The Joe Rogan Experience - #790 - Steve Maxwell

Episode Date: April 25, 2016

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

And we're live, Mr. Maxwell, how are you, sir? Mr. Rogan. Always good to see you, brother. Yeah. And you brought your bag of all your belongings. All my goodies, man. Everything I own in this world. I'll show it to you.

People are always curious about this. This always comes up with my wife whenever I say, Steve Maxwell's going to be on the podcast. That's that guy that lives out of the bag. Yeah. Look at him. Pretty crazy. This is everything I own in this world.

That's insane. It at him. Pretty crazy. This is everything I own in this world. That's insane. It fits right in my back. He has a, I mean, that's not even a really large backpack. Like if you brought that elk hunting, people would be upset with you. Yeah, like 45 liters. And then a little man purse, you know? So a man purse and a backpack? A man purse.

I carry my cords and my iPad and stuff like that. Wow. Stuff I need in a plane. And I travel all over the world. Wow. Pack really carefully, as you can imagine. Yeah. Three t-shirts, three pair of pants, three pair of shorts, a rain jacket, two lightweight

hoodies, a long-sleeved t-shirt. I can pretty much recite. I never felt more liberated than when I got rid of all my stuff. Wow. And I'm in a different country every couple of weeks. A lot of people say, hey, why not the roller bag, Steve? If you travel in any kind of third world country down cobblestones, I actually had a roller bag, but I ditched it my first trip to London.

I changed trains like four times, going up and down those damn stairs with a clunk, clunk, clunk, a roller bag. I said, you know what? This really sucks. I'm going to carry it on my body. I don't get any money from these guys, but it's the Tom Bihn, B-I-H-N, fantastic travel bags. So well configured. You wouldn't believe the stuff I get in there.

I even have my whole workout gym in that thing, man. Really? Yeah. What kind of stuff's in there that you carry around with you everywhere? Now, this Tom Benton, is this for hiking or is this just primarily a travel bag? It's a travel bag. I wouldn't want to take a serious hike with it. It looks like it's pretty sturdy.

Very sturdy. I use packing cubes. There's different packing ways. A good resource for your listeners that travel full time, go to onebag.com he has many recommendations for various bags and where you can just basically one carry on bag

and travel anywhere in the world for several weeks at a time if you want to smell onebag.com a lot of this stuff is high tech, I just wash my t-shirts out in the sink very high tech if you wear, one of the things that I found A lot of this stuff is high tech. I just wash my t-shirts out in the sink. Very high tech.

Well, if you wear one of the things that I found from hiking and camping for long periods of times, wool. Wool was great. There's a great company called First Light, First L-I-T-E, that a buddy of mine is a part of, my friend Ryan Callahan, out of Montana. And actually, catch him Idaho. Met him in Montana. Montana, and actually Ketchum, Idaho. Met him in Montana. But they make wool outer gear and inner gear, like long johns, stuff along those lines. Wool is fantastic.

A lot of hunting gear. And you can wear that stuff for days. Days. Days, and it doesn't smell because it's natural. Well, see, a lot of their stuff is this stretched polyamide. It's like a little elastane, a nylon-type material, which is real stretchy. It's silver impregnated. Silver helps stop the bacteria from multiplying. Oh, okay.

So you can get like three or four days out of this T-shirt. Really? Yeah, and it doesn't stink. Maybe you could. Well. I stink. I'm a stinky person. Here's my gym.

Check this out. I can train rubber band. Okay. I'm doing stinky person. Here's my gym. Check this out. I can train rubber band. I'm doing isometrics. I can do good mornings. What is the amount of tension on that rubber band? They just say heavy duty. But remember, the further you stretch it, the harder it gets. It gives this old man plenty of stretch.

Maybe not you. I have a bowling ball bag that I bought just so i could take on the road with me so i could throw a 50 pound kettlebell in it yeah that works although i try not to check but i never use it once this is uh my cardio obviously a little jump rope jump rope anytime anyplace anywhere if you can't run i like to still do a little running best self-defense ever right sprint the hell away man yeah if you could run further than the person trying to kill you. And I don't want to be like one of these old guys that can't run, so it comes in handy. That's great.

And this is a little homemade suspension device. I can set this any length. A suspension device? Yeah, I use it for isometrics, body weight rows, chin-ups. Basically, do you know your knots? Not really. I used to be a Boy Scout back in the day. I know a couple of fishing knots.

Bow line, right? You should know that one. PVC. And then this is called a Prusik knot. So I can slide this, right, up and down the handle. But if you would grab that handle and put weight on it, see, it doesn't move. Oh, I see.

So it's instantly adjustable. Huh, that's interesting. Yeah, Prusik knot. It's a climber's use. How do you spell that, Prusik? P-R-U-S-I-K. Okay. If you go to Animated Knots, it's like a little app

you can throw on your iPhone. It shows you how to do it. What's the app called? What is it? Animated Knots. Animated Knots? Yeah. It shows you every to do what's the app called what is it animated animated yeah you can uh you

shows you every kind of knot so i can just throw this over a tree do chin-ups bodyweight rows oh wow but if i want i can stand on it and i can do isometrics i'm really into isometrics these days yeah you showed me a lot of those the last time we worked out together and it was really interesting what you're trying to do now. Isolation-type movements. I could do deadlifts. Just absolutely incredible the kind of work that you can get in like 15, 20 minutes. Great for you. You're on the road doing your comedy act all the time, going to the UFCs.

And I'll tell you, kettlebell, it's good, but it is a pain in the ass, too. They lug around, yeah. Man, you can just, in your hotel room, literally in 20 minutes, your tongue will be hanging out. Shockingly metabolic, amazing cardio. At the same time, you get every muscle from your head to your feet. Really good stuff. I knew about isometrics back in the 60s as a young wrestler. Our coach used to use a lot of this stuff.

So anyway, that's the workout gym. Wow. Now, Bruce Lee was really into isometrics. He was into what they would call dynamic tension, which is essentially the same thing. The great Charles Atlas. Mm-hmm. Charles Bronson.

Well, Charles Atlas, those comic book ads that he used to have in the back, like becoming, you were a 98-pound weakling and becoming like a big stud. That was like what he was advertising. A lot of dynamic tension and stuff. The father of modern isometrics was the guy by the name of Alexander Zass, who was a Russian circus performer.

And he was traveling around doing wrestling and bending steel, breaking chains over his chest. He was just a little guy about my size. And he was captured by the Germans during World War I and imprisoned. And Zass, in order to get a little extra food because he was worried about losing his physique, he offered to train the commandant's dog for extra food. So meanwhile, he's practicing his isometrics on the cell bars every day. And he eventually bent the bars and escaped, went back to the circus,

got recaptured. This time they put him in chains. He broke the chains and bent the bars and escaped, not just twice, four times he escaped from the Germans. What? It's all written in his biography. Has that been verified? Has anyone ever Wikipedia'd this gentleman?

Back then they couldn't. You couldn't verify. You might have just told a bunch of goofy stories. But there's no doubt that this guy was strong. There's actually an old, old, old black and white YouTube of him breaking chains and stuff. Alexander Zass. Another proponent of isometrics

was the famed Henry Wittenberg. See if you can pull up a picture of that guy. Yeah, Zass. Another proponent of isometrics was the famed Henry Wittenberg. See if you can pull up a picture of that guy. Yeah, Zass. Z-A-S-S. His biography is fantastic. How big was he? Probably about 160 pounds, 165. How the fuck did he bend chains?

Well, he started as a kid in the force. He actually went to a- That's him right there? Yeah, there we go. When he was a young boy, he was really, really... I'll tell you something. I've lifted beams like that. That beam is really heavy.

He's got a beam wrapped around his neck. Actually, he's lifting it with his teeth. Oh, my God. That's what that is? Yeah, it's a teeth lift. He has a special mouthpiece where he's gripping it with his jaws. Oh, my God. And using his neck.

Imagine how hard it'd be to choke that guy out with that kind of neck. That's insane. And he would bend saplings in the forest because he couldn't afford steel, obviously. And he would bend trees to get his strength. Wow. These guys were the real deal back in the day, man. They were pretty amazing. And it's funny, too. No supplements, you know? Yeah. No designer whey protein or BCAAs. You know, it was none of this, like, dude, I'm going anabolic or catabolic.

It's been 15 minutes after my workout. You know, they just ate good food and just trained, you know? A lot of meat. They were also closer to monkeys because it was a long time ago. A long time ago. They hadn't evolved yet. Hadn't evolved yet. But these people back then, they also didn't really understand the modern principles of

strength and conditioning. I don't even think they knew exactly. Well, I wouldn't sell them short. No, I'm not saying it in a bad way at all, but I don't think they necessarily had an understanding of all the mechanisms involved. They just knew you train hard, you get stronger. Yeah, cause and effect. Train hard, get stronger. This guy knows what he's doing.

Go visit him. You can actually buy his book on Amazon. It's a pretty interesting biography. And I found it fascinating. It was translated from Russian to English. It translates kind of funny. One of the confusing things is in Russia, they use different names for the same person. I found it fascinating. It was translated from Russian to English. It translates kind of funny. One of the confusing things is in Russia, they use different names for the same person.

So they keep – yeah, I know. It's weird, man. Like how so? They just called them by four different names. It was like are they nicknames or – Yeah, like nicknames. Like Christy is from the Ukrainian, right? Don't they use different names? Yeah.

Yeah, you use your father's. Unfortunately, you're off camera, so we're not going to be able to hear you. Yeah, no. They use different names, like little pet names. Huh. So as I'm reading, I'm thinking, who the hell are they talking about? Right. And then I'm reading back, oh, they're talking about Alexander.

But they referred to him with four different names in the text. It was just kind of a weird translation, but absolutely fascinating about his life. That's so weird. You know, it's really interesting when you see those old school strongman type characters. Because there's some people that were doing things back in the day. Like, one I always bring up is the catch wrestling pioneer, Farmer Burns. Farmer Burns. Who used to do these.

He used to hang himself by his neck. By his neck. Pull this out, Jamie, because there's actually photos of this guy. This guy had a neck like my waist, and he only weighed about 165 pounds. And he used to drop like a hangman's drop and catch himself by his neck look at him here and he was he was actually uh beating heavyweights back in the day this is a this is a day where i wasn't just for the pin right you could do submissions in order to force a guy into the shoulders and uh people could also tap this This is rough, tough, American martial art.

Yeah, this is what's now known as catch wrestling or catch as catch can. And when you would get someone in a submission hold, they would call it a catch. And there were a lot of submission holds that they had back in those days that are still super effective today. And if you go back over the old depictions and old images of submission moves from Farmer Burns, there's stuff that's still completely applicable today. Oh, some of that stuff is awesome, man. I actually had his original mail order course back in the day when I was a householder collecting stuff. I actually had his original home training course.

Wow, that's amazing. I had to keep it in plastic and stuff like that. Yeah, like look at this neck crank he's got going on here. That's the old quarter Nelson, man. There's a lot of moves that they had that they used to use back then that are absolutely effective today. But just ask Josh Barnett. Yes, I was just going to bring him up. He really surprised Dean.

Dean's a hell of a black belt. Really well-trained black belt. And I think even he was surprised with that headlock. Yeah. I mean, he caught him in a scarf hold, too, which is like about as old school as it gets. Old school as it gets. So some of these things are so old, they're new. A lot of younger guys. Right.

I mean, when I was coming up, in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, there were so many different defenses against the headlock. We just basically just kind of gave up on using it. But if you don't practice that stuff, you get some wrestler, catch wrestler, judo guy, some rough guy, gets you in one of those headlocks unexpectedly, wow, he can really hurt you. Especially a really strong guy. Really strong guy. One of the things that's coming into play a lot is that bulldog choke.

You rarely see it. You see like every couple years someone will get one. Last one being Raquel Pennington got it on Ashley Evans-Smith, and Ashley Evans-Smith was kind of known as being like the grappler in that matchup. And Raquel Pennington was more of a striker. But she caught her in that bulldog choke and put her to sleep. Describe that bulldog choke. Someone's like, it's like a schoolyard headlock. Okay, because they're on their knees or whatever.

Yeah, and you're right in front of them. But the thing is, when someone's head is here, and you get that forearm under the choke, and you clamp down, man, there's not a lot that guy can do. There's not a lot. When the head is here, and if you're a strong person, you're fully locked in, you're sitting on it, there is not a lot. There you go, right there.

You see it right there. We used to refer to that as the rodeo choke, because it's like a cowboy taking down a stair almost. It's a good way to put it, yeah. Actually, you know who used that really, really early? It was was Bruce Lee choked out Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Yes! He did! And that was Game of Death.

Game of Death, one of my favorite movies. He also had the first MMA gloves in that movie. First MMA gloves. That was Enter the Dragon. Oh, that was Enter the Dragon. That's right. That's right. Remember, He did the armbar. Was it an armbar or was it the it was a neck crack. What do they call that?

Was it a crucifix? Crucifix. Yes, that's right. So he was pretty early. He was, you know, I mean, as far as like being open-minded, he was so far ahead of his time with combining martial arts. I mean, he truly was the original mixed martial artist. Because in the time, like, even when I was starting out in the 80s, the early 80s,

you really weren't supposed to train anywhere else. Like, I would get the stink eye if I would go to a boxing gym and try to learn some boxing. You know, they would say at my Taekwondo school that you basically could learn everything you want here. You didn't need to go anywhere else. And you definitely didn't want to learn Muay Thai or any of those other techniques. It's taking time away from your practice here, and this is what you really need to do. Well, that's martial arts teachers trying to protect their turf. They're worried about losing income if the students are going from this to that to the other thing.

Well, you see it from even jiu-jitsu instructors, unfortunately, where jiu-jitsu instructors who only train with the gi start saying terrible things about people who train no-gi. And the reason being is because they have too many techniques that rely upon handles. On handles. Yeah. And as soon as they roll with a grappler and they're going no-gi and they roll with like a really good solid college wrestler, they're going to get smoked. It's pretty tough. Yeah, they just can't deal with someone who's just really good at manipulating bodies that are sweaty and with gable grips and overhooks and underhooks. And they're used to those collars and they're used to like grabbing sleeves.

It's a whole different game, man. Being a former NCAA Division I wrestler, I hated the game for my first three years of Shinshitsu. And then finally, as I started getting a little older, getting close to my 50s, I started loving it because it does slow that game down. Yeah, completely slows it down. And so if you're smaller and weaker, the gi definitely gives you a chance to even the odds there a little bit. Well, it allows you to control people. And I think one of the things that's really good about the gi is people that live in cold climates if you ever get in a self-defense situation

with someone wearing a jacket. Like I had a conversation with a friend of mine and I said if you are in some sort of a street fight with a jiu-jitsu black belt and you have a leather jacket on, you might as well be a dead person. Because if that guy just grabs your collar, all he has to do is get inside your collar, grab a hold of

the back of that collar and you're gone. He's going to just clamp a hold of the back of that collar and you're you're gone he's gonna just clamp a hole the other side and he's gonna choke you to death like you have a weapon it's shocking how easy it actually is yeah people are judo person people always think like uh like in a straight fight you know you're gonna be using all this fancy stuff but uh it's gonna be the most basic stuff you learn is a white bout and a blue bout you're gonna fall back on that stuff most likely yeah i mean you know you have to think like lame you know like a person you're fighting probably is not a trained martial artist no most likely a buddy of mine got in a street fight with a trained martial artist once he told me uh that these two guys he and this other guy were like yelling at each other or

something on the highway and they decided to pull over so they pulled over to the side of the road they got out and they started duking it out and he threw a leg kick and the guy checked it and the guy shot for a double and he stuffed it and they're both looking at each other like oh shit. Oh shit. And he said they went at it for like 10 minutes and then high-fived each other afterwards

and got back in the car. Well, that had a good outcome. Well, they realized. They're like, oh, okay, we thought I'm fighting another trained guy. They thought they were going to, each guy thought they were going to get out and beat the shit out of some guy who didn't know what he was doing. And they both got out and they moved around like, oh, look at this motherfucker. And then after a while, they thought it was funny. That is, well, I have used jujitsu a few times.

In a fight? In a street fight? Yeah, in a street. Back when I had my school in Philadelphia. Oh, when crazy people would come in the gym or something? Yeah, well, we had gym fights, but a couple times even on the street. Really? Just crazy stuff, man.

Had a cab driver try to run me over one time, and I was furious. I used to commute by bike quite a bit, and when I went by, I was so mad, I hit the side of his cab. And, you know, just gave him a couple – expressed my opinion. And then the guy pulls over and jumps out of the cab. Yeah, starts coming at me. And I just used the inside control and just laid him over the top of the cab. And it was over before it started. He gave up and just got back in.

But thank God for basic stand-up self-defense. Well, also thank God for him that you're a nice guy. Yeah, well. You didn't decide to smash his face in. Nowadays, man, you smash someone's face in, you're going to have all sorts of lawyers knocking on the door. If there's a video of it. You've got to wear a disguise everywhere you go. There's always a video of it nowadays.

You've got to wear disguises, bro. You've got to go out of the house with a mask on. That's the move. How do you do it, Joe? It must be tough. You've got to wear mustaches and shit. Yeah, I don't know. Self-defense is like obviously last alternative.

Like you would most likely never use any of the techniques that you learn. If you're lucky, you could live your whole life and never use any martial arts. If you're lucky. Hopefully, if you're lucky. Yeah, absolutely. That's the goal. I personally like to run not because I think running is such a good workout. I like to run for the skill of running because if you don't run, you're not good at running. Most people don't like it.

I do it more as a martial art because I want to run away. Right. But when you run— And old people can't run. You see the way most people move. I don't want to be one of those, you know, mid-60s, 70-year-old guys that, you know, can't run. So I practice sprints at least once, sometimes twice a week, just for the skill of being able to run fast. Well, sprints are really good for your system, too, right?

They can be very good systemic-wise. You know, there's a real interesting study done on running. They found that people that run in the zone that like do 10Ks, 5K, you know, competitive running, marathons, triathlons and such, actually have shorter life expectancy than people that don't run at all. I was really surprised.

They claim it's the oxidative stress. My theory is people don't use the lung apparatus properly and breathe properly. They found that people that lived, all of them were the people that run real slow, just nice, leisurely, like zen running. They live longest. They live longest.

Well, have you ever heard the theory that there's only a certain amount of heartbeats that you get in your life? I have heard that. Yeah, I mean, it kind of almost makes sense when you look at the age of professional athletes, like how they die young. They burn, they flame out and die pretty young. Yeah.

Now, that's something that you have been really a pioneer in avoiding, like keeping your body healthy, like deep into your 60s and 70s. And I know you have a whole program about that, about with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Yes, I do. We call it Jiu Jitsu for a lifetime we're actually going to do a uh a training camp this next spring in April in Maui what a good place for a training camp hey how would you like to come I would love to if I'm available as my guest I would like to but I'm busy as fuck dude man just it's hard it's hard for me just just tell all those guys hey I'm just taking like a week off and going to Maui.

It's hard. I would have to. You know, it's like my time off is most of the time, if I actually have actual time off, I spend it with my family. I go somewhere. Well, bring your wife and your young daughter. Maybe. Maybe.

They would love it. They can take paddleboard lessons while you come up and do little Maui. Paddleboard lessons. I do. Maui's nice, but man, every time I'm there, somebody gets bit by a shark. I don't know what the fuck is going on. I don't know about that either. I have that morbid fear.

Ever since I saw that movie Jaws, it's like, forget it, man. Yeah, while we were there, we were watching TV, and there was a newscast about this kid who got his leg mauled. And my kids were just in the pool, or just in the ocean, rather, that day. We were just snorkeling. And then we came back, and we were watching this thing about this surfer who just got mangled, and they had him all stitched up, and he was fucked up. It's just such a primal fear.

I don't know what it is. I know it's irrational because my chance of being eaten by a shark is way less than being in an accident in a car. I rent cars and drive. People always say that, but that doesn't make me feel any better. Because also, the odds of you being eaten by a shark when you're on the shore radically decrease. That's true. If you ever go in the ocean, there's zero chance.

The ads increase when you get in the water. So if you don't go in the water, you won't get bit by a shark. That's just a fact. When I go to Maui- I just go to Baby Beach. This is Sunset Beach, I believe is what it's called, which is just south of L.A. Oh, Christ. What are you going to show me? A giant great shark breaches the water.

Oh, no. You just sealed it. Oh, no. Now I'm definitely not going back in there. Right off of Huntington Beach? Yeah. Oh, my God. This is insane.

A giant shark. That is one big-ass shark. That's got to be bigger than eight feet. Yeah Oh my god This is insane Giant shark That is one big ass shark That's gotta be bigger than 8 feet Does it say how big it is? I don't think they know Because they just randomly caught it Because they were doing some other stuff So he was filming something else

And the thing just breached the water Oh my god Show that again Could you imagine? Look at the fucking size of that thing Dude that's a big shark That's not a 7 foot shark Now can you imagine some kid

on a surfboard and it just comes up underneath there? That's how they stun those seals, if you've ever watched sharks hunt. The way they hit and knock it, kind of unconscious almost. Did you ever see the film that they got right off

of Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco? Some tourists were out there and they were just filming the water, taking pictures of each other, and seeing all these people hanging around by the water's edge, and a great white fucked this seal up in front of everybody. Like right in front of everybody. And we think it was probably two different seals that it killed because it killed one, and there was this big bloody puddle,

and then it seems like it got a hold of a second one it's hard to tell because you know you're just looking at the surface of the water but massive red and i mean these people are 30 40 feet away from this thing as it's tearing the seal apart it's really pretty crazy that is crazy there was an awesome picture of a uh orca hunting with its calf a great white. Oh, yeah, yeah. The orca totally fucked the great white up. Yeah. It stunned it and it used jujitsu, man.

It basically grabbed and turned it over. And if sharks don't keep moving, they basically drown. Yeah. It held it until it basically drowned and then it ate its liver. And the people that analyzed the video felt that the mother orca was teaching the baby how to hunt. How to kill a shark. Yeah. Crazy, right?

They're not nearly as agile as an orca. As an orca. And nowhere near as smart. I mean, they're really dumb. They have a tiny brain. They just eat and swim around. But the orcas, when you see that video, when they flip it up upside down, something about flipping a shark upside down also kind of like knocks it out. Yeah, they just go passive.

Yeah. I've seen people actually do it, you know, like in shows and stuff where they'll just take and just flip it and rub its belly. How bizarre. That's pretty bizarre, man. There's a lot of weird, like, flaws in God's early designs. It's almost, you know, like designs like that, like the design of a shark. It's like, what? It has to keep swimming?

It just has to keep swimming. So here's that footage off of San Francisco. Oh, this is a different one. It's the same one. Is it? Well, why is it so close? This is a little bit later into it as it got closer. It starts off a little farther away.

Oh, I see. Okay. No, well, let's go farther away then because the further away you get to see it. Back it up from the beginning because you see that these people just kind of... This isn't the one though, Jamie. The other one, it's from a distance and you actually see the shark. The orc, Amy.

Well, which one is this, Jamie? This is the shark eating the seal. This is the shark eating the seal. This is right off of Fisherman's Wharf where all the restaurants are where people are walking around. Yeah, see the... Okay, so there's more than one great white, too. But there's more than one footage of this, apparently. Obviously, this is a big deal, and everybody has a phone.

True. But to be watching this, I mean, these feet, look at that. That's like, what is that, 30 feet? That's pretty intense, man. Yeah, there's a better footage, though, a different angle, which is a little bit further off, where you actually see the shark breach the water with a seal in its mouth it's like yeah i'm gonna stand ashore yeah i think i'll stand short you know nick diaz he swam from alcatraz five different times five different times that guy swam from alcatraz to shore well you know one of my one of my heroes

jack la lane used to swim that while pulling a boat full of people. Wow, shackled. Yeah. He did it like as an annual birthday event. Yeah. What a man. He's an animal. Like the guy was still, you know, doing all sorts of crazy exercises right up until his 90s.

Yeah, he was a crazy man. He really, a real pioneer of health and fitness and wellness and juicing. Yeah, he got into juicing. You know, I always tell these kids, you know, don't be listening to these trainers in their 20s, their 30s, or even their 40s, because they haven't been over to the other side. They don't know what's sustainable. They don't know, you know, they just don't have the long-term experience. All my mentors were guys in their 80s. They're the guys I want to learn from. Guys that went to the other side, that are super fit, really healthy. They're the guys I've been looking at to put my own program together.

I don't want to listen to these young guys. They have no fucking idea, man. I didn't. A lot of the shit I did when I was even in my 40s and even early 50s, I have no clue. Yeah, there we go. Well, he would tow not just a boat. He would tow like seven boats or something crazy. I mean, like 70 people.

I think he towed like a person for every year of his life. So here he's towing like a whole stream of boats. Like how many boats were back there? The guy was an amazing swimmer. That water was cold. And it doesn't look to me like he has a wetsuit on. It looks like he may just have like a singlet type. It's hard to tell.

It looks like a wetsuit there. Okay, there's a wetsuit. It's hard to tell. But either way, the guy's a savage. That guy was an amazing fitness guy. There he is. And he's handcuffed. Pretty amazing. Yeah. there he is and he's handcuffed pretty amazing yeah but here's a guy that stood the test of time he got to his 80s and 90s another guy was uh master elliot gracie i mean that guy i actually had a jujitsu with a lesson with the guy

you know when he was in his late 80s wow and you know okay he's not gonna beat anybody right doing competitive jujitsu. But you wouldn't want to go up and mess with that old guy. He would mess you up. He had some thick-ass hands. He had big hands, big forearms, and he would just slap it on you. I used to hate to be the guy that he demonstrated stuff on because he would just really put it on you. I felt damn near injured, you know?

Yeah, well, he was a pioneer of no-holds-barred fights like way back in the day. I mean, he was doing that in the 1940s, right? Yeah. And even before him, his teacher, he didn't learn directly from this guy. His brothers did. It was that guy, Eiso Maeda, that little Japanese guy. Yeah. I had heard he won over 800 no-holds-barred fights.

I don't know whether that's true or not. Well, it's like the Hickson 400 no number. Yeah, exactly. But Maeda, he did a lot of no-holds-barred type deals. And he was one of the guys that really, really developed that guard because he was finding that big American wrestlers and football players were putting him on his back. And he became deadly from fighting from his back. He kind of specialized in that particular position.

That's so fascinating because that was a big part of Helio's game too. Well, he's so little. Yeah. I mean, he was like 140 plus pounds when he was competing and fighting against much larger men. Much larger men. Much larger guys. I lived with him for a month down at his ranch in Teresopolis, and I used to get daily lessons.

And his favorite thing was to have you put himself into just a really bad position, like mounted or whatever, and then just basically defy you to do anything to him. And it's a great game that you can play well into advanced age, you know. You just let the kids work on you a little bit and just play defense, and there was nothing I could do. Wow. I mean, he just basically knew everything I was going to do before I did it. He'd give his back, let you mount, and he basically, his defense was just so superb.

You would have either had to use an unusual amount of strength to do anything, or, I mean, there was no fool in him, let me just put it that way. Well, Hickson used to let guys start on his back with a full rear naked choke, fully locked in. That's how he would start. It's pretty amazing, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, but if you could develop that kind of defense, if you're safe from there, you're safe from everywhere. One of the big parts of jiu-jitsu, I'm sure you'll agree,

is the ability to be safe in any position and the ability to understand what it takes to be safe in those positions. And the best way to do it, like Eddie Bravo did that when he was training for Hoyler. One of the big things that he did was he had people start off in bad positions. He would have people start off mounting them, have people start off in side control. He never started out just facing a guy where it's an equal, neutral position. Every position, every role started with him on his back. Every role started with him in a compromised position. It's such a great way to work if you're

working with people that don't have the same skill sets as yourself. For example, Hickson was in America for years and years and years, and he only had white belt, blue belt level guys to work with. But this is the way he kept his sword sharp. He would put himself in these bad positions, partially closed triangles, maybe a partially closed umplata on the back with maybe a partially closed choke or whatever. And he just was just a genius at getting out of those positions. choke or whatever. And he just was just a genius at getting out of those positions. Yeah. And if you can show your training partners what to do, you can actually make it more difficult for yourself. If you tell them what they're doing wrong. And I mean, Hickson didn't just develop his own jujitsu skills. Obviously, he had a lot of great students as well.

A lot of great students. And a black belt under Hickson to this day is one of the most prestigious black belts you can get. I would say probably the closest thing you can get to Hickson is Luis Heredia in Maui. The guy's unbelievable. I love training with him. And we were talking about Luis. Old school, man. Luis gave me my very first private lesson at Hickson's old place on Pico.

That was before. I didn't know that there was a difference in the Gracies. When I was starting out, I was like, oh, this is Grac is Gracie Jujitsu. Okay. This is just like the UFC like who's Hicks and Gracie Oh, that's the brother voice. Yeah, I mean I didn't even know that he was the man and so Carlson Gracie school was closer It was off a Hawthorne like right off a sunset that was closer to where I lived by like 20 minutes And you know especially during traffic it was a nightmare to get down to Pico. So I was like, oh, I'll just go to this place instead.

So I fucked up and stopped training at like the best place in the world. Like I didn't even know. Well, that's how it was when I first started. You know, I didn't have a clue how well, I mean, I just didn't appreciate how good these guys were. But I got lucky, though. Any given day, I could have a lesson with any of the brothers.

They were one big happy family. Yeah, and they were always there, too. Always there. I got lucky, though, that when I came to Carlson's, Mario Sperry was there. Carlos Baheto was there. I got to watch those guys roll. I got to watch those guys compete. Vitor Belfort was there.

And it was when Vitor was called. They were calling him Victor Gracie. Do you remember that? I do remember that. Yeah. They would spell it with a K. Like, I don't know what happened. They changed his name. I really don't understand what happened. They were calling him Victor. I know in Brazil, a lot of times the women are able to keep their original name. So they don't always take the name of their husbands. Well well he was taking carlson's name i mean he doesn't he didn't belford is his real name like he doesn't have like a gracie background like he was taking a mother that might have been a gracie no okay but there's some people that do that like doesn't doesn't um who has that going on ang Angela Gracie? No. Someone has that going on.

One of the men has that going on. Roger Gracie, his father. Hodger, yeah. Yeah, Hodger is, his father's Gomez. Yes. And his mother was Gracie. That's one of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I think Caesar, too. Doesn't Caesar have a similar situation? That I don't know, but I do know it's not uncommon for a married woman to keep her maiden name. That's interesting. But anyway, so everybody called Vitor Victor back then. And if you look at the early UFCs, I'm pretty sure I even called... I remember someone pulled me aside and said, you can't call him Victor Gracie at UFC 12. You can't call him Gracie because Horian was

suing Carlson. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. Like Horian was suing all the other Gracies. They couldn't even use their last name. Meanwhile, Carlson Gracie is a legend, like a real legend of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and in MMA. And he was the guy who came in and beat the guys that Elio couldn't beat because Carlson was a bigger, tougher, stronger guy. I mean, he was more of a bulldog approach, which is why it was perfect that he had that logo, those two bulldogs. Well, he pretty much bridged the gap between Elio's young sons.

Elio was getting a little up there in age you know and was starting to fail physically a bit and his own sons were a little bit too young still so calls yeah Carlson Gracie was like the one to defend the family honor up until the point where Hickson and Halls Gracie got you know into the young yeah and he had a fantastic group of students an unbelievable teacher Murillo Bustamante Mario Sperry I mean he had a fantastic group of students, too. He was an unbelievable teacher. Murillo Bustamante, Mario Sperry. I mean, he had some really amazing, amazing students as well. They said his ability to go out and recruit talent was just incredible.

He just knew how to do it. He had an eye for guys that were going to be really good. Yeah, he also had a great family environment, like that Carlson Gracie team. They were very tight-knit. It's a fascinating time in the world of martial arts if you go back and look at that the early 90s and what happened to this you know to jiu-jitsu in America and how it just sort of exploded and changed the face of martial arts it really did I had my first experience in 89 and I just made up my mind I wanted to learn it. I went in as a NCAA Division I wrestler.

I had a really good record. I was like most wrestlers, kind of hard-headed. What are these skinny Brazilian guys going to show me? And then I'm tapped like a typewriter by Hoyler. I'm like, oh my God, what is this that he's doing to me? I've got to learn this. And I asked Corian, how can I learn this martial art? He said, come out to Torrance. It's the only game in town. At that time, that was true.

So you went from Philly all the way to Torrance to train. And I would stay for a week. I'd have so much money. I was a former school teacher, and I had a little retirement account set up, some money set aside after I quit teaching, and money I'd set. So I used that to fund my jiu-jitsu education. In the meantime, I had opened up Maxercise. It was a personal training gym. I put some mats in the back, you know. And I would usually go and take like $1,000.

And when I'd run out of money, I would go back to Philly again. Since it was my business, I could just take off whenever I wanted. Oh, that's great. And then I had mats. And it was the first gym of the Eastern Seaboard I would just get all my old wrestler friends Philadelphia Judo Club you know Aikido guys and just go in there and just work with these guys and practice my jiu-jitsu and then another you know a couple months later I go back and spend time again then I got smart I started bringing the Gracies to my place and then they would stay with me. I had Halston stay with me sometimes for a couple of weeks. Hoyce actually lived with me for a month, one time. Well, I think Hoyce and Hoyler,

they don't even have schools anymore. They just travel and do seminars and they find that that's more lucrative and they get away from the hassle of having to pay rent and employees and all the other nonsense that comes with schools. And, you know, they're just welcomed with open arms in these weekend seminars. And I mean, if a guy like Hoyce or Hoyler or Hickson wants to do a seminar, like who's going to say no? Who's going to say no? Well, it's kind of what I do myself. You know, I just go around showing the Gracie self-defense. And the other thing that I'm really into these days is just basically how can you keep your body still in the game? Because I mean, it is fun to roll. It really is. It's something that you can do into advanced age, but you got to be careful and you have to be very careful with the preparation

of your body. And what are the, what are the keys to a person that's like, you know, entering into their older age? What are the keys to maintaining the body's elasticity, what are the keys to maintaining the body's elasticity, your strength and vitality? Well, one of the main keys is joint mobility. Every single day you've got to do some type of mobility. People get confused between flexibility and mobility. Mobility has a connotation of strength. You want to be able to voluntarily go in and out of the movement.

I'll give an example. Being a grappler and a striker, I've seen your devastating kick, that spinning roundhouse thing you do. One way that, like, the difference between mobility, like, flexibility would be you may be doing a split or putting your foot up

on an elevated surface and just holding it and stretching, right? Right. That's flexibility. But lifting your leg up slowly under control and extending it out and holding it, like the old bruce

lee movie you know that is mobility right so practicing moving through the full range movement regularly is extremely good for the joints you keep your ability to move the other advice i have these young uh these guys out there, tap early and tap often. Don't be a fool. And this whole concept that you can't tap to a lower belt, that gets so many guys hurt. I can't tell you how many purple belts or brown belts get really PO'd because some really big, strong or technical blue belt gets them in a bad situation. They feel they can't tap and they'll literally risk injury, that's insane. Yeah, it is insane.

Why in the heck? It's very unfortunate. I don't know how that ever started, that you can't tap to lower your mouth. Well, the problem is, if you feel bad about tapping, that's one thing. But if you get injured, you're going to feel so much worse. So much worse. And it's going to take you so much longer to recover. If somebody catches you in a guillotine, you're like, oh boy, this is tight.

You know what? Let me just tap. Fuck, I'm an idiot. How did I get caught in that? That feeling that you get is actually good for you. It's good for you. Because that way you'll realize you can't just let your neck hang out there. You can't not defend.

You can't think about those potential steps. And I see in a lot of jujitsu situations, I see when a higher belt will go with a very enthusiastic and a very ambitious lower belt, they oftentimes disregard the possibility of getting tapped, and that's how they get tapped. Whereas some higher belts I've seen, they'll roll with a purple belt or a blue belt or a white belt, and they'll roll with everybody like that person's a ninja. They'll roll with every single person like that person is like the greatest grappler that they've ever faced in their life and if they do that i'm not talking about like going hard and being like really physical and hurting them but being aware of all the possibilities and being on your toes

and being at 10 at all times if you do that you're going to be fine. Or purposely just put yourself in dangerous positions and get caught just to practice. But I think it was Horian's boys, either Henner or Heroin, one of those guys. They mentioned a guy that worked in their school, a black belt in his 50s, who was really down in the dumps over having been roughed up by a blue belt. And they were saying, well, how old was the blue belt? And the guy was like in his 20s, and he outweighed him by about 30 pounds. And I think they were the ones that came up with the idea that for every 10 years of age and for every 10 pounds of weight, that's like the guy having an extra belt on you. If he knows how to use it, for sure.

Yeah. I mean, let's just say a big, strong, athletic white belt that's 20 years old and maybe outweighs me by 40 pounds. That's going to be like me fighting a guy like a much higher skill level. What he lacks in skill and technique, he's making up for with hustle and youth. And he's not going to get tired and strength well i i also think it's very dangerous to roll with people that are much larger than you i mean i think there's lessons to be learned in it and i certainly did my share of it but man there's a lot of times rolling with much larger guys we come off and your neck is just fucked up or your back is crap making weird. It's like, Jesus, is this really worth it?

Unless the guy's really, really technical. Yeah. Well, if someone's really, really technical, then it's completely different. Like I could roll with you and we could have a great time. You wouldn't try to kill me. You wouldn't try to crush me. Maybe you'd sweep me and come on top. But the smart big guy, if he's rolling with a smaller guy or an older guy, he's going

to put himself on the bottom again and let you sweep me or whatever and just practice his defense in the bottom. Well, I would way rather roll with a larger than me black belt than I would a larger than me purple belt. Well, good point. Yeah. I mean, it's just – it also – like if you roll with a larger than you black belt, like a Hodger Grace or something, they don't have anything to prove. They're not going to hurt you. You know what I mean? They've also been doing it for their whole life it's like they know how to

do it correctly like you can get away with so much with physical strength and explosiveness and and just weight and power but that doesn't make you any better it's one of the reasons why i always tell people if you want to learn jujitsu properly learn it from a little guy from a little guy learn it from like a barrett yoshida or a hoyler gracie or an eddie bravo if you learn jujitsu properly, learn it from a little guy. From a little guy. Learn it from like a Barrett Yoshida or a Hoyler Gracie or an Eddie Bravo. If you learn jujitsu from a smaller person, you're going to learn like really technical jujitsu. Like Master Elio. Exactly. His self-defense still stands the test of time, man. Sure. That's another thing that makes me really pleased to see that it's kind of gone full circle. You know, jiu-jitsu was kind of going the way of a lot of other martial arts. Like judo became like just a form of jacketed wrestling, really.

And, you know, taekwondo, tangsudo, you know, they were at one point deadly martial arts. But now they're, you know, a lot of the martialness has been lost in a lot of these different, especially if they go Olympic. But that was happening to Jiu-Jitsu. People are just basically shaking hands and jumping on their ass. And it was like, what? And that's a fun game. I'm not deriding it.

I'm not saying that the guys are not formidable athletes. They're amazing. But for the average guy, they're never going to be really great. They're just going to be so-so. They're doing. But for the average guy, they're never going to be really great. They're just going to be so-so. They're doing it for fun. I think it's important that you back yourself up with the self-defense. And I see now a big trend to going back to the origins of jiu-jitsu. The self-defense has been really big.

Guys want to know the basic stand-up street defense. And it was extremely well-developed in the old Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It was very well developed in the old Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It was very well developed. Gun, knife, stick, club, all kinds of clenches, defending yourself against a guy trying to ground and pound. It was all there, but it was lost. It was lost. Well, it is unfortunate when people are just trying to chase medals and win by points. And in doing so, they become extremely unrealistic in the actual application against a fight,

or a fighter, rather, who knows what they're doing. But one of the things that's really exciting right now is no-gi competition. That's kind of cool. Yeah, and what Eddie Bravo's done. Did you see the Eddie Bravo Invitational, which was No. 6, was yesterday? No, but I heard about it.

I heard some of the results, and it sounds like a very good way to contest skill versus skill. Yeah, it's amazing. What Eddie's done is he's figured out a way to, they have, it's submission only, so they go after it, right? But when it reaches a time limit, if it reaches a time limit and there's no submission, then what they do is they start off in compromised positions, sort of like wrestling. You know, in wrestling, one guy would start down, one guy would start up.

Like the referee's position. Yes. So you have the option of two positions. Either you take the back with over-under, just over-under, not a choke locked in, but just the back with the hooks in and over-under, or spiderweb control, meaning arm bar. The guy's defending the arm bar, lying on his back. You're in side control, and you have the arm hooked, and your legs are across. And you start from there. And so either the person gets a tap, or the person on the bottom escapes the position.

And then you count up the amount of time. So you do it in, like, I think there's three rounds of this. And if someone taps, then the other person has an opportunity to tap that other person and whoever taps the quickest like if one person taps the person within a minute and a half the other person does it in you know 30 seconds that person with the 30 seconds person would win and if there's no taps in the i think it's three rounds three rounds of of these submission attempts then they count up the amount of time it took the person to escape. So if one person escapes like 30 seconds quicker, then the other person, that person would win.

That's how Gary Tonin wound up losing yesterday. What a fair way to do it. Yeah, it's a smart way to do it too because it ensures that you're going to have exciting situations because if two guys are just locked up in front of each other and no one ever gets to a bad spot, you're not going to see any action. But if a guy's on a guy's back and he has over under and they start from there that's a dangerous spot and so you're going to see exciting stuff so it it changes grappling from

being this thing that can really wind up like Polaris you know they had those matches like Gary Tonin versus Husamar Paul Hares great Great matchup, but it went to a draw. You know, AJ, I don't know how to pronounce his last name, Jake Shields. The audience wants a winner. They want a clear-cut winner. Plus it gives the athletes a chance to showcase their skills. Yes. That's what people want to see.

They want to see the skill sets showcased, and you don't get to see that because sometimes these guys are so damn good that they neutralize each other. It doesn't always make for a great fight, two really good fighters. I mean, you've seen this in the UFC many times. You think, oh, my God, this is going to be so good, and it's like, oh, man, this is really boring because the guys just basically neutralize each other because they're just so good.

They're so good they cancel each other out. They cancel each other out. That is a problem, and I think Eddie's come up with the perfect solution with this format of putting guys in bad positions in the last stage of the match. Sounds like a fun thing to compete in. It's excellent, and it's on Fight Pass now. It's on UFC Fight Pass. So now a lot of people are getting a chance to see it, and they put videos on YouTube and all that jazz. So this is at the pro level pretty much?

Yeah, $25,000 for the... It might be kind of fun if they just did like a grassroots thing. A grassroots thing? Yeah, you know, just for like, you know, amateurs to go in. Yeah, it would be a great program. You know, brawl bout, purple bout, brawl bout. Yeah. I don't know how...

I agree, yeah. I don't know what the logistics of a tournament like that might be, but man, I'll tell you, it'd be fun to compete in something. Yeah, Eddie's done six of them, and they've gotten better and better, and yesterday's was the biggest one, especially because it's on Fight Pass now. But he's really figured it out. He's figured out how to make this an exciting thing to watch for people who are on the outside looking in.

Well, you know, speaking of that cast wrestling, a lot of people don't realize that pre-Civil War and just post-Civil War, wrestling was the most popular sport in America. People used to sit outside the telegraph offices to listen to the results of a lot of these old school wrestling matches. It was way more popular. Well, first of all, baseball was in its infancy. It was like a Civil War era sport that was invented. Basketball was still only like two schools, I think, were playing it.

They actually used real like peach baskets. Really? Oh, wow. Yeah, it was a physical education guy came up with a way just to, you know, like a game, just a conditioning game. Wow. That was the origins of basketball. And football was like.

Sneakers and cars. Yeah, football was like this big watermelon looking ball. But wrestling was the most popular sport in America. And it was real wrestling, though. Oh, it was the old-school catch. You know, guys like Georges Hackenschmidt and Frank Gotch and Farmer Burns. Even up to the era of Strangler Lewis, they were still doing real wrestling. And then, of course, they started getting into more of the entertainment business.

How did it go bad? Because it's really fascinating to me that wrestling itself is such an unbelievably difficult sport. Like, if you watch amateur wrestling in the Olympics, at an Olympic level, it's unbelievably difficult. And it's exciting and fun to watch, but there's no professional venue for it. No professional... Well, until the UFC came along.

Right, but that's fighting, though. Yeah, it's fighting. For people who just want to wrestle, they can't. It is a great basis, though, for a lot of different things. It certainly is, no doubt about it, but it's just, to me, it sucks that there's not a professional avenue for actual wrestling. For actual wrestling.

I mean, think about all the things that are on television, golf or whatever. There's this massive professional venue for it. It sounds like Eddie Bravo, though, is giving one. For jiu-jitsu. But jiu-jitsu is obviously very different than wrestling. I mean, just wrestling itself, getting the pin and scoring points for takedowns and all those different things. I mean, there's something to be said for that as a sport. scoring points for takedowns and all those different things.

I mean, there's something to be said for that as a sport. Maybe it's not the best as a martial arts for completing a fight, for finishing a fight, wrestling with the rules that are involved in amateur wrestling. But to me, the guys who get really great at wrestling, I would like to see them have a professional avenue, like a way to go from college and then compete as a professional wrestler and so not there's anything wrong with wwe if you're into that shit but i would love it if it was an actual competition yeah actual real yeah honestly god not choreographed yeah nothing's from they uh there was there was an attempt for a while to actually come up with a professional wrestling

couple attempts yeah but it kind of fell by the wayside. Could you imagine if that was the case with basketball? If you played basketball in college, and basketball is just like really, people watched it on ESPN, it was this big deal, it was in the Olympics, and basketball. But then when you went to pro, everybody had to dress like a vampire, and you threw glitter onto the thing. You know what I mean?

You have music when you introduce, you have matches in a cage. People are like, what the fuck happened to basketball? There are some countries where they actually do have real pro wrestling based on basic, not exactly Olympic rules, but like, you know, each country has their own little native martial art folk style wrestling. Some of the African countries do this. It's huge in countries like Somalia and what was the other country? I met this guy that travels the world for the International Olympic Wrestling Federation. And he was just doing like, just looking at all the different aspects of wrestling all over the world.

I met him when I was in Turkey. I went to the Turkish National Championships of Oil Wrestling. These guys are all pretty much like professional-level dudes, man. And this is the one where they wear these buffalo hide trousers that are tied off at the knee, and then they basically just pour a bucket of olive oil over themselves, and then they go out in a grass arena, and they just wrestle. And it starts out with like 50 dudes, and then half of those guys lose,

and then they just keep going until there's like two guys standing. Yeah, why oil? What happened there? What did that go wrong? During the Ottoman Empire, they had a standing army. Basically, the Ottomans pretty much conquered the world. So they had all these young soldiers with nothing to do. And these guys were getting into some problems. You know, you got to keep young men occupied.

So they came up with this. But at the same time, you know, these are ferocious warriors. You don't want your guys hurting each other. So they came up with this idea of coating themselves with oil to make themselves slippery. So you can go after each other, you know, like a rabid dog, but no one really gets hurt. Wow. And also it helps build heat tolerance because these guys were wearing armor in the freaking desert, you know, hundreds of degrees.

I mean, like 100 degrees and it really builds up a tremendous heat tolerance, you know, when you get used to training like that. So training covered with oil builds up heat tolerance? Yeah, I mean, your skin can't breathe, man. It's pretty brutal. Oh, wow. Okay, I see that way. So, like, you just, like, your pores really can't sweat that good.

Nope. And those guys, they were able to keep themselves in tremendous shape. That guy's got to work on his technique. One of the things they do is reach inside the pants to get a grip. And grab each other's butthole. And it looks a little gay. You think? But I'll tell you something.

I actually put on the Kisbit and the oil, and I wrestled with the former junior national champ. Dude, he was almost breaking my ribs with the lever. He would come inside the waistband of your trousers and put his elbow in your spine. See, the idea is to flip the guy over and expose your belly button to the sky. If you turn the guy over, you win. Yeah, but the guy on the bottom, this is a terrible look. It looks a little terrible. He's like literally waiting.

Let's put it this way. He would never fly in America. Why is there a gap between the waist and the body? It doesn't start that way. It's really tight, but the oil over time. But these guys are unbelievably

strong. And you can see the physics in these guys are like, oh my god. And they are national heroes. They're rock stars in their country. But they're grabbing each other as packages, no? No, no, no. There's no sexuality at all. Allegedly.

Well. Listen, there's no way you can get your hand deep in there like that and not have some shenanigans. He's looking at his friend going, my whole hand has escaped me. You see how he's holding the leg and the pant? Yeah. That's used as leverage to flip the guy over. So it's almost like jujitsu in a way. Or he's making sure the guy can't get away while he's got his hand deep in his butt.

That's part of it. Come on, man. You can't have this. I developed a keen respect for it, though. I get it from that perspective. It's definitely difficult. When you're flying a Western culture, no. Right, but you've done this before.

But these are strict Islamists, too, you know, and any kind of homosexuality is punishable by death in these countries. But you also know that that doesn't stop it. People that have gone over to Afghanistan have talked about Man Love Mondays or whatever the fuck they have over there. There's a lot of... The Mamba, you know, man-boy

love. Super common that they have gay relationships. Like there was an article that was written about one of those gay websites, like an app, like a grinder or something like that. And this guy went over to some forbidden country where, you know, some Islamic country and fired up the app. And it was just getting pinged left and right by all these gay dudes trying to hook up. Get out of here. It's forbidden fruit, my friend. Oh, my God.

You know how it is. I mean, I'll get all of it up and put on a buffalo hide and wrestle, but it's about as gay as it gets for me, man. Yeah, but if you were gay, you'd be psyched. I guess I would. Like if you were gay and somebody, like, put it this way, all right? Being a heterosexual man, if a girl wanted to get all lubed up and wrestle and you could stick your hand down her pants.

Dude, I'd be there. Exactly. Matter of fact, after the show. Honey, do you got that coconut oil? That's something set up. What's up with the tarp? Nothing. Nothing.

Don't worry. Just lay it down. Roll out the vat. You got a vat of oil. Put your Lululemon tights on. Yeah. Those pants look like they're sturdy at least. Looks like it's difficult to rip.

They're a little hot. It took me 15 minutes to get them on. Really? Because they're so stiff, they stand up by themselves. It's almost like armor. Really? Because they're so stiff, they stand up by themselves. It's almost like armor.

And I literally had to oil up my balls and my ass and my thighs just to slide in that thing, man. Again, some things. See, come on. This is not good. That's called a waist drag. He's actually grabbing the front, like grabbing the jujitsu belt. That's what you would call it. And he's going to pull him down into a takedown. It's called a cock holster in my world.

Right there. Look at that one. Boom. Look at that. That is outrageous. He's lucky he didn't break his neck, man. Yeah, for sure. Well, I'm sure when you're dealing with people being real slippery like that, that's part of the problem with actually grappling. Look at this. Hey, my friend, he's my

friend. That's the version of in prison, they hold onto your pocket. That's what it is these guys looking at each other there are no girls what do you want us to do that's what they're saying in my country there's no girls we just oil up throw down but you know it is a very difficult way to grapple all jokes aside that's really hard and in doing so like you you have to develop like you learn that about no gi as well and especially if you try to do no gi with no shirts on there's a big difference in no gi with a rash guard. Like that one year in Abu Dhabi it was like crazy uh the the thing also about that was it it was very safe for the soldiers to go full at it I mean what do you do with a standing army with no war to fight yeah what the hell do you do with these guys? But at the same time, you can't have them hurting each other.

That was the so-called origins of the whole sport. Yeah, there was an NPR podcast on Radiolab about the origins of football and how football was created. And that was one of the reasons why it was so appealing. It was like a way to compete in war without actually having war. I mean, you had objectives, you have goals, and instead of bullets and bodies, you had a football. It's like team wrestling almost. Sort of, yeah, in a lot of ways. And in a way, like if you think of the, let's say the rugby scrum, it's kind of like the old shield wall, isn't it?

Yeah, sure. When they formed the shield wall. wall isn't it yeah when they when they form the the shield wall so i mean it's it's basically learning to work work together uh and and and there is grappling i mean you're basically throwing guys down pretty hard too yeah it's i think whenever you have young men and you have competition there's there's always going to be this desire to dominate like young men always want to dominate other men and that's just always going to be the way it is. Like young men always want to dominate other men. And that's just always going to be the way it is. So they figured a way to have these workarounds that are acceptable by society. And then, in fact, it became the biggest sport in the country.

Team warfare, man. Team warfare like the NFL is the biggest sport in the country. But, you know, it's interesting. In the early football days, you know, you just didn't see the injuries like you do now. I mean, there would be elbows, knees, shoulders like always, like all tough boy sports where you're throwing people to the ground. You're going to get hurt. But you didn't get the concussions. Right.

And one of the theories I had was – and you don't see it in rugby or rugby union or Gaelic football or anything like that. You don't see it as much. Not as much. But you definitely do see it, right? You definitely see it. But it's not epidemic like in the NFL. I think the helmet became a weapon. Yeah.

And they start using the head as a weapon. Yeah, definitely. And, you know, it would be interesting to see what the NFL does now with all these lawsuits and all these injuries. Did you happen to see Will Smith in that movie Concussion? No, I didn't. But I keep hearing great things about him. Yeah, I got to check that movie out because I heard he did a hell of a job. I don't know what they can do to mitigate it.

Well, they do have a new kind of helmet now I heard that just came out that really reduces the sloshing of the brain. How does it do that? I think it's some kind of gel or something in the helmet, kind of like a a soft kind of thing It's the absorption. You know the helmets are hard. Yeah, so when you get hit your brain still sloshes It's just like you know when you get hit with headgear on it doesn't really stop the brain and no you just take more hits Because there's no surface and not only that a lot of people think it actually Accentuates the movement of the brain because the fulcrum effect. The fulcrum effect. Like if you catch someone with this larger object and the head twists. I believe they've taken, yeah.

There's a new helmet now that supposedly is gel-like that it takes the blow, but, you know, it saves the. Yeah, we're seeing in here, Jamie pulled up this video. It says 01 believes it can reduce the chances of a player sustaining a concussion. And this is interesting because the helmet itself sort of gives and expands. I would love to see that happen because I love pro football, and I would be thrilled to see that they come out of a way that these guys can still play the game without suffering those horrible injuries. I agree. But honestly, I feel like the real option is probably no pads, no helmet.

The same thing with MMA. Or like the original football in the U.S. Well, I think with MMA, one of the things that saves fighters versus boxing is that you really can't tee off on someone the way you can with boxing gloves. With boxing gloves, you almost can have no concern whether or not you're going to hit a forehead or you're going to hit an elbow, unless you have small hands or weak hands. It's much more rare that boxers break their hands than MMA fighters. But even MMA fighters, I think they have an unrealistic

amount of protection on their hands and it's just to protect their hands. Like I still, to this day, I'll get interviews. Like I got interviewed after that, uh, the, the guy died, uh, overseas really recently. And they were saying, do you think that they may, maybe should they have bigger gloves or maybe we should make people wear headgear. I think the real answer is no gloves. Not only no gloves, no wrist taping. Because I think that one of the more difficult aspects about punching someone is that your wrist joint moves when you hit things. And it makes it way harder.

I mean, you have to really concentrate to keep your fist completely tight, make sure that your wrist doesn't move when you make impact. And you have to make impact with the first two knuckles primarily, otherwise you could break your hand. Well, like the original UFC. I was one of the original investors. I told you this. I actually threw my little bit of money in there and was Hoyce's conditioning coach for those first three.

What did you have him do back then? I was actually trying to build his strength as much as I could because jiu-jitsu provided all of the conditioning that he needed. He was doing a lot of work with just bringing in fresh partners. And he wanted to stay a jiu-jitsu purist. Although, you know, he used some kicks and so forth just to kind of— Close the distance. Just close the distance, fake the guy out, make the guy wonder, like, what's he doing so that he could get the clinch and so forth. He would smack guys, too, to open up things where you don't run the risk of breaking your hand.

Breaking your hand. But in all those original UFCs, the strikers all busted their hands. A lot of them did. There was, like, I think three broken hands in that first one. Well, that's realistic, though. That's realistic. And ground and pound would cease to exist. Yeah.

You can't just sit there and tee off. Well, you could elbow people for sure just as much. You could elbow people. But imagine hitting someone in the elbow with your fist or at the top of the head. So that whole ground and pound thing would pretty much go away. Well, just reckless punching would go away. You would have to have precision punches. You'd see a lot more open hand strikes. You would see grapplers able to secure holds if they can't hold.

Yes. It might be boring for the public because I think you would see grapplers win a lot of fights. You might, but I think you would also see a lot better Muay Thai. You would see people would have to develop their Muay Thai because you wouldn't see any change in the weapons. The

knees, the kicks, the elbows, all would be exactly the same. The only difference would be the punches. So I think a really high-level Muay Thai practitioner would probably have a really good advantage if they can keep the fight on the feet. If the fight went to the ground, you definitely see a big advantage for grapplers, especially in securing chokes because you've tried, I'm sure, to grapple with MMA gloves on. Oh, my God. It's just like wearing oven mitts or something.

Especially like rear naked. If you try to get a rear naked choke, try to get the hand behind the neck. Or even a good guillotine sometimes. It's really hard to get it underneath the chin and stuff like that. Yeah, and especially if you like pretzel grips or something like that. It's just there's so much padding. There's so much. You create a good solid two to three extra inches of space that you don't want

with all the padding on the gloves. And it just gets in the way. And it's also, it's easy for your opponent to grab them and pull them off. Pull them off. I would love to see a return to the gloveless MMA. Yeah, I would too. I think it would be really interesting. I'd like to see a league somewhere where maybe on an Indian reservation or someplace

where they didn't have all the, you know, boxing is the reason why they put the gloves on in the first place. Sure. The boxing commissions all wanted, you know. Well, actually, it was Tank Abbott. You know, Tank Abbott was the first guy to wear those gloves. Tank Abbott wore the Chuck Norris MMA gloves, which was before anybody had them. I mean, this was, Tank wore them, like, I want to say, like, oh man, it was like early,

early UFCs because Tank was a power puncher and he was smart enough to realize, you know what, I'll just tape my hands up, put these small padded gloves on that are going to protect my knuckles and just mollywop these dudes. Was that before they went to the gloves? Tank Abbott was before they went to the gloves. The first UFC that I worked, they didn't have gloves. I was at UFC 12. And they still didn't have gloves? They did not have gloves. It was not mandatory.

It was optional. Vitor wore gloves, but he didn't have to. I believe he also wore shoes. No, he didn't wear them in those. I remember some of the guys were still wearing the wrestling shoes. He was barefoot. He wore them when he fought Vandele. That's him versus Oleg Tartarov.

Okay. See? So Oleg has no gloves, but Tank has gloves on. Interesting. Yeah. I'm pretty sure Tank was the pioneer of wearing those kind of gloves. And I think that they would call those, I don't think they called them MMA gloves back then because I don't think they had the term MMA.

But the original gloves were Century gloves, you know, the Century Martial Arts Supply Company. For hitting the heavy bag or the speed bag. Something like that, yeah. And that's what the design came from. Like, the design of MMA gloves didn't come from someone sitting down and saying, we need the perfect glove for mixed martial arts. No, they already had a model that was really not really necessarily designed for MMA, and

they just sort of applied it to MMA. And it became the standard. There's a lot of like really sloppy shit that's in MMA still to this day. That shouldn't be there. That's only in there because it was in there in the beginning. The 12 to 6 elbow. Which I harp upon all the time. Because I think it's so stupid. That if you go down from 12 on the clock to 6 on the clock with an elbow.

It's illegal. Even if you hit someone on the thigh. which is so stupid, it's illegal. And the reason why it's illegal is because the commissions, the athletic commission, saw people breaking bricks on those karate demonstrations. You can't do that. You would kill people. So that's why that's illegal. Not understanding that they weaken those bricks.

Well, and also the reason why gloves are mandatory is because somehow or another they erroneously believe those gloves protect the fighters. They don't. Not at all. But knowing that, I think if we got a room full of athletes and fighters and martial artists and we all had the discussion, we said, let's just have a show of hands. How many guys here think that the gloves protect the opponent? no not everybody right so everyone who knows everyone a hundred percent i think across the board i mean there might be a contrarian or two that would step in and say you know hey personally i'd rather get punched by a guy with a glove than no glove but most people

would say fuck that most people would say bare fuck that. Most people would say bare knuckles is probably safer for everybody involved. Safer. Am I correct? Did they not take the headgear off Olympic boxing? They did. Yeah. They did. Yes. And I think that's a good move. I think it's a very good move.

I think so, too. You don't get hit as much when you not have headgear on. I used to hate headgear sparring because your peripheral would get screwed up, especially kickboxing. It was really dangerous because you'd get hit with a jab, and you wouldn't even recognize the kick was coming because they're coming over your shoulder until, whop, it's catching the side of the head. Your peripheral would get all fucked up. It would close your peripheral quite a bit,

and I just always felt like I got hit way more when I had headgear on. You know, it's interesting. The little bit of boxing that I did do, I always noticed I always kind of had a dull headache after boxing with headgear. And when I didn't have the headgear, I didn't have that same headache. It was weird. Even back then, I could never understand why my head always hurt more after boxing with the headgear on. Because your brain is squishing around a little more. Well, now I know. But, I mean, at the time, I didn't put the causegear on. Because your brain's squishing around a little more. Well, now I know. But I mean, at the time,

I didn't put the cause and effect together. All I knew was intuitively I hated wearing headgear when I was trying. Well, what's interesting, when I've brought up this to people in high places, they always have the same thing. The public would never go for it. The public would think it's too brutal.

People would think it's too brutal. I don't know, man. What have we created? Because we've created something. Not me. I obviously didn't have anything to do for it. The public would think it's too brutal. People would think it's too brutal. I don't know, man. What have we created? What have we created? Because we've created something in MMA. Not me. I obviously didn't have anything to do with it, but what MMA is, is we have a completely new sport over the last few decades. And this completely new sport has redefined the way people

think about combat sports and fighting, right? Okay. Well, why don't we be honest about what fucking, what's happening? And why don't we be honest about, how come you can shin kick a guy in the face? I can shin you in the face full blast, but I can't punch you with a bare knuckle. Do you know how stupid that is? Because a guy like, you know, take, you know, someone who's a power kicker like a Vitor Belfort or something.

Oh my God. The amount of power they could generate from a kick in that raw shin to your face, it's so much more than anyone can ever punch. I mean, like multitudes more. It's like a baseball bat basically. It is. Like a baseball bat. But we don't have to wear shin pads. How come we don't have to wear shin pads? Because the public's not

used to shins being covered. It's all it is. I really honestly think that the smartest move would be to ban tape. Don't note you can't tape your wrists and bare knuckles. I think so, too. Well, if you go back in the early era of boxing where it was all bare knuckle, you rarely saw knockouts. Those fights used to go so, like, 30 rounds sometimes.

You know, like Jack Johnson and those guys. Do you think that's why they used to fight like this, too? I think so. They would, like, smack each other with the knuckles like that rounds sometimes. All the, you know, like Jack Johnson and those guys. Do you think that's why they used to fight like this too? I think so. They would like smack each other with the knuckles like that? Yeah. Or do you think they just didn't know any better?

I think they knew better. I don't think the mighty men of old, there's not too much we could probably show those guys. Imagine if we went in a time capsule back to Sparta,

the first professional army in Europe, right? Mm-hmm. Do you think we could actually show those guys anything about fighting or warfare? I'll fuck all those dudes up. Send me back. No, honestly, martial arts, I bet they'd get fucked up.

I really do. Because when I look at the martial artists from 1993 that were competing in the UFC, and then I look at the martial artists of today in 2016, look at Jon Jones. Do you know what the fuck Jon Jones would do to UFC 1? I mean, you know how ridiculous it'd be if you sent Jon Jones into UFC 1? He'd be like, get that guy out of here. This is not fair. He's doing a totally different thing. I think the martial

artist of today, like Demetrius Johnson, who I think is the best ever. But we're still talking modern, modern, modern. Let's go 2,000 years ago. You put Jon Jones in the gladiatorial arena. You don't think he would fuck those guys up? I think he'd be a hell of a gladiator. I don't think anyone would have a chance. I don't think

they would know what they were doing. I think they knew what they were doing. Really? Yeah. How come they didn't know in 1993? A lot of this information had been lost. Right, but even Jiu-Jitsu, which Jiu-Jitsu has evolved. This was like a resurgent of old stuff. Right. Okay, I see what you're saying. You is like a resurgent of like old stuff. Right.

Okay, I see what you're saying. You know what I'm saying? It's like the dark ages, you know, where they, you know, like in medieval times. But they didn't have the ability to share information like they have today. No, not at all. There's no internet. Yeah. That's one of the reasons why jujitsu is at such a high level today.

Like there's all these like viral BJJ, which is one of the ones I follow on Instagram. There's a bunch of them I follow on Instagram, where they'll have moves of the day, and they show these moves, and you'll just, I've been doing jiu-jitsu for a long time. And I'll watch something, and I'll just go, like the Home Alone guy, I'm like, oh my God, look at this fucking move. Every day, these kids are coming up with new moves. Every day. I saw somebody figured out how to go, some dude went from being in a heel hook to catching a guy in a Kimura

and spun out of the heel hook into a Kimura. And I was like, what? That's pretty amazing stuff. What did you just do? You watch it. And you just got to replay it over and over and over again. There's so many of those now. Let's go back to what we were just talking about.

again there's so many of those now but let's go back to what we were just talking about in ancient times your your ability to fight was a life or death thing you know you were actually fighting to the death right we don't have that true unless you you know but usually in the military it's with all you know shooting and guns and stuff like that you don't see guys fighting i mean it could be hand to, but for the most part, these guys were trained warriors that would fight hand-to-hand. That's why I say when you're fighting to the death, you're damn good at what you do. If you live.

If you live. But if you don't live, you don't get to really learn anything. Yeah, but there's plenty of guys that did live. Yeah. And so my point is that they were well trained and they really knew what was going on i think there's some good points on both sides i think uh there were certainly some incredibly tough people back then for sure oh my god yeah i'm sure the pain threshold was unbelievable but i think there's also this longing for nostalgia that a lot of people like to apply to the ancient martial artists and the ancient fighters.

And they like to look, oh, those guys, boy, if they could fight today. Like, if you could get this guy. Look, Jack Dempsey, who's a hell of a fighter and an amazing boxer and just an unbelievably tough man, wouldn't last one round with Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson in his prime would have ran through Jack Dempsey. He would have ran through all of them. He would have ran through all of them. He would have ran through Gene Tunney. He would have ran through all those guys. Of course, he ran through everybody in modern age, too.

I mean, is that because he was Mike? Or is it because those guys were really that bad? Well, it was also— Because he made a lot of modern guys look pretty shitty, too. He certainly did. But he had the benefit of having all of those guys on film. On film. See, he had his version of the internet.

I agree. What he had is his version of the internet, which was custom auto. And custom auto, I mean, might not have got him on Reddit or showed him all the funny memes on Instagram. But what he did do is he played him these films, these black and white films of Sugar Ray Robinson, of Jersey Joe Walcott, of Rocky Marciano. He got to watch these old school Jack Dempsey tapes and he got to emulate their techniques

and understand. And Customato would go over meticulously different positions and different ways to encounter different styles and different ways to move to get better angles for counter shots. And he learned from all those techniques in a way those guys really didn't have the opportunity to do they had to train they had to learn from trainers they had to watch other people do it but they didn't have the benefit of having a library of film well you have a very strong point uh did you happen to catch him in Ip Man 3 what is it Ip Man 3 no what is that my uh the you know the Wing Chun guy, Ip Man. Oh, okay.

It was one of those crazy kung fu movies? Yeah, yeah, but Mike Tyson had a... Oh, that's right. I saw the previews for that. Dude, he looks scary as shit. He sounds scary. Even to this day, he looks like he could still, you know, if he just trained for, you know, six months or so, he looks like he'd still step in there and take somebody out. Well, he definitely looks like he's still somewhat active.

There was a video of him hitting the bag recently for some shoot for something that he did. And, you know, he starts off slow, starts getting loosened up. And then he starts teeing off in the bag. And you're like, oh, Jesus. Oh, my God. He'd still fuck people up. He would still fuck people up. Joe, you would still fuck people up.

I'm trying not to. I'm still haunted by that spinning back kick you did in your garage that time. Your freaking banana bag bent in half, man. My ribs just hurt just watching that, man. Well, kicks are always going to be more powerful than punches. I think that kicking technique is one of the few things that is a little bit behind in MMA in comparison to some of the traditional martial arts. Especially like the spinning kicks and straight kicks. Like, the round kicks are pretty simple.

It's pretty straightforward. If you look at the round kicks of, like, the best Muay Thai fighters and the round kicks of, like, the best jiu-jitsu guys like an Edson Barbosa, I think Barbosa's right up there with pretty much anybody as far as, like, kicking technique in the world. But spinning techniques, straight techniques, like turning side kicks, there's a little bit of lost knowledge in those. Not too many guys know that, man. Yeah. Matt Serra used to have that awesome spinning back fist, man.

Yes. Wow, that caught by surprise. Am I correct? You were the one that taught GSP that spinning back kick. Well, he knew how to do it. I helped refine it. He actually came to me. John Donaher, who's like one of the best jiu-jitsu coaches in the world.

He's the guy who's in charge of what they call the Donaher Death Squad. He's all these guys out of Henzo Gracie's, like Gary Tonin, Eddie Cummings, all these animals. Yeah, in New York, I had a chance to talk to him. And the young man that won yesterday, I think his name is Ryan, Gordon Ryan, I think his name is, who won EBI. Can you find out what his name is? Young kid. He's 20 years old. He won the EBI tournament yesterday.

But Donahue and I were having dinner, and GSP wanted – he asked me if I knew anyone who – because he knew that I came from a Taekwondo background. He's like, do you know anybody who's a really good Taekwondo guy that can show GSP the fundamentals of the spitting back kick or the turning side kick. Yeah, Gordon Ryan. Young kid. 20 years old. Wow.

Won the EBI. 16-man tournament. What's that I stand for? EBI? Yeah, Eddie Bravo. Invitational. Invitational, okay. And so Don Herr asked him, and I said, well, I could show him some shit.

I know it's going to sound ridiculous, being a comedian and know just a commentator that's just your disguise man well it's just it's it sounds even to me ridiculous to me to say to john donahuer who's one of the best jujitsu teachers in the world you know hey um i there's a guy that i know his name's me you know it's just don't sell yourself short Joe I've been to your house and trained you a few times you're a beast had it been another time I think you probably would have been a hell of an MMA fighter yourself

people ask me that all the time I say Joe probably I mean you're a superior athlete there's no doubt about it you got the fast twitch muscle fiber you got the power I mean, you're a superior athlete. There's no doubt about it. You got the fast twitch muscle fiber. You got the power. I think had you had a chance, let's say maybe 10 years prior to when it started, you know? Well, that's very nice of you. I don't know. I'm not being nice. I'm being honest. You know, you're a really athletic, strong guy. You know, you're a really athletic, strong guy.

Well, I certainly would have competed, you know, in MMA like I did in kickboxing and taekwondo. But totally honestly, though, I've always been terrified of brain damage. I knew too many people when I was young that I knew were punchy. It scares the shit out of me. It still to this day scares the shit out of me. That's one of the reasons why I tell anybody if they're even thinking, even if they have one foot out the back door, if they're thinking about getting out, get out. Just get out.

Because there's going to be some animal in there that's not thinking about getting out. There's going to be some crazed young psychopath who's only thinking about putting his shin to your face, and he's probably going to do it. Well, sooner or later it's going to happen. You know, I lived in Philadelphia for

many, many years and Smoke and Joe Frazier used to be down in my neighborhood sometimes. The poor guy could barely put two words together. He would say hello to him and he didn't even know what he said. It was just really sad. He was gone. What happened to a lot of those guys? I've seen it. I've seen it in my time in the UFC, and I saw it in my kickboxing days. I saw it with guys when I went from taekwondo to kickboxing. I spent a lot of time in boxing gyms, and I got to watch a lot of guys get beat up in training. And over the course of just a few years, like three or four years, I could see deterioration. And it's scary.

That's why jiu-jitsu and submission wrestling is so much fun. Yeah. Because you can pretty much go full tilt, really spend yourself, get a nice workout. No one necessarily needs to get hurt. Right. If it hurts, even if it's highly uncomfortable, you just, you know, that's it. Yeah. You know, I mean, provided you got to let's go, you always have to have trust with your partners. But that is one thing you can do well into advanced stage. And it is a great anti-aging tool if you go at it in the right way. Yeah.

And I think one of the things that you brought up earlier when it comes to joint mobility and just flexibility and mobility, joint mobility and just flexibility and mobility, I think it's very important that people realize that if you want your body to be healthy, you have to use it all the time. You have to use it all the time. You can't have any excuses. Old men actually have to work out more than young guys. I got to work out every day, even a couple hours. Every day?

Just to maintain. Seven days a week? Yeah. Really? No, it's not hard. I'm not doing high intensity every day. You know, high intensity twice a week so I don't burn out. Even younger guys, especially if you're involved with any kind of sport, you've got to be really careful that you don't overtrain.

Overtraining is epidemic amongst grapplers, jiu-jitsu guys, even MMA guys are just chronically burning out. But, you know, two hard workouts a week is enough. And every day you've got to do plenty of mobility. And I like to do plenty of breathing exercises, walking, cardio. And I do some static stretching. But it's enabled me to still, you know, I can still hold my own in the mat. I surprise guys sometimes when we get on the mat and roll around. You know, at first they start babying me and

then they say oh well old steve he still got it going there and then they start upping the ante a little bit of course you know at the end i'm i'm usually the one tapping how is your shoulder i know you were having some shoulder issues i still got some issues with it do you ever get it looked at by a doctor i did there's a big old bone spurn there just from doing silly, stupid shit, not tapping quick enough. Had a couple injuries to it. It started back in college, actually. So I don't do any overhead pressing or anything anymore. I can still do Hindu push-ups and things like that.

I can still do dips. Well, you still do those shield casts with clubs. Not so much because I can't travel with that stuff. So I pretty much went to body weight and isometrics and so forth, you know, a lot of mobility stuff. But I would – here's a good resource for your listeners. Any of you guys out there listening that have shoulder issues, go and buy the book Shoulder Pain, Its Solution, and Its Prevention by Dr. John M. Kirsch. He was a former orthopedic surgeon who used to do surgery for a living. A doctor can either cut you or give you medication to mask the symptoms,

but it can't do anything to really help you. Well, Kirsch found that hanging with a brachial hang cured almost every type of shoulder ailment. It would get people out of pain. Well, explain a brachial hang. It's a pull-up with the palms facing away, shoulder width. I usually don't use my thumb or finger. Okay.

I mean my thumb, just a hook. You don't grab it like you would grab a baseball bat. No, just like a monkey grip we call it. Which is what you would do for a grapple or any way. You never really grab it with your thumb. Exactly, like a Americana holder. Right. And you just hang.

And it stretches out the coracoid bone and then the humerus has a little bit... What bone is that? It's like a little bone in the shoulder that what happens is, as you get older, it starts to... In fact, bring it up, that book. Shoulder Pain and Solution.

We need to make a t-shirt that says, bring that up, Jamie. There we go. I've already been thinking about it. This book is... Shoulder pain association. Yeah, shoulder impingement, rotator cuff tears,

labral tears. Damn, four and a half stars on Amazon, 135 customer reviews. That is a strong endorsement right there. Dude, I'm telling you, man. Of course, part of my problem is it's hard to find a horizontal bar sometimes when you're traveling.

You know, they take all the pull-up bars out of the playgrounds. Why? I don't know. Maybe, you know, poor Johnny's too obese to pull himself up. You know, God forbid he'd feel bad about himself, you know? Does it have to be this way? Yeah, it's got to be a brachial hang. So it has to be palms facing forward?

Yeah. Not like this. Let the shoulder come out of the socket. And you just hang passively until your grip starts to get tired. You can do it multiple times. You would be absolutely amazed how good your shoulders will feel from doing that. So full arm strength or full arm locked out? Yeah.

So not like this like you were doing before? No, no. Completely relaxed. Okay. So you just hang. Just hang. And just let the humerus come out of the socket and hang. So what is it doing?

It's just relaxing the impingements? It just opens up the joint. It gives the humerus more ability to move. Even with the bone spur I have in the shoulder, when I hang regularly, I have zero pain. Whoa, that's crazy. And this guy stopped doing surgery. This is a guy that made his living doing surgery. Now he doesn't advocate. He, that's crazy. And this guy stopped doing surgery. This is a guy that made

his living doing surgery. Now he doesn't advocate. He says this works better. Wow. This is an orthopedic board certified orthopedic guy. And he shows the, uh, quarry study where he did a study with the old folks. I'm telling you, it feels really, really nice. Really, really, really good. So pull this up. I use this for all my clients. I do a lot of online personal training, fat loss, diet programs and such. All my guys that have shoulder issues, I get them hanging

and there it is. Interesting. I'll tell you, Joe, if you're having any shoulder stuff going on right now, just start hanging every day, even multiple times. Your shoulders will feel good. I know it sounds counterint good. That's amazing. I know it sounds counterintuitive.

Like, it's too simple to be true. But it's one of those things that is true. Well, I had some tears in my shoulder, and I was having some pain, so I finally went and got an MRI. Apparently, it had been dislocated, and I never even knew it had been dislocated. You know, from jujitsu. I don't even want to see the damn pictures, you know? And I had a labral tear.

I had a torn biceps tendon. And I had a, what is it, labral and rotator cuff. Rotator cuff tear, too. You have any spurs in there? I've got a bunch of shit going on in there. Well, anyone that's played hard boy sports like we have all our lives, you're going to get that shit. But I'm telling you,

what Kersh found, it didn't matter what the source of the injury was, the relief is profound when you do that daily hanging. It's just that amazing. Well, what I've done, what I have done, is get stem cell shots. I got stem cell shots in the shoulder,

and it's incredible. The healing, first I had all this clicking and weird shit that was going on there. All that shit went away. You throw the hangs in there. I'm in. I'm hanging. I wish I could hang right now. I'd like to do it right now while we're doing the podcast. I'd like to hang. I need to find some kind of portable device.

What about one of the ones that goes in front of a door? Those ones that you do in a doorstop? Oh, that'd be great, but, you know, I'd have to buy one in each city and then just dump it. That's annoying. You're committed to this, or you were saying before that you might be thinking about Maui as a base? Well, I am slowing down just a little bit.

I've been, what, doing this since about 2005, I think? Well, when I met you, you had a truck. truck Yeah I was living in a van, a camper van And you're like I can't be bothered with this fucking truck And I really liked it But then I started traveling What the hell do you do with your RV You can't just park it somewhere You gotta find somebody you like

And you gotta turn the engine over You gotta maintain Mice get inside a lot of these RVs and eat the electrical wiring up and, you know, totally destroys your electrical system. Really? Yeah. Abandoned vehicles, you know, if you just sit it, little critters get in there. Wow. Yeah. It's not uncommon at all. So what the hell do you do with it? So I finally just sold it. Talking of the power of the internet, I sold my camper van to a guy I'd never seen. I was in Germany. He was in San Diego.

And the van was up in Seattle. I sold it to him sight unseen. Just sent him pictures. I was very honest. I had a bunch of shit wrong with it. I told him every single thing that was wrong with it. We agreed on a price. He wired me the money. wrong with it. I told him every single thing that was wrong with it. We agreed on a price.

He wired me the money. I mailed him the title and the key because I traveled with, I kept the key and I had the title with me. I mailed that to him. He went up and got it and drove it back down to San Diego from Seattle. Wow. Power of the internet, my friend. That's amazing. I put it on Craigslist and boom, boom. I had a few people bid on it. And if you would have told me, oh, even 20 years ago that I'd be making a living on the internet. Well, essentially you make a living doing not just seminars, but you do have a lot of online stuff. A lot of online stuff. Yeah. Once I understood the power of the Internet for doing online personal training, wow. Well, a lot of people found out about you, me included, because of the Internet. I mean, I found out about you from researching kettlebell exercises, and that's how I got some of your early stuff.

Also, I knew about you because I knew that you were one of the first American Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belts. One of the first. Yeah. Halis and Grace's first, to be sure. But I think there was a bunch, there was a couple guys, the Machados given, but I was like that first tier of actual Gracie Jiu-Jitsu guys. And then Horian and Master Elio had the Gracie Instructor Training Program. They were concerned of the teaching quality.

There was a lot of guys out there teaching that probably shouldn't have been teaching. So they had a specific educational style, like how to teach the moves. And I was the first person to graduate from that instructor training program. It was really good. Well, I'm sure you're aware now the controversy of this Gracie University, the thing they're doing online. Yeah, the sun's got a little carried away with that blue belt. I'm not real thrilled with that. Well, there's one guy who's giving away brown belts online.

Get out of here. Yeah. Do you mean Gracie? No. Oh, okay. I don't even want to say his name. Okay. But he's a pretty respected guy.

Really? And I read on the underground that he's giving away up to brown belt online. How could you possibly respect that? I mean, the only way I would think that it would make sense— Unless he came and tested, physically tested and proved himself. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I have seen guys that have trained pretty much from the Internet. I went to Tahiti.

I was hired by a group of grapplers to prepare them for the Society Island Championship. It was very popular. Grappling is a traditional sport amongst the Polynesian peoples. And I went to Tahiti. I stayed there three months. I trained these guys for the Society Island Championships. And the guy that was running it was still a white belt. And he was a prison guard there in Tahiti, big guy,

and an unbelievable grappler. He outweighed me probably about 50 pounds, yet he was very soft, relaxed, technical. He had never actually had a teacher. He learned it all watching online on the internet, speaking of the power of the internet. Wow. And I loved the way he trained with me. He was very respectful

even though I was, you know, like 30 years older than him and much smaller. We had some good training. I just gave the guy the blue belt right on the spot. Wow. I mean, there's no way that that guy was a white belt. I've done that at different places where people don't have a good instructor, where they are under-promoted.

And I get on the mat with them. I see what they can do. And I say, wow, OK, this guy is under-promoted. He just hasn't had a chance to have a legitimate guy give him a promotion. Who's that guy rolling with? Did he have training partners? He had a whole group of students, and he was the teacher, basically. White belt teacher.

Yeah, white belt teacher. And his guys were good. They were really, really good. Well, if you just really pay attention to the fundamentals and you really understand the principles behind each individual technique, you can learn a lot online today. You can learn a lot online. But not brown belt.

No. I just feel like there's— I think it's a little— You need someone there, right there with you. Blue belt, almost anyone can get that. Yes, I agree. I mean, I heard a really funny analogy one time from, I think, one of Carly Gracie's black belts, or maybe it was a health guy,

but he said basically a white belt is a sperm, just the seed. Right. By the time you're a four-degree white belt, you're like a little baby that was just born. And then the blue belt is like a little toddler, like just a little kid. Doesn't even know what he doesn't know yet. But by the time you're like a four-degree blue belt, you're like a child. And then the purple belt is like a teenager yeah like a dangerous teenager yeah you're a little you know you got the technique but you just you

know they're starting to know that they can do it too purple belts i feel like it's like some of the most dangerous that's a dangerous guy because a lot of times he's still using a lot of power but he got the technique too and then of course by the time you're a brown boat you're like a young man and you know basically a brown boat is a black belt in disguise it's just once you make brown belt you're going to make black belt unless you just outright quit yeah and you know and then a black belt's like you know a grown man but for me i don't know about you but once i got the black belt i felt like a whole new layer of learning was taking place at that point. Well, you'd never stop learning in jiu-jitsu as long as your body still works.

Like we're talking about these new moves that are constantly coming out. But then, you know, John Jock Machado has this really interesting take on things. He said, the more you know, the less you use. The less you use. He goes, I might know 10,000 techniques, but to win a match, I might use two. Yeah. Well, Salah said that one time. He says, look, I know 30 ways to pass the guard, but I only use two.

I have a backup. Move A and then backup plan B in case it doesn't work. I think that's just the way it is, man. Especially that Salo game, that intense pressure, solid top game. He uses body weight so well. When I used to train with Salo, he could tap me out on the cross side without even putting a submission hold, just crushing me with his weight.

And he's heavy, but he's not that heavy. Right. He just would rob your breath. It was just the most horrible feeling. It's like being waterboarded or something, man. It was like, oh, my God, the intense pressure. He learned to do that. You know, but yeah, I think for as far as moves and so forth, probably one of the most outstanding clinics I've ever witnessed was when Jean-Jacques Machado was in the second Abu Dhabi. I actually

went over to the Arab Emirates and I wanted to support Salo and Hoyler at that time. And I couldn't believe the clinic he put on. All closed guard, too. That's another lost art. You don't see too many guys use it. You know, Kron uses a good closed guard. But Jean-Jacques put on a clinic. Unbelievable, man. He had that super fight with Mario Sperry. I never saw such. He almost put Sperry out, man. Yeah, Jean-Jacques is no joke, man. He's always been a beast. He's a really brilliant person, too. Like, as a human being, he's a great guy.

On top of being this amazing jiu-jitsu practitioner, he's just a beautiful human being. And from that closed guard, he only used four basic moves. Triangle, arm lock, uma uma plata, guillotine, and, of course, some sweeps to back it up. That was it. Yeah. And the way he put them together was like a machine gun attack. It was like the guy in the guard was working so hard just not to get caught.

Never saw anything like it. It was like, wow. It just goes to show you that the basics done well, that's all you really need. Yeah. Well, you know, Hickson and Krohn, I mean, Krohn to this day still just uses the basics. Unbelievable. I mean, you know, and that's, it sounds derogatory almost. Like someone, like Minotaur once got upset that Vinny Magalhaes, Vinny Magalhaes was talking about his jiu-jitsu and he said it's very basic.

But that's not bad. Basic is not bad at all. Someone said that about me. I'd take it as a compliment personally. Basic is best. Just hone to a razor-sharp edge all the basic techniques. I think there's almost like – Hodger Gracie is another example of that.

Another example. One of the best jiu-jitsu artists in the world but very basic. What year was that where he won his division and then he tapped everybody in the open division with an X-Choke from the mount? I don't know. He used that one takedown, that one throw he does. He mounted every single—and these were all professional-level best black belts in the world. He tapped every single guy with a basic X-Choke from the mount.

Crazy. The first thing you learn, right, as a uh yeah your first first couple months in jiu-jitsu you learn basic x-joke the guy tapped the best in the world just doing basic stuff well there's such an advantage in jiu-jitsu to being tall and long oh what a nightmare it's a giant advantage because the tall and long guys have so much leverage so much and also the ability to get techniques and lock them up where a short, stubby-armed person like me just doesn't. My arms don't connect in spots.

Like with darts chokes and things along those lines where you just, you can't, they have more space. They have so much space. Like their arm goes deeper. But you'll see people with every type of physique type do well in jiu-jitsu because, you know, speaking like fire plug kind of build, I mean, no one was shorter and stubbier than Salo.

Right. Yeah, he's like one of the most winningest jiu-jitsu guys ever in the world. True. Wow. You know, he just maximized. He adapted the jiu-jitsu to his physique. Oh, who's Samar Pajaras?

Yeah. Another perfect example. Yeah, exactly. He's a little tank. That's the cool thing about the game. You know, it doesn't matter how you're built, big, tall, short, you know, whether you carry a little extra weight or you're really skinny, you can adapt the jiu-jitsu to your own body. So we were talking about you moving to Maui.

Yeah. We got off track a little bit. Yeah. Why Maui and what makes you – Well, you're going to laugh at this because it's not scientific, but it is. I use an astrologer. This guy is amazing. He used to be a Stanford professor. Can I say his name? Sure. Okay. His name is Robert Koch. Uh, his, his website is star center.com. I've been using this guy for a few years.

When I first heard about it, I thought this is such bullshit. I'm never going to do this. You know, I, the person that turned me onto it was was my my girlfriend and she says listen man just do a reading with this guy just do a reading and i'm saying to her you mean you take advice from a guy you've never met and you're gonna listen to this guy so i gave him my birth date the time of birth where i was born that's it plus my name he read my life to me i was like how are you doing this well maybe, maybe he got on Wikipedia. Maybe.

But this was an impromptu call, so I don't know. All I know is that it's based in mathematics. He believed, you know, like the Pythagoreans, you know, they believed everything can be explained in numbers and mathematics. He was a former Stanford professor. He came from academia. And he gave it all up to this basic astrological. But even more important, he's like an old philosopher. He's read all the ancient Greek philosophers.

He's also, have you heard of this mental science? Mental science. Mental science. Basically, your reality is based on your thoughts. And your current reality is based on the sum total of all your positive and negative thoughts. Thoughts are a vibrational pattern and the vibe you put out is the vibe you attract. So if you're

like a real negative person, always saying negative statements and feeling a lot of negative emotional things, you're probably going to have a pretty shitty life. And if you're thinking like a higher thought, of course the highest would be love, that would be the highest vibration if you're thinking like a higher thought, of course the highest would be love.

That would be the highest vibration. You're going to have good things happen to you. That's the basic, in a nutshell. It's much more complicated than that.

So like The Secret, essentially. Like The Secret, right, which is a great little book. Well, anyway, Robert developed his astrological, based on mental science as well as basic physics.

So anyway, he read my life. He looked at all the places in the world because, you know, you put off a vibration like an energy vibration. It can actually be measured. Yours would be as identifiable as your fingerprints or, you know, like an eye reading, iridology or whatever. And there's places on the earth that put off a vibration also. And the place that vibes best with me is anywhere in the South Pacific, but in particular, Maui.

And he really honed it down to the town Lahaina. Did he try to sell you a house there? I know the spot. 67 Clover Lane. Yeah, there we go, man. Let's go online and look at that. The house is for sale. Oh, my God. Damn, Robert, you're amazing.

No, but so anyway, Maui is supposedly the best vibration for me. For you? For me. So explain to me how this guy goes about it. So he finds out what your address or what your date of birth is, what part of the world you're born, what time you were born. And then what's he plugging in? He has some kind of computer program with all his charts and numbers. And he plugs all this stuff in.

And then I ask him, like, well, what is it you're actually looking at at the computer? And it says – it's just just basically he says i i can't make exact predictions said if i could make exact predictions i'd play the stock market and you know but i you know i i can come up with high probability for certain things happening and also he's looking at you ever hear the collective consciousness you know you have your higher consciousness you have your, but then there's a collective mindset. It's like everyone's emotions and moods and thoughts, right? Right now it's one of fear. You know, everyone's so afraid. You know, I'm traveling all over the world, so you can literally feel the fear. Right now, Europe is all up in arms

because of the terrorist attacks and things, and people are really scared with the ISIS and all this. There's like a real fear mentality. The problem is if you give in to that fear mentality, you actually create the very thing you're afraid of because you're basically concentrating on that. Right. It's like a form of visualization, right? If you're always like, it was like the shark thing we were talking about. I probably would create a situation where I'd meet a shark if I went swimming in the

ocean because, you know, I put too much energy into that. Yeah, me too. Whenever I stick the snorkel, the goggles underneath, I'm like, where is he? Yeah, exactly. Where is that fucker? So for you and I, we would probably possibly actually attract a negative situation like that. Just saying. Okay.

But anyway, there is a collective mindset. You can even feel like different countries have different moods. When I get off the plane, I can actually feel that I'm pretty sensitive to this. Like in Russia, it's real somber, kind of almost depressed. A place like Maui is like, oh, my God, I just feel so happy. Because they're so lucky. They're in paradise. They're in paradise.

The mood is much higher. The aloha spirit, as they say. Aloha spirit. So he told me that was the single best place. Other places were a place in Alaska. It's a place near, where was it? A little town. I can't even recall.

And then another place was- What part of Alaska? Near the coast? On the coast. The coast is not bad. Yeah. Like near Anchorage? Yeah, it was near Anchorage.

It was a little town. You'd be amazed at how moderate the climate is, too. Everyone says it's quite nice there. So, you know, but still, Alaska, Turkey, Maui. Alaska, Turkey, I think I'll go to Maui. Yeah, it's not a bad choice. It wasn't a hard choice, you know. Well, it's a very relaxed environment in Maui, too.

Like, the place is relaxed. It's a relaxed place to live. You know, as far as, like, the people that live there, they're really cool and chilled out. Totally chill, man. My webmaster lives there, Chris Crook. Awesome guy. So I always have business to do with him.

He's been doing a great job for me. What if the guy told you you need to live near oil mines in South Dakota? Would you be less reluctant or more reluctant? That would be interesting. Oil mines near South Dakota. You know what I'm saying? Someone that sucks. You need to live right outside of some fracking fucking compound.

Yeah, that's an interesting point. I think someone with a really negative mindset might have attracted a place like that. But I try to keep the vibe heavy and, I mean, light at a higher level. And you can attract goodness and abundance in your life. Just like The Secret. That's a good book for people to start. That U.S. Anderson was quite an interesting guy. The power of positive thinking for sure is real. I mean, for sure there's a lot of good that can be done in your life if you look at things, if you have a positive approach. You could look at things in a good way and have those things have positive attributes,

have benefit in those things. Or you could look at the exact same thing, exact same moment in your life and just decide that this is the end. Life is terrible. You're a loser. And people have these deeply grooved patterns that they've carved out in their consciousness over years and years of approaching different situations with very similar reactions and it's almost like automatically like something happens to you everything always goes wrong for me god my life sucks i'm such a loser but if you compared your life to someone who's born in bangladesh or some place where people are really genuinely unfortunate. They would be laughing at you.

They'd be like, you live in America and you're white and you don't have cancer. Will you just shut the fuck up? What's wrong with you? A perfect example of that would be George Costanza's character, right? On Seinfeld, right. Right, the guy that no matter how good he had it, he always would manage to screw it up somehow, and things would always turn bad. But we've all had the experience, right, of being in a room, and someone would come into the room, kind of a dark vibe, and the whole room vibe would go down. Sure.

But then we've also had the experience where a guy would come in who was a real bright, positive-thinking person, everyone's mood would just let—that's that collective consciousness you've got to be so aware of. Because not every thought that a person has is their own. It can come from the outside. We don't manufacture all our own thoughts. You can be influenced by negative thinking from other people or positive thinking from other people, and you've got to start to be very conscious of the kind of thoughts passing through your brain and reject those negative thoughts. And it's not easy. It's like a discipline, like working out. It really is. And it's also one of the more important aspects about surrounding yourself with positive people. When you surround yourself with positive people, you find them to be inspirational. You get excited. You all think along similar lines.

You support each other and help each other. And it benefits everybody. And you develop a real keen sense of love and community. Whereas if you're around people that are constantly negative, you're in conflict all the time. All the time. You're wearing out. You're constantly getting exhausted, too, by the stress of... And I have a theory in that, too. And it's not just my theory. I mean, it's part of the mental science we were talking about. I believe that those people are the ones that attract all sorts of uh uh degenerative diseases and and and uh you know they bad things happen well certainly can play a factor especially stress you know stress has been shown to be devastating to your immune system people that

have really stressful lives and don't get enough sleep and are constantly negative and thinking about things. Sleep is more important than diet. You know, people that are overweight, man, I'll tell you, you could be in the best diet in the world and still having a lot of struggle with the weight if you're missing your sleep. I've seen that many, many times, even with my own clients, because I do a lot of fat loss programs. And, you know, guys will be eating pretty decent and not losing the weight. And then, you know, I'm looking, they're only getting like five and a half, six hours a night, and they're really stressed. You know, you have a tendency to really hold on to water, and your body will hold on to that body fat. It's hard to lose.

Yeah, that is an interesting aspect of a lack of sleep is that your body holds on to fat. It really holds on. And also fluids, you know, what they call false fat. It's not even fat. It's just like all this fluid just gets trapped in the tissues. It might as well be fat because it just is unattractive and just is uncomfortable, you know. So did you bother investigating what this guy is doing

about this astrology stuff? Did you bother looking into it or just like listen to him? Well, his website is quite interesting. His reading list is like fantastic, you know, for people. But what is the astrology itself based on? It's based on the position of the stars at the time you were born? Yeah, it's a heliocentric. The old astrology was Earth-based because they believed the Earth was the center of the universe.

He created his own heliocentric, you know, with the sun as the center. And then it's just basically— This guy created his own astrology? He did. How does one do that? How does one create their own astrology? I couldn't—I could almost, and I say almost, almost understand how someone could imagine that if you looked at, you know, thousands of years of data, you could figure out that people develop certain personality traits if they're born during certain times. And you could sort of try to align those times with the constellations in the sky that are moving and the, you know, just the way the earth wobbles and where the the stars

are at any given moment that kind of almost makes sense but this guy doing it on his own like how's he doing that you know i don't even pretend to really understand it what's no what sold me i didn't have said maui yeah no i he said maui uh heally. I didn't have to understand it because he basically read my life to me like a book. Yeah. It says there's no freaking way that he could have known this information. Like what kind of stuff could he not have known? Just the way my life went, man. You know, like my relationship with my parents and the relationship with my ex-wife

and the way my marriage went and the way my marriage dissolved. And like, you know, all sorts of stuff like that. Like sort of like a tarot card reader. Yeah, but a tarot card reader. Is bullshit. Yeah, exactly. And this is not bullshit. I don't, let's put it this way.

He's told me not to do stuff and I've done it and it never has worked out for me man right but isn't it possible that it one of the reasons why it didn't work out is because he told you not to do it and that you thought about it and i had your negative thinking and negative thinking just like we talked about yeah like uh in the brain all i know is every time i go against him it doesn't usually doesn't work. And when I listen to the guy, it almost always works out. Right, but this is sort of contrary. This goes along with what you just said. Like you're almost not giving yourself advice.

You're not following your own advice. You literally were just talking about thinking about things in a negative way. Being afraid of thinking. Like things are predestined. So this guy has sort of created these scenarios that you shouldn't engage in. Here's an interesting thing. Like he's told me something on my chart, right? Uh-huh.

And then I'll call him a day or two later and it's completely changed. Your chart's changed. Yeah, like something changed. And I said, well, wait a second. Two days ago you said I shouldn't do this. Now you're saying it's okay? He claims, like quantum physics, right? If you change your thought or your vibration level, he actually sees a change. It's okay. He claims, like quantum physics, right?

If you change your thought or your vibration level, he actually sees a change on his chart on his computer. What? Yeah. Okay, this makes zero sense. Well, I'll give you another example of how this might work. I had this guy that was a professor of – he was actually a PhD in biochemistry and board-certified in nutrition. His name was Dr. Greg Rielis. And he used to take hair samples, right?

And he would test these things out for various deficiencies, this, that, and the other thing, right? And he was into this electric – basically, I am attached to that hair forever. And as my body would change, the hair sample would change, even though I was no longer connected to it. Change how? It would no longer show the deficiency when he would retest it. What? I know, man. I don't buy it.

It's some pretty crazy shit. I'm not buying it. He was a hardcore scientist, man, PhD. Maybe he just had a tumor. This doesn't make any sense. I don't buy that. That doesn't make sense. Your physical hair is not going to change. It would actually change.

I don't believe it. Well, I had trouble believing it myself. But did you see it? Did you know for a fact? Have you read into it? Have you looked at data? Have you seen it tested. But did you see it? Did you know for a fact? Have you read into it? Have you looked at data? Have you seen it tested and peer-reviewed? I didn't really actually understand the process.

Right, but this is— But I knew him not to be a liar. I'm sure he's not, but he might just be delusional. See, looking at something like that, you're talking about something that defies physics. It defies science. It defies everything. With quantum physics, that completely threw physics on its ear. Right, but it's cool.

We know that an electron can occupy more than one space, which now opens up the whole door for parallel universes, all sorts of stuff. Stephen Hawking just recently claimed that the black holes are like a door from one universe to another. So there's all this crazy stuff. They just put everything on end, what we know about physics and medicine and everything else. I believe that. There's an actual book called Vibrational Medicine that they actually talk about this. Check out that book. Right, but see, here's the problem.

You're not testing subatomic particles when you're testing hair. When you test someone's hair and you're testing hair for various mineral deficiencies and vitamins, those things aren't flying through the air and going back and forth. So if your hair is deficient... He was actually testing it, the vibrational level of the hair. What? What does that mean?

Like everything puts off like an aura. You can photograph it with Karelian photography. You can actually photograph the energy. Everything has an aura. Even this cup, with the Karelian photography. You can actually photograph the energy. You know, everything has an aura. Even this cup, this table, your body. An aura that you can actually prove? A real aura or an aura that someone who believes in crystals?

They've actually taken pictures of it. You've heard of the Karelian photography? No. How do you spell that? Oh, fuck. How do you spell that? Karelian photography? Yeah, Karelian photography.

Karelian photography. Yeah, yeah. They actually have taken pictures of this. And he can actually measure, right, the energy coming off this, and it matched me. Well, Jamie's a photographer. Jamie should know about Carillion Photography. You ever hear about that shit, Jamie? I can't say I've ever heard of it.

If you ever try to bang some chick who's really into crystals, I bet she'll talk to you about it. Yeah, man. Check it out. Anyway, that's pretty simple. Listen you about it. Yeah, man. Check it out. Anyway, it's pretty similar. But listen, it works for me, man. Well, I understand that

it probably has its applications. The power of the mind. Right. The power of the mind. But is it a big, giant placebo effect? I don't know. I do know this.

In a recent study, they found that placebo drugs work about 40% better than real drugs. What test is this? There was a thing there. They didn't give them placebo mushrooms. I read a whole, work about 40% better than real drugs. What test is this? There was a thing that I read a whole— They didn't give them placebo mushrooms. I read a whole—they were giving people regular medication from pharmaceutical stuff,

and they found that placebos worked way better. Well, for what application, though? You know what I'm saying? Like when you say that the placebos worked way better. For pain relief and stuff like that. Well, pain relief makes sense because a lot of pain relief you can actually do with your own mind. I don't take pain pills. Me neither.

I got knee surgery and I didn't take a damn thing. I just didn't. I've just read so many negative side effects of the ibuprofen and this kind of stuff. Well, ibuprofen is probably the safest of all of them, and it's still not good for you. But my fear was always I just knew too many people that got addicted to pain pills. And I'm like, well, what's the worst part about pain? It just doesn't feel good. Well, isn't that just okay?

Can't you just deal with not feeling good while you heal? At least now I know I'm in pain because I'm healing. An awful lot of pain is, you know, a mind thing. How you approach the signal. Yeah, like that back pain guy, Stuart McGill. Sarno. Dr. John Sarno. Yeah, but also that Stuart McGill.

They were looking at x-rays of people's backs. And, you know, people with chronic back pain, a lot of times would not have any physical reason to be in back, back pain. Right. And then they were looking at, you know, pictures of guys that were active like us and their backs are a mess, all sorts of slip distance. And the guys are not in any pain at all. I don't must be afraid to look at an x-ray of my back, you know? Yeah. Right. They tell you to feel bad. If anybody, yeah, right. If anybody would have a messed up back it got to be me all the falls and throws i've taken over you know 45 years of wrestling and jiu-jitsu

little tiny micro injuries constantly but yet i'm not in any pain at all yeah well pain is an interesting thing in that i think the mind can regulate pain so well that's what i meant by the pharmaceuticals but it doesn't make sense with other applications where we find like anti-epileptic medications or things along those lines where you just know for a fact there's a physical effect on the body that these drugs have. They don't understand placebo effect. That's one thing for sure. They know that placebo effect is real and it does work in certain circumstances. It works really, really well. It's the power of the mind. Well, especially depending upon who is receiving that effect and how much the person believes that this thing is going to heal them.

And if people, what I find, a lot of people are really into the body, but they're not really working with their mind or their thoughts or anything like that. It takes a lot of discipline. It does, but it also, you really have to clearly establish what's woo-woo, what's nutty, crazy, crystal bullshit, and what is an applicable modality. Like, what can you really do as far as meditation, as far as things that are repeatable, things that people have shown to have a beneficial effect on your consciousness, a beneficial effect on the way you approach life. And that is pretty much individual.

It is. You know, you really have to, like you say, do self-experimentation. Like what I just talked about might sound pretty damn weird to a lot of people, but so far it's been working for me. Well, as long as it works for you. And I feel good about it. Yeah. And I don't feel like it diminishes my life in any way.

No one's taking advantage of me. You know, I feel, like, confident and really good about the type of information I'm getting. And I found it worked. But like you say, power of the mind. Well, if you just approach it on that level, if you say, power of the mind. Well, if you if you just approach it on that level, if you say, okay, this guy's gonna give me advice, and I'm gonna find this advice to be beneficial, and I'm gonna follow through with it. And I'm gonna use that as a

guideline. And I'm gonna have good confidence in that these choices are going to be correct because of this guy, and his knowledge. And my problem is, I've just, I've seen too much bullshit. And so whatever beliefs I might have had, like even even six years ago before I started this podcast, a lot of them have eroded just under scrutiny. I hear you. I always advise people, give the guy a call. The first session is free. If you think he's a crackpot, never call him again. Yeah, but I mean what I would want to do, my problem with someone like that is I would want to go down the rabbit hole.

I would want to find out, okay, how are you making these distinctions? How did you devise this method? What's going on behind the scenes? What do you base this on? How do you know? What are you saying? When you tell someone, hey, don't take that flight to Germany because something bad is going to happen, who the fuck are you? How do you know that?

You don't know that. The reality is you tell someone don't do something. If you tell someone, hey, Steve, I really don't think you should go to happen. Like, who the fuck are you? How do you know that? You don't know that. And that's the reality is you tell someone don't do something. If you tell someone, Hey, Steve, I really don't think you should go to Florida. Oh fuck. The guy says I shouldn't go to Florida. You're already starting a cascade of negative thoughts. And that to me, that is a very good point. And I have thought about that, you know? Yeah. Well, there's not a fucking person in the world that can tell you that, uh, if you, uh you pick up your car keys and drive your car to Minnesota, something's going to go wrong. So if this guy's telling you that, I call bullshit. Not only do I call bullshit, but I think that that kind of stuff is kind of dangerous.

What he's looking at is like, you know, we're really influenced by the collective a lot, you know, like people's general moods and so forth. He gives me like a little heads up. He's able to see that. How so? It helps me. Like if I want to do a seminar on a certain date and he'll look at the charts and he'll just say, eh, energy's pretty off that. Okay. But what does that mean? The energy is pretty off and looking at the charts. What does that mean? What does that mean by he's looking at what charts? Maybe he can kind of predict that I might be tired. I don't know. I haven't seen these charts, but I hear them clicking in the background on the computer. That guy's on Facebook.

He's looking at pictures. He's going on YouPorn. He's checking out girls' asses. Just give him a call, man. No fucking way. It's free. Yeah, I don't care. Time is not.

Time is valuable. I don't think there's a guy in the world that can look at a chart and tell you where the energy of the world is. I think there is, man. Really? I've experienced it. So you think that this guy can look at a chart. I do know you. That's why I'm questioning this.

You're a little wacky guy who lives out of a suitcase. Yeah, maybe that's enough to... You're kind of crazy. I think you're a beautiful, brilliant man. If I was your friend, and I am your friend, but if I was there while this was going down, I would be asking this guy a fuckload of questions. I do find he's a really good guy to talk to about stuff too he's almost like

kind of like a psychologist a psychiatrist in a way is like in ancient times the scientists were philosophers and all the great even alexander the great and you know uh all the great roman emperors you know, they would have their own private philosophers to advise them on things. Marcus Aurelius, for example. And they would listen to these philosophers. I kind of look at this guy almost as a philosopher. As an advisor.

An advisor. I can buy that. I haven't always taken... I have gone against the guy. In what way? I just didn't listen to what he said. What did he say? He gave me advice, don't do the seminar this weekend.

Why would he tell you not to do a seminar? See, this is bullshit. It would be a better day to do it on this day. Oh, fuck. Why? You know? Because of voodoo? Because you threw some chicken bones in the ground and one of the sticks was pointing south?

I have done it, and it would be not such a good one. Maybe it's because he told you that it was going to be a bad one, and you had it in your head, then you went and did it. Maybe. Has he ever told you not to do something you did, and it worked out awesome? No. That's what made me think. Well, it's because you're thinking about it.

Maybe he's on to it, man. But we talked about it with negative thoughts. Maybe. Maybe. More likely than a fucking chart that can tell you the energy of the universe doesn't want you to fly to Miami that's crazy there's some pretty brilliant guys out there

that know stuff that we don't man um yes there's definitely some brilliant guys out there that know stuff that we know but this one guy that's got a computer that can tap into the collective energy of the universe and tell you where the energy is. You should definitely not go to Ohio.

I've looked at your charts. Fuck you. That's what I'd say to that guy. Fuck you. Fuck you, crazy man. Haven't you ever gone and done a set in your show and it just kind of bombed? It just didn't work out that well? If anything ever went wrong, there are a bunch of reasons why it went wrong.

And I could look at all of them. I could say, maybe I was tired. Maybe I was overworked. Maybe I didn't prepare well enough. Maybe I have new material that's not worked out. But it's not because I shouldn't have gone to Ohio. You know what I'm saying? It's not because some guy shows me a chart and the collective energy of the universe is off. But just maybe there are people, this guy in particular,

that could potentially, right, have seen that. Seen what? The set going back. But wouldn't you want to have a method? But hold on a second. Stop, because this is very important. Wouldn't you want to have a method that you would clearly understand how this guy's making these arbitrary decisions and choices? Because you're talking about bullshit.

You're talking about voodoo. And if it's not bullshit, then it's science. So if it's science, it's repeatable, and you should bring it to people that are experts, and they should analyze it and study it. But for this guy to just sit there and click on some things and tell you don't go to Ohio, that's bullshit. Well, all I can say is it's worked for me so far. The proof is in the pudding as far as I'm concerned. Okay. If your mind decides that something will work out well and you have full confidence and

your plane doesn't get hit by a meteor and everybody gets out alive and at the end of the seminar or the end of the trip that you took, you say, hey, that guy's advice really turned out well. It really did. What you've done is you basically give yourself a little mental shield to go into battle with. Well, there we go. Well, that's what it is. But it's not real. Do you know what I'm saying?

Plus, I like this guy. You could have that mental shield. Well, isn't it, though? Well, it is. It is real. It is in the sense that it was effective because you had confidence in it and because you approached all these events Like you had confidence in it But is it real in that there's a guy who actually can look at a computer and tell you whether or not you should go

Somewhere based on the energy of the universe. No. No, that's not real. It's definitely not real. I will tell you with 100% confidence It's not real Do you know how I know it's not real? Because there are millions of brilliant people out there, millions of scientists, and you talk about quantum physicists and theorists and all these different people. They would have heard of this. If you're talking about a guy who's making a computer program, they would analyze this.

It would be something that people would be talking about. If this guy really believes it, he wouldn't just be holding on to it in Maui. He would be telling the world, listen, there is a way where you can accurately predict events. There is a way, and it would be up to peer review. People would be studying it. They would be putting out papers on it. It would be something we would understand. We have figured out a code, whether it's like the Fibonacci sequence or something like that, a code to the universe.

And if you follow this code, you will have predictable, repeatable events. How do we know that there aren't a lot of people doing this? This is a problem. This is a problem. This phrasing that you're using, how do we know? It could be. It could be. That's not enough to base your life and any decisions.

And this woo-woo bullshit that comes along with tarot card reading, with palm reading, with all that stuff, it's all the same. And it's all one person telling you, first of all, he's telling you stuff you already knew about your life. Okay. This is the strategy of charlatans. I mean, this is what tarot card readers do and palm readers do and fortune tellers do. They tell you shit that you already know. And they tell you it through leading questions. And they tell you it through a bunch of signs that they can tell from being really good at reading people. Then they go on to tell you what's going to happen

or what you should and shouldn't do. And in doing that, you can plant some thoughts and seeds of doubts into people's head. This is the reason why people used to think that someone could put a hex on you. Because if I put a hex on you and you believe i put a hex on you and you leave this room and you're like i am fucked joe just put a hex on me and you run around in life that will be overwhelming your thoughts and if you allow that to happen it will be true you you can manifest bad things by having bad energy and bad ideas this is exactly what you were talking about earlier but this is done through like a strategy and a repeatable pattern well all i can say is maybe it works maybe it works come on man this is crazy talk nah not as crazy as you think um it's definitely crazy okay well i'm certified

crazy well it's just if if there's a method to it Like if this guy says Oh here's the reason why The reason why is You know there's a Like the golden sequence Of the universe And you can tap that golden sequence Into a computer And it's based upon

All these different factors If that guy has information like that And he's just holding on to it in Maui Or wherever the fuck he is No he travels like I do Yeah He's kind of a nomad By the way someone who went to Stanford And he's just holding on to it Maui or wherever the fuck he is and he travels I got you yeah He's kind of a no man by the way someone who went to Stanford and he's a professor It doesn't exclude them from being out of their fucking mind dr. Oz is on TV, and he's telling people weight loss medication That's a miracle now fucking guy had to go to Congress about it guess what he's still on TV the guys on TV

Telling people about miracle weight loss fucking berries. Crazy shit. Bullshit. He's a charlatan, right? There's tons and tons and tons of guys out there selling this kind of stuff. As you know, I'm pretty much an anti-supplement guy. Well, you used to take a lot of them. I took $320 worth of supplements

a month, and I didn't notice a damn thing when I stopped taking all that shit. Not one thing. In fact, I felt better that's interesting and and you know once again you know a lot of this is placebo you know there is some that's placebo effect but there's also some that's been proven by science to have beneficial effects on a lot of different factors but you know you're a guy who's a, active guy who's constantly eating correctly and you don't allow yourself— I'm extremely strict with the diet, you know. How do you do that on the road? Like when you're in these different places and, like, say if you're traveling to countries and you might not even speak the language, how do you make sure that you get the right food?

Well, I try to always keep the quality as best I can. But as you know, being a frequent traveler yourself, you know, you can't always get the best quality stuff. Talking about placebo effect, I won't let it get me bummed out. I won't start thinking negative thoughts. Let's say, for example, I have to eat, oh, I don't know, a bag of pretzels or something. I believe I can supplement any ill effect of that food, you know, just by being grateful, just by visualizing my body being able to respond well to the food. It's just calories, you know. I see myself digesting it and assimilating it, and I won't let it negatively affect me. You just look at it as raw calories.

Yeah, it's just raw calories, you know. So it's some starch. It's not the best stuff in the world. It's not like I'm going to be eating that as a habit. Right. And I'll be fine because you can work yourself up into like a, you know, a real negative thing. I'm going to give an example. When I was younger, I had a friend that was, taught me a lot about higher mind science. And we were in a restaurant one time together. This is, I guess, maybe in the late 70s. And a restaurant one time together. This is, I guess, maybe in the late 70s. And there's a guy smoking. This is when people could still smoke. And this guy's blowing the smoke on me. And I'm getting madder by the minute. It's really pissing me off. So I asked the guy if he would please not blow the smoke over to me. And the guy started doing

it even more. And I wanted to punch the guy right in the face. And I'm looking at my friend, Tim, and he's totally relaxed, you know, about the whole thing. And I says, doesn't that bother you? Doesn't that really aggravate you? And he said, Steve, you're getting yourself all worked up. He said, I can supplement the bad effects of the smoke by not letting it get to me. He says, all those negative emotions and the anger and upset you're feeling are 10 times worse than any amount of cigarette smoke blowing on you. He says, you're actually doing harm by the way you're thinking about it, as opposed to the actual harm the smoke's doing. And wow, that blew me away. And I'm seeing him so relaxed. And I started thinking, well, there's probably everything in life. So I started looking at food the same way. You know, if you if you eat something that maybe, you know, isn't the best

quality, because there's just no other thing available. Well, so what, you'll be fine. You know, you just go back to eating a really, really, you know, good quality stuff. After that, it's what you do most of the time is the key, not what happens upon occasion. But I will say this. As a full-time traveler, I will pack my own food as much as I can. I always carry like a little grocery bag. Yeah, I was following your Instagram and your girlfriend got their food confiscated. Yeah.

What did they confiscate? A lot of times you can't take anything that looks a little liquidy through the security. Sometimes they'll grab fruit, you know, like going from Maui back to the mainland, all the fruit and stuff, any fresh produce, they'll take. For example, I had a salad, right? The lettuce was fine, but they wanted the tomatoes and the cucumbers off. That wouldn't pass. What? Yeah, the Department of Agriculture guy.

Speaking of Voodoo, right? It was just the craziest thing. Did you ask why? I did, but he had no real firm—they never have an explanation for any of this stuff. It's just banned or whatever. Well, certain flies, fruit flies. Yeah, I guess I suppose— Well, they're attracted to liquids.

Could be attracted to the stuff. But, yeah, usually I don't have too much trouble getting stuff through. And it's funny. Some countries are so amazingly lax. Like, where was it? It's Australia. You can take liquids through the security. You can?

Yeah, you can take water and all sorts of stuff. But you can't take a dog to Australia. Did you see what happened with Johnny Depp? Yeah, Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp and his girlfriend. He's still in trouble with that. Did you see his video that he made? I haven't seen it.

It's hilarious. It must be really funny. It's hilarious because he mocked Sirius, talked through his video. He's an actor. Yeah, he's very funny. He made it look like he was being serious, but did so in a way where it's pretty obvious to anyone watching that it wasn't serious. It was so subtle that one of the politicians, one of the main people in Australia, actually had a comment on it, how it's pretty obvious that he wasn't taking it seriously. He made this video.

It's really weird what will go through security and what won't. For example, in China, they were absolutely scrupulous. I couldn't believe how good this girl was in that screen. She got all my little secret shit. I like, you know, because I do all carry-on now. I don't check bags anymore. I had a little key that's actually

a knife. It opened up into a little knife because you didn't need a blade, you know. You always could use a blade no matter where you are to cut stuff or whatever. You just always have a need for it. She found that key. I don't even know how the hell she knew that that was a knife. They, um, I carry like little survival tools with me.

I have like a little flint and steel fire starter sometimes. When? Are you starting fire somewhere? Dude, the fucking zombie apocalypse. Does that ever come up? Does your astrologer tell you that you need to carry that around? No, but I watch The Walking Dead. And I fear The Walking Dead.

Speaking of creating a mental... But I also have one of those little drinking straws. You mean a filter? Yeah, you can actually drink 250... Pond water. Yeah. Well, when I saw that... Remember the tsunami that hit Bali, that resort? You know, I'm in places like that.

Right. And I just figure, better safe than sorry. Yeah, that makes sense. I do believe that, you know, my astrologer will keep me safe from these things. But let's just say we would have a situation where the water would be really shitty. Like, I've been in, like, places like Novosibirsk, Russia. Dude, that's in the middle of absolute nowhere. If there would be any kind of natural disaster or something, at least I know I can drink, right?

Right. And I have a little thing I can make fire. I mean, you never know. Plan go down and I'm surviving in the Andes or something. Have you ever made a fire with one of those things? Yeah, I have actually. Really? Yeah, I just wanted to see if I could do it.

Do you bring kindling with you as well? Yeah, you get, you know, there's like a whole little art to doing fire from. It's fun to try those. They call them earth skills or ancient skills. Well, a lot of people bring like steel wool or something like that. Steel wool with batteries works really good. I also have a little magnifying glass thing I travel with. I always have a compass, you know.

You bring a compass? Well, you know, it's old school. I learned how to use a map and compass when I was a kid. As a Boy Scout, you do orienteering. Right. So I knew how to do the knots, you know, my little thing. So when you're going to these places, like, say, you get an offer to go to some strange place in Siberia, are you reluctant to take any of these?

Or are you just like, anybody who wants to do a seminar, I'm open for the journey? I'm pretty much open for the journey. I like to go to different places, you know. But in China this last time, my God, they were taking my freaking nail clippers. They want nail clippers. They found that little key. They took my little fire starter. How she even knew what that shit was, I have no clue.

They must be well trained because she nailed me for everything, man. Wow. And you get in trouble when they nail you for that stuff in China? They just take it because none of it could be considered a weapon. However, I was arrested in Switzerland one time. I had been traveling by train. I had one of those Gerber, or was it Cold Steel? It was like a knife that was spring-assisted.

Rock climbers use it. Because if you're rock climbing and your harness gets tangled, you may have to hold on to cut yourself free from your harness. So you need a knife you can easily open up with one hand. So I just liked it. It was a great little knife. And I had been traveling by train and had it in my little man purse carry-on thing and forgot about the damn thing. So it went through, and they pulled me aside, and they pulled that knife out of there, and I was like, oh, shit. And they said in Switzerland a assisted

opening knife is considered a weapon and the police took me back I sat there I almost missed my plan they you know they they obviously were you know going on interpol and you know doing all this bullshit to find out who I was and what I'm doing with this knife wow to add insult to injury I also had like a little credit card thing. It also had like a little teeny blade in it. It was like one of those multi-tools in the shape of a credit card. So they found two blades in my freaking carry-on.

I could have got away with the credit card because they wouldn't have even looked at that. But once they found one thing, they tore my shit apart, man. They looked at everything. Oh my God. But it's weird. You know, like Australia, China, you shit apart, man. They looked at everything. Oh, my God. But it's weird. You know, like Australia, China, you don't even have to take off your shoes.

In most places, you don't have to take off your shoes. But U.S., you still do. Well, it's just because of that one guy. But, you know, fingernail clippers, all that stuff goes through. Even small knives, you know, they don't even bat an eyelash. Multitool you can take through TSA. But they're looking for stuff like liquid and, you know, any kind of shoes. Electronics a lot of times.

I saw them this past time making people prove that their computers could turn on. I saw a number of that. Because, you know, that one dude tried to slip a bomb through the— In a laptop, yeah. And recently, have you traveled lately? Mm-hmm. Did you find the security lines were, like, crazy? Internationally, you mean, or locally?

No, just even within the U.S. Seems normal. It's always sucky. In Maui, it was ridiculous, and LAX was absolutely awful. That lady got through security and actually boarded a plane with no credentials or boarding pass. When did this happen? It was just, I read like Bing News. I usually read the...

I don't like to read the actual news because it's always talk about negative mindset. I just look at the headlines just to see like, just give me a clue like what's going on. What should I be scared of? What new virus? Well, yeah, I never read that shit. But I do like to read travel stuff just to see like what the latest and greatest is, you know.

And anyway, there was a new... hit international news well yeah there we go she actually went got the whole way through and the word came down because tsa was already under fire basically just for being incompetent so uh they anyway this woman got through and now all of a sudden now this will be going on for the next month or two, they're just, oh, my God, the travel is so delayed. That's interesting because I've been traveling a lot. It seems totally normal. It always sucks. Well, I usually go pre.

This last time I took the budget, Sparrow Airlines, they don't have any contract with TSA. So everybody goes through, like, the long-ass security lines. But one of the best things I ever did, I did global entry. And I can just walk through like a freaking rock star when I come into, you know, JFK. Yeah, global entry is nice. Oh, my God, it's so nice. But along with it, you get the pre. And I usually fly business or first class these days, especially for the really long flights.

Man, that pre is so nice. You know, no shoes off. Don't have to take off your jacket. Yeah. It's interesting how that's changed. You know, it's really short. How that's changed over the course of our lives. You know, it used to be you didn't even have to have an ID to get a plane, get on a plane. I remember that. You used to just hand them the ticket and you could give a ticket to a friend. That friend could go on the plane instead of you. Yeah, that's right. Those were the old days.

The old days, man. You could just drive through Canada, no problem. Come back. I mean, it was none of that kind of stuff. So this astrologer told you to move to Maui. Yeah. Are you going to follow his advice? Are you going to go there?

I'm setting up a little home base to work out. I'll still travel somewhat and do some seminars, but I'm going to set up a shop in Maui. Yeah, because I was thinking, for a guy like you, a lot of people would come to you. Like, it might not be a bad idea to just... Maui would be a damn nice place to attract, right? Yeah, and not only that, but you could set up seminars

on a weekly basis and do them literally from the comfort of your own home. You could just have a program where you run people out of Malibu and make a great living, or Maui rather, and go back and forth if you so choose. You could kind of go anywhere. If you did do that and you could establish your own gymnasium and have a real gym there, would you start changing your own training? Because I know a lot of what you're doing now is mostly body weight. Yeah, I'd probably go back to some of the things that I really,

really enjoy. Like what? I like the clubs. I like club swinging. I like swinging the light clubs, just as a mobility thing. It makes my elbows and shoulders and wrists feel good. You know, talking about the little one-pound Indian clubs? The wooden ones? Yeah, I used to be quite the expert. You know, I actually learned that as a physical education major in college. Really? As a freshman. All PE majors had to learn the basic old-school physical culture systems, and one of those was the old wooden club system.

Back in the day, huh? Yeah, that was 1970 when I went through the School of Health and Physical Education at Westchester. That's interesting that now 40-plus years later, those sort of training modalities are coming back. Yeah, well, so old is new, right? Yeah, well, kettlebells is a perfect example of that, right? Yeah, perfect example. That was an old-school training tool.

And they came from Germany, by the way, not Russia. Really? Yeah, the Germans were the ones that actually established. They called them ring weights in those days. No kidding. A lot of the old German strongmen used them. And it looked the same, like a cannonball with a handle? Kind of.

There was a lot of really weird designs. Some of them really, like, circled just on a cannonball, you know? Uh-huh. They used to use real heavy ones in their act. A lot of them were hollow, and you would unscrew it, and they would put weight inside and screw it back on. That was kind of interesting. Oh, so you could adjust it. Yeah, like

adjustable weights and so forth. If you had your own gym and you could do whatever you want and lift weights and, you know, what would you, like, how would you set it up? Would you do, like, standard Olympic-style weightlifting type exercises? Nah, I've never been a real fan of olympic

weightlifting i don't believe that it's the most efficient way to train athletes there's an awful lot of ncaa uh strength coaches and uh nfl strength coaches are shying more and more away from the olympic lifts they're finding their athletes just getting too busted up and hurt you know even just doing a front squat why would i risk a million dollar athlete you know? Even just doing a front squat. Why would I risk a million-dollar athlete, you know, to teach them the, you know, Olympic lifting is a hell of a sport. I mean, it takes a lot of coordination to do Olympic lifts. Yes. And as you well know, one sport doesn't make you better at another sport.

Right. It really doesn't. It just causes motor learning confusion. There's no doubt that Olympic weightlifters are incredible specimens. They're strong. They're fast. They're explosive. But it doesn't follow that doing Olympic lifting will make you stronger and more explosive than fast.

It's like self-selective. The guys that already have those attributes do well at Olympic weightlifting. So if I take a slow twitch wonder and give them Olympic lifting, I can't selectively recruit those fast twitch muscle favors and make him a fast twitch guy. I'm probably just going to get him hurt. If I was a wrestling coach or an MMA coach or a football coach, I want to be spending most of my athlete's time out practicing the skills of the sport. That's the most important thing, the skill of the sport. And most of your sport-specific conditioning comes from the practice of the sport itself. Aside from that, I want a general strength training program to make his skeletal muscles as strong as humanly possible.

So I'm going to use modalities to do that. And the idea is to keep it as safe as possible. And I see Olympic lifting as pretty doggone dangerous. I've seen a lot of guys bust themselves up, hurting themselves, you know, trying to do it. So I'm not a big fan. So you're saying motor learning confusion? Is that the term you used? Yeah, like sometimes people think that a power clean is like the snap,

finish off a double-A pickup throw or something. It's a completely different skill set. One isn't going to make you better at doing the other. Do you think, though, that strengthening your muscles and having more explosion and more the ability to close the distance quicker from box jumps and sprints and things along those lines can directly translate to things like martial arts? I don't think so. It's very specific.

Yeah, doing a box jump is a whole lot different than shooting a double leg throw. Way different. The best way to get guys really explosive at doing that is just do those things over and over and over again and get really good at it. That's very controversial, isn't it? Oh, yeah. There's as many guys that talk like me. There's just as many guys that would argue to the death the other way.

Right. But I've done both. As a young boy, I learned Olympic weightlifting from the last Olympic world champion, Robert Benarski. My dad used to take me down to York, Pennsylvania, when the United States was still the mecca for Olympic lifting. And I actually learned Olympic lifting down there at the old York gym. Wow. lifting. And I actually learned Olympic lifting down there at the old York gym. Wow. Yeah. And I used to lift in my basement. But what I found, even when I was just in high school as a wrestler, that it wasn't really helping that much. And even then, I just sensed like a real

danger to my body. And wrestling is a tough sport as it is, your training should prevent injuries. If a person needs to foam roll and do massages and is hurting themselves in their supplementary training, there's something wrong. If it's really a good training modality, it should prevent injuries, not cause. So I'm a firm believer in getting rid of all of the dangerous stuff out of your training because what we do, martial arts, it's dangerous enough as it is. That's really controversial though. I mean there's a lot of high-level strength and conditioning coaches that think that strength training and power training and things along those lines actually improve all of your skills,

your skills as a martial artist? I've been strength training for 53 years. I didn't find that myself. Right, but based on your own body and your own life. Yeah, but also with clients. Remember, I've trained literally hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of people over the years. I didn't find a good correlation. It's just interesting because in a men's journal, there was just an article by a guy who is one of the leading experts in speed training. And he found that the thing that correlates most to your ability to run fast, like in a sprint, was the trap bar deadlift.

He tried leg presses, cleans, front squats, all this stuff. The thing that had the greatest transfer into improving your ability to sprint was the trap bar deadlift. Why is that? Just the way it positions the hips and the way that the weight is centered. You know, like instead of out in front of you where there's a lot of spinal shearing, your hands are at your side. So it's like you're almost inside the weight. Yes. And the way you hinge out in that trap bar deadlift.

I'm a big fan of that type of deadlift. That's the only way I do them now. They always felt just intuitively like such a damn good exercise. Yeah. Well, anyway, it was just in this month's issue. I think it was Men's Journal. Well, anyway, it was just in this month's issue. I think it was Men's Journal.

My only feeling on trap bar deadlifts is I always felt like I didn't get deep enough because the 45-pound plates were so large. Well, he was saying that it's not necessary to get that much range of motion for sprinting because your legs aren't really bent that much. Anyway, but there's a lot of strength and speed coaches, like really well-known guys. They're now going against power cleans, front squats, and all that. Joe DeFranco is a really famous strength coach. He won't risk the injury to his athletes anymore with this stuff. He's finding guys who are messing up their elbows, their wrists, their fingers. I mean, if you have a guy that's like top-level NCAA wide receiver or something. You do not want to use risky modalities and risk hurting this guy

because what they do as an athlete is risky enough. Out there, the way they run and sprint and cut and so forth, the kind of collisions that they have, you want to make that training as safe as possible. You want to make it as general as possible so they get as much strength transfer. It doesn't have to be fancy exercises. You know, basically squat, hinge, push, pull, horizontal and vertical, some type of rotation or anti-rotation.

And then work the ancillary muscles of the neck, the fingers, the hands, the forearms, the grip. And obviously the feet, calves, and ankles are really neglected in a lot of people's training. Weak feet, weak ankles, and weak calves. A lot of guys leave that out. And of course, the neck. Man, you know how many guys I know that don't train their neck? It's crazy, man. Even your jaw, you know? I can remember watching Muhammad Ali, you know, the old videos, you know, they do like these little snippets of his training. He used to do a lot of jaw training. He had this really cool thing where he would take like a sling and hook it onto a, you know, like a pull down. And then he would open his jaw

against the resistance. I said, that is freaking brilliant, dude, to strengthen the muscles of the jaw. Because, you know, it's well known fact that if your jaw is stronger, there's a lot less chance of knockout. Yeah, a lot of guys used to chew beef jerky just to strengthen their jaw. They used to chew bubble gum all the time because you know how your jaw gets tired when you have bubble gum. The bubble gum gets old, and you just keep chewing on it. And they would do that to keep their jaw strong. You know, it's funny.

Remember when we brought up Alexander's ass with the teeth lifting with that beam I used to actually have a mouthpiece and two teeth lifting when as a kid really yeah It was a it was very popular back in the 60s You know teeth lifting for your neck and your jaws I used to lift my little sister up She used to lay down and I put the nice little sling and I do Feeling on those like neck harnesses with the chains? Fantastic. You like those?

Yeah, yeah. That's controversial, too, because my trainer hates them. You have to be careful. And some of them are really crappy design, man. They hurt your ears. And I already have qualifier ears. I don't need to make it any worse. But they can be good.

I think one of the best things ever invented was the old Nautilus four-way neck machine. That was a damn good piece of equipment. And old Nautilus four-way neck machine. That was a damn good piece of equipment. And later, the Hammer Strength four-way neck. See, those things, it's like Kelly Starrett, I talked to him about those things, those neck machines. He's like, those are terrible for you. Nah, that's bullshit, man. Really? Yeah. How do I know

to believe? Yeah, well, you gotta try it yourself. I tell people to experiment. But you know what works really well that I don't think would be too controversial for anyone? Neck isometrics. Yeah, you showed me those with a belt. Man, they are fantastic. You know, Hickson used to do a lot of neck isometrics.

He used to use that rubber band. And run up hills. Well, he would walk back and just hold it. It's almost like someone trying to pull you down into a front headlock or a front guillotine. And then you go with it on your forehead and on your side, and you develop tremendous stability. I don't think, you know, the other stuff, I can see where it could be controversial because it all comes back to your technique, your form.

You know, if you're an idiot and you're using a lot of momentum and, you know, you're using poor technique, I can see where you can really mess your neck up. But isometrics, they're pretty safe. Okay, but excluding isometrics, those neck machines, like moving your neck with those neck machines, where do you think the problems lie? You think the problems lie in people using momentum too much? Too much weight, too much momentum, and not using good form.

I mean, okay, we know that you can get really strong and really fit using shitty technique and form. Right. You see it all over the gym. You see huge guys, really muscular dudes, just throwing the crap out of the weights. That doesn't necessarily mean it's the best way to go. Right.

Many of those guys don't stand the test of time. Remember earlier I was saying, you know, anyone under 60, if they haven't passed over, of course, that's pretty convenient for me now. Right. Saw you smiling there. But no, seriously, if you haven't been to the other side, there's a lot of stuff that I did in my early days.

No way that I would advocate that stuff now, man. Right. But I was always a firm believer in working the neck. And I used neck harnesses successfully using really good strict form, not necessarily heavy weight. If you put yourself in a biomechanically inefficient position, you can really work those muscles really hard with very, very safe. Now, when you talk about neck, those neck harnesses and you lift your neck up and you can lie on a bench and put a plate on your head and lift your head up.

What about side-to-side movements? You can also do it on the side. And you're cool with those? Yeah. Another one, well, remember, too, in violent contact sports, someone's going to put your neck in some pretty weird positions, whether you want them to or not. So you've got to kind of endure yourself to those basic positions. And what kind of repetitions are you talking about when you're doing neck exercises? Pretty high reps.

I always like – well, it depends on the speed of movement too. I mean like I like a slow, high-tension speed of movement to really fatigue the muscles. So it just depends how fast you're actually moving. So just a real slow – Usually I go by time under load. So somewhere between a minute to 90 seconds time under load is good. For the entire set? Yeah, for the set.

Like a 90-second set. One of the things I've gotten into over the last year or so is long negatives. I like long negatives. Exploding on the initial movement, the power of the out movement. Like say if I do a chin-up, exploding up, and then a very slow, maybe like four times as long, maybe even more than that, on the way down. Negative emphasized training. Yeah. It can be very, very good.

It's been used for a while. One of the big proponents of that type of training was the famous Mike Mentzer, the only guy ever to beat Arnold Schwarzenegger. We're talking about bodybuilding now. And it's really interesting because Mike used to use these very intense brief exercises. The year he beat Arnold in the Mr. Universe show, Mike was only training about 90 minutes a week. And Arnold was training about 26 hours a week. How is that possible? Because of the high-intensity training.

90 minutes a week? Yeah, he was very much into high-intensity training, like 30-minute workouts. His disciple, Dorian Yates— But that's three 30-minute workouts a week? Yeah, he was very much into high-intensity training, like 30-minute workouts. His disciple, Dorian Yates— But that's three 30-minute workouts a week. Yeah, that's right. Go check him out. He has a whole website called Heavy Duty. He was a real pioneer in the high tension.

He used a lot of negatives. He was doing a lot of experimentation with isometrics towards the end. That's crazy, though, that he could do just 90 minutes a week. And, of course, they're all using steroids, you know, obviously. So that's with, you know, that's. Helps. Yeah, that's without a given. But, you know, people can't say it was just the steroids because Arnold was using steroids, too.

We were talking about Pavel before the podcast. Pavel Tatsulin, is that how you say it? Tatsulin. Tatsulin. Tatsulin. And he is a proponent of low reps, doing things like under five reps. Five reps or under. Well, remember, his sport is his strength.

That's what he does. He's not a fighter. He's not a martial artist. He's not an athlete. His sport is weightlifting. If your goal is to lift as much weight as you can, his system works extremely well because that is the sport. Right. If you're an athlete and you want to use strength training to better you in your sport, the majority of your time should be spent doing your sport.

Right. Right. So the amount of weight isn't the most important thing necessarily because an athlete is not a strength specialist. So once you can deadlift or press a certain amount of weight, it's pretty much you're going to get diminishing returns. I mean, how strong do you need to be in a weight class sport? I mean, if you're able to do a double body weight deadlift, how much stronger do you need to be? In order to get stronger, you're going to have to specialize. But that's going to take me away from the skills of my sport.

And also, a lot of the low repetition stuff, you know, that comes from the field of weightlifting. There's no doubt it's a strong do. But it's not necessary for me to do that low of repetition when I'm just training for general strength. necessary for me to do that low of repetition when I'm just training for general strength. Well, his philosophy or his claims are very interesting because what his claims are was that people doing these low rep exercises, like five reps or under, they experience benefits in all of their sports. And then it translated to all that power and strength translated to gymnastics and track and field. All strength training is going to translate into sports to an extent.

Olympic lifting works. Power lifting works. Low reps work. High reps work. I know many guys that did nothing but super high repetitions. There have been plenty of guys like that. It all works one way or another. What you want, though, is to get as efficient as possible and

you don't want to be beat up for days after your workout obviously that was one of the reasons why he liked the low rep stuff you know because it it doesn't seem to beat you beat you up quite as much but i found that doing short brief intense workouts usually even single sets translated just as well as as. I'll give an example. You've heard of the 1973 Miami Dolphins? No. They were under Don Shula. They were the only team ever to go undefeated and win the Super Bowl.

No other team's done it before or since, ever, in the history of the NFL. They used cocaine. They're in Miami. But you know how they train? They train in nautilus machines with single set training. What? Yeah. There we go.

So it all works. It all works. You can get in great shape no matter what you do. It's just what works best. What works best. I personally believe for a lifetime, and believe me, I have a lifetime of injuries. If you're getting hurt in your strength training, you're doing something wrong. Strength training should prevent injuries, not cause it.

So there's something wrong with your technique and your form. Me being a wrestler and a jiu-jitsu guy, I can't afford to hurt myself. And, of course, at my age now, you get hurt. Oh, my God, it takes forever to get myself. And of course, at my age now, you get hurt. Oh my God, it takes forever to get back. We know that fast explosive training works, but we also know there's a much higher chance of injury. So for me, I like slow, high tension reps, really controlled. And like you discovered, that slow negative. Yeah, slow negatives seemed to be having a really positive benefit on my training lately. And I found that doing my exercises, fasting explosively, did not make me faster on the mat. I had to selectively pick the movements I wanted to be fast and explosive on and do those fast.

And drill those. And drill the crap out of them until I was like a freaking machine. One of the things that I've gotten into also over the last few months is grip strength. You know those captains of crush? Yes. I have a 167-pound one that I keep in my car. Dude, did you close that? I just smash that fucker.

I do it for three reps, and then I throw it down. Well, thanks for taking it easy on my hand when we shook hands this morning, man. Well, I started with a 120-pound one, and then I got a 167-pound one that I use now, but I have a 200-and-something-pound one that I'm saving for when I get tired of the 167-pound one. But it's like there's a rabbit hole with that because I'm like, I'm into squeezing things now. It's really weird.

Just make sure it's not people's hands. Well, I just have gotten excited about the idea of strengthening my hands because my strength handing has all been accidental for my hands. It's all been attached to deadlifts and kettlebells and chin-ups and all the different stuff, and that's how my hands got strong. But I've never just actively trained my grip. So in doing this, I've been doing it, I'll say, like four or five months now. I've just been smashing these things all the time. Well, you know there there's different types of grip strength You know, there's that crushing strength that which the captain's a crush we give you but there's also like endurance strength Which is really good bars for grappling. Well, just hanging off a high bar, you know either one hand or two

Well, that's one of the things we found on fear factor. That was interesting We did this thing where we had people hang all over water on a bar, just hanging by their body weight. And the women all beat the men. We had these really strong men. Really, like, big, yoked-up guys. But they were too heavy. Strength-to-weight ratio. And they probably just did

curls like a bunch of bitches. Well, the grip is really, a lot of it people just don't pay enough attention to it. One reason why rope climbing has stood the test of time as a grappling modality is it's a very specific vertical type grip. Like you grab a hand or a neck or a wrist or forearm or even an ankle. Really good for grapplers. And, man, it takes tremendous grip to climb a rope.

There's a lot of stress on your joints, too. Well, there can be. You have to tremendous grip to climb a rope. There's a lot of stress on your joints too. Well, there can be. You have to know how to climb. But it has been an exercise. It's been around forever. Yeah, I've got a big fat rope in my garage. You've seen the gym that I have set up in my garage. I've got this rope that I can't even get my hand all the way around it.

It's like one of those ropes that would tether off an ocean liner. That's what they're for. Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's where they get them. But I'll tell you, just hanging on that or squeezing it, you know, just not even climbing, just hanging until your hand gets down is a tremendous grip exercise. Oh, for sure.

But, yeah, for jiu-jitsu and wrestling, I found that captains of crush don't translate as well as doing things like towel chin-ups, you know, obviously. Yeah. Climbing a rope. A lot of guys throw a gi over a chin-up bar and just pull themselves up with the gi

fantastic sports specific grip strength also just hanging for time like we talked about for shoulder health awesome grip exercise and there's a very interesting correlation between biological age and chronological age

old people have really weak hands well then I'm like 20 because I'll smash it and chronologically age, old people have really weak hands. Well, then I'm like 20 because I'll smash it. There you go, man. I have a friend who does these scapula exercises. He's an archer, and he hangs the way you're talking about, and then when he gets to the hanging position, he just lifts himself up like this. That's a fantastic exercise.

And holds it. It's like pinching his shoulder blades together, just pulling his body up slightly, but his arms completely locked out. His upper back muscles are so neglected. And it's good for posture, too. Yeah. And I'll tell you, I like to superset that with a set of regular pull-ups sometimes. Do you feel that upper back? Because, you know, usually when you do pull-ups, your arms get tired first.

Right. But by pre-exhausting the lats and the rhomboids and all those back muscles, when you do your pull-ups, man, you really feel your back. So you do pull-ups, like do all your sets? Well, not all the time, but I would do the scapular retractions first, jump down, shake out my grip a little bit, and then jump up and do the pull-ups. Wow, what a great little back workout. Oh, so you do the scapular exercises first? First, to pre-exhaust those muscles because they're bigger and stronger than your little teeny grip forearm hands. So usually what comes out first in pull-ups is the hands, the forearm, sometimes your

biceps. So by pre-fatiguing those upper back muscles first, they get much better workout when you add in the arms. Ah, that makes sense. You temporarily fatigue those. So when you do these sets of, if you do like those scapular contractions, what would you call those? I always call them scapular retractions. Retractions?

Yeah, retractions. How long would you hold that position for? I usually like two seconds up, two seconds down. Oh, short. Yeah, it's a short little movement. Yeah, because he does it for 15 seconds. Yeah, but one with a thousand, two with a thousand. You could.

I've actually done static contraction where I just pulled myself up and held it so I couldn't hold it. You know, like 30 to 40 seconds, you know? It just depends. That was another thing that Pavel was talking about with planks. He was talking about like doing a plank but contracting every muscle in your body and holding that position. It's an isometric. It's called an overcoming isometric. There's two types of isometrics. One is—I'm sorry—yielding isometric. There's two types of isometrics. One is, I'm sorry, yielding isometric. One is where you have a measurable weight. It could be your body weight. Let's say you hold a chin up at the top with your chin over the bar. It's a classic exercise called the flexed arm

hang. Okay, you have a measurable weight there, right? The other version of that would be you just grab something and just pull as hard as you can. No way to measure it. Right. Both ways will get you strong as can be, strong as a beast. So that plank that you're talking about, it's like a yielding isometric in that you have a measurable weight, which is your body weight. And rather than just hang out to see how long you can survive, what happens is you start to let the back collapse a little bit. You start to relax certain areas of your body. And now it's just not nearly as effective.

But if you're really trying to shorten the abdominals and really squeezing and creating this tension, you create a tremendous amount of muscle fatigue. And that should be the true purpose of exercise, to create that overload, that muscle fatigue. And allowing your muscles to recover from that. And then recovery is everything. Establish a new base of strength. I have a friend, and a lot of jiu-jitsu guys are getting into this now, where they're doing super slow sets. I love super slow sets.

I was one of the original super slow trainers back in the day. I still do them. And as a man ages, and you have all the dings in your shoulders and elbows and stuff, you'll find that you'll be drawn more and more to nice, high tension sets really very safe way to train um how many seconds up and down do you suggest like say for something like a chin up well mike menser you know for bodybuilding hypertrophy he found like 424 where you would like four seconds up pause in the contracted position and four seconds down the contracted position the contracted position, and four seconds down. The contracted position, the push-up, the hard part would be the bottom part. So you would hold just off the floor.

On a chin-up, it would be the top part. So for a push-up, say, you would slowly go up for four, like one, two, three, four. Then turn around. No. You would then turn around. Or just slowly. Then I would go back down and hold at the bottom. Okay, one, two, three, four.

And then how long would you hold at the very bottom? Hold 1,001, 1,002. Just two seconds and then back up one. And that's surprisingly difficult to do. For someone who thinks of a push-up as being a pretty mild exercise. Dude, you can just sandblast yourself with just about five or six reps if you do it right. Yeah. I've even done them slower.

I've gone like 10-10, 15-15. Try this. If you like negative accentuated, sometime you're in a hotel room and you want to get a quick pump for your comedy act, start at the top. You don't get pumped for a comedy act. You've got to stretch out. You're a dude. You've got the rep.

But probably the fittest comic out there don't you find that comics in general are pretty bad a lot of alcoholics yeah smoking

yeah a lot of smoking yeah it's the nature of the business it's nightclub life you know it's very unhealthy it's also there's this false correlation

that you have to be an abuser of your body to be funny really yeah well that vanity and takinguser of your body to be funny really yeah well that vanity and um taking care of your body are connected and that vanity is ego and then having a big ego and being vain like it's anti-comedy but i just think i don't think

it's vanity to take care of your body i just think it's intelligence i think it's foolishness to not take care of your body and i just know too many people whose bodies are literally falling apart and who are my age or younger, who have massive issues. I've seen it myself, man. It's really scary. Yeah, and they realize with time the error of their way, and it's usually too late. If you start a rigorous physical fitness program when you're 45, like, boy, you've got a kind of an uphill battle there. You've got an uphill battle. It's not impossible.

Well, you know Anthony Bourdain. You know what's going on with him. Yeah. He's a jujitsu guy now. He's got a blue belt. He started at 58. Yeah. A lifetime of drinking and smoking and even a problem with heroin in his youth.

Getting himself cleaned up. I heard his wife's into it too. Oh, she's way beyond into it. I know she's actually pretty good, man. She's very good. And she's obsessed. And that's one of the reasons why he got into it in the first place is because his wife's into it, too. Oh, she's way beyond into it. I know she's actually pretty good, man. She's very good. And she's obsessed. And that's one of the reasons why he got into it in the first place is because his wife is a maniac. And he didn't want to get choked out anymore.

Well, no. I mean, she talked him into it because she loves it so much. And then once she actually bribed him with narcotics. Whoa. That's how she got him in. Okay. Yeah, she told him she'd give him Vicodin. And so she got him into it.

And then once he got into it, he's a very, and I say this in a good way, he's a very obsessive guy. He gets obsessed with things. That's why he's such a great chef and a great writer and he's great on his television show. And he got obsessed with jujitsu. He travels everywhere. He brings his gi. He trains every day. He trains twice a day. He'll do a private and then he'll do a class every day. He trains twice a day. He'll do a private and then he'll do a class every day.

Every day. He trained with Chris Crook, the guy I was telling you about in Maui, my web guy. Yeah. He trained with Anthony. He said it was really fun. That's awesome. Oh, back to that push-up. So try starting at the top, right? You very slowly use your iPhone, like a little timer on there or something.

I use one with a metronome so I can hear the text. your iPhone, like a little timer on there or something. I use one with a metronome, you know, so I can hear the text and I go on down in 30 seconds. And when my chest just barely grazes the ground, I do a slow, what we call turnaround, where you change direction, very slowly come back up in 30 seconds. I don't walk out of the top. There's no resting at the top because the top is just too easy, right? You can hold it forever. So I keep my elbows just a little unbent and then 30 seconds back down. Dude, you have the pump of your life. 90 seconds time under load. It's like, wow, what an amazing workout. One freaking rep. Actually, one and a half reps. Negative, positive, negative. Just negative, positive, negative for 90 seconds. So do you set like a timer for 90 seconds?

Well, not for 90 seconds, just the running stopwatch. I use like a little thing on my iPhone that goes tick, tick, tick. What is it? What is it? I don't know. It's just one of those many apps. But I wanted one that had an audible tick. So if I can't actually see the iPhone, at least I can listen to the seconds. So it's really easy to fool yourself when you're going too fast.

Now, do you do the same sort of technique for squats or for any other exercises? Yeah, man. I have this one bodyweight squat where you face the wall, where you can't unload by leaning forward, you know, letting your torso lean forward. Whew, man, what a killer. You face the wall? I face the wall. Great for your posture, man, your toes against the wall. So what are you doing? Like you're facing the wall, and how killer. You face the wall? I face the wall. Great for your posture, man, your toes against the wall. So what are you doing?

Like you're facing the wall, and how close are you to the wall? My toes, nose, everything's touching, the knees. My hands are out to the side. I slowly lower down. And you keep your face on the wall? Your nose is just barely skimming, and it's great for posture because your back is really arched, so your back's working isometrically. And I don't do the top third of the movement with a bodyweight squat because it's just too damn easy.

I would recover. You're so mechanically efficient at the top that there's no work. So you get to the top third and then you go back down again? Back down. Sometimes I use that 30-30-30 for that one. It's absolutely killer. When you're done, basically your legs are just crippled for a second or two. I've been doing slow Hindu pushups and I'm just amazed at how tired you can get. It's amazing. Like a set of 20 slow Hindu pushups and your heart is ready to

explode. It's amazing, isn't it? You don't have to go fast to get a good cardio metabolic workout. I'm a big fan of that Hindu pushup too, just for the range of motion. It's such a wide range of motion in that technique. Really good spinal mobility. Yeah. I would say arguably, that might be the only push-up a person would need just for fitness. Yeah. I mean, really, it's a hell

of an exercise. It's basically upward and downward dog of yoga combined with movement. Yeah, and I do it with a 40 pound weight vest sometimes. Dude, you're a beast. Well, it's just such a great workout. Try slowing it down even more. Try doing 10 seconds down, 10 seconds up. So you don't have to keep adding more weight to your vest. Yeah. Also remember, time under load is really important. I'll give you an example. I went to the gym one time. I saw this guy just jacking off pull-ups like crazy. He was using a

lot of momentum. It was basically one second up, one second down. The dude did 25, which is impressive, you know, but he was pretty much yanking up his joints, you know? So I had my client do a set of six, but he was doing four, two, four, each one. So the guy that did the 25, his time under load was only 50 seconds. My guy did six. His time under load was a minute. My guy that did the 25, his time under load was only 50 seconds. My guy did six. His time under load was a minute. My guy actually did more mechanical work and was physically, in some ways, stronger, better strength-to-weight ratio. Well, what do you think about those CrossFit-style chin-ups? Absolutely insane.

I mean, well, we talked about this last time. The Greg Glassman guy? I mean, the guy's an obese cripple, man. Well, he's got health issues. I know that he kind of started it off. He's younger than me, man. It's like, what the fuck? I could have had health issues.

The injuries that I've had, if anyone has the excuse for not training, I don't mean to toot my own horn, but, man, I never missed a training due to an injury. I always, man, if you hurt your shoulder, you got your other shoulder and your legs that you can work and your core, right? You know, I busted up my foot one time. So, you know, I was able to work. You always work around it. There's something to do. Always something to do.

You know, not training just because you're injured. I blew out L4 in my spine one time just doing the stupid abdominal rollouts from the feet. What's an abdominal rollout? Oh, I saw this Jackie Chan movie and I was really inspired. You know, you use those ab wheels, you know, those little wheels. Yeah. And from your toes, you roll the whole way out and whole way back. I was pretty good at that at one time. From your toes, you roll the whole way out and whole way back. Yeah. Which I'm not exactly sure what you mean. Can you? Yeah.

Ab roller Jackie Chan. This is pretty inspiring. So you mean like you make like a scissors and then go like that? Yeah, like an inchworm. Oh, okay. And you blew your back out doing that? Well, I left my back. This guy.

This guy's doing it. Oh, here we go. There we go. I could do that. I probably still could do it, but I'm just too afraid to do it. Is that hard to do? Fuck yeah. It's unbelievable, man.

Try to, well, no, don't try it because I don't want you to hurt your back. But you got to really, really brace your abdominals and keep your glutes tight because the shearing force on the lumbar is really high, as I found out. I don't do those, but I do do a lot of ab wheel stuff. But I just never do it like that. You can do it off your knees. Do you know what the same movement is? Hanging leg raises.

Very safe. Some people call it toes to bar. Try doing it with no momentum. Slow up. Touch your tippy toes to the bar. Pause for a second. Slowly lower. If you do three or four, wow, you're pretty strong core.

It's the same movement as that. With the legs straight? Yeah, with the legs straight. Like try to almost like you're touching your toes? Toes to the bar. Yeah. Not the ankles or shins. That means the person's too tight in their hamstrings. But yeah, I blew my back. I had an L4 subluxation and spondylothesis. And I was told I might need surgery. So you have a bulging disc? Oh, my God.

I had sciatica so bad, Joe, I couldn't even walk. When you were here, did I have the reverse hyper machine in the back when you were here? Yes, you did. Yeah. What do you think about those? Have you used those at all? I have, but the strength curve, I think I told you, is off. Because right where your glutes and your lower back are

in the weakest part of the curve, the resistance is at its highest. Right. I see what you're saying. Yeah. You know, you'd almost be better off putting ankle weights on and just doing reverse leg raises. Man, I just love it though for decompression of the spine and strengthening the lower back area. I mean, my whole back area is just so thick and strong from doing that exercise. It gives me a lot of relief. I'm a big fan of that machine. Yeah. I mean, my whole back area is just so thick and strong from doing that exercise. It gives me a lot of relief. I'm a big fan of that machine. Yeah. I mean, I'm not against it per se. I think there's just as good, if not better exercises that you can use. Because I mean, you know, in my case, I can't travel with a reverse hyper. Yeah, you'd have a hard time

checking that thing. I'll tell you what I do enjoy is the 45-degree back extension bench where you do back extensions. Fantastic exercise. Is that called a Roman chair? Is that what it's called? Not quite a Roman chair, but it's kind of along those lines. I'm not talking about the glute ham raises. I'm actually talking about 45-degree back extension. Right.

I was at Arthur Jones Ranch when he was doing his experiments with Med-X, which was a machine for back rehabilitation. And the Med-X studies is doing it with this Dr. Wayne Pollack from University of Florida Medical School. And they found that people's backs are pretty undeveloped and pretty weak and can cause a lot of problems. So they were trying to invent a machine to work that area. But the freaking machines were like $50,000. It was ridiculous. You know, you're getting all these electrical feed out and all this stuff. So I said to Arthur, I said, surely there must be a very simple exercise that you could do that would give you really, really good results.

Because he was basically poo-pooing most back exercises. He's not really working the back. Most of them work the glutes and the hamstrings, like kettlebell swings or deadlifts. More glute than hamstring. So he said the back extension. He says that would come as close. And I started religiously practicing back extension.

And man, I'll tell you, that's one area of my back that was always strong right up until that point where I did those abdominal rollouts. That was the first back injury I ever had. How'd you get over that? Well, I went to a rolfer. I had this woman that was actually a professor at the Rolfe Institute. You know, they do circuits.

Really good, hands-on rolfer. She was the one that I heard the word surgery come out of her mouth because she was pretty much anti-surgery. That was the first time I ever heard someone say, oh, Steve, you really did it this time. I don't know whether I can help you, really. You really messed your back up. I'm going to try, but I can't guarantee anything. So she would put me on their table like in a tense position where the table goes like this.

So it's bent for people who are not listening. Or listening rather than not watching. Literally taking your fingers and trying to rotate that vertebrae back into position. And then I was going to this guy for pain. I didn't want to take painkillers. This Dr. Frank Gu in Philadelphia on Art Street, he was shooting me with the needles. Acupuncture? Acupuncture for pain relief.

And I would walk in there in absolute agony and i would walk out probably 60 to 70 percent reduction in the pain and it would last for a day or two and then it would come back of course but i was just doing it just to get out of pain right and over the course of let's see how many sessions was it it was like eight sessions by the eighth session all of a sudden i woke up one day and the pain was completely gone. So it was slowly relaxing and the disc was going back in. Finally squirted back in there. Stretching, anything like all those lines too?

I was sitting in a back chair. I used to be the trainer for the owners of the Philadelphia Eagles. Jeff and Christina, they're divorced now, but Jeff still owns the Philadelphia Eagle team. He used to have all these really cool nifty devices because he suffered a lot from bat. It was a chair that you sit on a sling, like this playground swings, with these two clamps that grab you

underneath your armpits and clamp, right? So you're clamped. You can adjust it. And then you slowly release the sling, so you're just basically sitting with your back completely just hanging there from your armpits. And I would sit there and watch TV for an hour or so with my back in this traction. That really gave me a lot of relief. Yeah.

Spinal decompression is gigantic. Yeah, the back chair. It was a really expensive thing. I just borrowed his for like a couple months. Man, that thing really helped. What do you think about those hang-ups? Inversions on that? Yeah. You like those? I do.

I didn't have the table or the room for it at the time, although I do like it. I did have inversion boots that I used to hang off my pull-up on. My problem was with the sciatic, I couldn't get into the position. It was just too painful. I had to, you know, I was in too much pain. You were so far gone.

I was so far gone. Everything was killing me. But once it went away, it was like it never happened. Never happened. But, you know, despite that, I didn't stop training. I was still doing super slow machine work pull-downs and chest presses. And interestingly enough Enough with that injury Riding the Schwinn Airdyne you know those air bikes

With the handles that didn't hurt It actually felt good I would feel good for like 30-40 minutes After that workout with zero pain And then it would slowly come back on me Those Airdyne machines seem to be Like a really Popular exercise for strength and conditioning

For fighters a lot of wrestlers use them. Because I'll tell you, man, the faster you go, the harder it is. The air displacement. The thing that's so cool about it is you're getting both upper and lower body together. So it's not just lower body aerobics. Your whole body is involved in strength endurance. Do those bother you with your shoulder? With your shoulder being?

No, no. Any kind of vertical movement. I mean, horizontal movement. It's the overhead press. But interestingly enough, I can still do Hindu push-ups. That is interesting. It's the angle. You know, I can angle it.

And also, you know, corkscrewing the hands, gripping, activating the lats and all that kind of stuff can really keep you out of pain. Steve, we just did three hours. Holy shit. Flew by. Wow, man. It's over. I know you have this video, though. Tell people about this did three hours. Holy shit. Flew by. Wow, man. It's over. I know you have this video though. Tell people about this video, your isometric video. Well, I just came out with my second isometric because I was so thrilled with the first one.

I started looking deeper into isometrics and I found these old school techniques that I've made an advanced isometric video. So is it a full workout? Yeah, what I did was in the first one, I had either yielding or overcoming isometrics. Here, for advanced guys that are really strong like yourself, I combine yielding and overcoming isometrics in the same exercise. And boy, I'll tell you, even an Olympic athlete could get a full workout in a hotel room with virtually no equipment. Just your jiu-jitsu belt is all you'd really need. Dude, you would know you had a workout. Very safe, no chance of, I mean, of course, some idiot could screw it up and get himself hurt,

but the chance of hurting yourself with isometrics is virtually none. Good way to also work around an injury. You know, if you have a foot, ankle, knee, elbow, you can still do isomet none. Good way to also work around an injury. You know, if you have a foot, ankle, knee, elbow, you can still do isometrics. You could even potentially do isometrics if you're in bed. You know, let's say you had an injury, a car accident,

where you could actually keep your muscles in shape laying in bed. Whoa. It's pretty cool stuff. Where can people get it? How do they get it? The website is maxwellsc. Whoa. It's pretty cool stuff. Where can people get it? How do they get it? The website is MaxwellSC.com. S as in strength, C as in conditioning, MaxwellSC.com.

And I think, yeah. Oh, yeah. There's a link to the page. Let's see. Maxwell SC training is that what you say MaxwellSC.com yeah

MaxwellSC.com okay really good video I put a lot I did I shot it in Maui Jiu Jitsu and it's really really

one of the best ones I've ever done alright beautiful and people want to get a hold of you on Twitter it's yeah Twitter Steve Maxwell SC yep, all that jazz, Instagram.

Feed the media machine, baby. The media machine. You got it. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you being on, man. Thanks for having me again. Appreciate it. All right, friends.

We'll be back tomorrow. See you soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. you