The Joe Rogan Experience - #749 - Carlos Condit & Erwan Le Corre

Episode Date: January 20, 2016

Carlos Condit is a mixed martial artist, competing in the welterweight division of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Erwan Le Corre is the founder and innovator of a physical education system and lifestyle known as MovNat. http://podcasts.joerogan.net

Is it live? Alright, we're live. Carlos Condit and Erwan LaCour, welcome. Gentlemen, welcome. Thanks for doing this. Appreciate it. Thank you. Of course, thanks for having us.

So, first of all, for folks who are not aware of the situation, what's going on, Carlos, professional MMA fighter, one of the best in the world, just fought for the welterweight title, extremely close fight against Robbie Lawler, and you spent a lot of your time, this camp, how many camps was it where you trained with Erwan? Two now. Two now. Yep. And Erwan, you are a movement specialist, and this is all the rage in MMA right now.

It's really kind of fascinating. As this sport grows and develops, we're looking at a sport that's really only realistically been around since 1993. That's when it sort of formed. Martial arts, of course, have been around forever. But as a sport where people really started picking it apart and trying to figure out what's the best way to pursue this, it's really only been since about 1993 when the UFC first started. And the most recent trend is guys trying to improve upon balance, movement, and their ability to close distances and attack

and be in a position to constantly be able to do that in between those techniques. So instead of concentrating on just hitting pads or just doing, you know, shooting doubles or doing various drills, you're concentrating on the movements that take place in between those techniques. Is that a fair way to describe it? Yeah, and I think that the movement also helps in the techniques themselves. We can focus specifically on martial arts techniques, which are on a base level movement. Right, right. And how did you guys get hooked up?

I'll reach out to Carlos. Actually, it's one of your comments that you were commenting on one of those UFC events, and you talked about the current state of the welterweight division, and at some point you talked about Carlos, and he was still recovering from his injury. And you said that at this point, you know, he was 31, or three years old back then, and it was a serious injury, and that from then on it could only somewhat get slower and that made me react because it was both true and not true true from a conventional standpoint that's true but from a training coaching movement practice standpoint i knew that there was a possibility to

to reverse that to improve right and that this is actually that comment that made me think carlos is right there i need to reach out to him i can train him and i can show that there are some different methods that can bring results even in uh seasoned fighters like carlos what is your background training in the woods a lot when i was a kid, moving in the woods, climbing trees, jumping from rock to rock, and being not only encouraged to do that by my own dad. And then later on, I did some extreme trainings, I would say, in Paris with a very small group, and we would climb scaffoldings, and we would jump off bridges, and we would balance on top of the scaffoldings. Like parkour type stuff? It was a parallel movement because the founder of parkour, David Bell, was almost my neighbor and practically we're the same age.

But we didn't know each other back then. And I was following an older guy, and we would do these trainings because we were somewhat wanting to go against the normalcy, how heavy the inertia of normalcy of wanting to know ourselves through movements and exercises and challenges that were complete out of this world. What do you mean by heavy the inertia of normalcy? What exactly do you mean by that? Well I like to say that normalcy is a silent killer. A lot of people are just extremely bored by their day-to-day routines. It kills them. It shrinks their comfort zone all the time and it robs their creativity, their vitality because we're not

meant to live such predictable lives and we're actually we're supposed to be extremely adaptable at a mental and physical level and we need to train that adaptability by presenting ourselves with the challenges that are going to maintain that adaptability. We need a strategy. If a lifestyle is boring, if we're bored in our lifestyle, there's nothing in this world that's going to really change that we can entertain ourselves we can consume tons of entertainment but what we need truly to get out of this is a strategy

a perception of oneself that is different and then the strategy that's in line with that perception of a stronger self a more free self I know it's very philosophical but you asked me about it. I'm just telling you the way I think about it.

If I had followed the box, the textbooks, the conventions, I would not be in the place I am today. I would not have done what I've created. So it's philosophy as much as it's a training modality because everything in life is philosophy but you call it philosophy outlook perspective opinion values whatever you call it it's something in your mind is a certain perception that makes you see yourself see the world a certain way and behave accordingly right a bodybuilder you may you may think that's purely physical, but it's not.

It's a philosophy. The guy who wants to be big has a perception of himself as being very big, and he's going to train accordingly. So it always starts with the perception, and then you behave accordingly. So everything in that sense is philosophy. Now, when you met this character, what was your first this character why do all these movement teachers look like Jesus because that's a question that's been coming up over and over again on the forums and I feel obligated to ask well I think they are portal yeah that I think they're along you know they're

of the the the naturalistic persuasion yeah um so uh first first impression of erwin was that he's very intense um you know we went and we you know there's a wooded area there in albuquerque and we you know i thought we're gonna go play around you know walk on some you know walk on some logs and just kick it immediately it's like, no, we're working. And it was, you know, from the first time that we started, he was demanding excellence. And, you know, demanding quite a bit of focus. And for me, I'm kind of like an ADD type of person. And I'm, you know, that's why I fight.

There's a lot of different things to do. I can move. play I can focus at certain times then go fuck around at other times and and um working with Erwin it's not only been uh beneficial for for me physically but also um you know as far as my my my uh my focus and uh yeah just. Physically, initially, it was hard, man. I was just maybe seven or eight months off of my knee surgery. My body was stiff. I had a great physical therapist and we were making progress in that respect, but I wasn't there yet. I had a lot of imbalances. I was still kind of fucked up. What type of knee surgery? You had ACL reconstruction? Did you get cadaver or patella? I had an allograft, so a cadaver. I like that. That's my favorite one. I encourage people to do that. I know that guys have said

that it doesn't take, but when guys say it doesn't take, I always wonder if they were training too hard, too quick. So I have a good friend who's a orthopedic surgeon and he told me that it's strong initially because they use somebody's Achilles tendon, which is four times thicker than your actual It's 150% stronger than a regular ACL. But as your body's assimilating it, it gets weaker. But as your body's assimilating it, it gets weaker. Apparently, your body does this scaffolding of its own cells around it as it's assimilating it to your own tissue. And it gets weaker during that point. Eventually, you wait a year, 18 months.

It's going to be stronger than it was before. But in that period of seven, eight months where you're feeling good, the inflammation has gone away. The swelling has gone down. You're like, oh, I feel amazing. I can go fucking train. I can go spar. Boom, you blow it. Yeah, and they say it didn't take.

But that's not really true, right? I don't think it's true. That wasn't my experience, thankfully. From what I've talked to doctors, that's exactly how they said it too, that you feel really good and you start training hard, then you blow it out. Ed Herman did that. Dominic Cruz did that. A bunch of guys have done that, and it's very common. Yeah, so Erwin and I started working together. Initially, it sucked, man.

I couldn't do hardly any of this stuff, and I'm a high-level athlete, and it was frustrating. So I would go, and I'd input a little bit of information from him. I'd work a little bit by myself, and then the next time we worked, I would have made some progress. And we'd work together for once a week, maybe twice a week, for over a year now. Now, how are your camps structured? Because a lot of people, they structure their camps, they're very regimented.

They have particular days for strength and conditioning, and it's all sort of designed so that they have enough time to recover for their skill work, and especially if you're working at specific techniques for a specific type of fighter, and you would have to incorporate all these things, and then this movement training and stuff as well. How would you figure out when to put that in? Did you have to experiment? Every camp really is an experiment because as I've grown as an athlete, I've changed. I've got older.

I have to take more time off than I did before. I have to really pay attention to my body. So we do have somewhat of a structure like that. Um, but it's also every, every, all the scheduling is tentative. It's like, okay, yeah, I have this scheduled on this day, but if I'm feeling like shit, I'm not going to go in there and do that. That's, that's a good way to get hurt. That's a big fight. I can't, I can't get fucked up. So when you feel like real worn out, you have to sort of like really be paying attention to your body. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and we do active recovery. Um, my strength and conditioning, um, you know, the place that I, that I go, um, we

do a lot of different things. They, they use some, uh, uh, biofeedback, uh, uh, uh, software that that's pretty cool. You stick some fucking sticky pads on your body and like an EKG thing, and it can actually tell you physiologically what your readiness level is. And this has been being used by a ton of different professional teams, collegiate teams and professional teams and Olympians. So they're checking like muscle balance, lactic acid? No, this, what it does is it measures heart rate variability and central nervous system activity and the correlation between the two and whatever their algorithm is that they've come up with to figure out, you know, the, you know, what the correlation means.

They can, you know, you've got a little dumb screen that shows you blue or green, you know, yellow, red, as far as your trainability. I can, you know, I can do strength and speed, but my power and strength, you know, level readiness is down. And then so we use that as a tool. There's some times we've just got to go. Sometimes you've just got to go old school and be like you know yeah this you know this is this is fancy but i need to push through today but it's it's a tool to help mitigate over training wow that's that's really fascinating so it seems like experience is probably the most important

thing then i think so i i think so and that's hard though when i'm in training camp i'm like a racehorse man i want to fucking run and i really need somebody to you know pull back the reins and sometimes i can do that myself but sometimes i'm in fucking you know in shark frenzy mode i just want to go go go go go and uh you know and and you know i have i have to have people around me to be like hey no whoa kick it you know you need to need to kick back and your relationship with erwan when you guys first started how did you work in the movement training with all the other stuff that you were doing did you have like a specific day you'd say hey we're going to meet on tuesday and yeah pretty much tuesday aside

pretty much yeah we would go uh you know block out uh maybe three or four hours um later in the week um and you know just hit it and it wasn't always intense that was a cool thing about work with erwin it wasn't like physically intense it was um mentally and neurologically taxing. So after we did this stuff, I was absolutely wiped out, but you know, I got my heart rate up a little bit, but these weren't hard workouts. They weren't taking it out of me physically. That's interesting. So what was, what wiped you out about it? Um, I think it was, we're, we're training the neuromuscular system and we're training the, um, uh, he could probably tell you more about it than I, than I can, but, um, it was, you know, really, really precise, uh, uh, movements that

just taxed, taxed you neurologically. Um, and, um, like, I don't know know you could probably tell you more about what is he uh what's he babbling i like to say well first off so uh carlos is surrounded by a war a team of world-class people uh the person he was talking about adrian of elevate albuquerque is a strength and conditioning coach so he works specifically with him on this area of this training and then there is brendan gibson and then there's ricky landell and of course there is greg jackson and and wayne conjol and so um so me i had to uh to address areas of his training that i believed were were lacking if i was to find a word to describe what we've been training with him, I would say, Carlos, we've been training your brain. Because the number one reason why we have a brain from an evolutionary

perspective is for movement. It's not to discuss fine wine or the history of art, which is great, but originally it's so that an animal can navigate through complex movement, through complex environments. That's the reason why we have a brain. So intensity is not necessarily raising the heart rate, you know, going really hard and burning all over. Intensity can be in the mindfulness that you apply to intentionally perform movement very specifically with a high level of efficiency. That requires a level of focus that challenges, stimulates, reason for helping connective functions. It does a whole deal of things, processes in the brain that's going to help it grow and what you acquire through movement transfers to any area of life but obviously transfers to better movement and better movement is not always just more power

more uh or new techniques i i told carlos carlos listen you've been training for 13 years you are extremely seasoned extremely experienced and i bet that you've tried diverse modalities of training but that currently you are every camp is pretty much the same in term of preparation except what's specific to a game playing for a given opponent so i said you may try to acquire more power. It's going to take a lot of energy because you have already a lot of power for your weight category. You may try to acquire more endurance, but that's going to be putting a lot of time,

a lot of energy to get that. You can try to learn more techniques, but you know already so many techniques. So one of the things that you can do is to move better. So any technique that you already know, we want to perform them better. Okay, so what is involved in movement training? So let's say it's day one, you get a guy and he says, hey, I love this idea, hook me up. Well, in the case of Carlos, it had to be something specific to him as a fighter. To what I saw, I saw what are his fortes, his strong points, but I also saw what I believed were deficiencies.

And that may seem presumptuous, but when I talked to him about it, what I saw that could be improved, he said, well, that's exactly what I've been told for years by my coaches. And what was that? I thought that his stance was too high. He used this, mostly this particular, you know, typically Thai boxing square stance, you know, with his feet in the L shape. And to me, that caused a ton of instabilities, but also prevented him from being as fast as I believe he could be in moving in and out or sideways. So what adjustments did you make as far as the stance?

The position of his back foot is orientated at a 90-degree angle. So we moved it forward more at a 45-degree angle. But the problem when we did that is that when we have a square stance, basically your feet are in line. When we have a square stance, basically your feet are in line. So if you move, you are relatively stable only because the back foot is going that way. Now when you move it that way, you shrink a bit your base of support. It creates even more instability. So what you need to do is to have your feet wider, to widen a bit wider to the front or to the back and then to the sides,

like something like a width, shoulder width or a hip width. So that was really a lot of, when I was tweaking something, it may create a negative consequence. So we had to do a lot of drilling to to improve that stance to make it to make to make it better now the stance that you developed uh sort of classic stance you know and you're a tall guy you would fight tall and stand up high um were there any issues when you started adjusting the way you placed your feet or did you have to relearn things? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, without a doubt. I've been training Muay Thai since I was 15 years old. And so, yeah, I mean, these things have been stratified in my freaking muscle memory for years. So, yeah, it took quite a bit of – and I probably, you still see me going back to my,

my old habits. You're going to, especially when you're tired or you're stressed or you're in different situations, you're going to revert back to the thing that you've trained the most. But when I'm mindful of it for the most part, um, you know, I, I definitely think that the improvements or the, the, the adjustments we made were, uh, were major improvements. Um, we also worked on, instead of being real, real heavy on my front leg, having more of like an upright stance and upright stance as far as my torso and not being so heavy, being more 50-50 on my legs. And that allowed me to move in and out faster, not only forward, but back. And that showed big time in the fight against Tiago Alves.

I think that was the reason I was able to get in, get inside, land with the elbows as effectively as I did, and then kind of get the fight rolling. We're seeing some, I love watching different sort of patterns that are developing that fighters start following, but one of the things that we're seeing, there's a lot of people that are standing in more of a karate stance. More sideways and wider stance.

And with that, like sort of Lyoto Machida style, Gunnar Nelson likes to fight like that. You can bounce, Conor McGregor, you bounce in and out easier. It seems like a lighter footprint sort of stance. Yeah, and that's very much what we were aiming at. I execute it the way that I do because I'm a flat-footed kind of fucking goofy guy. And I do my best. I'm lucky I got a hard head sometimes because I'm not Mr. Technique all the time. But we definitely made improvement i must say that working with carlos

and uh he's he's extremely focused actually when he trained there was like no it was like a zero fat kind of training like completely entirely focused from the beginning to the end always really applied himself during the training and i know that he drilled a lot also on his own in between every session to make those adjustments to make them become second nature. Because when you change any aspect of your technique, at first it feels unnatural because your brain is, you know, you have certain patterns that are ingrained in your neuromuscular memory, and they are a little hard to change.

But Carlos was able to change things really fast, actually, and I was always impressed by how fast he would make those progresses. And again, those progresses were not that much physical, you know, in the sense of strength and conditioning like it would have to work hard to it it the the changes where i always told him you have the body has it what you need is that that map in your in your brain somewhere to really understand recognize identify and assimilate fully that particular pattern you've done so many movements so many so much footwork so much but that way to do it requires a different wiring between the mind and and the body between the brain and the and the body that's

a big part of it right is just patterns and getting those patterns ingrained in your system to the point where they come out automatically. Yes. Like, you know, those movements that happen either in sparring or in competition where all of a sudden you're executing something and you had zero thought. It's just completely your training takes over. You slip a punch and counter, and you don't even there's no conscious thought at all and that has to sort of similarly be achieved through movement exactly and

that what's that's what stimulated carlos brain that much that he had to to take a nap after every training whereas he's used to really really training. But with that training, which is relatively low intensity, the brain is so stimulated that it needs to recover because it needs to process. It's like if the movement, the mindful movement is the input that the brain needs to do that re-circuiting differently. And to deconstruct old patterns, replace them with more efficient patterns. And that didn't happen while we were doing it. While we were doing it, a lot of the times I was struggling with this stuff. But I'd go home and I would rest and I'd go back to my, my regular training,

work a little bit on it, not a whole lot, but then the next time I would come back, it was almost as if my, my, my mind and my body had digested this stuff and assimilated and put it into practical application without like, uh, um, unconsciously without me even really working on it too much. He says that I would work in the meantime between our sessions. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I had a lot of other stuff going on. What? Sometimes you didn't? No.

But it looked like I did because I feel like, and I think this is kind of a consensus that you make gains during your rest. You can lift and lift and lift and lift, but if you never rest, you're never going to make those gains. The same thing with your technique and this neurological training. I think it works the exact same way. I think it works the exact same way. The whole movement that's going on right now is really fascinating because there's a bunch of different sort of branches of it. And there's like what Ido Portal is doing.

There's what you're doing. But there's also what Nick Curzon is doing. He's a guy who's a strength and condition coach for Fabricio Verdum and Rafael Dos Anjos. And I had him on the podcast and I asked him, like, what is, like, one of the most important things that fighters are lacking and that you try to improve on? And he said foot strength.

And I found that to be really interesting. And when I watched what you guys were doing, a lot of this barefoot jumping and leaping and balancing, and it requires, like, some pretty extreme foot stability. It's the number one thing we addressed we call number one number one I said your feet are not strong and they're not they're not smart enough not that that that feet have a brain but there is an extremely strong correlation between the proprioception in the foot and the brain and movement. So most of the time when we move, we're on our feet.

And that's the reason why there are so many sensors, nerve terminations in the feet, thousands and thousands of them. Why? Because it's about intelligence, intelligence in the sense of information. We talk about proprioception, exteroception, which is the particular perception of a given surface and its texture. Is it slippery?

Does it give some traction and things like that? Is it stable or shaky? Anyways, so the moment you place your feet, boom, it sends an information to the brain. The brain processes

and gives order to all the rest of the body to shift the way, to just give some order, some intention. It happens without you having to think about it, and it happens extremely fast. However, the more your feet are sensitive in that sense, the faster that information travels up and back down. And secondly, also, the stronger your foot is, the more reliable your base of support is.

So we talk about the strength of the foot. We talk about the elasticity of the muscles in the feet to be sometimes more bouncy, to be sometimes more bouncy, just simply faster, to be also more endurant, to last longer with that elasticity and speed. And we did a lot of that through balancing drills, even like loaded balancing drills, but also specific footwork drills and moving in and out. specific footwork drills and moving in and out. And it was not only the footwork itself, it's also how the level of alertness that you have in relation to an open net and the level of responsiveness that you have in your movement in relation to an open net. Because it's not just reinforcing a particular part of your body as if you're made of parts.

It has to work as a whole. We had to make sure that anything would improve specifically then would be brought back to the whole spectrum, which is movement in a fight and work and actually improve. And that's what Carlos did every time when he would go sparring. And then he would see by himself and then tell me back, I've improved this, I've improved that. And my coaches see it too.

So the proof is in the pudding, as Carlos would always say. It works. You know, most people would think that if you're a fit guy and you're a strong guy, and, you know, like say maybe you do squats or something like that, you'd have strong feet. And one of the things that shocked me the most when I started doing yoga is that's what would give out. It's my feet would give out. I was like, this is so bizarre. Like, I felt like, okay, if I could stand on one foot, like if you made me stand here on one foot with my sneakers on, it's not hard. I'll stand on one foot, you know, okay, no big deal. But when you're balancing, my feet would fucking ache, you know, like you're doing like bow pose or something

like that. And you got one leg up here and your arm is stretched know like you're doing like bow pose or something like that you got one leg up here and your arm is stretched forward and you're balancing my feet would be what was giving out and i started thinking about how little stability you know most people probably have from training with shoes on lifting weights with shoes on doing running with like big thick cushy shoes all those things even even uh elite elite athletes and even elite mmf fighters and the reason why even even when they are training uh barefoot in dojos or in gyms um but you have to think of what's the background of a given person most people today today in modern populations grow up indoors with shoes on all the time, walking on flat, smooth surfaces, very predictable. There's

no challenge to the body. There's no challenge to the feet. The feet become numb. The feet become weak structurally and in terms of strength, in terms of mobility, stability. Yeah. So if you train MMA because you're going to do, you know, say a striking move on your feet, it's going to help. Definitely it's going to help your foot strength, your foot mobility, your foot stability. stability but not as much as what you're gonna gain when you have to balance uh on on narrow surfaces and or in certain positions in certain transitions and kneeling and sitting and get ups and get down especially with loads on or at a certain pace at a certain speed, it's different. And when you make the feet stronger, then your footwork is stronger. When we talk about movement coaching, some people are confused because when they hear movement in relation to fighting, they think footwork.

And it is footwork, but it's also more than that. Do you remember a few years back, it was all the rage. You were hearing about a lot of NFL players were doing ballet. Do you remember this? Yeah, I remember. It was a big deal. People were mocking it and joking around about it. And I remember thinking, man, that is really interesting.

Very smart. They must have some sort of benefit in that if they're doing it. But if you think about ballet the movements are incredibly difficult and especially if you're a 260 pound fucking stud athlete covered in muscles it's like if you're a fit like there was a guy that was in a yoga class recently he was a former football player real big guys like six four and real thick and heavy and it's so much harder for him to do these movements and say like like, a girl who weighs 100 pounds. It's like a castle in the sand.

You know, it's not an Achilles tendon. It's like an Achilles foot. You have a whole mountain that's built on a very weak foundation. So ballet, even for NFL players, was actually a very smart move because when you look at the strength of the the cows i had a cousin who was a professional uh dancer uh her her cows her foot strength was completely amazing because you know they do this gracious movement people see the grace but they make extraordinarily movement look easy but they're not like floor floor gymnasts too, I would imagine, because they have to stick. Your foot has to have the ability to catch you

and then just stay in that position completely locked in. Absorb foot, ankle, knee, hip stability, core stability. I mean, it starts in the foot. Balance, I mean, everything is integrated, core stability. I mean, it starts in the foot. Balance. I mean, everything is integrated, of course, but it starts at your feet. I saw you doing, in some of the countdown shows, you were doing a lot of jumping over things and jumping onto what looks like a board and landing on what looks like a 2x4 or something like that and locking in place on that. And it was pretty impressive stuff because there it is right here jamie how

what you're on the ball but like this kind of stuff like when you were doing these kind of movements like look you'd see it here on this how did you how do you design these erwan and like what are you looking for different things specific to Carlos? Totally specific. 100% specific to Carlos. Because that's the point. Movement coaching, for lack of a better term, it's not giving a fighter random movements

that are not fighting movements. Ballet dancing or whatever, Kepora chi could be anything it could be any movement movement is such a very it's a vast world or universe um if you're lucky you're gonna you're gonna if you give something randomly you're gonna find something that happens to be useful but in in the case of Carlos, I looked at his fights. I analyzed his movement. I had some intuitions about what was there, what was missing. And then as I was training him, I was constantly adjusting the movement programs, what was in every session to what I saw was working, what I saw was not working.

in every session to what I saw was working, what I saw was not working, depending on the level of progress that it was making, we would do something more difficult or at a higher level of intensity. It's tailored. It's customized, not random. How did you develop this program? This is very interesting because I would imagine that you would get athletes from a bunch of different sports that would come to you, right? No. No? i'm not looking i i told carlos carlos listen i'm focusing 100 on you right there's no other athlete that i want but you have like a gym right i mean you have this move nat is this

company you have this website and yeah we have uh we have thousands of certified trainers who are using thousands yeah thousands of trainers i think somewhere around three thousand at this point around the world uh six six the company uh since 2009 so this is all your creation you've developed this all yourself my method the method is my creation but however i, I do draw from the history of physical education, which I have studied a lot, especially what comes from Europe. And in my case, because I'm originally from France, there used to be a method called the natural method by a guy called Georges Baer, who himself was not. Who himself was not, he was seen as a pioneer, but himself was, you know, at some point of that long line of people. Before him was Amoros and Pestalozzi and Mercurialis, a lot of guys who were working on these different methods. But we're talking 20th century, 19th century, 18th century and before and and before and before. And back then, people didn't have exercise science.

So what is it that they were training? They were training the most down-to-earth practical movements. They would jump. They would run. They would crawl. They would lift and carry things and throw and catch things. Why? Because these are the movements that people needed back then, that they were in the military or firefighters.

And when you look at it today, if there is a situation that's, say, potentially life-threatening, these are still the movements that you need to do to save your life or to save somebody else's life. They're natural, but they are natural also to the point that they are vital. So you have this gym, right? What is your normal clientele, like the normal person that comes to a Move Nat gym? It's impossible to shrink to a particular category because…

Do you get like housewives? Do you get athletes of all sports? Yes, yes. Old and young, men and women. So some woman comes in, she's a housewife. Women hate that fucking expression. A woman comes in who's a non-professional athlete who's just looking to get back in shape maybe after having a baby.

Do you design a protocol specifically for her? Is that what you would do? Yeah. Or do you have classes? The movements, there are some movements that are fundamental movements that anybody can do. And then you have more advanced movement. And then you have, say, a simple jump.

You see Carlos jumping. You're like, this woman you're talking about won't be able to do that right yes she will but not at the same level of intensity right oh I see so you would have her do it like shorter jumps over lower it can be a simple jump on the spot where you jump two inches above ground and land in the same spot where you were standing two inches i think she could do four you gotta push her yeah exactly well you just need to keep the training you got it um you know never too hard never too easy that was actually also my concern when i started to train carlos because he was recovering and i was extremely worried that i wouldn't do anything that would

compromise his recovery in any way that would actually help him recover even even faster so a method you have a method only when it's scalable and also when it is progressive and because these movements are natural they belong to all of us like it's like what would be the best way to train a wild tiger? Can you imagine that you're going to try to isolate their hind legs and then try to have them do another workout for the front legs and then put them on a treadmill for cardio?

That wouldn't make any sense. That would be hilarious because to be optimally strong and agile and like a good hunter a good predator the wild tiger just needs to be and behave and move like a wild tiger in its original environment but why wouldn't it be any different on an inverted treadmill and really push that motherfucker have some good music going maybe some motivational videos. Turn the heater up. It would be a Drago Tiger. Well, you know, they do that with pit bulls. You know, pit bulls, when they train them for fighting, they put them on treadmills.

They put them on a treadmill that's sort of self-propelled, like the animal's propelling the treadmill, and they'll put something in front of it that it wants to get to. So exercise science for pit bulls. Yeah. Well, it's a real thing. I mean, they sell these. They have weigh-ins.

Yeah. Yeah, they do. This shit's serious, man. Oh, yeah. Why not? But my point was everybody needs the fundamental of – I believe everybody needs the fundamental of movements before you go through a very specific science-based exercise for anybody. Most people don't need that. Most people just need to move in the first place.

They don't even move. They can't even squat. Right, right. Most people are just sedentary. They're just sitting in offices and cubicles or what have you. And the cause of most of their physical ailments is that improper movement behavior, lack of movement or too specialized movement,

lack of diversity. And the good thing is that the antidote for that is movement also, movement behaviors. Movement behavior is the cause and the solution to a lot of physical issues. Yeah, so when you think about it, what do we do? We fucking stand, we sit, we lay, we bend. That's about it.

That's like four things, right, throughout our day. And that is so, so narrow of a movement spectrum compared to what should we do? We should throw, we should run, we should catch, we should swim, we should balance, we should pull, we should carry do we should throw we should run we should catch we could should swim we should balance we should pull we should carry we should you know fight we could all all this uh you know variety of things that that the human body is supposed to do and yet we are like in these constraints of our you know we have chairs we're sitting here on fucking chairs before there was chairs or the fucking you know a low low squat or kneel or you know um there's uh there's also the the the neurological uh benefit of doing those things because to for you to um to to move that way your body has or your brain has to do it for you. It has to fire those synapses off.

We're not doing that by this boring-ass shit. Or even if we're fit, we're still laying. We're sitting on machines. I'm doing an elevated whatever. Bench press or something like that. We're still kind of isolated. It's very minimal. Yeah yeah it's it's it we're still kind of isolated and very minimal yeah it's very minimal we we're not supposed to be like that we're supposed to fucking move exactly the the even the people who who are brave enough to go against that inertia of normalcy

um and go to the gym uh and they will with machines. I see a huge problem with that. Yeah, like Nautilus-type machines. It's totalitarian because machines dictate your movement, shrinks it, shapes it. You have no choice. You follow a very simplified pattern that's imposed by the machine. This is not who you are. this is not what you're supposed to be and move like yeah because you're supposed to be highly adaptable in the way you move

but when you do try to isolate your muscles you're treating yourself like you're a freaking machine it's like a factory when you should be like a wild forest or a permaculture garden or something like that it's it's not what you're designed by uh evolution or creation whatever to do um and so bringing it back around to mma it's stepping in the octagon to fighting you know the nature of our sport has so many different uh variables anything can happen we go through you know, we're using various energy systems. We go from, you know, going aerobic to anaerobic to using an isometric hold all the way back through, you know, so many different things involved

because basically we're able to do whatever the fuck we want in there with, you know, under a very limited amount of rules um so training this way just just makes sense um because i mean it's it's much more uh along the lines of what we're actually going to do in competition how much of a factor is this flexibility uh play and how often do you train flexibility? A lot of, so flexibility is huge, mobility is huge because the more mobility you can you know explore, manifest physically full range of motion but it also plays a huge role in how relaxed you are and therefore how much power you can generate. That's actually one of the main points focused on the second camp that we did for the fight for Roby.

So we established a strategy, I proposed a movement strategy to Carlos and he when he talked to Greg Jackson about his game playing they they came up with the same thing and that was to use his wrench to always keep control of the wrench and therefore to use his his reach through using his kicks more and better and we had to address some some deficiencies in flexibility because what we what we what we noticed right away is that when you was when Carlos was trying to reach a certain height he had to somewhat go a little beyond these is back then current level of you mean height mobility yes yes and so when you try to somewhat force a little your mobility, what creates is instability.

And it slows down the movement, and then you also lose accuracy and power and accuracy. So we did tons of stretching, but we did that stretching through natural movements, through a lot of movement on the ground and, yeah, through those natural patterns. So I think, and, you know, tell me if you agree, in MMA, as opposed to traditional martial arts, I think we skip over a lot of the intricacies. Because I know you're a martial artist. You came up in Taekwondo. You're a martial artist. You came up in taekwondo.

And I feel like traditional martial arts really emphasize you don't go past this point until you've mastered this thing. Right. And it's very specialized. In MMA, I think we get a guy and he's got a wrestling background. We'll teach him a little bit of boxing. We won't get him necessarily super crisp. Teach him how to stay out of a few submissions. Get him real strong.

Get him in shape. And then put him out there and let him go with intensity. And a lot of times that will carry a lot of guys to the top levels. And yet they've missed some of these smaller basic nuts and bolts kind of thing with the movement. And I think that going back to – that's all good. That's all well and good. You need that mix of stuff. You need the intensity. You need to be able to get out there and bring in – bite down on your mouthpiece and throw down when the time comes.

But if you have that, you can always go back and work on that other stuff. And that's what I feel like I did quite a bit with, with Irwin is, you know, making these tweaks on these, these very fundamental things that, that had been, had been skipped over because, you know, I'm, you know, I'm kind of, I'm built to be, I got, I got the fighter thing here. And you put me, you know, against whoever I'm going to, I'm going to be a fighter. I got the fighter thing here. And you put me against whoever, I'm going to fucking go. But now let's refine, let's refine, let's refine and maximize the potential of what I can do. Yeah, it seems like almost having that kind of go, go, go mentality, that fighter mentality, it's obviously a huge benefit when you're in a fight.

But it almost seems like maybe sometimes it's against your benefit when you're training because when you're training, you almost should be looking at it like a science. You almost should be looking at it instead of just trying to be the toughest guy in the room. You should almost be looking at it like you're building a castle. You have to make sure the foundation is good. In traditional martial arts, you have your white belt techniques. Then as you develop in the ranks and you get new belts, you move up and you get higher ranks. One of the things you say you get higher techniques or more difficult techniques, but one of the things you see in MMA is there's guys that have mastered, like truly mastered one particular aspect of MMA. Like Damian Maia is a perfect example.

He's a legitimate jiu-jitsu master, world champion. And because of that, his specialty is so strong that when he gets to to that spot he's just got this massive advantage over almost anybody and you see that when he fights like really good guys you know like gunner nelson i mean gunner nelson's a motherfucker yep a motherfucker on the ground yep but damien's so goddamn good like neil magny's another one neil magny is so good he's so tough and so so good at avoiding submissions. His defense is excellent. And Damian just ran right through him.

And he runs right through him because his technique is samurai sword sharp. And he has polished it down. And then now he's learned all the other stuff. He's learned kickboxing. And in the beginning he didn't have that. And that's why Nate Marquardt knocked him out and all these other guys were able to beat him. He just didn't have the stand-up skills.

He didn't have all the other attributes of MMA. But that one thing, he had honed to sort of a mastery level. Whereas some guys never get to that in anything. They're really good at everything, but they never get to a mastery level in anything. Yeah, yeah. And I would say that that's probably me. I'm good at a lot of in anything. Yeah. Yeah. And I would, I mean, I would say that that's probably me. I'm good at a lot of different things.

Maybe not a master in necessarily anything. Your stand up is pretty high level. Pretty high level. Yeah. Pretty high level. You stand up with pretty much anybody. You know, I put your stand up at a very high level, but you know, your submissions are very good too, man.

But if you spent five years and did nothing but jiu-jitsu every day and started competing in the Mundiales and Abu Dhabi and Naga and all that shit. And who knows what the fuck your jiu-jitsu would be like. Which sounds awesome. I mean, when I was coming up, Greg Jackson's gym now is very much seen as kickboxing, lots and lots of striking. Some wrestling, some jiu-jitsu, but mainly striking. Back in the day when I first started with Greg and his system and his affiliates, it was mainly grappling school. It was gaido jitsu, right? Gaido jitsu, yes, sir.

His style had been created. Yeah. Well, him and some other guys kind of got together and created this thing. grappling school it was gaido jitsu right gaido jitsu yes sir his style that he had created yeah um well him and some other guys kind of got together and created this thing um does he still call it that or is that no history no that's that's history man that's just that's old school stuff i don't know how the fuck i still remember that um but you know a guy like keith jardine who by the time he got into the UFC was kickboxing everybody. When I first met Keith, Keith was a jujitsu guy, man. He was competing and in the advanced level at, you know, at these, uh, uh, grapplers quest tournaments and that sort of thing. And then kind of got away from that. Um, and you know, I think my first 12 or 12 or 13

wins or something were by submission, and now I haven't had a submission in years. Yeah. Yeah, so we just got away from that, and I think the sport kind of evolves, and then it comes full circle. It swings one way and then the other. And you see that with fighters as well, like Paul Felder is a perfect example.

He's this excellent striker. And he had a couple really close decision losses to Barboza and Ross Pearson. And then he wins his next fight by submission. And attacked with another submission before he got the rear naked choke. He almost got him in a guillotine. You see guys going, hey, there's other ways to fucking skin a cat. I've got to figure out how to be more predictable. Or unpredictable unpredictable rather.

And I think that that's one of the real problems with guys who are specialist strikers is that when you fight a guy who's a specialist striker, you know that he's not going to be shooting on you, so you're more relaxed. You can loosen your legs up a little bit. Your footwork, your stance takes a different position because you're not squared off, always looking to sprawl and hit underhooks. Absolutely. And, you know, you bring that up and that makes me think about my last fight. I'm a well-rounded fighter, but I went in there and had a kickboxing fight with Robbie.

Well, I thought that would actually be to your benefit because what I said in the pre-fight thing was that issues you've had in the past with guys who've been able to hold onto you and grab you down like Hendricks and that that might be a benefit to you in the Robbie Lawler fight. Cause fucking Robbie just, he's a gladiator. I mean that dude, he's so rare in that regard. He, what you see is what you get. That guy, you know, he is all bite down the mouthpiece and move forward. He's got excellent technique and he's just fucking tough as nails. But he's a born fighter. Born fighter.

Yeah. Well, that's why that fight was so good between you guys. That last round, man. Jesus Christ. When the fucking round was over and you guys both put your arms on the cage, that was the perfect example of leaving it all in the octagon. You guys just emptied out the tank. You were on fumes. And then the buzzer rang, and you both did the same thing.

When the fuck has that ever happened? I don't think that's ever happened in a fight where the fight's over and both guys just walk to the cage. You didn't hug each other. You're like, that'll fucking happen later. Look at this. Look at this picture right there. That's you guys.

That's fucking never happened, man. I've never seen that. I wasn't even conscious of that at that point. I think I was oxygen deprived, hypoxic, probably mildly concussed from taking shots. That was a fucking amazing fight. It was an amazing fight. And it was an amazing round. That fifth round was

just goddamn chaos I mean that to me is all of the the scariest aspects of MMA as far as damage and you know what you guys are doing to each other and all the greatest aspects of MMA as far as like display of heart and courage and willpower and just determination because you had to be burning i mean everything what was it like in there that fifth round um i came out and i was i was feeling good i think i came out and finishing that fourth round i finished strong i almost almost had him finished um in that fifth round i knew that he was going to come out like a bat out of hell. So I wanted to finish strong. You never know with the judges.

I didn't know where I was. I felt like I was maybe up on the scorecards, but I'm like, fuck it. I need to go out there. And I started the round really, really strong, I think. And then he woke up and came on, turned on his beast mode like he does at the end of a lot of fights and landed some really heavy strikes. But it was i mean we were just digging i don't even remember honestly i don't i remember at certain points i guess the only thing that i could uh compare it to was like being in the ocean and having waves crashing on you and you're just getting your head above water just to get enough

breath and then boom you're getting another one crashing down upon you and um you are you know out of breath you're fucking struggling for survival and you know and you're just doing your best to fucking you know to come up a moment like that in a fight like that has got to be something that fuels you in a way that nothing else can when you're in the gym. Because you know that those moments can happen. Like when you're thinking about slowing down in a strength and conditioning program or when you're doing rounds in the bag and you're thinking about slowing down. That moment's like thinking about that fight. I mean, that has got to be.

Yeah, yeah. That's something tangible that you can fucking grab onto when you're hitting those those those points you're hitting your your your edge and you don't know if you can go any any farther that that sort of thing can bring you through you know there's the debate in mma like what is the most important aspect of training is it strength and conditioning is it skill training? How do you quantify that when it comes to a fight camp? And one of the things that Nick Curzon was saying when I talked to him about it,

it's like he believes that when a fighter comes to him or when a fighter is preparing for a fight, they already have all these skills. They already know how to fight. They already know how to kickbox. They already know jiu-jitsu. know how to fight they already know how to kickbox they already know jujitsu when it comes down to what a camp is he believes that the the primary focus should be on physical preparation the primary focus should be on getting your body to be able to perform at an extremely high output for a long time and recover quickly and if you can get there that the benefits of that are greater

than the benefits of just consistently working on skill training and drilling and all these other things. I think there has to be a balance because you can be in phenomenal fucking shape, ready to go five rounds and then step out and get knocked the fuck out in a couple of seconds. That's true, right? Yeah. That's true. Or you could freeze up. So I think the mental aspect of it and the aspect is super super important so that drill anything like that do you do you have a mental coach or do you have visualization drills or

anything along those lines I visualize I do but I've done this quite a bit you know I coach I work with Ricky Lindell talks about bringing it to the moment you know it's it's about being a game day player. I love Ricky, by the way. He's awesome. Absolutely. Great grappler, super smart guy, and just cool as hell. Yeah.

Just love that guy. Good all around dude for sure. But being a game day player, you get a lot of these guys in the gym there. Killers. World beaters. But then the bell rings, they're under the bright lights and they just they wilt yeah and the doubts and then come haunting home yeah well you and then you get these other guys you're like really he's he's fighting who in the ufc and you're seeing training you're

like oh man i don't i don't know how well this i don't know if i want to watch this he's a nice guy he can get worked and and then he goes out there you know and and does work and rises to the occasion and accomplishes something that maybe you and maybe not even he realized that he could do. Yeah, it's an interesting thing to try to figure out where the balance, where the focus should be. And I think it's different for everybody, man. It's different for everybody.

There's no one answer. That's the thing about martial arts. Like, I've heard this guy talking about this once, that it's not an art. You know, that it's just people beating each other up. And I'm like, wow, that is such an ignorant thing to say. Because when you watch someone fight, you are watching art. It's just violent. It's a violent art.

When I watch, like, your fight with tiago alves you can't tell me that was an art that was an artistic performance like your interpretation of the movements in the moment to step in and blast that elbow that's that's that's a beautiful thing i mean it's not beautiful to him or anybody who cares about him or his facial structure or yes that's it's beauty there's beauty in that there structure. Yeah, but that's, it's beauty. There's beauty in that. There's beauty in that. And, you know, there's beauty when he did that to Matt Hughes.

And when he hit Matt Hughes with that flying knee. There's beauty in martial arts. There is. Well, for me, it always has been a creative outlet. I can put together all these sequences and all these different things in a way to solve a particular problem while somebody else is trying to do the same thing against me. And the margin for error is really fucking thin.

If I zig when I should have zagged, I'm catching a shin upside my head and there's going to be bone exposed. That's why this is a great thing. That's why MMA is so fucking cool. It's so fucking cool to watch. But the preparation for one night, like the idea that you're, especially for a guy like you who came off of a knee surgery, you're out for a year. And then you have, you were out for more than a year before the Tiago fight, right? How long was it? Probably 16 months.

So you have all this time building up to this one moment. How difficult is it to just be in the moment when that happens and not be overwhelmed by the fact that so much of your future is riding on this. You're not entirely set for life financially yet. You know, there's all these different variables. You have a wife. You have a child. You have a family. You have obligations.

You have all these things. But yet here you are preparing for this one completely just it it's like it just slips through your fingers, this moment. This moment that's just there that you cannot, you can't hold down and you're sharing this moment with another trained killer. And you're just locked into a cage and your future rides on your success. Yeah. future rides on your success yeah um i like to say that you know fight day you know that that night could be the best night of your life or the worst and you don't know fucking which one and there's an incredible mix of emotions and i feel i feel happy i feel sad i feel fucking nervous i feel um uh you know elated to be, to be

there and then fucking scared as shit. And I don't want to do this anymore. And I really just have to ride it out and be, and, and trust in my training, trust in the preparation that I've done up to that point. Um, cause man, my mind and my emotions do all sorts of things, but I just have to know that I've done what I need to do in preparation for this fight, that I'm going to be all right, and that no matter what, I know that I will never give anything less than 100%, than my best. I will never give anything less than what you saw in that fight. I may get knocked out, or it but, or, you know, it may,

may be an early night for me. It may be a terrible night, but that's out of my control. I, I gave, um, everything that I could to each, each round, each training session, uh, each, each minute of, of, of the training camps. So that, um, when I, when I step out there, I've done everything in my, my control to fucking win this fight and, and to compete to the best of my ability. Um, there's also the things that are out of your control and you can't worry about that shit. Injuries,

like injuries, Tyron Woodley fight or catching that one that you don't see, you know, and, and, you know, shit happens, but that's kind of the,

that's the, uh, it's the thrill of it. Does that make the highlights sweeter? Knowing that those, you know, the bad moments are out there, that they're possible? Oh, yeah. Definitely. Like I said, we're walking on a razor's edge on this thing.

I mean, it could be a phenomenal night. It could be a terrible night. I mean, fuck, I don't know. Nobody's died in MMA at this point. Well, not in the UFC. Yeah, not in the UFC. But, you know, that shit could happen. This is a tough thing.

What's your feelings on weight cutting? Like, if you could be assured that weight cutting would be out of the picture? Like, let's just throw all the weight classes out. And let's just say, like, what do you walk around at? Like, 185, 190, something like that? Yeah, between 190, 195. If you could be assured that that is just, that's what your opponent's going to weigh, that's what you're going to weigh, you don't have to cut any weight,

wouldn't you think that that would be a better way to compete, to just completely eliminate that from the equation? Just find out whatever is your natural healthy weight and compete at that instead of this insane thing that everyone's doing where they're dehydrating themselves. A massive percentage of your body weight, sometimes as much as 10% of your body weight, just getting sucked away in water to the point where you could literally only Exist in that state for a short period of time a couple hours. Yeah Yeah, that's fucking bananas that that's a part of cage fighting that one day to me. I feel like

The athletic Commission's are sleeping on a potential time bomb They're just ignoring that this is a huge issue while they're concentrating on steroids and EPO and all these other things, which are real issues. Those things are unquestionably real issues. But just as big of an issue is massive dehydration 24 hours before a cage fight, especially now that've eliminated um the iv rehydration methods and the fact that we know now there's medical science has proven that the brain does not rehydrate as fast as the rest of the tissue it takes longer it takes as much as 70 hours or uh yeah 70 hours which is fucking crazy. Yeah, to rehydrate your brain.

Yeah. I think it'd be interesting to see different proposals. I know that 1FC is doing something. Yeah, they've eliminated it. Yeah, what are they? They're going to check your hydration levels. They're going to eliminate weight cutting. Yeah, well, I know that they're doing the hydration levels on like a collegiate and high school wrestling level. And I still know guys that are trying to game that system.

Yeah, well, let them try to game that system. But if you can eliminate that and test hydration levels, imagine a guy like Johnny Hendricks who never made it to the fight with Tyron Woodley because of the weight cutting. Imagine them getting to a point where they check him and they go, hey, man, you're fucking dehydrated. You can't fight. You didn't make weight. You're not where you're supposed to be. I'm on the side of health for fighters and guys taking care of themselves.

We're doing this for a very brief period of time in our lives, and the repercussions long-term from a lot of the different stuff involved, including weight cutting, this is going to have long-term ramifications. For internal organs, specifically kidneys, right? Yeah, man, and i think it ages you man it it especially if you're not doing it correctly especially if you're not living a healthy lifestyle year-round all of a sudden boom i'm gonna change the way that i eat so drastically that my body's gonna freak the fuck out which you see a lot of these guys and then they don't make

it to the they don't make it to the wayin because their system isn't used to eating like this. I'm used to, you know, eating a bunch of bullshit and now I'm all of a sudden eating greens, which is good for you, but your body's still going to have this, this, this reaction to it when you're not used to it. So yeah, I would, I would definitely like to see some change. You know, if it benefits the health of fighters, I'm all for it. I don't think it could possibly not benefit them. I think that would be the biggest thing that we could do even more

so than I think what the what Jeff Nowitzki and the UFC is trying to do with eliminating performance enhancing drugs is awesome. I love the fact they're catching people. I can't believe that they caught Yoel Romero. Who would have thought that that guy was taking steroids? That's crazy.

Who would have thought that? That's amazing. A couple of those guys man. I would have thought that that guy was taking steroids that's crazy who thought that that's amazing couple of those guys man I would have never believed it him or Hector Lombard was another one who saw that coming that's nuts Vitor Belfort are you kidding me nuts cyborg really Wow crazy yeah yeah I think that it's awesome because, I mean, we're going to come to a point in time in the real near future where it's impossible to cheat. Yeah. I mean, they're pretty close to it now. They're pretty close to it now where they're so good at catching people, but they're also saving urine, which I think is fascinating.

See, urine and blood for eight years. Yep. To test it in case they don't have a test that detects whatever it is you're testing at this point. We can test you down the way. Exactly. And you can come off hot down the way, which is cool. They're super close to being able to catch you doing anything now. But what they're doing is they're coming up with all these little designer things and peptides.

And that's what Yoel Romero got caught for, for some designer peptide which artificially increases your body's own production of testosterone you know so they're doing all this sneaky weird shit that used to be totally uh undetectable you know five six years ago or what have you yeah well that i think that's what they've been doing for a long time correct correct? Like, it's been like an arms race between the dopers and the anti-dopers. Yes. That's what I understand with Lance Armstrong. It was like a constant thing, man. They were like some super sophisticated fucking programs to beat these tests.

Yeah, and with Lance Armstrong, one of the interesting things was everybody was dirty. I mean, it's not like MMA, where you have, there's a few guys that, like, Nowitzki, I think he calls it the smell test or the look test, where you look at them and you go, hmm, what the fuck's going on over there? Right. You know?

But with Armstrong, like, none of those guys looked like Yoel Romero. They were just little skinny guys on bikes. Yeah. It's the nature of the sport. Yes. And I think what they were, probably what they were taking is different than what fucking, you know, what these big muscled up, you know, prize fighters are taking.

Well, another important distinction about these bans and about the banning of IV rehydration is now you can't blood dope. Because they used to be able to blood dope. It used to be pretty easy to just take your blood out and reinsert it into your body. You have more blood. And you get the same sort of benefits that you would get with EPO. So you can't do that anymore because they'll be able to detect. They can actually detect plastics in the blood that come from the bags and from the tubes. It's fucking nuts, man.

It's wild, yeah. It's nuts. It's fucking crazy what they can do. I've heard, though, like in, you know, we're talking about the arms race, that people can use glass. A glass syringe. A glass. people can use glass syringe, glass, glass, and then the vein, like sterilized veins from animals as they're, as they're tubing. That's, that's what I've heard. Oh my God. Oh my God. That's so crazy. Yeah. Like sausage casing and shit. Oh my God. That's fucking, now they're going to

check for pig veins Down the rabbit hole like all that stuff That's I mean when the Vitsky was telling me that they've now figured out a way to develop testosterone from animals and it's Semi theoretical at this point with they don't they haven't caught anybody who's done it yet And then maybe one of the reasons why they're you know They're holding on to this blood for eight years but he said they've figured out a way because right now I don't understand the process but right now the way they develop artificial testosterone is through wild yams they use Mexican yams I fucking don't understand it but somehow through yams they can develop

testosterone the youngs are manly manly yams I've always said I am what I am that's why pop pop I knew he was ahead of the time they make me feel manly so they've figured out a way through these carbon isotope tests to detect that the testosterone in your body was non endogenous that it was exogenous it's somehow came from something else. But they won't be able to do this right now, at least, with animal testosterone, which is so fucking bizarre. It will always be a race between the cheaters

and those who control those. With the French Tour france cyclism biking and uh back in the early 20th century they were doing it already and then today every sunday there is some competition somewhere like a local short distance triathlon and those you know sunday athletes and they don't yeah they're saying that like executives that want to like show off are taking EPO and entering in triathlons and winning them like they can put that on their resume jack to the tits on EPO which is really fucking dangerous apparently I don't understand EPO but the way it's been described to me was that when you have so much extra blood in your system, there's a high risk of stroke and that you have to mitigate the

amount of EPO and the amount of blood in your system by constantly exercising. You have to exercise. You have to drink water and exercise. Otherwise, your blood gets too thick. As we talk, millions of people are doing crazy things in their day-to-day life that are going to mess up with their brain, mess up with their whole physiology and hormonal balance and stuff like that and they're not getting paid to do it they just do it out of whatever ignorance of laziness or uh so why wouldn't these professional athletes of course some of them especially in combat sports yeah yeah i mean there's one thing winning winning a bike race is one thing but not getting kicked in the head or being able to kick the guy in the head because you have that extra juice of energy. You know, when you're tired and you're in that fifth round, but you come out because you're on EPO and you're fucking Dominic Cruz stepping and throwing high kicks and the other dude is gasping for air.

That's where it becomes a huge issue. Absolutely. I mean, we're talking, we're talking potentially life and death. Yeah, sure. Well, the way I describe MMA is it's high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences. And we've seen it. We've all seen guys get flatlined. We've all seen people.

I mean, you've done it to a bunch of guys inside the octagon, and it could have been you. I mean, it's a fucking nutty sport. and it could have been you. It's a fucking nutty sport, and in this sport, the doping has just a much higher level of... Consequences. Yes. Ramifications.

Ramifications is the right word. What's interesting to me, though, I'm absolutely anti-doping, but I'm pro the science involved in it because what we're experiencing right now, what I believe, is that we are in a period of time in human history where our understanding and the scientific understanding of the body and

its mechanisms and all the things they can do to it is being sort of deciphered and tweaked and poked by all these various scientists although i believe that that should be outside of competitive athletics we're going to get to a point in you know who knows 10 20 30 years where they're going various scientists, although I believe that should be outside of competitive athletics, we're going to get to a point in, you know, who knows, 10, 20, 30 years where they're going to be able to genetically re-engineer human beings. And this is all going to be out the window. I think we're kind of experiencing the last years of natural competition. Yeah. Gene doping type stuff. It's going to happen. I mean, they have this new thing that they've figured out how to do where they, because of this really interesting science, it's called CRISPR is what they've developed. And I'll butcher it if I try to give the scientific definition of it. They can literally add genes and manipulate genes.

And they're doing so in small animals and small multicellular organisms. And they're getting it to a point where they really understand it. And they're saying that in China, they're starting to do this with human beings. And they're starting to fuck with it and test it. And you might see some Chinese Wolverine type dudes in the next 20 years and you'll know well that that kids the product of these Chinese experiments you know I mean that's what they used to call Corellon they used to call Corellon the experiment because if you've ever seen Corellon's family his mother and father like five foot six they're like these

tiny people and Corellon was this fucking monster of a wrestler. Do you know who we're talking about? Alexander Carellon? I've never heard of him, no. Undefeated wrestler. I mean, he lost one time to Rulon Gardner, but the only reason why he lost is they changed the rule. They changed the rule. This is Greco so crazy, whereas

if you release your grip, if someone gets you to release your grip, it's a point which is insane and that's how Gardner beat him he couldn't do anything to him but he got Carellon towards the end of his career he'd been wrestled forever but he was so

scary that guys would try to flatten out to keep from getting thrown by him because he was so strong that he would take these men, 280 pound men and he would just go under them while they belly down, flattened out on the mat, just praying they don't get taken for a ride. And he would lift them up and throw them through the air with all his weight and their weight, boom, coming down on them.

So he's essentially knocking them the fuck out with the mat where everybody else was wrestling. He was wrestling as well, but he was also hitting you with the world you know it was crazy and no one knows how he got so fucking big in history of sports there are always these these freak of nature these completely exceptional athlete in a given in a given sport with what you say in the the manipulations they're gonna be able to do on on physiology maybe using nanotechnologies or indeed uh genetic modifications they might be able to replicate to clone those those freaks of of science oh they're going to if it doesn't happen in our lifetimes it will happen in our children's lifetimes It's going to happen

Science doesn't stop If you just go back 40, 50 years What they were able to do if you had a knee surgery You know, like you're talking about your knee graft You were fucked back then You were fucked You were crippled Bum knee

Yeah, that's just 50 years ago That's inside of a living person's lifetime Well, 25 years ago or less They weren't able to do this one that I had successfully. Yes. My friend Steve Graham was on the U.S. ski team, and he's had some fucking insane number of surgeries. I want to say he's around 18 knee surgeries. He has his knees capped. I'll show you this.

You'll fucking freak out. He has his knees resurfaced. The tops of his knees are um it's all steel it's fucking bizarre man it's so it's so freaky to look at but he came around uh when they were doing all these experimental surgeries they just they just couldn't they just didn't know how to do it. They just were taking all these risks. And here it is right here. I'm going to show you this. This is fucking freaky. That's the surface of the inside of his knee. So he has no more cartilage.

Wow. And all the meniscus is gone as well. So if you see that white thing down there, that's artificial meniscus. Okay. That's like a pad that they put in place So they put this artificial pad in place then they have the tops of the knee the top of the femur and It's glides upon the yes the plastic looks like an abstract painting to me. It's fucking chaos. It's like dinner

Yeah, I told him dude You gotta send me this after you get your latest operation because he's had so many operations He was so chewed down to the wire that this is this is the the latest Sort of fix that's wild man. It's fucking crazy, and she's had Multiple ACL surgeries on both legs MCL just the whole deal Meniscus scopes and this and this and that. There's nothing left. They predicted that so many years ago when I was a kid. Steve Osteen, whatever his name was.

Yeah, Bonac Man. Right. It was fascinating back then. Yeah. We're close to that. I mean, they're putting artificial hips in people and having them being more durable than the natural hips. They're also using exoskeletons. Yes.

Especially in Japan, they're really big on all these robotics innovations. I got in one of those. I got in an exoskeleton. I find it beautiful for people who really need it. Yes. You had a very serious accident. There's nothing you can do, but it's not your responsibility or you come back from war. Right.

And you need that kind of assistance. In that case, I believe it's beautiful. Yes. It's not your responsibility or you come back from war and you need that kind of assistance. In that case, I believe it's beautiful. Yes. But my concern is that this kind of new technology is going to be valuable to millions of people who basically don't give a crap about their body. Their body has become completely alien to themselves and they neglect it and they let it deteriorate. You could think about it that way or you could say you know what man it's just technology it's it could be used or abused i mean like cars i mean cars could be used to get places or you could be a fat fuck and they

just wheel you over to your car you ooze your way into the car and they push you in and shut the door then the car drives you around because you're too fucking lazy. It's the balance. And I think in our society, we always go too far. It's like that exoskeleton for your body becomes what the shoe is to your foot. And I think that's your point. That's a very good analogy. Is that your foot is going to atrophy or your body is going to atrophy because you have, you know, your foot has this artificial arch. But from birth, like in Wall-E.

I love that movie. And then you're like – the thing is that, yeah, it's freedom. It's individual freedom. You do whatever you want. I completely agree with that. But ultimately, it becomes the norm. It becomes something that's not shocking anymore. Yes.

Like in the Wall-E world, the that movie in the end not being able to even stand let alone to walk it's not shocking it's it's the norm it's just something normal my grandma was able to walk a little a few steps wow she was extremely fit you know that we change ultimately through generations we change the norm and so yeah i won't be there you won't be there we won't be there yeah but somewhat i'd like to know that we're going in in a good direction the healthy direction not i don't know i don't know if it is it's definitely crazy i don't know if it is a bad direction but if we went back to single-celled organisms like oh look at these pussies with their multiple cells back when i was fucking kid, you had to have one cell and you were happy.

So I don't think it's good or bad. I think it's how it's applied. Yes. And is it beneficial? Is it detrimental? And what is the implication on a societal level, on an overall thing? implication on like a societal level on like an overall thing we can look at tech technology you know the technology in general in in that respect um i like to see that as a as a as options as additional benefits to our current society and culture means that let's imagine utopia like a

society where every individual would be would would consider their own health and movement ability as somewhat their personal biological duty. So they would really make sure that they stay strong, they stay healthy, they can move, they're in shape, they're sharp physically and mentally. And on top of that, whenever whenever needed they would punctually and wisely use those technologies then that would be an enhanced lifestyle in society but when you have people it's just there to support people who have voluntarily disempowered themselves degenerated themselves that i i don't i don't like the direction that would be aren't we basing that on the current paradigm, though? If we keep moving in the same direction, it's entirely possible that you're not going to need to be in shape or get in shape.

You're just going to be in shape. You're going to have something that they've invented, whether it's some sort of a biotechnology or what have you, where you never get out of shape. You're always physically fit. Your body regenerates tissue. If you lose an arm, it grows back. Yes and no. It doesn't mean because here's the problem. You won't be the master of a technology.

Somebody else will. The same way, it's like if you, everybody stops growing their food. So when you're hungry, you need that food to be delivered to you, to be produced for you. If at some point the production of food is in the hands of a very few people, there's no freedom anymore. I see. So you say, yeah, but it allows you to be always strong, always fit, always healthy. Yeah, but the technology is in the hands of a few people. And when they want to take it back…

That sounds like some Illuminati type of thing. But you don't have to go into a conspiracy theory to think about, are you in control? Is it something that you can fix yourself? Like when you have a car or a bow or something, can you fix the technology yourself? Does it belong to you? Do you control it or not? I think you're talking about things in a practical sense, and I agree with you. In a practical, sort of a pragmatic approach. I'm extrapolating 100 years from now when all it's nonsense.

Because I'm saying there's going to become a time in the future where there are no natural athletes because there's no natural people. We're probably, yeah, we're just a few years away from being symbiotically connected to electronics. We're pretty close now with phones. You leave the house without your phone, you freak out. Very few people live without a car. You have your navigation system to get you around. I only remember like three or four phone numbers now. When I was a kid, I remembered everybody's number. I could be able to call my friends. I could be able to call you around. I only remember three or four phone numbers now. When I was a kid, I remembered everybody's number. I could be able to call my friends. I could be able

to call my house. I fucking barely know my own home number now. I give someone my cell phone number after think. I have to think about that number. So you do give up some of your control. You do, but you get Google. You get all sorts of good shit as well.

And the bad shit that comes with it, right um so you know what 50 years ago they started or maybe longer i don't know uh they started making uh fucking processed foods and that was like the best thing ever oh my god we don't have to fucking cook our food anymore we could throw you know we could have it made for us in a factory and we just throw it in the oven and it's done. Boom, this is the greatest thing ever. Fast forward 30, 40 years and now we're fat and unhealthy and our

trans fats and corn syrup for our healthcare is fucking our healthcare cost exceeds our fucking gross domestic product for the fucking United States. And we're just, you know, there's good parts of it. Yeah, they probably made food safer in a sense.

Less people are dying from fucking listeria outbreaks and that sort of thing. But on the flip side of that, now we're really fucking sick and fat. I 100% agree with you, Carlos, because it's not like you could say, wait, we won't be there when this will happen. There will be some adverse consequences to all this, but we won't see it. It's already here. It's already altering people's life today as we speak.

The people are listening to us, maybe suffering from this and that. They don't even know why. Well, maybe you're surrounded by thousands and thousands of chemicals in all your hygiene products that you know that you breathe that go through your pores that go in your system that alter your hormonal uh homesthasis and stuff like that maybe you're eating gmo maybe everything is altered in your day-to-day life and you see it as something normal means you don't see it basically and doesn't doesn't bother you you're not conscious of it but it does bother you in how well you live well and and ultimately somebody's profiting right mm-hmm then that's the thing is

with with any of this stuff I mean it will become the norm if somebody's profiting off sure they can sell it to you if they can if they can convince you that this is better whether it is or whether it's not but you know through you know whatever they're already selling water to us maybe they'll sell air to us pure air aren't they in some places can't you buy canned air in china i mean think they buy canned air with a little mask on it. You suck the canned air and feel good about it. I've done that in Japan, actually. It's pretty wild. Made my veins blue.

What? It's wild, yeah. What? Yeah, because you had so much pure oxygen. You could get it at like 7-Eleven over there next to the weird squid hot dogs. Whoa. I did an oxygen bar once in Vegas. Remember they used to have those?

They're probably still around. I think they do. You put like a little pipe up your nose and I'm supposed to be like, what am I supposed to be getting out of this? Yeah. It's like one of those oxygen things you see old smokers roll around with. Yeah, totally. And the thing goes up your nose.

These little tubes go up your nose. And we're sitting there going, okay, what am I supposed to feel? A sense of euphoria, a lot of extra energy. And the cute chick that works there comes up and rubs your nose and we're sitting there okay what am i supposed to feel a sense of euphoria a lot of extra energy and the cute chick that works there and comes up and rubs your back and does that weird thing on your scalp and you kind of feel that shit i felt good but it would come to your mind to do something like that if you're in the mountain and the air is pure yes surrounded by trees why why on earth would you try to put some whatever oxygen in your in your brain? You don't need it.

Well, that's one of the things that I love about forests and trees is that you can physically feel the difference in the air because trees literally absorb carbon dioxide and express oxygen. They produce oxygen. You breathe it in. It feels better. The point is that you need these enhancements when you're living within an environment that is a tremendously deteriorated right complete after then you're like oh my god I need better air and meet more

natural food and I need to try to make my even my my house a bit more complex so that it it stimulates my movement and things like that right that's because you're already out of a universally, I would say, universally natural environment. Right. Comprising not just where you are, but what you eat, how you breathe, the light, and even your own behaviors, how much you sleep, how you think. All of that is behavior and environment. Right. behavior and environment right and all that will impact you positively or not in term of how how you look how well you perform how you feel it all matters all these variables matter what when what

is your diet like when you're training do you have someone who monitors that stuff do you have a dietician that you work with or anything um so i worked with, I worked with Mike Dolce for this last camp, this last cut. Um, I met Mike when I was, when my knee was, was, was hurt and I was in recovery for that. Um, was doing some seminars. He was going and doing these talks at some military bases on, you know, diet, nutrition, holistic living. And, um, they brought me out, you know, as the special guest or whatever. And I, and I, you know, I spoke on it too, but, uh, our, our philosophies on, on food and nutrition clicked. I mean,

they were, they're pretty much aligned. We have a little bit different approaches. Um, I started learning about, uh, nutrition from, um, uh, strength, excuse me, strength and conditioning coach when I was about 19 years old, up to that point, it was like, it was, you know, excuse me, a strength and conditioning coach when I was about 19 years old. Up to that point, it was like, it was, you know, whatever. I, I fucking was eating, you know, off the dollar value meal at, at Wendy's. Really? Yeah.

Yeah. During the time you're like fighting in the WEC or the UFC? No, no, this was before then. This is, I was fighting in like little, little casinos out in the middle of the desert now in New Mexico and like making $ 200 for a fight if you're lucky at a 400 person venue um and yeah so it was like oh if i only eat half of this four piece nuggets i'm definitely gonna make weight tomorrow and yeah and and you know yeah i vividly remember those days anyway i've got with this guy and he just kind of taught me the basics you know

basically talked me taught me about macronutrients and he mainly trained bodybuilders but gave me some basics. And then since that point, I've, you know, through my own practice, through my own practical applications of running through these training camps, running through these weight cuts and absorbing information, going out there and looking at information myself, have kind of figured it out pretty much on my own. And I cook. I fucking love to cook.

That's like my hobby. And so that helps out because I'm cooking for fun, like kind of as a cathartic thing after I'm training, but it works well because I'm cooking the nutrient-dense food that I need to perform and to train and to make weight and to be a high-level athlete. I saw that you and Erwan were working on bow hunting exercises. Do you do bow hunting? Yes. I started bow hunting exercises do you do you do bow hunting uh yes i i started started bow hunting three years ago i have yet to fucking kill anything

i am not i'm very much a novice yeah uh but uh you know i'm learning and uh is anybody teaching you yeah i've gone with some guys um some some older guys that are my dad's age. My dad's not an outdoorsman at all. He likes to fish, but he doesn't go farther than about 20 feet away from his car to fish. So all this stuff, Erwan, if you could back that up a bit, please, Jamie, to that bow hunting thing that you just showed. What exactly is involved in these bow hunting exercises that you got them doing? So that was in between the two camps that we did together.

And Carlos already knew that he was going to fight Robbie Lawler. Shooting lefty, huh? But it was somewhere. I see, right. We were just fucking around both ways. Yeah. Yeah, it was somewhere late september if i remember well and um new mexico is the best spot to hunt elk next to colorado i was like new mexico and

colorado are the spots in this country new mexico is the best place to just live really you think well no let's let's get on let's keep it a secret what why do you say that um diego sanchez lives there no uh yes the beauty the the the landscapes but but again it's uh all the people will prefer another place but but there's a certain energy you know some places resonate with you yes more than others me i i moved to santa fe new mexico never never left and then find Jessica, my soulmate, and everything is beautiful there. Well, you look like Jesus. It's the perfect place to live. Santa Fe,

it's a lot of hippies. You got a scarf on, even though you're indoors. It's a perfect place. I'm European. I can't afford it. Whatever. I'm French. What do you say to that? Yeah, what do you say to my scarf? Right.

Fuck you. But you love New Mexico, though. Love New Mexico. I need to get there. I'm a New Mexican now. Really? I can't say like they say, born here on my life. Yeah, you definitely don't sound like it.

No, I have a profound love for this land uh there where i live it's surrounded by 19 pueblos or native indian energy which i really relate to and um oh so you can go and see like these ancient sites where they used to live you can you can they still live there in some of them oh yeah, yeah. Straight up. Right. Like in the mountains? Like tucked into the mountains? Yeah. Well, yeah. There's lots of reservations also. These mud kind of old school,

like Stone Age apartment kind of buildings. And they have cable and now they have... Cable? Yeah. Well, they got satellites hanging off the side of them now. What? Yeah. Oh, my God. That's insane. If you ever come out to New Mexico, I'll take you by Acom of them now. What? Oh, my God.

That's insane. If you ever come out to New Mexico, I'll take you by Acoma, bro. Dude, I'm going. I've been thinking about going to New Mexico and doing a show there for a while. I want to do something. And probably Albuquerque is a good place to go, right? Albuquerque or Santa Fe? Where should I go?

Santa Fe is an hour away. So come to Albuquerque and then boom. There's a lot of stuff right around. Come hunt. Okay. Okay. Yeah. There's the Apache, Jicarilla, Apache,

Mescalero, Apache Reservations. It's still there. It's really... A lot of cool stuff. A lot of cool stuff. But it's a secret. Let's not talk about it. Too late.

So with regards to the bow hunting stuff, honestly, the stuff that we were doing wasn't a whole lot different than what we were working on for the training camps. We were working foot, ankle, knee, hip stability in complex environments, in walking on logs or navigating different terrain while staying aware of my surroundings you know if I'm fucking sitting there looking at my feet and stumbling over myself and and worrying really you know so much about being quiet where I'm standing fuck I miss miss a goddamn you know something something right there and feeling with your feet saying that that Erwin has that helped me out quite a bit as kind of a coaching cue is put your mind in your feet um so that i'm looking here and i'm aware of what's going on around me but i can

feel where i'm going boom i i did i i hunt in like a like minimal boot so i can you know i can feel if i'm about to crack that uh that stick and make that you know what kind of boots you are like lightweight they're they're called the ones i use are called mini mill um and they are how you spell that uh m-i-n-i-m-i-l-l i think is is what it is and they're they're dope man so i think initially uh the the vibram's five fingers came into vogue in the military. They loved it, right? And everybody was all about the minimal footwear. Right. But if you go too minimal too fast, you're going to hurt your feet because our feet, our bones, our tendons, our muscles are atrophied from being in basically casts.

Yes. For our entire life. And all of a sudden, I'm going to go run a couple miles like I did in these supportive shoes and you're going to get stress fractures, you're going to get all kinds of injuries. So I think the military, a couple of the branches

banned the five-finger shoes or the five, yeah, that's what they're called. Because people are getting hurt? Because, yeah, foot injuries. Foot and arm. Lots, lots. Because people's bodies and physiology

are just not ready structurally you have to work your way everything's at your fight indeed yeah this guy runs you know runs barefoot throughout you know through the mountains you run barefoot yeah yeah you don't wear any shoes at all no well sometimes but it depends on what i do but i do train also to uh be barefoot because it it makes you extremely sharp uh mentally you have to be barefoot because it makes you extremely sharp mentally you have to be extremely focused just not injure yourself right to be extremely adaptable so it doesn't just train people think okay so it's gonna make your the sole of your foot tougher what about that what's special about that but

that's not the point that's not it's there's much many more benefits beyond just making your feet tougher it's so fascinating that when in the invention of the running shoe which what they thought was an advancement well we're gonna put cushioning it'll save people's bodies the wear and tear and it actually wound up fucking people up and getting more injured the food is a masterpiece there's nothing to change about about it the human food is a masterpiece yeah and uh yeah you try to come up with some science cutting science uh shoes footwear it's bullshit well you just need minimal you just need minimal protection to avoid abrasion and punctures and things like that but otherwise you need to let need to let the foot work as naturally as possible.

And if you don't, then you will make your feet weaker. Right. It will shrink it. It will numb it. But then on the flip side of that coin, my feet aren't strong enough to just go and run as I would normally in completely minimal shoes. I have to kick back. I have to kick back the intensity and the distance. Um, so if I really want to get a really hard, hard run in

and, and, and get, get fatigued, I need, I throw on some, some regular old running shoes, shorter distances. I'm, I'm like specifically training my feet and, you know, and conditioning my tissues and everything to be able to do that. And that's, you know, that's kind of a distinction. And moving. So I don't hurt myself. Moving barefoot in wild environments is not mandatory to people who say want to. Mandatory. Mandatory.

Well, forgive my French. I just when I have to do the math in my head as to what you said I feel I have to clarify Well, thanks. That's good. Thanks. Um, yeah, you don't have it's it's not mandatory mandatory mandatory Mandatory thanks Joe for correcting my sorry my flawed English. It's very English. It's way better than my French My flawed English. It's very good English. It's way better than my French. You start resetting your body in a more natural way through these natural movement patterns. And you can do that in an indoors environment, even wearing some minimal footwear.

And then you remove the footwear. And then you start to expose the body through these natural movements on more challenging, more complex environments. Ultimately, if you want to, you can go through these more, say, you know, badass trainings where it's like the real deal. You're in the wild. There are maybe cactus and sharp stones and all kind of things. And still you can do that. But that doesn't mean that you have to do that right away or that you ever have to do that. Right.

The bow hunting practice was, yeah, these balancing movements, the point was not just the movement itself. When you move in complex environments, there are also situations. For instance, you're hunting. Your goal is to catch the game game so you need to be aware of what's going on you need to avoid being detected and you need to look and scan your surroundings and be as light as possible as silent as possible if you're already in trouble with your movement if you're already struggling with your movement, how much of your brain activity and awareness is going to be dedicated to the situation itself, which is the hunting part. Right.

Because the movement part in the environment part is already, it's not there. You're struggling. It's not just a matter of, oh, I have some cardio, so I'm good. No, well, maybe you have a hard time just kneeling. Right. So I'm good. No, well, maybe you have a hard time just kneeling, just getting up and getting down, let alone in a supple, silent, move way that is not detectable. Well, bowhunting in particular. Those are the kind of things we're training. Bowhunting in particular sort of experienced this most recently, this fitness movement

where a lot of guys are getting in extremely good shape to be able to run the mountains so that they can hike long distances and not be fatigued and so that they can take shots and have some mobility where you can be on your knees. And for long periods of time, you might have to be held at full draw while an animal is looking at you. After having run up a hill and you're fatigued. Yeah, and it's the difference between being successful and not being successful. I mean, in today's day, you can still go to the supermarket, but ultimately what it means is whether or not you can eat or not eat.

So you have to be in physical shape to be able to do that kind of hunting. And a lot of it is at high altitude, so you're trudging through the mountains with low oxygen. Both the body and mind have to deal with so many diverse variable changing and that's yes that's again that's adaptability it's it's about adaptability i've got the the chance to to train the the seals in coronado and these guys are well number one they are gentlemen they're real good good people but uh they are extremely fit from the the stance uh the standpoint of how much they can run how much they can endure but i would challenge them with very simple movements such as some of the movements we've trained together with carlos uh the when you are in that split squat position and you reverse your orientation from forward to backward and while

maybe holding a stick that represents a rifle or a bow or it could be a camera if you're shooting photos. So if you're struggling with a movement, you have imbalances, how much again of your situational awareness can be dedicated to the situation at hand right at stake that's a good point because you're surviving the movement oh excuse me and then stay close to the mic oh all right and then for a split second or maybe for a little longer uh you're in trouble so in in in a cage situation it's very similar because you need to always keep an eye on your opponent so you need that situational awareness while also not having to think exclusively at how you

move so the more comfortable your movement the more fluid the more second nature it becomes then the more attention your brain can dedicate to the situation and to the adaptability the range the, the timing, all of these subtle little adaptations. And your brain is in charge. Your brain commands, not the body. So the body needs to be able to move in a highly reliable way. Ultimately, that it is the movement itself or the situational awareness, it all boils down to the brain what i was getting

at before with the the bow hunting is uh and with regards to your diet like do you eat wild game or do you get like what i do yeah um mainly i eat uh grass-fed free-range uh meats um i get as much wild game as i can like I said I didn't kill anything the last two years but the people that I did go with did they they harvested elk so you know I we all share the meat so yeah I eat as as much wild game as possible because I feel like that's I mean that's about as pure as you can get yeah it's it really is healthy too when you eat it it does have like a different effect on your body. You can feel it.

If you're health conscious and if you're aware of what you're taking in on a regular basis, you're sort of aware of how your body reacts, you'll feel different when you eat wild game. It's just more nutrient dense. Yeah. Yeah. And there's, you know, there's other aspects to it, man. When you see the animal die or you kill the animal, there's just a sense of gratitude, I feel like, for this thing giving its life to nourish your body

as opposed to buying something in a nice little neat package with fucking saran wrap over it. You don't really think that a life was separated to give you to nourish your body. But when you go out and you see it or it's in front of you, you realize that you're a sickness, our food culture that we're experiencing these days. The gratitude is certainly an aspect of it. And also the connection, just an understanding, a real understanding of what happened, how you got there, what this meal is. And it just, it has, it feels better.

It feels better to eat it. Yeah. Yeah. it's a mix of things you actually feel as opposed to just not even thinking about it and just yeah yeah now mike dolce you're saying uh works with you for or worked with you for this last camp what was the difference like what what different things did you eat and what, what approach did you take? Did you do any blood work to examine your nutrient levels? I did not, I didn't do any blood work. Um, the difference was we didn't change what I was eating. We changed the structure and the timing of when I was eating. Um, I, I was kind of, uh, you know, I didn't, I didn't have much of a structure. I was like, oh, you know, I'm eating the right things.

I'm good. He's like, okay, well, no, this is how we're going to do it. You're going to sit down and you're going to eat until you're full every three hours. You're going to do feedings. You're not going to kind of snack and graze here and there, which is what I was doing. You're not going to kind of snack and graze here and there, which is what I was doing. And, dude, it increased my energy levels immensely. Why?

How so? In what way? I felt awesome. So I don't know why. I don't know the physiology behind it. But I think it's hormonal. I think. So after I would eat these big meals, boom, I would get tired.

I would get like a kind of insulin dump, be tired for a little while. But the next time I went to train, I just felt like I had more fuel, more energy, more sustenance for these training sessions. And my weight cut was – I've never had a weight cut as easy as that. We were eating, you know, full, large meals right up until the night, or even the night before weigh-ins. What? I was, I came down so quickly. And I kind of have a weird deal, man. I feel like my body, I've cut weight so many times.

I have, you know, 40-plus professional have you know 40 plus professional you know fights you know between kickboxing and mma and i think my body just kind of knows it just drops even mike's like dude i've kind of never worked with an athlete that just boom boom it's just it's just on a schedule it just my weight drops um and uh yeah felt, I felt amazing. I felt good in the fight. I think I look good in the fight. I performed well. Um, the, the cut was, the cut was awesome. So you're eating big meals?

I mean, fairly big, relative, relatively big meals. How many calories have you counted out? So I would say I would have probably a, uh, portion of salmon, probably a cup of white rice, and then a good amount of vegetables. We're talking about several times a day. Really? Yeah. Wow, that's interesting because most people think of weight cuts being that you severely restrict the amount of calories you have. Your body starts to go into ketosis or what have you,

starts absorbing fat instead of carbohydrates. You dehydrate yourself then after that, and that's how you get to that state. Yeah, well, I mean, that's one way to do it, and I've definitely done that way before. I've done it a bunch of shitty ways. What's the worst way you've ever done it? Not the chicken nuggets way, but I mean like as an... Right around that same time, not eating.

I remember, so my first kickboxing fight ever, I fought a guy named Andy Sauer. I don't know if you're familiar with Andy Sauer. That was your first kickboxing fight? First kickboxing fight ever. What the fuck is that? Yeah. Who was your manager? How long had Andy been fighting then?

His record at the time, I remember. 62 and 4 or something? 93 and 1. Oh, my God. That's so insane. 93 and 1. Your first kickboxing fight. Oh, my God.

So I was 12 and 0 as an MMA fighter. Oh, my God. I was 19-0 as an MMA fighter. Oh, my God. I was 19 years old. I had maybe one or two amateur boxing fights, and I had been training kickboxing for a long time. But anyway, I go out to- But he had 90 what? 90 how many?

93-1. I remember. Oh, my God. What fucking governing body sanctioned that? It was in Japan. I was the guy that they were bringing in. You could have fought a lion in was basically i was i was the guy that they were bringing in japan exactly i was the guy that they were bringing in for the slaughter oh my god and uh i i show up out there and i'm only i think i remember i was only like eight pounds out

and we didn't know what the fuck we were doing with with regards to the weight cut at the time i was 19 and so i'm like oh shit and i stopped eating. I just didn't eat for about four days. Oh, no. Yeah. Oh, no. That's so cool. Meanwhile, eight pounds ain't shit. That ain't shit.

I'll do that. I'll do that, yeah. The day before, eight pounds, you're like, oh, we're good. Yep, exactly. Still eating fairly well. It's one day in the sauna. Yeah, yeah. That's nothing.

Oh, my God. And so I starved myself for about four days. Were you checking your weight while you were starving yourself? Yeah, I think I was. I don't remember. It was a long time ago. But it was same-day weigh-ins, too. Oh, Christ.

I weighed in in the morning and then fought about maybe eight or nine hours later. Oh, my God. And I went five rounds with him. Wow. I got my ass kicked. I got my ass kicked, but I learned a lot, and I grew from the experience. I'd imagine.

Holy shit. Andy Sauer's a legend. Yeah, yeah. That is so crazy. That was your first kickboxing fight. He TKO'd me with 17 seconds left to go. He had chopped my legs down to the point where I couldn't even stand. I was falling through the ropes.

I was all fucked up. Wow. Yeah. It was awesome, though, man. It was dope. It was cool shit. I went back in. I came back to Albuquerque.

I went down to the gym. These guys had been kind of throwing me around up to that point. I specifically remember Diego Sanchez. I mean, at at the time he's the king of the cage champion he's like the man the new mexico man of jackson's and you know he always gave me a you know really really really tough fight at or tough sparring sparring matches at the point and after i went through that experience it was just kind of like that you can't do shit to me. Wow. Just nothing. Just changed you. That's interesting. That's amazing.

What a fucking crazy matchup that is. That's criminal. You should find out whoever matched you up and go beat their ass. I know who did it. I'm glad. I shake their hand. You know, that shaped me. Yeah.

Well, for you, for a guy like you, you could handle it. But God damn, that could have ended a lot of people that it's this they'll call them syndrome stockholm syndrome right yeah right yeah becoming friends with your captors right it's that's that's insane man what a crazy fucking matchup yeah i've never seen i've never seen it i've never seen a video of it i think it's out there wow i think even hendy Sauer hit me up on one of the social media, you know, like asking if I had ever seen it. I'm like, no, up to this point, I have not. It was under shootboxing rules.

So shootboxing, I don't know if you're familiar, was billed as no-holds-barred stand-up. So it was throws and takedowns with kickboxing. Okay. No elbows. Like Drakka? Remember when they used to do that? They were doing that in the United States for a while.

It was kickboxing with takedowns. I don't remember that, but that's what this was supposed to be. Maury Smith did that for a little bit. And standing submissions. What? Yeah, you were supposed to be able to do standing submissions. And I actually caught him in a few chokes standing

and I think the rules were if the guy hits his knees, they break it and they stop it. What? Yeah, yeah. I don't know. It was weird. It was cool, man.

It was a good experience. I was 19 years old. I got to go to Japan. Yeah. Fight for, I don't know, probably 500 bucks. I don't even remember how much it was a good experience. I was 19 years old. I got to go to Japan. Yeah. Fight for, I don't know, probably 500 bucks. I don't even remember

how much it was. Japan's crazy. Did you see Risen? What's that? Did you see Risen? The Japanese, the New Year's show with Fedor?

I did not. Yeah, it's the ultimate freak show. Yeah. It was awesome. Cool. Yeah, it was almost like

kind of like early days of pride where it was like like kind of like early days of Pride where it was like kind of chaotic. Like Gabby Garcia was there, 220 pounds. I saw that fight, yeah. Just juiced to the fucking earlobes.

She got dropped, right? She did. Right off the bat. But she came back and she cracked the chick with a back fist. Fucking back fist coming back, man. Arlovsky with Travis Brown, he landed a back fist. Oh, this one? Yeah, a a back fist fucking back fist coming back man arlovsky with travis brown he

landed a back fist oh this one yeah a regular back fist not a spinning back fist a regular back fist just the pimp hand just the back backhand pimp hand but um it was two days of fights wow yeah sakuraba i might have been more than two days. Sakuraba fought Aoki, which was just criminal. They shouldn't let Sakuraba fight anymore. It's just awful. How old is he now? It's not how old he is. It's the miles.

He's probably younger than Anderson. If I had to guess, I would say he's younger than Anderson. But the beatings that guy's taking. Did you see the Melvin Manho fight when Melvin was soccer kicking him and he was down? No. It's so hard to watch. Those Vanderlei knockouts that he suffered, those were brutal.

Those were ruthless, yeah. That guy's been through the ringer. He's so great. What a legend, though, that guy is. What a legend. Absolutely. I remember the first time I saw Pride, I saw him fighting Hoist Gracie and just wasting him. That was that 90-minute fight. What a legend. Absolutely. I remember the first time I saw Pride, I saw him fighting Hoist Gracie.

Oh, wow. And just wasting him. That was that 90-minute fight. That was that 90-minute one, and he had Hoist in that dead-to-rights knee bar, and Hoist would not tap. I forget what ended up happening. Was it a draw? Decision, yeah. Well, it was a draw because they went the 90 minutes and nothing happened.

I think it was a draw. I think that's how they... No, no, no, no, no. Hoist broke his ankle. That's right. Didn't he break his ankle and he couldn't continue? Fuck. Why do I not remember that?

Jamie will pull it up. He'll find out. All right, cool. There was two fights. They had another one in K1, and that was in America. I was there live for that one, and Hoist was juiced up. He was big. He was yoked up. Then he tested positive.

And they fined him a fuck load of money. I don't know if he ever paid it, but he vanished. But now he's back. He's fighting which is crazy. He's fighting Ken Shamrock. I saw that on Bellator. Yeah, it's the main event in February. That's crazy. Yeah, it's so strange. Yeah.

I remember their fight was the first fight I ever saw. It was the first UFC fight I had ever seen. Sakuraba and Hoyce? No, no, no. Cannon and Hoyce? Cannon and Hoyce. Wow.

And Hoyce choked him with his gi. Yeah. It was wild, man. That was... The early days, man. The first fight I ever saw was Orlando Veit versus Remco Pardue. When Remco Pardue took him down and elbowed the fuck out of him from side control. He had him like that judo scarf hold.

I remember watching that going, Jesus Christ. What kind of fucking crazy sport is this? And the Pardue guy kind of hits him a few times. He's like surprised that he's knocked out and he kind of just lets him go. The refs at the time would just let them melee each other. Big John. Big John was one of the refs back then, which is crazy. You remember when, what the fuck is his name, fought that ninja dude, Pat Smith.

Pat Smith fought some dude who was doing doing, like, they had his pre-fight video. And his pre-fight video, he's doing like ninja techniques and like fucking all this crazy shit that doesn't really work. And then he got in there with Pat Smith, who was a pretty seasoned kickboxer. Yeah. And it was dropping just wicked elbows on him. From the mount. And like knocked him out and then woke him up and then knocked him out again before the ref stopped. Yeah, well, he got up and it was just a bath of blood.

His whole head was essentially opened up. Boy, that was the early days, man. The early days were really fascinating because you were around martial arts before the UFC. So you had seen karate and you'd seen all these different judo and all this different stuff and nobody really knew what the best stuff was i always knew that wrestlers could take you down i always knew that was going to be a problem because i wrestled in high school and i had a good buddy of mine my friend uh steven arduino when i was doing uh taekwondo and he was wrestling one of the reasons why i got into wrestling is because i didn't think that he

could take me down like we're out in the grass he think that he could take me down. Like, we were out in the grass. He's like, I could take you down anytime I want. I'm like, bullshit. He took me down over and over again. I was like, this is crazy. It was so humiliating. Like, he just took me down every time he wanted to. And I was like, this is mad.

I got to start wrestling. So I started wrestling. That's one of the reasons why I started. Another one, a dude got me in a headlock and fucking threw me down in the locker room. He could have beat me up, but didn't. I was like, God damn it, I'm fucking frail. So I had to learn wrestling.

But I always knew that wrestlers could take you down if they wanted to. But I always felt like a guy who knew a little bit of wrestling, was a good kickboxer, would probably be able to keep the fight standing. But then when Hoy started choking people, I was like, oh, no. That's a whole different thing. This is a completely different thing. That guy beat that guy from his back. Who the fuck wins on their back?

It was just a whole new element. It's interesting because you've been around from the WEC days, which were when you were the WEC champ, it was so small in comparison to what it is now. For you to go from that to that last fight against Robbie in Vegas, which was just this massive fucking media event. You're fighting for the world title. You get there.

The place is sold out. It's craziness. The roar of the crowd. You know, it's time. Like, what a fucking odyssey you've been through in your career. Because you were there sort of when it was kind of just starting to take off. Yeah. Yeah.

I really got in on kind of the ground level. Yeah. I mean, even before WEC, I told you we're fighting at like 200, 300 person venues. Yeah. In the middle of the desert. It's been crazy, man. It's been an incredible ride. And it has been the coolest fucking thing ever.

I wanted to, as a young kid, none of this existed. But I was into the early 90s martial arts movies and the Ninja Turtles. I wanted to be a ninja. That's what I wanted to do. Of course. I remember that was the second movie that I had ever seen was the first Ninja Turtles movie. And I came out of there throwing fucking kicks and spinning shit.

And from then on, I was training to be something. And it just so happened I lived in a time that was training to be something and just so happened. I lived in a time that this came to be and lived in a city where there was this camp that was, you know, by, you know, kind of inexplicably good for a small podunk place like Albuquerque, but not just inexplicably good for the what it was but also for the time and it evolved whereas a lot of those camps that were big back then like the lion's den they're gone you know the pat miletic's gym it's gone like these these gyms that were really big

at the time they didn't evolve or they didn't carry on or for whatever reason they stopped doing it you know your your gym has not just evolved but evolved to be one of the premier gyms in the world it's really kind of incredible yeah and there's been a lot of change you know some like a lot of the original guys have branched off and are kind of doing their own thing but um yeah, the genesis of MMA in Albuquerque is kind of an interesting story. And I wasn't there. I was, like, told this. This is kind of firsthand hearsay from the people who did develop this thing, is that basically these guys from these different disciplines got together, and they had watched the UFC and wanted to, oh, you know, I have a wrestling background.

This guy has a Kenpo background. This guy is like a, you know, a KKK karate kind of background or whatever. They all got together and they started formulating the shit. And this one guy was a flight attendant and he was flying all over the country. was a flight attendant, and he was flying all over the country. And everywhere he'd stop, he would go to these different schools because there wasn't the internet at the time. You couldn't jump on YouTube and look at techniques. So he would go.

The guy's name is Chris Luttrell, and he cornered me for my fight against GSP. And he was one of the founding members of Jackson's. He was going to these different jujitsu judo pancreation schools and seeing what they were doing that he was bringing the information back and they were and then they were you know kind of getting into the laboratory and see what was working at the same time some of these guys were um bouncers and police officers and literally using this stuff on the street in some roadhouse-type fucking situations. That's awesome. My original trainer was like a Patrick Swayze from Roadhouse-type kind of guy, Tom Vaughn.

I don't know if you know Tom Vaughn. Yeah, sure. He trains Tim Means. Yes. Fit NHB now in Albuquerque as well. Tom Vaughn. I don't know if you know Tom Vaughn. He trains Tim Means. Fit NHB now in Albuquerque as well. Him and Greg were... He's one of the founding members

as well. It's kind of crazy that there's two big gyms like that in a place as small as Albuquerque that have UFC fighters. Well, they split up there. They're from the same place. They branched off at one point. They split up. It's from the same place. They branched off at one point. Or they split up. It's crazy that these both guys have developed really high-level talent.

Well, it's because they all came from the same original thing. That's a fascinating story about the flight attendant. I'm sorry, what was his name again? Chris Luttrell. Chris Luttrell. Because him traveling and doing that, that's similar to what Hollis Gracie did. Holes did. Holes Gracie traveled to America and learned a lot of wrestling shit and learned catch wrestling stuff.

That's why the Americana is named the Americana. It really came from American catch wrestling. And they started incorporating it into Brazilian jiu-jitsu along with some wrestling techniques and some sambo. And he learned a bunch of shit. And he was the guy that really was Hickson's mentor. He was the guy that was the head of the family. Before he died, he was the man. And he died in a hand gliding accident in Rio.

Yeah. And he was the guy. He was the head of all the others. He was the one alpha of all the grapplers. And he was dedicated to learning and incorporating different techniques. I think like in any other context, those who are the most adaptable, most open to change and evolution are those who survive. Look, I remember Eddie Bravo showing his approach to Rickson Gracie. Hickson, Gracie.

Hickson and... Jesus Christ. Why is it so hard? Why is it so hard on me? No, I'm not. And he was... Despite his amazing knowledge and background and achievements,

he was open enough to listen carefully, respectfully, with humility. he even asked questions like hickson was asking questions about different aspects of the positions yeah and coming from the the bjj world that's that's unusual actually well hickson is a very unusual guy hickson was a yogi like he was the first guy to incorporate yoga and he is a legit yogi like have you ever seen the videos of him doing those exercises in Santa Monica where he's balancing on one leg and he puts his leg up in a full split? He has incredible control of his body. Yes, and hence the people legitimately saying, hey, Rickson was the first to implement movement in this training he was yeah

he was but here's the thing to me uh i want to pay tribute to all coaches that they are muay thai striking coaches judo coaches even strengthened conditioning coaches they are all movement trainers and movement species they all are well more or less specialized but they are it's all movement it is and you know there's an interesting aspect that's going on right now in tenth planet jiu-jitsu with break dancers there's a bunch of these guys like Richie Martinez who was a break dancer like amazing break dancer and his brother Gio these guys they can do crazy shit with their body.

They're standing on one hand and spinning around. And because of that. You have another term, hip hop. It's a lot about how you control your hips, which is the fundamental of jujitsu. I don't think that's hip hop. I don't think that's where it's like, because it rhymes. It came from like, um, hop sugar hill band you know different sugar hill band

hip hop hip hop what you don't know Joe those guys had incredible movement they didn't show it much they had to to carry those chains

their rhymes their rhymes overshadowed their fucking their stability their core stability there's the dance there's the dance and then there's the music

and then there's in breakdancing you're gonna use yeah look atdancing You're gonna use your hips Like crazy A lot of those movements are achieved because you have great hip control And in Jiu Jitsu You must have great hip control Play that from the beginning Jamie

Watch what this guy can do This is just one of the breakdancers Look at him standing on his fucking head Just his head. But the control. Yeah. All sorts of stuff. Absolutely.

Well, these guys, when Eddie first started training them and rolling with them, he was amazed at how freakishly strong they were. And, you know, you look at them, they look like regular people. But the physical control of their body is just spectacular because of you know it's essentially similar to gymnastics in a lot of ways like look at this fucking guy that's me that's me go level oh my god but at the same time it's and walking on his hands this is nuts man that is fucking nuts what's the name of this video jamie so people are listening how they can watch this 10th planet breakance crew freak show. Yeah, they all call themselves freak show He's got a he owns tenth planet San Diego. Yeah, he's trying to submit himself. Yeah, it looks like it

Yeah, he can submit himself. There's a couple of kids that could put themselves in triangles like legitimately put themselves in triangles Look at this fucking look at this shit. I'm, but I admire at the same time this kill. There's no doubt. Oh, there's no doubt. The physical control of the body is just spectacular. Right. And this is the first time I've seen this, but I mean, I can see the application to combat sports.

Oh, yeah. Immediately. I've rolled with a couple of these guys. They're fucking freaks. Like, you can't hold on to them. Yeah. They move all over the place, and they can catch you and shit from all sorts of weird angles. Look at that.

He's on one hand, and he puts his legs in full locus, standing on one hand, jumping up and down. It's nuts. Tenth Planet Jiu-Jitsu is a very explorative, innovative school of jiu-jitsu. school of jiu-jitsu and in the game of MMA, those gyms who also are open and collaborative are going to keep themselves at the upper echelon. And those who don't evolve will disappear because it is indeed the methods. The end result is the same. It's the fight. It's fighting.

end result is the same it's the fight it's fighting but the methods to get there and to be proficient at it it boils down to the methods that you use and with with Carlos there was there was no resistance when I approached him and start to try and talk to his coaches about it and they they may not understand right away exactly what was about about or what it was going to bring to his game, but they were at least open to it. And eventually they saw what together we've been able to improve and achieve. And if they didn't have that attitude, then Carlos would have not benefited. Did you contact Jackson and Winklejohn before you worked with Erwan, or did you try it out first and go, hey, I think I'm on to something?

I think, I don't know. I don't remember how that worked, but what was really interesting, and Erwan touched on it earlier, was that they saw the same thing. They both watched. So after my... my widening the stance yeah and and the ability to move forward and back we got me and uh and greg jackson sat and he wanted to watch a couple of my fights and we want he wanted to see what what we were doing well and what we needed improvement on um saw a few things and i started work with erwin completely

independently and you know we're walking on logs and this and that. He's like, well, this is kind of a plan that I have for you and this is what I see. And it was exactly the same thing that Greg Jackson, who is, you know, considered to be one of the most brilliant minds in MMA, saw. Irwin is a movement specialist and Irwin had a plan and a strategy on how to improve that. What was Jackson's idea of dealing with it? What did he think? Well, he knew what needed to be done. I don't think he necessarily knew how to get there.

So he knew that you needed to be able to move in and out better. Yes. But he didn't have any strategy. Yeah. Well, I mean, I wouldn't say that he didn't have any strategy. It was kind of, okay, you know, we'll work on that. Let's figure out how to do it. Yeah.

Let's work on that. Maybe just drill out how to do it. Yeah, let's work on that. Maybe just drill it. Yeah, exactly. Drill it. Erwin and I, we videotaped us moving across the same distance. And this dude's fast, man. He's like a fucking deer. He moves really, really, really quickly.

He can run. He can jump. He kind of looks like a deer. Yeah, he can jump he does I don't find myself in the corner of the wood with me being a so called deer and this guy with his bow because he shoots like super sharp

so anyway so videos, you're going back and forth so we're looking at we're looking at this stuff in slow-mo frame by frame, where his body position is compared to where mine is. And what's the difference? He's moving faster because, boom, he's more upright.

He doesn't have so much weight on his front foot that he has to load and take another half second before he springs backwards. Right. And so we're like, boom, that's it. This is what we need to improve is what this is what we need to improve on this is what we need to to do now we are going to drill it and and there's a variety of different things to kind of uh you know it's still that that uh uh the stance and the posture you know is on a neuromuscular level are you having other fighters approaching now not yet but really no after i saw that video i would imagine the video of you guys training together here's the thing i think

there's there is still some probably some uh skepticism you know what's this movement coaching right like it looks like the guy doesn't have it doesn't look like jesus doesn't have a man bun and a suave for an accent. It's a ripoff, you know. Right. So I think that they don't know exactly what it is about. And they probably believe that it's either it's probably random or. But if you listen to what Carlos says, it is actually, it was highly specific because a camp is three months. We would train once a week, maybe sometimes twice a week, but that's still a limited amount of time to make those changes happen. So I had to choose my battle.

And then I told Carlos, listen, this is what I believe we need to work on and just focus on. And we did that for the first camp. And then the second camp for Lawler was completely different. Completely different. And highly specific to improving kicking. What were you going to say? You were going to say? We do have some guys that are, they've been doing this kind of independently.

One of the guys is a young guy, and they're fighting on amateur and regional levels, but I have a feeling you're going to know their names here in the next couple of years. They're up-and-coming guys. They're young, like 21, 22, 23-year-old, kind of making their way. One of them has been watching Erwin's videos since he was 15 years old. He met Irwin. He was all starstruck. Oh, my God, this is Irwin LaCour.

How did you even meet? And they are incorporating movement quite a bit. So it's not that they haven't sought him out. They're kind of very interested in this and doing their own stuff and and and finding this stuff on online and watching you know portal stuff watching erwin stuff and um and and definitely incorporating a lot of this this stuff and then one of the kids is a gymnast he was a gymnast before and and so now he could do all kinds of crazy shit i mean they're all looking for an edge definitely they're looking for an edge even carlos was looking for Well, George St. Pierre was doing a lot

of gymnastics. Pat Cummings does a lot of that as well. It's the same thing. Now we see with Conor McGregor, this big thing, oh this big thing. GSP was, he was doing gymnastics for the same exact reasons. To be able to move his body through space

and ultimately become a better fighter and be able to move his body better through, through space and, and ultimately become a better fighter and be able to better beat the shit out of people. Cause that's, that's the goal, right? You know, it's, it's, it's fun and it's cool. It's a cool way to train. And you know, after the fact, I think this is a cool fitness modality that's, that's very different. I absolutely love it.

I've been an athlete all my life, and I plan on being an athlete until the fucking day I die. How much longer do you think you're going to be fighting? Have you considered that? Oh, yeah. I've heard you talking about that

after the Robbie Lawler fight. I don't know. I don't know. How old are you now? 31. I'll be 32 in a few months. You're still in your prime. I am, but don't know. I don't know. It's, I'm probably. How old are you now? 31. I'll be 32 in a few months. So you're still in your prime. I am.

But, you know, this has been a, this has been a long road. You know, I started training professionally, or fighting professionally at 18. Um, have had 40, you know, over 40 fights. And you feel it? You get dinged up? I get dinged up. And I still feel great. I think my concern is the long-term neurological stuff that is kind of coming to light with all the studies on the concussions. You've seen me fight.

I don't go in there and not take damage. I fucking take damage. I take punishment. I'll take two to give one, and that's just kind of my style. Well, you didn't fight like that in the Nick Diaz fight. That was like one of the few fights where you didn't fight like that. Yeah. You know, I felt I had seen a lot of guys go in against Nick Diaz

and gas themselves out trying to knock that guy out. It's like you can't knock him out. He took a full-on left hook from Paul Daly, flopped around a little bit, popped back up. Paul Daly blew his wad trying to finish him and then got knocked the fuck out himself. And I've seen a lot of guys hurt him, but he's so goddamn tough. He's so hard to put away. And so, yeah, it was more of a calculated approach. You know, as I got flowing later in the fight, I started opening up a little bit.

But I think that's what a lot of Nick Diaz's strategy is. He wants, for one, he wants to get in your head, and he wants you to fight emotionally. He wants you to sit there and have a face-punching competition with him. You know, oh, we're going to stand here like it's the fucking schoolyard. Was he talking a lot of shit to you? He was, but I knew what he was going to do. I mean, I grew up with dudes like that my whole life.

So I was kind of used to that, and I knew that I was going to have to be emotionally prepared. Blank? Yeah, emotionally kind of shut down and just fight a strategic fucking game plan against the guy. Yeah, it was interesting to watch that fight because he was extremely frustrated by that, and he couldn't get you to change, whereas he's been able to fuck with guys' heads. The Frank Shamrock fight, you could, and he couldn't get you to change, you know, whereas he's been able to, like, fuck with guys' heads.

Like, the Frank Shamrock fight, like, you could see Frank Shamrock going, I can't fucking believe this is happening to me. Like, when Nick was talking shit to him, like, what, bitch, what? And then popping him with a jab. You could see, like, for some people, that shit talking becomes overwhelming with Nick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, what's funny is both me and Cowboy fought the Diaz brothers within a few weeks of each other, right? Cowboy lost to Nate, and I fought Nick just a few weeks later. And in preparation for both of our camps, we were switching roles and both fighting Southpaw and both fighting, you know, like one round I would fight Southpaw and talk a bunch of shit and try,

and try, try, try to get, you know, try, try to emulate the Diaz style and then the next round he would do the same. Did you yell out Stockton motherfucker? I, I, I did my best impression. It reminds me of a Buddhist monk drill where they're all in their meditation posture and they partner up. And the other guy is trying to instigate them and tell crap to them to have them get out of their meditation. That's the drill. Well, there's definitely something to that.

I mean, if you're not used to people that talk shit, when someone talks shit to you, it can be like emotionally devastating. What? What's happening here? But if you're used to like, fuck you, I've heard this shit, you know, it becomes normal. Yeah. You know, I mean, I tried to explain that to fighters when they deal with online criticism as well. Like I've talked to guys who would go on like the underground and see like some shit that people are talking about them and just be fucking devastated and get so upset. And I was like, look, man, you got to treat it like snake venom.

You get a little bit of that shit in your system and you're going to be okay. You get a little bit more and you eventually you build up an immunity to it. And then you go, oh, I get it. You're just a bunch of little cunts who've never accomplished shit. So you're talking shit about fighters calling them pussies and like because to some fighters you have a loss and you're like good i'm glad he got knocked out i fucking hate watching that guy fight he's a pussy like yeah and to them it's just like it's very evil stuff oh my god it's the initially it's like it's like whoa after that you know i'd never experienced that until, really, until after the Diaz fight.

There had been some, but after the Diaz fight, I mean, you know that. It was like, whoa. Big time. So, yeah. I call it the unique snowflake syndrome. You're told since you're a kid, you're a unique snowflake. But the problem is that they can't stand the heat. Does that make sense?

Who are you talking about, who is the unique snowflake the person talking shit or the fighter uh whoever is like being told all the time hey it's okay to be different or it's okay to be this and that but the problem is that sometimes you do need to uh stuff about yourself that is challenging and to take it. Yeah. To not crumble. To not crumble. I don't necessarily know you need to hear it. I mean, I would appreciate, I mean, man, it's hard because I like both ways.

I kind of love like Nate Diaz punching Michael Johnson in the face and then pointing at him. Ah, I just fucked you up. Like, it's funny. You know, when Anderson fought Nick and Nick laid down on his back and pretended he was sleeping for a second, I just fucked you up. Like, it's funny. You know, when Anderson fought Nick and Nick laid down on his back and pretended he was sleeping for a second, I was fucking crying laughing. I love it.

When Conor McGregor talks mad shit to Jose Aldo for months until he just rents space in his head to the point where Aldo just, he literally can't fight his fight. He has to run at Conor because he's just so overwhelmed with emotion and then Con Connor sleeps him

You know, I mean, I like both but I prefer in a perfect world. I prefer martial artists I prefer guys to go out there treat each other with respect shake each other's hands and then just go out and just let their skill take it but It's an effective tactic to these fighters. It's part of their weapons. It fucking works. It's not something outside their game. It's completely embedded in their whole game. Oh, yeah. Well, it's also a lot of fighters define themselves by respect,

by how much someone respects them. Like to a fighter, when someone's not scared of them, it becomes a very devastating thing. Like I remember when Anderson fought Chris Weidman. Whenidman and anderson were at the weigh-ins and anderson staring at him looking at him and weidman goes i'm not scared of you dude i'm not scared of you and you could see anderson was like shit this guy really isn't fucking scared of me like you could see there was a tangible moment where this guy wasn't pretending he wasn't scared. He just literally wasn't scared. And you could feel it.

That similar situation at the weigh-ins with Ronda Rousey and Holly Holm. Yes. Same thing. And I felt like that was a precursor to what ended up happening. Well, the big part was when Holly didn't flinch. When Ronda was yelling at her, you fake bitch, you preacher's daughter,

all this stuff and stuff. And she wrote all this stuff on instagram about her and holly's just standing there and then when i interviewed holly afterwards she goes well i was just trying to get a sip of water and you realize like whoa this girl's so fucking composed like so composed and and also she'd been to so many dances yeah She had fought for so many boxing titles and kickboxing and MMA. She had been in so many dances that the bright lights weren't an uncomfortable thing to her. She's like, okay, we're here again. Whereas for a lot of people, it's like, whoa, this is the big show. Holy shit, I can't believe I'm here. Yep, absolutely.

Being overwhelmed by the moment is almost something that you can't prepare for. It seems to me that for a lot of people, some people just naturally can deal with moments. And some people, they have to experience it a couple times to get loose. They got to get comfortable with it. And then they have to, like some people, like Cowboy is a perfect example. He fights his best when he fights a lot. He's got to fight all the time. He fights three, four times a year, and then you're going to get the best cowboy you can get.

But you make him take a year off or take a long time off, and he's much better when he's active. He's got to stay loose and looped up and fired up. That fight with Tim Means is going to be fucking crazy. When they announced that, I went, whoa. Why did Cowboy decide to take that fight? Because he doesn't like cutting weight? I have no idea don't know i haven't i haven't talked to cowboy but i mean i said hey what's up you know we didn't but we didn't really talk about the fight at all

well he's so crazy you could probably offer him brock lesnar he looked come on bring it on oh for sure exactly do it that's it that's why it's because he's cowboy yeah he's just nuts man yeah yeah he's a fun dude man yeah absolutely fun to watch fight fuck he's either he's cowboy. Yeah, he's just nuts, man. Yeah. Yeah, he's a fun dude, man. Yeah, absolutely. Fun to watch fight. Fuck, he's either on or he's off. Yeah. Unfortunately.

Unfortunately. Well, I don't even necessarily know if it wasn't that he was not on. I said, Dos Anjos is a fucking demon. Yeah, he just jumps all over you. He's a demon. Did that to him. Did that to Pettis. Yeah, man. Nobody's done that to Pettis, man.

Dude, dude. But he done that to Pettis, man. Dude. Dude. But he's just so fucking fast. And again, he's a guy who trains with Nick Curzon. And Nick Curzon's gotten doing all these plyometrics and jumps and sprints and foot strengthening stuff. Have you ever seen that stuff where they're lying on their back and their feet are pushing up these bars and they're kicking up these bars and catching them with their feet and exploding with their feet.

I saw the video before the cowboy fight. Yeah, it's all based on Marv Marinovich's training strategies. That's the same sort of shit that he used with BJ Penn. Really, it's really interesting. I remember that. I remember watching that and BJ was standing on the tennis balls and all that sort of thing. Yeah. You know?

Very similar. Yeah, very similar. And it's, you know, it's all very similar kind of different ways, different branches. Yeah. But it's all kind of, you know, it's all this, you know, the same goal. So what's next for you now? Do you hang back for a while? You had a brutal, crazy five-round war for the title where it was as close as you're ever going to fucking get.

I mean, a lot of people saw it your way. A lot of people saw it Robbie's way. It was just that close. Split decision. What do you do now? I'd like another shot at Robbie. I felt like I won the fight. And like you said, it was a razor, razor close decision.

Could have gone either way. MMA judging is subjective. The scoring system is so fucking crazy too. It is, absolutely. It's just nuts that we're still using that 10-point must system. Yeah, it doesn't apply very well to MMA. And that's proven over and over again. Yeah, I'd like another shot at Robbie.

I feel like I should have the belt right now. But it seems like Tyron Woodley's next, right? I mean, at least he was sort of promised that based on the Hendricks fight where Hendricks didn't make Wade. It seems like that's what's probably being said. But you never know with the UFC. I mean, Misha Tate was supposed to fight Ronda.

If she beat, was it Jessica Ai? Is that who it was? I think that's who it was. And then they decided no. So it's interesting because the UFC kind of decides to call the shots. Has anybody talked to you about whether or not they would do that again? I think it's definitely a possibility. talk to you about whether or not they would do that again uh i think it's i think it's definitely a possibility i you know i i think the first fight they made that fight because that was the fight

that people wanted to see among among any of the contenders that that that was the that was the one that got everybody excited right that that was the one and a rematch of that fight oh yeah come on now well i think as far as uh public interest that would be the biggest fight out there yeah but i feel like i just hate when someone gets promised something you know and i would feel the same way if it was you like tyron woodley get promised that title fight if he beat hendrix hendrix fucks up it doesn't make weight and the fight fights off and then woodley sort of left out the dry, I feel for him. Yeah.

And I do too. And shit, you know, I have a loss to Woodley. I mean, and that, you know, that's definitely on my radar to avenge that loss. Does a loss like that, an injury loss, fuck with you as much as a loss by decision? Or, you know, I mean, that's a kind of a crazy loss because your knee blew out yeah i think even more so just because the fact that i i didn't get to do as much as i wanted to do you know i didn't get to leave everything out there you know this this last one yeah it's a bummer i didn't take the belts home that night didn't go my way but you know i i pushed it i was able to

fucking empty the tank you definitely emptied the tank. Yeah. You both did. And in the Woodley fight, I didn't. You know, my body gave out. My knee blew out. So, yeah, from that perspective, I definitely see where you're coming from. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, he was promised a fight. But I'm not in charge of Tyron. I'm not in charge of picking the fight. I'm in charge of, you know, Carlos Condit and trying to get myself in the best fight. That being said, honestly, that's about the only fight that interests me at this point. Well, I'll tell you what. I wouldn't be mad if they decided to make a rematch. I'd feel bad for Tyron.

But fuck, I'd love to see that again. Yeah, I'd love to do that again. How much time would you need off after a fight like that? Yeah, I'd love to do that again. How much time would you need off after a fight like that? I think I'd be ready to go in late spring, early summer. UFC 200. Sounds good to me.

Sounds good to me. I don't know. Jesus Christ. I don't know about you. That would be gigantic. That would be... UFC 200, that's... Oh my goodness. I wanted that fight to You know, I I I

Wanted that fight to be legendary and I think that it lived up to that. Oh, it was legend and it was one of the greatest Fights I've ever seen. Yeah, so I've probably called 1500 fights or something like that something crazy like that. That was easily in the top 10 Just everybody wants to see a sequel Except I like an unfinished Tyron Woodley. He's right now listening going, fuck that shit. That's my fucking job. Yeah, and I understand where he's coming from.

Yeah, I get it too. I get it too. Hey, maybe they can fucking give him a little kudos. Listen, Tyron, take a few of these. Kick back, relax. Have a good time. But, you know I don't know

I still I still love this shit I mean I still I still love the process training camp even fucking fight week I enjoy and you know

that's awesome one of my favorite things in life is to get in there and freaking you know mix it up with a guy like Robbie so

well it was one of my favorite things to watch because it was just an amazing fight it was like I said after the fight it was Well, it was one of my favorite things to watch because it was just an amazing fight. Like I said, after the fight, it was an honor. It was an honor to be there and to call it because I know that when this is all over

and we're old and we're sitting around at a bar or at a picnic someday or we're picnicking? What the fuck am I talking about? We're talking about the past. We're going to talk about that fight. The way people talk about Leonard and Duran or the way people talk about any great, crazy fight that they were there for. Yeah. And win or lose, ultimately, that's what I want to be said.

That's the legacy that I want to leave. Well, I think it was martial arts in its best form in a lot of ways. It was martial arts in its best form in a lot of ways. It was heart, determination, willpower, technique, the discipline to go through camp to get yourself in the kind of shape that you need to be in to compete for five rounds like that, which is just an insane amount of physical conditioning. You guys fucking emptied, and your workload was extremely high in that fight, especially kicks. I remember that was one of the things that we commented on, like how many kicks you had thrown. I mean, it was really a really fucking crazy, crazy fight. Yeah. Yeah.

It was fun, man. I had fun. Maybe I'm a little bit twisted, but that was— I would definitely say you're a little bit twisted. You know, that was a good time. The kicks were a big part of the strategy too. I think that a lot of people wondered why is it that Lawler was not as aggressive as usual. I believe there is a reason because it's not like he was less hungry or less in shape.

It's because the strategy worked of higher volume and higher accuracy with those kicks to lower his aggressiveness, it worked. Well, kicks are always so dangerous too because it just takes one slip up. They're so much harder than punches. And you're taking them on your arms and they fuck your arms up to the point where you can't throw punches anymore. So you got to be careful what you absorb. Right. The volume is statistically, the volume is going to create damage to different divers, part of the body. So I've heard the debate about the fight metrics, how I threw a lot.

I didn't necessarily land a lot. I threw a lot. I didn't necessarily land a lot. And I feel like the kicks and the volume of punches that I was throwing out was the equivalent of, say, putting down cover fire if you were in a firefight. Yeah, you're not necessarily popping people's nuggets. But it's part of an overall strategy to come out with victory. You're throwing him off. You're making him keep his hands up.

You're keeping that distance. You're making the enemy keep their head down in this analogy. And you weren't also loading up either. You were touching him with a lot of these things and keeping him on his toes. And that was something that Dwayne was calling T.J. dillashaw to do in his fight with dominic cruz he was like to just go out and then touch him just keep touching him and then the shots will come but he got so emotional and tied up and trying to knock dominic out you could see him standing more flat-footed swinging more single shots single kicks single punches this yeah this guy that had looked just incredibly dynamic with his footwork

and he looked like Dominic Cruz against other guys and looked really well. Dominic Cruz goes out there and makes him look like a very orthodox fighter. He's not moving like that anymore. At times, yeah, at times. Initially, they came out and they were both moving like that. I'm like, oh, this is crazy. These guys are going to open up a wormhole. What the fuck's going on?

You know? Yeah, right. This shit's going to be wild. Well, I think that's what a lot of us expected. But it's interesting what Uriah had said about TJ, that he had a feeling that TJ was going to get emotional because TJ's a super competitive guy. He'd get really geared up.

That was an interesting fight, a really interesting fight to watch. It's crazy that Dominic Cruz was able to come back, having essentially only fought once in four years, and win the title like that. He performed like that, yeah. He's a different kind of animal. He's a smart motherfucker, too. You talk to that guy?

Oh, yeah. I've known him since WEC. I listen to his analysis of fights, like when he talks about what mistakes guys make and things guys are doing right and correctly and what they need to do. And you realize he's operating on a very, very high level. Oh, yeah. Very high level. Absolutely.

And that's probably part of why he was able to come back and compete at the level that he did. Yeah. Because he was sitting there analyzing this. They talk about you can sit there and do repetitions of a kick or a technique 100 times, but it's almost the same thing neurologically to visualize yourself doing that. They say that visual training is very similar and almost as effective as actually doing it yeah so i wonder if i mean i wonder if there's kind of a correlation there i would imagine there is well he's interesting in a way also because he says

that there's no such thing as octagon rust like i asked him about and he's like it's not real octagon is mental weakness if he believes that it's true not real. Octagon, it's mental weakness. If he believes that, it's true. But when you watch the fight, it certainly looked true. I mean, he didn't look rusty at all. It was just fucking kind of nuts. I think that's the thing. It's a belief thing. He's not going to let that one second hinder him.

I agree with Carlos because in the absence of of actual movement training due to his injury it's very likely that he was still visualizing every day his movements and therefore using his brain to keep practicing the movements even though a body could not the body could not follow at that you know during that time do you examine dominic's footwork do you examine guys that are fighting do you watch like different guys movements and it's it's close to perfection in easy using a particular technique yes but also most importantly it's all about his alertness and responsiveness and timing and that again it's it's it's it's uh it's not how much your body can can do it how much your mind is able to operate your body to achieve that. Yeah.

So you need a brain that is extremely sharp. Well, I was super impressed with him. But one of the things that I thought of when I watched that fight is, God damn, how good is Mighty Mouse? You got to take a leak? Is that what's going on? Yeah, let's just wrap this fucker up. It's, yeah, we did almost three hours. But listen, thank you very much.

It was awesome. Absolutely, man. Thank you, Erwan. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Joe. So your Twitter handle is, there's Movenat, N-A-T. Right, M-O-V-N-A-T. M-O-V-N-A-T.

And then there's also yours, which is just Erwan LaCour. Erwan LaCour, Movenat.com. And you can find it on my Twitter page because I tweeted it today. And Carlos, it's Carlos Condit. And Movenat.com. Movenat. M-O-V-N-A-T.com. M-O-V-N-A-T.

Thank you, brother. I really appreciate it. Absolutely, man. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Joe. All right, folks. We'll be back tomorrow with the guys from Cowspiracy. Holy shit.

Here we go. Thank you.