC flyweight champion, the guy who, in my opinion, is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. I think when it comes to taking the least amount of punishment, the ability to make great fighters look average, the ability to impose his skill set, never runs out of gas and is always technically he's always in the best position he's always doing the right thing like it's really really well trained I've never seen a fucking heavyweight even remotely move like that like the best heavyweight in the world is Cain Velasquez obviously and he's gonna beat Verdun it's tough fight it's

very tough fight because his big strength is taking guys down. Yeah. You know, take Verdun down. You're in a world of shit. Yeah. That guy is no joke off his back. His fucking guard is head and shoulders above anybody that Kane has ever faced, without a doubt. Absolutely.

And I don't know who he brought in to train with it, but they're not good enough. No. Who the fuck are you going to bring? Unless you bring it in, you'd have to bring in like a Vinny Magalhaes, like someone who's like a really, and only specifically work the ground aspect of it. Because Vinny can't hang with Verdum on the feet. Right. Because Rafael has done an amazing job of taking those guys and turning them into kickboxers. I mean, he's just fucking, he's a master. Rafael Cordero, one of the original guys from Shoot to Box,

the original Brazilian berserker camp out of Curitiba, Brazil. They were fucking animals, man. They were just the most feared camp ever at the time, you know? But he's so smart and so skillful at taking those grapplers and turning them into elite strikers. You look at Dos Anjos, you look at Verdum. Verdum out-kickboxed Travis fucking Brown. Right.

And Travis Brown's an animal. Right. You know, you figure if Verdum's going to beat Travis Brown, he's going to take him down and submit him, right? Mm-hmm. No. Kicked his ass standing. I mean, that was crazy.

Watch him double-jab Travis Brown, you know? Yeah. I mean, that was crazy to watch. Yeah. When you go back to his fight with Junior dos Santos or even before that his fights in pride And you see the rudimentary striking he had back then and then you look at his abilities now pretty goddamn impressive Cordero is a great striking coach and a humble guy to really really nice guy. He's a great guy I love that dude

But if you you look at the best fighters in the world the the world, the two best guys in the heavyweight division currently, the best of all time, I kind of got to go with Fedor. I just think Fedor, yeah, I think he's the best of all time in the heavyweight division. Heavyweight division. I mean, maybe Kane would have beat him. I would have loved to have seen him. What about the natural? Randy is really a light heavyweight.

I mean, I think at at heavyweight he was undersized i mean he was a great great fighter but i think honestly pound for pound i just don't i mean fedor easily could have been 205 too by the way you know he wasn't a he wasn't a like when you see a guy like that's carrying around all that extra fat what do you think about that like cane carries around extra fat yeah uh i think as long you know again that's that's uh does it matter obviously not but it does it i mean look he's obviously a monster right but would he be better if he had very little more muscle yeah no not necessarily no because that goes back to what we're saying about like the rate of force development and how, if you look how explosive Fedor is, despite not being, looking like Hercules. Right.

Right? That goes back to what we're talking about, the rate of force development and how the nervous system, you know, plays the greatest role in how much force you produce. So how explosive you are. He's an interesting case, too, in that he started off his career early on he was into heavy kettlebells did a lot of lifting and he was a thicker bigger guy yeah and then as time went on he he talked about how he didn't lift weights anymore and he just relied on skill training yeah he just would wrestle and do sambo and kickboxing and all that stuff i remember you asking i think i heard a show where you're asking,

you know, you're wondering what the Russian guys are doing, like these wrestling guys, like what are they doing for their conditioning? The truth is, not much. They're not doing weights. A lot of them, they're just wrestling. I know this because, I don't know if you know, I train Aaron Pico. Are you familiar with Aaron Pico? Yeah, so he's one of my guys too.

So I train him, and he goes out there for months at a time and trains with the Russians and Ukrainian national teams. And he says, no, they just wrestle. That's it. No strength and conditioning? Not really, no. Wow. What do you think about that? Maybe some running and stuff like that.

I think, well, they've got great wrestlers. Right. So I would almost rather have that than have a detrimental thing in there like heavy weightlifting or something like that. So you'd have yeah i would rather have them just focusing all their energy on their skill and doing some like cardiovascular training have you ever seen the workouts that kane velasquez does i haven't you want to throw up sure okay yeah i don't mean a good way check it out kane velasquez has some weight lifting routines that he has some guy working out with him. I showed it to Steve Maxwell. Steve Maxwell got angry.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. Let's check it out. He's got a video. Yeah. Show kettlebell swings. He's doing really heavy kettlebell swings.

I'm not lying. Maxwell got angry. Really? He got angry. Steve Maxwell, the kettlebell master, right? That guy's been into it for a long time, huh? Well, he's not just a kettlebell master. He's just an overall fitness guru.

Right. Like he understands the human body. He's like a real student of all sorts of different modalities. Like watch this. Yeah, watch this. He's got this giant kettlebell. Oh, my gosh. Look at this.

He's like kind of, it's almost like he's doing like. Look at how tense he is. Yeah, but it's not really a swing because he's kind of pulling it up. It's more like almost like a deadlift. Yeah, I mean, it's got to make him stronger, but the lower back thing he's doing is not swing like. He's like popping it up. Right.

Whereas every other kettlebell swing you'll see. I have no idea how it's going to help him in the UFC. It's going to make him stronger, I guess. It it's gonna make him stronger at doing kettlebells that's about it lay some pipe like a motherfucker see if you can find a correct technique double-handed kettlebell swing online like maybe Maxwell has a video or someone or mike mauler is very good at that and he's uh he's a great uh instructor as far as like proper fundamentals but there's a bunch of those that he has like one of them is leg extensions i'll show you the cane velasquez leg extension one he'll throw up at that one too because he's doing like 300 pounds leg extensions and he's just had

sets of 20 or 30. 20 ACL and something. I wonder how that happened. Crazy. Right. Both shoulders blown out. Is his shoulders repaired? See this guy.

This guy's using three pounds. This might not be the best guy to look at. But this is how it's supposed to look. Right. He's popping his hips forward, and the arm swings. That's why it's called a kettlebell swing. Yeah, I went through the kettlebell phase too like 10, 15 years ago. You were an early adopter?

Yeah. I love them. Do you? My favorite thing to work out with. You know what? For an athlete, I wouldn't have them doing them to be honest. Really? Yeah.

But for guys like you and me, as we're getting older, like I'm going to be 42, I need to keep the muscle on a little bit. So yeah, for general fitness, I don't think there's anything wrong. Performance wise, like I said, the movement movement pattern there you're sitting back on your heels you're training excuse me you're sitting back on your heels you're training yourself to to i felt it affect me like i've been in that position where i've been training with guys and i'm like fuck why is this guy taking me down i'm way better than this dude like but he's beating me to the punch every time because i was sitting back on my heels i was in that kettlebell posture when i'm standing there trying to really take down i'm standing there with my back bent and my heels are flat on the ground

why couldn't i get off my toes because i've trained my body to sit back on the heels that's interesting so you your body like automatically went into that posture exactly so you can retrain that though that's the good thing. It takes some time, but you train the forefoot so you're quicker on it. How many times have you heard it in sports? Man, these guys are on their toes now. They really look great. What do you think about Turkish get-ups for grappling?

I'm a big fan of those. I just don't know how that plays into grappling. Just being able to lift heavy weight off of you, get up off your back, have that core strength. Again, I don't know how that plays into grappling. Just being able to lift heavy weight off of you, get up off your back, have that core strength. Again, like, I don't know. I think at a high, really proficient level of jiu-jitsu, you're not going to lift anything off you. You're going to move around it. You know what I mean? Like, maybe the best out. Shoulder stability, maybe?

Does it help in that way? It's only going to help wherever you, you know what, I don't know. Like, I was having this problem with my back, and this guy gave me advice. This guy was a strength and conditioning coach to do a lot of windmills. He was like, windmills, kettlebell windmills, like dropping down like that, are really good for stabilizing the spine, stabilizing the shoulder joint, and anything that is in the thoracic area and yeah the cervical area as well yeah what do you think about neck exercises I love them

do you but I'm not big on like the neck bridging I think that the discs are so small in the neck that you know you put man I used to do like 45 pound plates on my chest and do the neck bridges on the back of my head really just stupid i've got this exercising machine uh it straps on your head i mean you look like a retard like is it that eight-way neck machine is that what it is or is it a different thing damn maybe i have a picture or something i don't know if i have a picture on my instagram or not but no it's what's it called it's called a halo oh i've seen that have you okay yeah it's what's it called? He's called a halo. Oh, I've seen that have you okay? Yeah, it's got a strap under the chin

Yeah, and a velcro strap on the top and you pump it up with air and it's like this big metal thing I mean you look you look ridiculous wearing it And what do you do and you can exercise in all ranges of motion? It has like an elastic band that you'll attach to a wall so you can put just a little bit of tension tension on it Pull the see if you can find that Jamie if not, I have a video on my phone on it. See if you can find that, Jamie. If not, I have a video on my phone. I don't know if you can show that on there. Probably. But it's pretty cool. If you can email it to him,

he can show it. Don't give out his email in the air, though. No, you don't have a battery? We have a charger, I'm sure. That's an iPhone? Yeah. This thing? Is this it right here? Similar to that. Netflix Halo? No, this one is a little more hardcore than the one I got.

It's about like $700 or $800. Does it have a... So it has a rubber band? Yeah, it's got like a band attachment. Man, do you have a thing I can plug this in? Yeah, and I'll show you. Is there a... There's a plug back there somewhere?

Right behind you? That's it, right there. Oh, okay. Check this thing out. Oh, whoa. Look at this fucking thing. Yeah. Little spaceship looking thing.

Yeah. Okay, so this. I really like this. Oh, so it rotates, so it moves around. Yeah, so you can hit every angle. Mmm, okay. And that's the pump up part. Right.

The little, so you put it on. Uh-huh. Oh, I have seen this. Okay. And that's the pump-up part, the little... So you put it on. Oh, I have seen this. Okay. I've seen this very video. So he has this thing on, and it's just a rubber band that's the resistance? Yeah, exactly like that. Or you can use it with like a weight...

So he's moving his head and spinning around in a circle. Yeah. So you can exercise at all different angles. What is the resistance, though? Is the resistance the spinning of his head and spinning around in a circle. Yeah. So you can exercise at all different angles. What is the resistance, though? Is the resistance the spinning of his head, or is it pulling? It's a combination of the two. That looks like a cable. So if you see it's pulling right there, he'll be exercising the side of his head.

If he faces it, he'll be exercising the back of his neck. Excuse me, the side of his neck. He looks like he's got a steel cable, like he's doing a lat pulldown. Yeah, he's probably got it hooked up to a cable machine. I have a guy I'm training right now. He's actually going to Mexico next week for a title fight, but he put on two inches in the last month. Oh, his neck?

Yeah, on his neck. Is that good? Yeah, it's fucking great. It's 108 pounds with a 16-inch neck. Jesus Christ. It's called the Iron Neck, a dynamic neck-strengthening rotary cable attachment. with a 16 inch neck. Jesus Christ. It's called the Iron Neck. Dynamic neck strengthening rotary cable attachment.

Gives pointers as he takes a college football player through the Iron Neck basic workout. Huh. So you have this guy. He puts this exact thing on that you got right here. Yep.

And then what do you have him do with this? Similar stuff to like what you just saw right there. Like rotational exercises of the neck. And it's all... It's like this. It to like what you just saw right there like rotational exercises on the neck and it's all this look like circular movements all different movements and that doesn't with the discs or anything no no no because it's very i mean lightweight well yeah if you're gonna go

on there and put like you know 80 90 pounds on there 100 pounds or something what do you think about those uh traditional ones that people use those those leather things with a chain that hangs down? I'm not a big fan of them. I think because it's too linear. And again, you don't really get the stretch out of the muscle. It's just like an isotonic contraction. So that's just the same weight going up and down over and over. Right. Now, would you recommend something like that to somebody who had a neck injury they're trying to recover from? This one here? Yeah. You know what? I think, actually, I believe they use them at the Disc Institute or the place in L.A., you know, Marina Del Rey, the spine or whatever, disc or something like that. Whatever they have at places, yeah.

Yeah, I think they have it there. So they use that for rehabilitation? I believe so, yeah. Because there's a lot of different, like Kelly Starr, again, I hate to bring him up again, but he hates a lot of these machines that are out there like those machines where you can like yeah four-way neck flexion extension all that stuff you hate those things too I don't hate but I just don't I don't use them I think it's too the the pattern of the movement is too linear it's not efficient enough

for like sports and stuff right so it doesn't mimic how you would use the neck in real life Same like a squat or maybe a bench press. You know what I mean So I think if there would be a way to strengthen your neck up That would be really crucial for striking sports anything where your heads getting jolted back more than it should yeah And then the endurance of the neck is like you know you're in a longer bout You know it's you can't resist anymore. Right. And then you get pop, your head flies back more.

Absolutely. Guys doing their tires. I think it's been shown too to reduce concussion, like the damage from head injuries, you know. I'm sure. So that Ruslan, we use that thing frequently. He can do it also with like an exercise ball. You can put it against the wall and roll your head against it, you know what I mean? Oh yeah.

There's a lot of different ways. He can use a towel. So, I mean, I've got a lot of different modalities I use. But, yeah, we really focus with Ruslan, like, durability for this training, too. Really building the abdominals and the obliques and the lower back and then the neck. And what kind of exercises do you do for the abdominals? You know, I like the, we call it the horse, but the glute hand machine. You can do a lot of abdominal exercises on there.

You can do like the Russian twist. I like that exercise. I like a lot of like medicine ball, rotational medicine ball throws. So the glute hand machine, you're like leaning back. So yeah. Way back on the, like the big padded hump. Yeah, exactly. That one.

Yeah. Why do you, why do you like that one particularly? It's, I just, it's pretty versatile, I think. For how basic it is, I think it's pretty versatile as far as the amount of exercises and how specific you can get with each muscle group. Like if I want to target your obliques, I can hit that oblique so easily just by turning your hip a certain way. You know what I mean? And I can find all these little weak areas in the abdominals and the feet lock in yeah and sort of a similar way to like an old school like sit-up bench yeah exactly and when you do you how's those old school sit-up benches

are those uh you know i don't think so i think you can get some good work done on those believe or not like yeah i'm not but they're not as good as the yeah no i my preference is is the glute ham i like that better that's the glute ham yeah exactly yeah and that's that's a guy facing forward you have him face backwards yeah you can go both ways yeah lower back you want to get the back in there and um and that machine seems like it would give you some spinal decompression as well absolutely yeah that's phenomenal for for the lower back and and is that guy holding a weight in his chest when he's doing that? If you look up that image? What are those two guys doing

on the right? They're banging. That's the way to do it. If you're gonna bang a guy, yeah, what the fuck is that? That's the same guy. Two different faces. Come on, is it? Yeah, that's what it is. No, this guy's banging his buddy. That's how you do it. You know, it's pretty interesting. You know how that was...

You know how that machine was invented was the Russians took a pommel horse and they moved it up to the wall. They stuck a two by four on the wall. Oh. And they just put their feet on the wall and did bag extensions over it. No shit. Yeah. Pretty cool, huh?

That is pretty cool. Have you seen the reverse hyper? Yeah, I have. What do you think about that? I think it's good. I have one of those back there. I think it's... I love that thing. Yeah, I have. What do you think about that? I think it's good. I have one of those back there. I love that thing. Yeah, I think there's some.

Is that better, do you think? The glute ham? I think the way you do the exercise is the most important. Uh-huh. That's the key. What's cool about the reverse hyper is on the descending, it's got like an active decompression. It's like releasing. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Well, you feel it. Yeah like an active decompression. It's like releasing. Oh, is that right?

Yeah. Well, you feel it. You feel like pulling on your lower back slightly, and then you're lifting up and strengthening all that. Yeah. So now this, like for sports performance, the speed at which you do that would be a crucial factor. You want to feel the stretch out of the tendons and ligaments before it fires back up.

And the weight that you would put on it. Exactly. Like how much weight would you put on that? Maybe start off with two and a half pound ankle weights at first. Really? Yeah. See it, you know. And just build it up.

Yeah. So you would explode up, lower down, explode up. I don't load guys up with weight unless the quality of the movement and the speed will not be compromised. So if that's compromised, then there's no sense in moving it up. For me, it's all about getting the guy faster, producing more force. So when you have a guy like Dos Anjos, and you obviously got him in incredible shape, do you incorporate any traditional exercises that people are familiar with,

like, say, hill sprints or sandbags or anything? Hill sprinting is kind of like that's old school, you know? people are familiar with like say hill sprints or sandbags or anything and hill sprint like hill sprinting is kind of like that's old school you know like i used to do that shit like crazy but fuck man i pushed myself to the limit like oh my heart rate's like 190 wow i'm really pushing it 195 but it slows you down your sprinting should be for done for speed again so running up a hill why would you try to go fast? You're running against resistance. You're making yourself slow.

It's actually been shown that it's proven. You can look this up in the strength and conditioning manuals, whatever, that downhill sprinting has been shown to increase the top speed in sprinters' performance. Downhill? Because you're decelerating. You're slowing yourself down. Because it's forcing your body to adapt to a higher speed You know what I mean, so instead you're going up hills. You're forcing your body to adapt to a slower speed But you feel like you're gonna fucking face plant at any moment, right?

I think the biggest misconception with all the resistance type training is that Somehow you're gonna put the weight down and you're going to move faster. Right. People believe that. But why? Because you can lift the heavier weight, and so your muscles are stronger, and it makes you faster. Exactly.

Doesn't work that way? No, it doesn't work that way. Wasn't there some sort of a study on powerlifters that they found out that powerlifters, they'd increased their ability to do vertical leaps and all sorts of other different explosive exercises just because of powerlifting? There might be some truth to that. And Olympic lifting as well, they found they're good sprinters.

But you would say that that's strengthening of the feet? I'd say that has a lot to do with it, but also the strength of the quadriceps in relation to the leg in relation to the rest of the body. But how do they move laterally? How do they move rotationally? That's where they're deficient. Well, when you see a really big, bulky guy in the UFC, it becomes super obvious when they fight a guy who can move,

moves real good, they're almost like stuck in mud. Exactly. But for some guys, their style, like Husmar Palhares, he's a guy where that big, beefy fucking build. All he's trying to do is grab ahold of your leg and rip it apart. Right. So it's like, it's almost for him, it seems to benefit him to be, like, really over-muscular and super strong because he's about that very small movement.

Uh-huh. Or a very small group of movements, rather. It's pretty interesting because I'm actually training another guy from the UFC. I just started working with him about a month ago. Ricardo Demanche Abreu. Oh. Demanche. Cyborg?

No. Ricardo, that's a... Ricardo Abreu. This guy's another really good jiu-jitsu guy from Brazil. But this guy is... How long has he fought in the UFC? I don't know how many fights he has now. Maybe this will be his second or third, I think.

He's pretty new. I'm thinking a Cyborg or Brew. He's fighting on the June 6th card, I think. There's one on June 6th, right? Probably. It's one of the fight night cards. Yeah, he's fighting on that one. Oh, there he is.

Yeah, that's him. How many fights has he had in the UFC? Just one. One. Yeah. Fight night, renegade choke. Who did he? Just one. One. Yeah. Fight night, renegade choke, hoodie fight,

Wagner. Okay. He's another guy. I mean, you look at this guy and he is just like freakishly built. He was in the Brazil card,

the Miochic versus Maldonado card. Really good jujitsu too. This guy. Like he's fought with the Hodger Gracie and all those guys. And he's like really, but he is a classic case of a guy

who's lifting, I mean he's huge, but just ripped. And he's lifting all these heavy weights slowly. I got him out there the first day of sprinting, I couldn't believe how slow the poor guy was. Slow on molasses. It blew my freaking mind. Here's this gigantic muscle-bound guy and the guy couldn't,

it looked like he was jogging. Really? Yeah. Maybe he was taking it slow because he thought you were going to torture him. No, dude. Go slow today. I don't want to get that tired. And then I have him do like a throw-off, like what I showed you with the plyometric bench press type movement. Maybe like 45 pounds.

Right. The guy could barely throw it off six inches. Really? Yeah, because his muscles are trained to be short and slow here. So the body remembers the movement pattern and the speed, not just, you know what I'm saying? So you're training slow twitch. And now, already a month later, like, getting huge gains, like, getting explosive. Like, Friday was a breakthrough day. Yeah?

Yeah. A month later. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, that's interesting So you would take a guy like that. Yeah, he's a good example Thick very obviously freaking huge, right? Yeah. So what do you do with a guy like that? Like what's the first thing you do first thing I do is get a moving dynamic movements getting him To move a little quicker on his feet, learning how to more coordination exercises, but keeping him loose and dynamic rather than anything that's tense and going to tighten him up. So like even the shadow boxing a month ago was just like, like it looks like slow motion.

Now it looks, it looks pretty good. Like that's amazing. You can do such so much progress or make so much progress happen in such a short period of time. Yeah, it is. And, yeah, it's really, I'm not going to say it was easy because this is one of the harder cases. Usually it takes about two weeks before I start seeing a difference. But, no, once you get that breakthrough and you start seeing them moving differently and quicker, man, it's on from there.

It's like, okay, now we can start really progressing and hitting the nervous system with really intense biometrics and stuff like that. Now, how cutting edge is this style of training? I mean, Marinovich, did he invent all this? Marv did was he took scientific studies from what the Russians had developed during the Cold War period, and he translated it his his exercises and So I'd say at least 80% of what I'm doing is stuff that he's come up with 80% yeah, maybe 75 a yeah, but something like that and how did you do like an internship with him like how yeah? And even if it's not what he's doing. It's something along the lines. You know it's something similar

it's it's very heavily influenced by what the Russians came up with and their studies of the nervous system and So Marv took these things and translated into exercises, and it's just been phenomenal like you know it's just It's really uh you gotta try it man. Yeah, I know I believe you work out me for two weeks I want your life, but you're way the fuck down there. Where are you? So what, dude? I'm in Woodland Hills. Oh, look, you're here right now. Fucking Burbank, bro. Let's do this.

Okay, we'll do it. I would love to. I would love to. Change your life. You're a guy with an open mind. You'd be blown away at the difference. Well, I would love to, just from the point of view. I mean, first of all, for a person, I'm always trying to work on you know different things and improve different things about my performance

physically but I also as a commentator I think it would help I think that's what one thing I really like Joe is how you've educated the fan and this is something I think maybe boxing needs a little bit more of is like educating the fans on on the different techniques and strategies of the fighters you remember that one fight i think it was who was it anderson silva and the crowd was booing i think it was anderson so he won and crowd was blue and you're like why are you guys booing that was like a great performance like a strategic performance well i loved floyd mayweather versus pacquiao you did you know yeah i mean i i love skill yeah i mean skill is very important to me

i didn't love it. I respect it. Like, I respect Mayweather's skill. Like, he's a phenomenal boxer. I just would have liked to see it for 200 million bucks. Like, go for the kill, dude. You know, the guy's tired in the 12th round. Put a little something out there for the fans.

I loved it, but I didn't love it as much as I love Canelo Alvarez, James Kirkland. Like, that was more, or Matisse and Provodnikov. Yeah. That was more my, I mean, that was definitely more crazy to watch. I mean, one of my favorite fights of all time in the UFC, I mean, there's been a few favorite fights, but Dan Henderson versus Shogun. Yeah. Which was just fucking chaos. Phenomenal.

I just watched that the other day, man. Oh, my God. That gave me brain damage just watching it. The other one I watched the other day was the Don Fry versus... Takayama? Oh, my God. That gave me brain damage just watching it. The other one I watched the other day was the Don Fry versus... Takayama? Oh, wow. Yeah, that exchange when the two of them were in the corner and were just collar tie, haymaker, haymaker. He was bleeding out of his eyeball, man.

That was insanity. I love it. Yeah, that was crazy. Some of those pride fights were fucking absolutely nuts. Yeah. But I'm a fan of skill. Like, that's why I said Mighty Mouse is, like, one of my favorite guys to watch. Right.

But Vanderlei's probably my all-time favorite. Although Vanderlei's skillful, what I loved about Vanderlei was just you knew you were going to see some fucking chaos. And that guy got in there and started rolling his knuckles. Right. You knew you were going to see some shit. Yeah, exactly. I'm so happy that he got that lifetime ban rescinded

and i don't know whether or not he was on i don't know what the fuck he was on but i do know that the vast majority of those guys are doing something to help them recover and and when you take a guy and you take away his livelihood forever you say you can never fight again that to me is just disgusting it's disgusting you can't do that. They did that to Kung Lee, too, right? Or then they took it back or something. No. Kung Lee, they were going to give him a one-year suspension.

They were going to give him nine months, and they tried to shift it to one year. He had agreed to nine months. And then when they tried to shift it to one year, that's when he started hearing all these people on the Internet that were saying that the tests that they did were not proper. You know, that he couldn't, he wouldn't hold up. Either mishandled or the protocol wasn't established.

So what the UFC did is they kind of overstepped their ability. You know, like if you're going to have someone get tested, you really have to have some WADA type organization come in and handle it. People that have been doing that forever. The people that handled the testing did not do the best job. So the results were in question. They would not have probably held up in court and the

UFC had to stand down. And so now Kung Lee is involved in some crazy lawsuit with the UFC and he's a part of the whole class action lawsuit thing but I think he was also kind of on his way out you know I mean I think it's a bit of a money grab in certain ways but I think the the Bisping fight was it was an interesting fight because Kong looked great he was ripped chiseled and that's why people were like what the fuck is going on with that guy right like what is he up to he gets these these tests. The results in question, but the tests apparently showed very high growth hormone rates, like unusually high. Yeah.

But when the tests are in question, I'm obviously not a doctor or a scientist. I don't know what the fuck really happened. Right. Guy looked awesome at 40-something for the first time ever. He looked fucking yoked and jacked. It was a pretty quick transformation. Kind of like Juan Marquez when he fought Pacquiao that Yes

Yeah, that was an interesting one too. Same gym or something. Well, he's Pacquiao's guy. Yeah, I was old guy There's a lot of that going on, you know, yeah when you hear okay, we kind of talked about this slightly But you didn't touch on it. Um, a bunch, like Bobby Green was accusing Rafael dos Anjos. Is he a fighter? He's a high-level fighter in the UFC's lightweight division. What's he ranked, you know? He's highly ranked. Is he?

Yeah, if he's not 10, he's top 15. I don't know what rank he is. I'll find out. But he's a very good fighter. But, you know, I think his exact quotes were Pettis got played by a PED cheat. That's what he said. That's interesting. But it's just speculation, right?

Is that the guy that Raphael trained with? I don't know if he trained with him. That's the one, I think. Did he? I think they trained together. Did he? He told me about a guy running his mouth. Oh, yeah?

And that he came up to Raphael and was all humble and wanted to train with him. And then they started training. The guy was complaining, don't kick me here, don't kick me there. Oh, really? Yeah, I think it's the same guy. But what do I think about that? I think the guy, if he's not top three and he's saying that, he's probably just trying to make a name for himself.

And it's pretty disrespectful to Rafael, but it's kind of complimentary to me. Like, okay, cool. Like, stoked, man. You think it's that good? All right, come on, sign up. See what we do. His body does not look that much different. It doesn't.

Look, if you're, you know, if you're juicing, dude, you're going to have traps up to your ears. You're going to look like a freak. But not always. Look at Lance Armstrong. Lance Armstrong. But he's taking EPO. He's taking EPO and testosterone and a bunch of other things as well. Yeah, I don't know.

He's taking a cold cocktail. Bro, to be honest, I'm not that educated on this stuff. But I'll tell you this. If I've got him at 12,500 feet altitude doing sprints, I'm going to make damn sure he's clean. Because if you're taking any kind of stuff, I don't know what the hell that could do to your body. Thicken your blood up or something like that. You can be like EPO. Yeah, absolutely.

Can you imagine that? And then you're taking 12,000 feet? That's like ridiculous. Bobby Green or whoever you are, you know, come on, go through a workout and see what he does and then you'll see why he's the best. Do you think that this sport has an issue? I mean, it seems to, there's at least a perception that there's an issue with PEDs. Do I think it does?

I'm sure there is. I'm sure there's an issue. PEDs. Do I think it does? I'm sure there is I'm sure there's an issue Why do you think that exists? Do you think it exists because of improper training or because guys want to get an edge because I think that man Joe if you and I are trying to reach for that cup of coffee and you take something and I think and I know you Took it and I want the coffee. I'm gonna take it too. If I need it's gonna give me a benefit, right? It's totally understandable If if one guy if you don't have proper training you feel slow, and you need to take some shit to feel stronger

You're gonna do it because you know the other guys doing it. You know I mean like what did you what did you think about the? Whole testosterone replacement therapy debacle which I think is a real debacle. I mean anything the way they handled It was just ridiculous. They gave it to people they allowed it for a few years I mean, I think the way they handled it was just ridiculous. They gave it to people. They allowed it for a few years. You had these staggering performance. Like, Vitor is the poster boy for testosterone replacement.

You know what? I think if it's a medical thing, and like you've been to a doctor and they say, hey, dude, this is it. I think if it's regulated to the point where it doesn't put you above an average level of testosterone, then I don't see how it should be a problem to you. What benefits you? It gives you quicker recovery, allows you to train harder? Right, but I'm saying as long as it's not above an average level. So if you're deficient, let's say your total testosterone is 100, and the doctors are monitoring it thoroughly, and you show up every week and they're doing a test,

and they can show like, hey, this is his thing, and it's 300. That that's it then i don't know if that would be i'm not condoning drugs but i'm just saying maybe that would be an acceptable way to let it in i agree with you in a perfect world yeah i think there's too many variables if your testosterone is low you probably shouldn't be a fighter yes there's and also it's probably it's indicative of one of two things, pituitary gland damage or gonad damage, or you took steroids. And now you're not producing it. Yeah, and your body's shut down. And that's what a lot of guys were doing.

They were taking it. Yeah. And then when you add in exogenous, is that how you say it? I guess. Testosterone, your body goes all right We got plenty of this and it stops its natural production and so then you would do that and then go get tested And then the doctor would say oh your natural production is way down way down here. I'm just any testosterone. Yeah, and That's what a lot of guys were getting away with we're good training. You don't need it with a great diet

Yeah, like Raphael like the guy saying that i don't know who he is but you have to understand there's a reason he's the champion and it starts with his mind and his discipline and his dedication to the fighting he came here with nothing dude like his diet is impeccable his training is is impeccable i mean he drives two hours to train with me. That's dedication. Like, do all the PEDs in the world you want. If you're not willing to make those sacrifices to beat him, like the same sacrifices that he makes, you're not going to beat him. So when he goes down to train with you, how many days a week does he do this? Three to four days.

Three to four days, depending upon how he's looking. And sometimes I'll go down there. Yeah, exactly. Or how he feels, you know, sparring is really hard or he's got something the next day, you know, then we'll take it off. But, yeah, I really think it's kind of disrespectful to him, dude. Like, he put in so much work. How many, five fights in the last year, something like that?

But six training camps. Well, you look at the guys he's beaten, too. He's beaten some insanely high-level guys. Exactly, and towards the end, we're not going to lie, it started to take its toll on him. Look, he got a partial tear of the MCL. He was getting worn down, and now he really needed a break.

The other thing is, the guy walks around at like probably about 190, 193. Jesus Christ. Yeah. You've seen him at the weight cuts. You see how emaciated he is? Yeah. The guy's fighting in an emaciated state. He's probably fighting about 172, maybe 173 on fight night.

So imagine you take a guy who's 190 and strip off 20 pounds. Of course he's going to look ripped and lean. We all look like that underneath. So these accusations are very disrespectful, I think. But people think it because of his stamina. His stamina, for sure. He's just a monster. Whenever you see someone who excels at a very high level, people go, hmm, how's he doing that? I do that, too.

I question some guys, too. There's some guys in the UFC I question. And it's because their bodies have changed a lot over time. You know what I mean? Over the time. And there's some guys you look at it and go, okay, what? Like when Hector Lombard tested positive nobody went what? No way that doesn't even make sense

Right Hector Lombard had muscles that weren't even in books right you go like medical books They go what the fuck is that what is that that is it's not even a human What I don't even understand what drug he would need to take to have like Raphael I don't even know what drug he would need to take to have great stamina That's that's easily trainable. The problem is all these guys are doing such improper training that they're making me look even better. You know what I mean? So if you took a guy that had poor stamina, like, okay, let's take BJ Penn, for example. Do you think BJ was on PEDs when he fought Diego Sanchez?

No. Why? Well, I watched his training. Well, first of all, BJ's one of those guys. There's only a few guys. Yeah. He wouldn't even take in a fucking IV for the Frankie Edgar fight. He wouldn't even rehydrate with an IV, which I think is crazy.

But BJ's one of those guys where I don't think he's done anything ever. I don't either. I don't think he would either. Why do people think Rafael has? Because he's Brazilian? Yeah, that's why. And he's not, like, the most handsome dude in the world? Sorry, Rafael. What are you trying to say? No, but you know what I mean? He's not going And he's not, like, the most handsome dude in the world. Sorry, Rafael.

What are you trying to say? No, but you know what I mean? He's not going to be on the cover of a Wheaties box. Like, yeah, he's from Brazil. The dude comes here to fight. I mean, he's a fighter, dude. That's how fighters look. Sorry, you know?

Yeah. Well, I mean, he's obviously done, even if he had done any sort of PED, there's no fucking PED in the world that makes you that good No, that's hard work. Yeah hard work and dedication 100% Not only that but they did blood and urine testing for the fight Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know, I mean like I think it was three weeks out from the fight like right right And then they did urine testing after urine. I mean they can detect some stuff from what I understand Like I'm not like a master of Mexican supplements, but I know a little bit and

So yeah, I don't I just keep bringing the compliments man. I like it So if you took a guy like a guy that was known for not having the best stamina in the world a guy who fades Mm-hmm How much time would you need to get him to a point where he had a fight? Like, say if he's fighting a title fight. Like, let's take a guy who's known. Here's a good example. Tyron Woodley is one of the best 170-pound fighters in the world. Carries a lot of muscle mass.

You look at Tyron. He's fucking huge. I mean, it's amazing that guy makes 170. And that guy is yoked as fuck. When he gets in the cage, I don't know how much he weighs, but it ain't 170. Right. You know? And he's known for being very fast, very strong in the first round, but slows down a little bit in the second.

Right. How much time would you need with a guy like that? And what would your advice be to a big, muscular guy like that? Three weeks, probably about three weeks, I think. That's it? Yeah. I'd probably get him going in three weeks. Three weeks?

Yeah, three weeks. How come you only need that much time? I'm just kind of trying to base that off of past experiences. I'd say about three weeks to get him ready for about five rounds. He might struggle a little in the fifth round, but you give me a full training camp with a guy, he'll do seven or eight rounds hard, no problem. Seven or eight?

What is a full training camp for you? Ideally. Roughly eight weeks. So if you had a guy and you wanted to get a guy to the best possible shape for five rounds He say he's gonna be fighting Robbie Lawler for the title. Yeah, he's got to go five rounds through fucking hell. Uh-huh How long would it take? Yeah depends who it is and again what he's had in the past so I have to assess him first so if you give me a guy who's like got good cardio and his stamina has been He's known for stamina. He's not known for stamina. He's not known for stamina I could have him ready for probably like four or five weeks

And would you take a guy like that who's got a lot of extra muscle again? I'm sorry I'm sorry to interrupt but again though he would have to prioritize that in his training So something else might have to be substituted because training the energy systems is very taxing. So let's say we're doing sprints or we're doing something to train the energy systems one day. Then he might have to shorten his wrestling. He'd have to be willing to make a sacrifice to shorten his wrestling. You know what I mean? Really?

Yeah. Yeah, you've got to find an even trade-off where you don't compromise all the aspects of what the athlete needs. So the skill work almost takes second place. If the guy's conditioning is bad, you have to look at the athlete as a whole. So if the guy sucks at wrestling, but he's got great stamina, then you need to devote more time to the wrestling. Right. Or same with striking. If his striking sucks and he's good at jiu-jitsu and he's good at wrestling, he's got great stamina, then you need to devote more time to the wrestling. Right. Right? Or same with striking. If his striking sucks and he's good at jujitsu and he's good at wrestling, he's got no stamina, then you got to devote your time to the, a little more time to the stamina and the striking

to try to build that up. Again, with the skill, there's only so much you can do in a training, in one training camp. Right. You know, that's more like a year long process. Now, do you hook your guys up with nutritionists if they don't have one? Do you have someone that you use? You know, you know what? Usually they have their own guys, but if they ask me, then I'll help them. You know what I mean? But you know, I'm not a licensed nutritionist or

anything like that, but I know Raphael's using George Lockhart, who's getting kind of popular and he's pretty happy with him. And I think Ricardo's using him too. A lot of these guys, they get their meals prepped way in advance. they get them in like little tubware boxes and they keep them in their fridge and then they heat them up before each meal sun sun grow or something like that they deliver to your house oh really yeah there's one sun foods or something like that yeah they can deliver like and it's all athlete prepared stuff yeah they can do like they can you can tell them what you want like a menu or something like that, I think. I think it's called Sun Foods or something. Because I would think that the more things you could take out of the athlete's mind that

they have to think about, the more resources they have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. How did, when Marinovich's, when they developed this sort of style of training was this met with skepticism Absolutely, it still is still is yeah, there's gonna be a lot of haters on the comments on YouTube I know I'm sure you can't squat you. What do you mean? You can't do a deadlift

Do you know what I mean like right unless you can prove it? Show us that the proof in what you're saying like we already know the proof is out there You just have to to read the fine text of the nervous system training you know the the records that they have on the nervous system training i mean i think my theory is that this whole thing with the weightlifting came about because they needed like a universal um measurement you know what i mean like they needed to be able to put a number on improvement. And so they would use weights because it's universal. So that can kind of show, regardless of whether or not it's good for sports, it's just showing an improvement in strength.

That's before they have all the fancy monitors. Athletes in the U.S. now are gravitating farther and farther away from weightlifting. A lot of the football guys, they do it because they have to. They don't like to do it. They don't like the way it makes them feel. The boxers hate it. Like I haven't met a boxer yet that has told me, yeah, I want to hit the weights. They don't like it because it makes them too stiff and it makes them too slow. Marquez was lifting a lot of weights for that Pacquiao fight when they showed that 24-7 or whatever the fuck HBO calls it. Is that what it is? 24-7? When they showed his routine, I mean, a lot of it was weightlifting.

Dumbbells, heavy dumbbells. Pretty crazy, huh? But he wasn't clean for that. Just wasn't? No. I showed up looking like a 24-year-old beach model, man. You know what I mean? 41 Mexican did.

It's like being through wars. It's like, yeah, he showed up. That was ridiculous. Yeah, and it might have been a fight where Pacquiao was clean for the first time. Yeah. Well, there was always a lot of speculation about him as well. And then, you know, he found

Jesus in a very deep and meaningful way for a while. And his body changed a little bit. His body changed quite a lot eight divisions eight world titles yeah different weight divisions that's pretty crazy yeah and kept his knockout power all the way up to the top just about i well actually hasn't knocked anyone out though in the last what five years or something like that or like i don't know you got to be thinking about who he's fighting though yeah He's fighting world-class competition. Very difficult to hit.

I mean, the last big KO was, like, what, Ricky Hatton? Yeah. But he fucked up Chris Algieri. I mean, he knocked him down. Yeah, that was pretty nice, right? He looked great in that fight. Chris Algieri, though, he's got some balance issues in his feet, I can tell. Does he?

Absolutely. You know, you can tell, Joe, by looking at a guy's calves. feet in this, I can tell. Does it? Absolutely. You know, you can tell, Joe, by looking at a guy's calves. So the gastrocs, the two calf muscles on the side of the calf right there, if they're really underdeveloped, chances are the guy's got poor balance.

Those are fast twitch muscles that control your balance. So, like, Pacquiao's footwork is freaking amazing, right? Right. You see the size of his calves? They're watermelons. Exactly. So that plays a crucial role in lateral movement and footwork. So you take a guy, you look at, Juan Marquez doesn't have great footwork. Right.

Have you seen his calves? They're like noodles. What about John Jones? John Jones is another guy. Very skinny calves. He doesn't have very good footwork. He's quick. His upper body is quick, and he's got quick leg kicks, but he doesn't have the greatest footwork, I don't think. Really? Yeah, I don't think so. Rafael has pretty good footwork. He's quick. His upper body's quick and he's got quick leg kicks but he doesn't have the greatest footwork, I don't

think. Really? Yeah, I don't think so. Rafael has pretty good footwork now. He's in and out real quick. You know what I mean? You see that in the Henderson fight for sure. For sure. Yeah. Who else? Be honest, I haven't been following the UFC that much. Your work with Dos Anjos

is what got me excited about talking to you. Have a lot of fighters started contacting you now? Yeah, I've been contacted by a lot of guys. You know, I'm very like, uh, I'm very kind of choosy about who I train. It's only so many hours in the day. Not only that, but there's

different personalities, man. It's exhausting. Right. Guys who don't want to listen or they don't want to push hard enough. I don't have time for that anymore. I'm done with like i did that in the beginning i ate a lot of shit and had to deal with it now it's like dude if i sense right off the bat you're not serious i'm just we're done and that's how the marinovich has treated bj in the second this camp with uh frankie i think yeah but i think you know the marina's really cared about bj dude it's it's a funny thing when you're working with a guy that close.

You really get attached to them. You really care about their well-being. And I think they took it as kind of like an insult and kind of like almost like a stab in the back when he questioned their intelligence as far as training goes, like, you know, their programming, the way they program the training camp. So I think they were hurt by that, you know. To this day, I mean, Gary and Marv, you know, if you talk to them,

they're still saying, you know, I just can't figure out why he had it. He knew how he felt after the training. Why would you get rid of it? It's hard. You know, it's also when you're that good and you have so many yes men around you that's the problem it's very hard that's the biggest problem i think was staying in hawaii man all the hawaiians are gonna hate me now but staying in hawaii the reason why i stay in hawaii because hawaii is fucking awesome yeah it's fucking great

don't get me wrong but the same training partners and over, that's just monotony kills athletes. It does. And also being the baddest motherfucker in the room. You have to be. You got to be challenged. Even here at the Ruka training, when they're at the Ruka training camp for the Diego Sanchez, we had amazing guys. I was in there training with them every day. Benson Henderson was in there.

Efren Escudero, who just won the Ultimate Fighter that year, a lot of other guys, Division I wrestlers, and BJ just tore through everybody like they were nothing. I didn't see one person get the better of him. Wow. Imagine a cage filled with, like, 15 of these intense, like, hardcore lightweights, and BJ's just walking through all of them. His timing was so precise, the elastic energy in his muscles,

the elastic strength that he had, his explosive power was just remarkable his takedown defense when he was at his very best was absolutely retarded too yeah he'd be able to hop around on one leg i mean just his flexibility is ridiculous i tried to take him down many times to no avail what kind of flexibility did that guy have ridiculous Ridiculous dynamic flexibility. He'd do a lot of stuff with rubber straps and stuff, pulling on them and resisting and stretching. You know, at this camp, he was doing all the same stuff that basically I'm doing, that I do with my guys, like the dynamic stretching. A lot of the exercises on the stability ball and workouts in the pool,

stuff they use for rehabilitation, but you can progress that and use it for performance as well. So if it's good for rehabilitation, you know, you take it to another level, it's got to be good for performance. What is your education background when it comes to this stuff? I went to continuation school in high school and got obsessed with weird things. That's about it. What's continuation school? You know, you get kicked out of high school.

Oh, really? You got to go to like, you got to go to continuation continuation school? You know, you get kicked out of high school. Oh, really? You gotta go to continuation school. I've never heard of that before. Yeah. So you... I have an informal background, training background. You know, it's funny. Marv did too.

Marv majored in fine arts from USC. Really? Yeah. And that was my major in junior college was fine arts and psychology. So everything you learn, you sort of learned along the way from reading and studies and data and rehabilitating my own body after the car accident. That was, that was big. I went to supposedly the best physical therapist in the area. And six months later, I've got a huge bill and no results. So I just took it into my own hands, started it i know what to do and then within a month or two i'm i'm already back at work feeling

great so then how long have you been training fighters now how many fighters you know like uh before i started training the fighters and strictly doing conditioning you know i was also working with like football athletes and soccer i've got a ton of college athletes you know i don't think i can talk about them because the ncaa rules or whatever you can't use them for reference from promotion exactly But um some pretty high level ones a lot of high school athletes, but before prior to that I had a Jiu Jitsu Academy also and So I was always I've always been in the mix with like the Jiu Jitsu scene and MMA scene and stuff like that so now I just had so much more success with the conditioning that I've just gone that direction. Well, one of the things I like about this conversation is there really is no

straight consensus about what's the right way to train athletes and fighters and especially fighters. I think when it comes to strength and conditioning, fighters I think is probably the most varied. I mean, I think the NFL kind of has an idea of how to train football players. NBA players train in a very similar fashion, but with fighters, man, it's across the...

You saw the Cain Velasquez. Cain Velasquez is the baddest motherfucker on the planet. And you saw what he's going through. Want to see his leg extensions? No. Yeah, you do. Pull up Cain Velasquez is the baddest motherfucker on the planet. And you saw what he's going through. I mean, I can't. Want to see his leg extensions? No. Yeah, you do. Okay. Pull up Cain Velasquez's leg extensions with 300 pounds.

I'm just wondering how good this guy could be with good training. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Well, he's got great wrestling training and great kickboxing training. I mean, great conditioning. Let me say that. I'm just wondering how good he could be with that. His fucking conditioning is insane.

His stamina is insane. But his speed and his coordination, I don't know. Maybe it could be even at another level. Who knows? Wow. You know what I mean? Let's put it this way, Joe. Look at this. Oh.

Look at this. This is 300 pounds on the leg extension machine. What do you think about this? It's nice. That's going to help. I don't know what that's going to help. It's going to build up his quads, I guess. I don't know.

What part? Leg extensions? One muscle in the quad. I don't know. This is not going to help? It's not going to help. Throw leg kicks or anything? No.

Is this all caveman shit you're looking at? This is not even caveman. you're looking at this is not even caveman this is like nautilus like jack lillane type stuff i used to work at a place that i used to teach people to do that when i was like 19 yeah i worked at a place called the boston athletic club in south boston all right to teach people how to lift weights yeah so when i see that i just wonder how much better the guy could be, you know? Yeah. Good training. I mean, I know,

I know it works. I've been around this stuff for 15, 20 years, you know, strength and conditioning and seeing what works. And it just, I know it works like Marv too. He's,

he's, him and his brother combined 70 years of experience, maybe more, maybe it's 80 now. And they've seen everything. Marv was one of the guys responsible for designing the combine, the football combine, you know, what, 40 years ago. Amazing.

Yeah, so he's seen everything. To argue with him about it would be just ridiculous. Like, you're way out of your league, you know. It's like talking to Helio Gracie about jiu-jitsu. There's nothing you're going to bring to the table that he hasn't seen. Right. Despite all the monstrous stories that you hear, like on ESPN, he was one of the worst sports father.

It's all media, dude. It's bullshit. He's actually one of the most generous fucking guys in the training, like out of trainers that I've met, he's one of the most generous and was one of the most transparent guys that I've ever met. Honest guy. That's awesome. Well, I think-

All about the product. The problem with the ESPN documentary Was that his son went off the rails and when the Sun goes off the rails everybody looks for someone to blame? You know that he was too strict right didn't give his son sugar. He didn't even let his son eat meat, right? Uh I think he did. I don't know. I don't know about that. It was something on the documentary They're saying let him have wheat gluten. I think really yeah even back then yeah, I think they were saying. They didn't let him have wheat gluten, I think. Really? Yeah. Even back then? I think they were saying meat. I saw it really recently. Maybe it was certain types

of meat. Yeah, when I knew I was going to talk to you, I think that's when I watched it. But, uh, it's just fascinating to see a guy with that much knowledge take his son and turn him into this fucking super freak athlete. I mean, in certain ways, it was sort of, I mean, it was vindicated.

Right. I mean, his techniques, his strategies, I mean, look how good his goddamn son was. Yeah. Until he got crazy with the drugs and the partying and all that stuff. Right. And the idea was that the discipline was too much, then he couldn't take it anymore, and then he had to start boozing and doing drugs. Eh.

You know, you can blame it on whatever you want. Nobody put the stuff in his mouth more, you know what I mean? Right. It's a good point. You can blame it on whatever you want. Nobody put the stuff in his mouth. It's a good point. You could get 10 different personalities. You know you have a son. If you have more kids like I have three, they come out of the box completely different. That's what I'm worried about, man.

I love my son so much. I don't know if I want anything different. Believe me, you'll love the other one. My two youngest are completely different. I love them equally yeah, they're totally different But they're they have their own little thing going on but the point being that it's Different children different humans will react differently to different forms of diversity that they face There's only so much you could do as a parent You know you can't really totally protect them and shield them and it seemed like his son has come back from all that stuff and he's okay

now right yeah but yeah he's an artist man his art's pretty bitching too man i guess he's living up in oregon you know i don't really know todd very well but i've actually never even met todd so but uh yeah i guess he's living up in oregon It's got some killer art man And there's also the the reality that when you push your son or your daughter or anyone any human being they people have a Resistance to some of that shit and they don't want to do what you want them to do and they develop a distaste for something Even something that they're really really talented at yeah, that's possible as well. Yeah Well, you know what the funny thing is? Did you ever read that story about his son running a 10K or something when he was like four years old? No.

Did he really? He was running like an eight minute mile or something when he was four years old. Really? Yeah. And I asked Marv about that one day. I said, Marv, what the hell is that? Like, you know, like an eight minute mile. He's like, so yeah, you know what I can't figure out, Nick, is why everybody thinks

I made him do it. Oh. I didn't make him do it. That's he said he wanted to do it yeah so he had that drive and that intensity that right in him you know what i mean so it's kind of like shed some light on some things right there well hey man you know whenever someone comes out in a weird way you there's a lot of people trying to point blame in a lot of different areas, whether it's the friends or the family. It seemed like his college coaches had a real issue with him as well, right? Yeah. They were trying to put him in a box.

Yeah. That's, yeah. And then he kind of took over and it worked. Yeah. Took over and was, yeah, and made the coach look pretty foolish. And they didn't like that either. Right. What is the name of that documentary if anybody wants to watch it?

Do you remember? Was it like 30 on 30 or something? Oh, The Marinovich Project. Wasn't that it? I think that was it. Yeah. They talk about Mars in the beginning. He's an undefeated wrestler, undefeated boxer.

That's great, man. A lot of people don't know that about him. He was a football player too, you know? But he was also an undefeated boxer and wrestler through the Army and college and stuff. And his fascination with training athletes was more powerful than his fascination with competing. Well, he was so, I guess, Marv was so into weightlifting, and he felt it destroyed his athleticism. Once he went to the Raiders, and he was competing with the guys in the weight room. I mean, he's squatting 1,000 pounds. And he said his athleticism had he went to the Raiders and he was competing with the guys in the weight room I mean he's squatting a thousand pounds and he said his athleticism had never been worse

was when he was doing that wow and that just destroyed his professional career that's interesting yeah wow and so that and that was in the 60s right like right it's got to be in the 60s so you figure he had that awakening 50 years ago wow Wow. And, you know, he's been developing this stuff for years. Nick, thank you very much for your time, man. Thanks, Joe. I really appreciate it. This was a great conversation. I really, really, really enjoyed it.

And anybody who wants to check out your gym, what is the name of it and where is it at? Speedofsport. You can go to speedofsport.com. Speedofsport.com. Speedofsport.com. And it is located in Torrance, California

in Torrance and speedofsport on Twitter yeah that's your handle yeah alright thanks brother

very enjoyable conversation I really appreciate it thanks alright friends we'll be back tomorrow see you later bye thanks Joe

thanks man that was fun yeah Thanks, Joe. Thanks, man. That was fun.