Steve Maxwell is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts Trainer living in Australia. He has been into cannabis for a long time and has always been open to the idea that it could be a good thing. In this episode, he talks about how he got into it and why he thinks it's a great thing. He also talks about the dangers of THC and how it can affect your brain and how to deal with it. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts. I'll be picking one person at random who leave a review to win a FREE place on the next Shreddin8 program! Thanks for listening and Good Luck Out There! -Jon Sorrentino and are the hosts of the podcast "Out Of The Box" and "Out of The Box Jiu Jitsu" Podcast. Please Rate/subscribe in iTunes and tell a friend about this podcast and/or share it on your socials! I'll see you next Monday with a new episode of Out of the Box! Enjoy & spread the word to your friends about this amazing podcast! Jon & Jon :) -Jon & Jon Thanks Jon & Joe Don't Tell a Friend About This Podcast! - Jon & Jonathan Steve Maxwell Out Of the Box - Out Of The box - by: Jon and Jon is a great guy! "Outlaw" by: Jon is an amazing guy and is a good friend of mine and I'm looking forward to see you in a live show in the next episode, so don't forget to check it out! . . . . , is a fellow out of the Stateside, so be sure to check out the show! and I'll send us out and send us a review of the show and give us some good vibes! Thank you Jon's podcast Thank You, Jon is awesome, & , and I hope you enjoy it out on the podcast, Jon and I love you back! , etc etc. -Amenities: -Josie, - -Drew, Jon -Sue, Jake, Joe, etc., etc., etc, etc. etc. - etc.. And so much more! -Jon from Australia
00:01:00.000I was like, you know, hardcore athlete, wrestled NCAA, Division I. And for me at that time, I believed all the anti-propaganda.
00:01:09.000You know, I was a pretty straight-laced guy.
00:01:11.000And so, you know, oh, it's a gateway drug, and oh my god, you're going to go to hell in a handbasket, and this stuff will destroy your brain, and blah, blah, blah.
00:02:31.000You go out and try to hurt someone as much as possible with joint locks and so forth, or you choke them to sleep, right?
00:02:38.000Of course, that being said, I had way more injuries with college wrestling than I ever did with jiu-jitsu because you can always tap.
00:02:45.000But I just noticed that these guys, you know, it's an intense sport, maybe not as intense as MMA, but certainly up there, and they all would light up at night and so forth.
00:02:55.000You know, they'd have their bongs or, you know, roll up a joint.
00:02:58.000And I could just never figure this out.
00:03:43.000They have pens that, like, they look like...
00:03:47.000It's like some sort of a metal cylinder with a lip on the end of it and you pack it with either oil that you can buy pre-filled little tubes of hemp oil or THC oil and you stick it in there and it has some sort of an element in there and it heats it up and you're just breathing in vapor.
00:04:04.000It's just a vaporizer, a portable vaporizer.
00:04:07.000So, yeah, I was just very curious, and well, I mean, you've been into this for a long time, very open about it, and I thought, well, you are really into your health and your body, and you take great care of yourself, and I figured,
00:04:23.000you know, if it's really all that harmful, Joe wouldn't be doing this.
00:04:28.000There's no way that you would do something like that.
00:04:50.000My first major one, my first ACL, was a patella tendon graft, which is particularly painful because they slice your patella tendon, they cut a chunk out of your kneecap and a chunk out of your shin bone, and then they drill it all in place and screw it in place.
00:05:06.000It's good because it's a native piece of tendon, so it adheres to the body very quickly, and there's very little chance of rejection, and it's very strong.
00:05:29.000My other two surgeries, my other ACL and my other meniscus surgery, I didn't take anything.
00:05:35.000My knee, my nose, when I had my nose fixed, I had my deviated septum fixed and my turbinates cut out, my nose stretched out and they put tubes in it and everything.
00:05:45.000I didn't take anything just pot and I Don't like I don't like anything that leaves me like cloudy and that seems like that's what I thought pot was I thought pot was something that left you Stupid or cloudy and it's really just it's the opposite.
00:06:03.000It tunes you in I was shocked I was utterly shocked and The first thing I noticed was my vision improved.
00:06:10.000I've been nearsighted most of my life, and I basically found my eyes were getting worse each year, getting stronger prescriptions.
00:06:18.000I finally read this book, Take Off Your Glasses and See, and I just basically threw my glasses in the trash and started doing eye strengthening exercises.
00:06:31.000There's a lot of different exercises you can do, but The name of the book is Take Off Your Glasses and See.
00:06:37.000And this guy was a disciple of the Bates method of eye strengthening.
00:06:42.000But when I was at the summit of the Breathmasters in Moscow, they had a bunch of guys there that were using breathing and eye exercise and all sorts of stuff for the improvement of vision.
00:06:53.000One was a former Spetsonist sniper, so I guess he knows a thing or two about vision training.
00:06:58.000And he was showing some of the eye exercises he does, you know, real simple stuff.
00:07:03.000And it was like, wow, this works, but only to a point.
00:07:06.000It got really good to the point where I can drive during the day.
00:07:10.000I'm still a little reluctant to drive at night.
00:07:13.000I mean, I could, but I can't read street signs at night.
00:07:17.000During the day, I can actually see signs.
00:07:23.000And what I noticed when I would take the THC, I was using one of those vaporizer things, it was like my eyes would start to really clear, which leads me to believe that it has something to do with muscular tension.
00:07:37.000I noticed that my digestion would improve.
00:07:40.000And instead of getting foggy, Like I would be on my iPad maybe doing an email or something.
00:07:46.000It's like somehow my fingers would just glide over the keys and just magically find the letters way faster, or at least my perception of how much faster.
00:07:57.000It was just a very interesting experience.
00:07:59.000Well, one of the things that people use it for with jujitsu is not just to relax after training, but before training because it focuses you in a very tunnel vision sort of a way.
00:08:08.000When I roll, when I smoke pot and roll, I feel like I'm better at jujitsu.
00:09:01.000Yeah, no, I'm going to be very careful.
00:09:03.000I have not, in truth, taken it before I've trained, but I read about the guy in Colorado, the triathlete.
00:09:11.000He's a world-class athlete, very elite, and he's been really advocating taking it before endurance training.
00:09:18.000Somehow it improves pain threshold, your tolerance to physical exercise pain, not pain pain, but like exercise-induced discomfort.
00:09:29.000It changes the way your body reacts It changes the way your body reacts.
00:09:35.000When I work out with it, if I lift weights with it, I can feel the fibers, or at least I feel like I'm feeling it, I feel the fibers of my muscles.
00:09:44.000I'm very sensitive to it, which is one of the reasons why I really enjoy doing it before I stretch.
00:09:50.000Terence McKenna, who is a late great psychedelic philosopher, it was his contention that yoga itself was really a how-to-use cannabis manual.
00:10:01.000And that the way to optimize your experience with cannabis was through yoga.
00:10:05.000Because all of those sadhus, all those guys are just hash smoking freaks.
00:10:11.000That's like the dark secret of the sadhus, he would say.
00:10:14.000What they really concentrate on is how many chillums can you smoke before you pass out?
00:10:18.000You're not a man unless you can go deep, deep, deep into the rabbit hole.
00:10:23.000And these guys would smoke massive amounts of hash and do yoga.
00:10:28.000And I used to think, wow, that's kind of crazy.
00:10:31.000I guess they're just having fun and doing it.
00:10:33.000Until the one time I did yoga when I was high.
00:10:55.000Sat Solain, who's one of the most famous advocates of the kettlebell industry.
00:11:01.000He talked about stretching being a big part of what holds you back is tension, psychological tension, not necessarily even flexibility, but that you're worried about...
00:11:11.000Yeah, your brain sets up that stretch reflex when you're in an unfamiliar position.
00:11:15.000So it's, you know, it's saying danger, you're in a different position than you're used to being in.
00:11:20.000And for most of us, that's sitting in chairs, or most people.
00:12:14.000Listen, man, never let it be said that Steve Maxwell doesn't experiment, you know?
00:12:19.000I really think that one of the secrets to aging well is to be open-minded and just to experiment and learn new things, try new things, and don't be such a stick in the mud with your belief systems, you know?
00:12:33.000Don't get so holier than thou with all your beliefs because, hey, man.
00:12:37.000You know, if you think about it, a lot of really high spiritual adepts, they all use some type of either, you know, hallucinogen or—we talked last time on the show about ayahuasca and so forth and, you know, the shamans using their mushrooms and— Well,
00:12:55.000I think as you get older, I think especially when you have been around a lot of fools, you reach a certain point in your life where you don't want to tolerate any nonsense.
00:13:06.000And you're just like, ah, enough of this nonsense.
00:13:08.000Like what you need is, you know, a good diet.
00:13:18.000That sort of mentality serves you well, but in having that mentality and meeting all these fools, sometimes you can kind of develop prejudices.
00:13:27.000You develop these ideas that aren't necessarily based on data.
00:13:30.000It's more based on like sort of just your perceptions of the people that are around you.
00:13:36.000Like if you see enough losers that do something, you say, well, that's for losers.
00:13:40.000You see enough losers that are Smoking pot, you think, well, pot is for losers.
00:14:03.000There was actually an article recently about ultramarathoners.
00:14:05.000Jamie, see if you can pull that up, because I forget what publication it was in, but it was a big article where people were really being really shocked at the results and these guys that were ultramarathoners that were advocating smoking marijuana,
00:14:20.000and they were talking about, should this be banned from ultramarathons?
00:15:12.000You know, there's another very interesting thing I've been experimenting with for years, and that's the theta brainwave meditation, where you actually – your brain produces different levels of brainwaves.
00:15:27.000Your brain oscillates at certain speeds, and different parts of the brain produce different – like alpha, beta, gamma, delta, theta – But Theta is like the one that's most closely associated with that sort of between sleep and wakefulness when the subconscious mind can be programmed.
00:15:44.000And there's a lot of really good programs out there.
00:16:26.000Yeah, it's very, very relaxing, speaking of relaxation.
00:16:30.000And so for those folks that are still a little leery about maybe trying something like THC, you can do this with the theta brainwave meditation.
00:16:39.000All the brainwaves, like, have their benefits.
00:16:42.000The alpha is like what we're in right now, the alpha and the beta, like while we're awake.
00:16:49.000Gamma is like when you're in a real deep sleep, like a real deep dreamlike state.
00:17:09.000It doesn't require any special breathing or postures or anything.
00:17:13.000You can just literally sit or lie down comfortably, and you just go into the zone.
00:17:18.000And if you do practice visualization or if you practice any kind of affirmations or Subconscious mind programming, it's a great time to do it, man.
00:20:17.000I have one of those things in my house, and it's supposed to do all sorts of things as far as stimulate the production of various hormones and aid healing and circulation, but it makes you feel great.
00:20:31.000There's even ways you can just exercise and do vibrations and so forth.
00:20:36.000Trampolines are really good for that, right?
00:20:50.000You get on that sucker for 10 minutes, and you're like...
00:20:52.000It goes through all these different...
00:20:58.000You'll do like 10 seconds at one, and then 10 seconds at another, and then very fast, high frequency, and then low and slow, and shaking...
00:21:08.000And when it's over, you're like, God, I feel so good.
00:21:12.000But, yeah, like Feldenkrais, he was, you know, they have like a bouncing, shaking, vibrational kind of thing, and there's, like I said, the Taoist yogis have a thing where they do this kind of stuff.
00:21:25.000When I was in Russia, they had, like, as part of their Slavic Russian health system, their mobility stuff, they would have shaking and vibrations and And all the stuff that you just kind of do to yourself.
00:22:00.000I do believe it does help facilitate recovery.
00:22:04.000I think mental problems and relaxation are so often not connected with each other.
00:22:09.000Mental problems and exercise and exertion and the fact that a lot of people, a lot of their tension comes from not releasing energy and their body stores up this energy like a battery and then it's leaking all over the place.
00:22:24.000It's just like they're short-circuiting.
00:22:26.000When you see people screaming in traffic and, you know, and cutting people off and all this madness that, I mean, it really is like a form of madness when you see someone screaming at someone that's not even anywhere near them in traffic.
00:23:19.000And it does all sorts of weird things to your hormones.
00:23:21.000And it's definitely, it's hard to be in a good mood and relaxed when you're in this panicked state.
00:23:27.000Your subconscious mind doesn't know that there's not like a threat looming over the horizon.
00:23:34.000So everything that happens is perceived as a threat.
00:23:37.000Every little comment, you know, someone cuts you off in traffic, people take it so personally because it's a threat because they're all caught up in the chest.
00:23:46.000And man, I'm telling you, when you learn to do proper diaphragmatic breathing and bring the breath down in the lower lobes of the lungs, it's incredibly calming.
00:24:27.000You know, Hoyce, Hoyler, you know, they all knew how to do this, and they weren't teaching us blue and purple bouts at the time, but now he's spending a lot of time teaching it.
00:24:36.000I heard that Kron also is spending a lot of time, because I think it's really, really important for combat athletes to, you know, learn to relax, and the way you relax in combat is through breath manipulation.
00:24:48.000But as far as actually being taught, I haven't seen it.
00:24:53.000The Systema guys do a pretty good job with it, you know.
00:24:56.000But it's funny because, you know, I started really getting into this and reading a lot.
00:25:01.000But I wasn't reading stuff related to combat as much as mostly yoga stuff, you know, or Qigong.
00:25:08.000So, yeah, it's kind of hard to find the information.
00:25:32.000You're dealing with extremely stressful situations where your body is pushed at a very high pace, where you reach the point of exhaustion, and then you have to continue for three, four minutes while you're exhausted.
00:25:44.000Everyone who's ever rolled has experienced that.
00:25:47.000You're doing maybe a seven or nine minute roll, which means grappling, sparring.
00:26:00.000And you've got to figure out a way to get to a clinch and just Try to bring your heart rate down and try to do just enough to defend and keep moving But not enough to totally tax out your muscles and also don't let your mind get into that panic state like the breath is what Controls that yeah,
00:26:22.000because if you can't breathe you're gonna freak out Yeah, I remember training with a guy who was like a real athletic guy, a very strong guy, but he hadn't done jujitsu before.
00:26:34.000And so he was really excited to learn it and just try to get into jujitsu.
00:26:38.000And, you know, he's in there sparring and he asked me to spar.
00:26:42.000And I'm like, okay, alright, you know, how long are you doing it now?
00:26:44.000He's like, oh, a couple months and this and that.
00:27:16.000Like, you know, it's not going to help you.
00:27:19.000Like, this is definitely going to hurt you.
00:27:20.000You're going to get tapped out either way, but if you breathe in, you're going to be able to keep going and you're going to be able to learn.
00:27:41.000And in a real emergency, let's say some type of street altercation where, I mean, maybe there's a lot more on the line than a trophy or a medal or...
00:28:01.000But it takes a lot of practice, and you have to do it.
00:28:03.000And there's a lot of really cool breathing exercises that you can do, even just walking, jogging, you know, even with your exercises and so forth.
00:28:13.000Anyone, especially that's learning and developing, you can lose, and you're probably going to lose, whether it's in sparring or whether it's in competition, when you come up against someone who's better than you.
00:28:24.000But there's a big difference between losing and losing composure and breaking, you know, that term breaking.
00:29:02.000I mean his arm, John's arm was fucked up for like months afterwards.
00:29:06.000He had to take a gig on the Ultimate Fighter and coach for a long time because he wasn't able to train and he wasn't, he was not gonna be able to fight for at least like six months to let that arm heal.
00:29:23.000And then there's other guys The first moment where things go wrong, you see this look in their eye, they're like, oh shit, it's going wrong.
00:29:50.000He wanted the win, he took the damage to the elbow, fought one arm, just to eke out the victory.
00:29:59.000For folks who don't know what we're talking about, Haja Gracie, one of the very best black belts in the world, and Jacare, one of the very best black belts in the world.
00:30:10.000Yeah, it was a huge Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Championship, and Hodger broke Jacare's arm, and Jacare just tucked that sucker in his belt and kept going.
00:30:35.000We're talking about hardcore professional athletes that make their living fighting world championships on the line, you know, thousands of dollars on the line, but in class, I'm one of those guys that like, hey, if you catch me,
00:30:51.000you trick me, you know, fighting out of an arm lock or a triangle.
00:30:56.000Look, the mistake's already been made.
00:31:53.000I mean, he had it repaired back then, but...
00:31:55.000The damage, all the cartilage, and all the stuff that's broken off inside of his elbow was just swimming around in his elbow, messing with his...
00:32:04.000You know, you can't extend your arm all the way.
00:32:06.000Well, your body builds up, you know, bone and calcification around that injury, and you get those osteophytes, and before you know it, you pretty much lose range of motion in your joints.
00:32:16.000Yeah, the surgery images he put online, and it was just like so disgusting.
00:33:05.000Well, it's very possible that that is gonna happen, but also very possible that they're just gonna be able to regenerate tissue, that all your injured tissue, all your damaged areas are just gonna be able to regenerate them.
00:33:16.000It's gonna be like Star Trek, right, where they used to take that little thing and, you know, just go over your body and, you know, you're healed now.
00:33:22.000Well, there's a guy in Germany, Dr. Peter Weller, who is the same guy who created that Regenikine process that all the pro athletes, they were flying over to Germany to do it, and now they go to, there's a company called Lifespan Medicine that does it in Santa Monica,
00:33:37.000and they do it in Dallas, and I believe they're opening up other offices as well.
00:33:41.000They take your blood out, they spin it in a centrifuge, and they heat it up, and the reaction to the heat makes your blood produce this really intense anti-inflammatory and I've had it done.
00:33:52.000A lot of people have had really chronic injuries have had it done.
00:35:17.000So for folks who are just listening and not watching, it's just Steve demonstrating a bunch of different jujitsu techniques and now mobility training, which is a big part of what you do to keep healthy and keep your joints healthy and protect yourself from injuries,
00:36:15.000It says 28th of November to the 5th of December, and then the 5th of December to the 12th of December in 2015. So this is a start a new tradition, it says.
00:36:25.000This is a new thing that you're starting to do, and what a great vacation.
00:36:30.000You know, have some fun, go to El Salvador, do some surfing.
00:37:02.000When I was in my mid-40s, I'd be getting up in the morning and it was like, Oh my God, I could barely turn around to back my car out of the garage.
00:37:09.000And I'm thinking, geez, what is it going to be like in 10 years from now if I'm just in my mid-40s already suffering this pain and stiffness and inflammation?
00:37:18.000So I started really investigating the different exercise systems, mobility systems.
00:37:24.000Of course, I've always been interested in diet and experimenting and so forth.
00:37:28.000And, you know, I've been doing this for a long time.
00:37:30.000And I discovered a lot of really good things I like to share with people so that you can continue to do what you love so we can all be like Master Elio Gracie and, you know, 95 years old, I mean, getting on the mat and still having fun with it.
00:37:46.000He was fanatical about his diet, right?
00:45:36.000It's like part of the survival mechanism.
00:45:39.000Back when our ancestors had to tolerate a lot of extremes in temperatures, like cold, you have this brown fat that's like a metabolic active fat.
00:45:49.000Kids have it, but by the time you're like 12, it almost disappears because we have this regulated temperatures all the time.
00:45:57.000People don't expose themselves to cold.
00:45:59.000They're always bundling up and their homes are overheated.
00:46:03.000But what a lot of people are saying now, you can actually get that metabolically active fat, the brown fat cells going, which helps keep you lean and helps burn the other yellow fat.
00:46:17.000So cold showers, cold water treatments, exposing yourself to cold, a really good thing for developing that brown fat.
00:46:25.000And it builds your immune system, and you have a much better tolerance to cold, and much less likely to get innervated in cold weather, so you don't have a tendency to come down with colds or flu and stuff like that.
00:47:38.000You put on a surgical mask, you put on earmuffs, you wear socks that go up to your knee-high socks, and those rubber Crocs, because you don't want to stand on the floor.
00:48:19.000So when I count that minute down, I always want to make sure that I'm not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. I'm counting slower than the actual seconds.
00:51:43.000Once your body realizes that you're not going to die, no one has dropped you in the top of the moon, and it's on really 250 degrees below zero.
00:51:52.000That's literally the surface of the moon, is 250 degrees below zero.
00:51:57.000The moon varies from like 250 degrees to 250 degrees below zero, depending on whether or not the sun is hitting you or whether or not you're in the shade.
00:52:05.000Well, that's like how all these things work, even training, right?
00:52:08.000You know, your body, if training's done properly, your body perceives it as a threat to its survival.
00:52:13.000You know, you basically are tapping into your survival mechanism with these things.
00:52:18.000And your body in its wisdom will say, hey, I'm not quite up to snuff here.
00:52:23.000I better adapt and get stronger so I don't die.
00:52:27.000And that's training too, weight training or anything.
00:52:30.000You know, you have to make it stimulating enough and difficult enough to tap into that survival mechanism.
00:52:37.000So that if you're not, you're not getting the benefit of the training, or in this case, the cryotherapy.
00:52:44.000So your body, you know, like an adaptation response.
00:52:47.000Well, there's this new system that they've developed in Japan.
00:52:53.000And I don't know the gentleman's name who created it, but I had a chance to try it out this weekend in Austin.
00:52:59.000And what it essentially is, is like these, they take these straps and they constrict your bicep, like right below the delts.
00:53:09.000And then you go through like a 15 minute routine.
00:53:13.000Like 15 minutes of, you do curls, you start off, you do push-ups, you do curls with a kettlebell to failure, and all this is while your blood flow is restricted.
00:53:30.000I mean dead because you're restricting the blood flow and then they release it and take it off and Apparently the response that your body has to the fact that your blood flow is restricted it triggers all sorts of responses as far as your growth hormone your testosterone all these different your body starts trying to compensate for the fact that it doesn't have enough blood flow so it just over ramps everything up and it's apparently fantastic for healing It's fantastic for people that have injuries.
00:54:00.000Recovery time from injuries reduces drastically.
00:54:04.000Like Bodie Miller, the Olympic skier, he used it to get back in shape from surgery much quicker than he would have without it.
00:54:14.000It's just one of these new methods, much like this cryo thing, much like many of these other protocols, where they're trying to figure out ways to kind of trick your body into ramping up the healing process or ramping up the...
00:54:26.000So it's used for healing, not for strength training, per se.
00:54:30.000It'd be interesting to see how it compares to this traditional strength training as far as, you know, actual general strength.
00:54:37.000Yeah, and the idea also is that it puts a strong load on your muscles, but not on your joints.
00:54:43.000Because everything you're doing, like say if you're doing like kettlebell curls to failure, I was doing it with like a 35-pound kettlebell with two hands.
00:55:10.000But I just fucked around with it yesterday for the first time, and apparently the results are amazing.
00:55:15.000And at Onnit, we're starting to look into this and trying to see what we can do to bring this To the mainstream, but to try to get more athletes involved in doing things like this, you kind of get these results where you start going, oh, okay, well, if you do that and this,
00:55:32.000what if you do cryotherapy and this Katsu method and also the breathing?
00:55:37.000Also, what's the difference in the response to your body?
00:55:42.000What's the difference in how quickly you can heal, how quickly you can get in shape?
00:55:46.000That's a big issue for MMA fighters is the downtime from injury and then ramping your body back up to competition shape afterwards.
00:55:54.000Anybody who's ever gotten to a very good fitness level and then got injured, it's so frustrating getting back to the gym and then trying to get back in shape.
00:56:03.000And a lot of guys never do get back because it's just such a hard road to come back on.
00:56:11.000It's hard for people to accept the state that they're in.
00:56:15.000You know, like especially, that's one of the issues with younger athletes.
00:56:19.000You know, you're young, you're 20, your body heals quick, you're just a wild motherfucker, and you're doing anything you want.
00:59:47.000You know, Jones for some grappling experience, but it was really hard working a job, and at that time I was married and a householder with a family and all that.
00:59:55.000But I did go down a few times, and I got a chance to tour the facility, and it was really impressive.
01:00:00.000And I had a clinic with, well, the guy they didn't even mention was that guy, Valentin Jordan, the Bulgarian guy.
01:00:08.000That's the guy that DuPont gave his whole fortune to.
01:00:12.000When he died, his fortune went to this Bulgarian coach.
01:00:53.000And I was really fortunate to have, you know, been able to travel in those type of circles and get a chance to see it.
01:00:59.000But this is after my college wrestling days, so I was looking for that thing to fill the gap, you know?
01:01:05.000And that's when I discovered those Gracie brothers, you know, around 1989, man.
01:01:11.000It was like, oh, shit, this is what I've been looking for, man.
01:01:14.000What is it about the Bulgarians and a lot of the Russians and, you know, there's a lot of those people from that part of the world that are such good athletes.
01:01:23.000There's so many tough people from that part of the world.
01:01:57.000So, I mean, those guys are just, you know, they grow up in a really tough neighborhood, kind of like dog-eat-dog, and it produces like a really tough, kind of-minded I think a lot of these Eastern European countries, they don't have much.
01:02:12.000They have a lot of time on their hands.
01:03:49.000Gennady Golovkin, all these tough, tough guys coming out of Russia, of that area, you know, that part of the world, the former Soviet Union.
01:03:57.000Well, I've traveled, like, into Siberia.
01:04:00.000I've traveled to, like, you know, down around the Black Sea area.
01:04:04.000I've been to a lot of the Slavic countries, too, you know, Serbia and Slovenia.
01:04:08.000Man, the guys are huge, big, strapping guys.
01:04:12.000And you just don't see the obesity, either, man.
01:04:15.000They don't have the food to just, you know, they can't afford just to overeat like we do in America or, you know, in the rest of Europe or the UK or whatever.
01:04:26.000You see some, you know, some real fatties.
01:04:28.000But man, when you're there, wow, people are pretty lean and wiry and stringy.
01:04:32.000And a lot of the younger guys are just like specimens.
01:04:39.000I mean, you think about the people that have lived and gotten through those harsh climates and tough jobs and just had to work their whole life.
01:04:46.000And those are the people that bred and those are the people that kept going.
01:04:50.000What you notice also about a lot of those people from that part of the world, which is interesting enough, is not just that they're tough, but that they're very technical.
01:04:58.000There's a lot of really technical wrestling that comes out of Russia and out of the former Soviet Union, that area.
01:05:05.000Those guys, those Russian nationals that went up to Montreal, that's a lot of where George St. Pierre learned how to wrestle.
01:05:11.000Never wrestled in high school, never wrestled in college, but became one of the best wrestlers in MMA, and that's part of the reason why.
01:05:18.000I remember I wrestled, this was in the 70s, I wrestled in the Montreal Open Wrestling Tournament.
01:05:24.000And this was just at that time when the Russians were making a big influx and they were starting to try to defect and flee to the Western world.
01:06:19.000This was back when the Ukraine and Russia was all part of the Soviet Union.
01:06:23.000And he was telling me that they would only spar really hardly twice a week because they found that the live wrestling was what was producing all the injuries.
01:06:31.000But when they would train, they would train like real slow motion and they would gradually build their speed to the point where they were just going all out hard.
01:06:39.000And they would just do this for long periods of time.
01:06:43.000It's an unbelievably hard workout when you're shooting high crotch singles, doubles, and so forth at match speed over and over and over and over.
01:08:56.000You know, I've lost a little bit of touch with the wrestling community, but, you know, our wrestling coaches are fantastic.
01:09:01.000You know, they're smart guys, so I'm sure they're taking a hard look, because the Russians have been really successful, as have the Iranians, as the Turks, the Bulgarians, you know, all these countries that perennially put out, like, world champions.
01:09:31.000They don't have a lot of sophisticated equipment and so forth, but they make up for a lack of sophistication with equipment and facilities and all that with technique.
01:10:51.000We'll see if we can find some highlights of it, but what I'm going to ask Steve about it after he gets done using the little girl's room.
01:11:00.000What was incredibly impressive was not just the skill level that Dos Anjos showed, but the pace and the fitness.
01:11:09.000He doesn't want to toot his own horn, so I'll toot it while he's out of the room.
01:11:12.000He's so knowledgeable, and he got Diego Sanchez into probably the best shape of his life when Diego challenged BJ Penn for the belt, and Diego wound up getting beaten pretty badly by BJ when BJ was in his prime.
01:11:30.000And just one of my all-time favorite fighters.
01:11:33.000But he was in incredible shape for this fight as well, which was always like kind of his Achilles heel.
01:11:40.000He was so talented, but he just never really...
01:11:44.000He was able to continue that sort of strength and conditioning program that got him into the shape that he was when he fought Diego Sanchez.
01:11:52.000And what we were talking about with Steve being that the technique is so important.
01:11:58.000It is so incredibly important, but MMA is so unbelievably grueling.
01:12:04.000I had a conversation with Chael Sonnen about it, who's a former UFC fighter and fought for the title several times, a great fighter and also a very open guy, very open as far as his own limitations and his strengths and weaknesses.
01:12:20.000And he was just talking about how the time that you spend inside the Octagon, competing for 25 minutes, is almost impossible to really do.
01:12:47.000And very few people figure out how to get in the right shape as well as work their skills.
01:12:55.000It's so hard, man, because endurance is a skill.
01:13:00.000But then there's also the skill of making the other guy use up his energy more than yourself.
01:13:06.000And, I mean, controlling and managing your energy system in the ring and on the mat is such a skill unto itself.
01:13:18.000I mean, let's just take out the striking skills and the grappling skills and all that stuff.
01:13:23.000Just that energy management, that's huge, man.
01:13:27.000And a lot of guys don't pay enough attention to that.
01:13:30.000Well, dealing with pressure is a big one.
01:13:33.000I remember from my days of competing that when guys were really aggressive and I was backing up a lot, trying to move away, I'd get so much more tired because you're always thinking.
01:13:42.000You're dealing with this guy attacking you and you're backing up, which is kind of an unnatural movement.
01:13:47.000I mean, a lot of people run, but very few people run backwards.
01:13:50.000And you've got to realize that when you're going backwards, you're kind of using your muscles in a different way.
01:13:59.000Muhammad Ali used to run miles backwards because he was always backing up and then moving forward, backing up and moving forward.
01:14:06.000And one of the most beautiful things about him when you watch him, like in his prime, like the Cleveland Big Cat Williams days, before they took his title away because he didn't want to fight in the Vietnam War, His footwork and movement was just magical.
01:14:40.000I'm curious to see what you think after you watch this fight, because one of the most impressive things about the fight, as far as Dos Anjos' performance, was his cardio was insane!
01:14:50.000Yeah, some of these guys are just like something else, man.
01:14:53.000I mean, he just attacked from the moment the fight started.
01:14:57.000He just went after Pettis and just never let up.
01:16:00.000I had a conversation with him when the UFC was in Los Angeles, and one of the things that he said, he goes, first of all, we're going to test everybody tonight.
01:16:07.000We're not just testing the guys at the main event.
01:16:10.000We're not just testing the people that are involved in the pay-per-view.
01:16:14.000We're testing everyone that competes tonight, blood and urine.
01:17:00.000It's goddamn huge and there's some guys we all know some guys you try to hit Singles on them you try to like try to do an arm drag and it's like trying to pull a wall You know some dudes like look at who some are Paul Harris is a perfect example that damn dude is so strong He's so ridiculously strong.
01:17:17.000Do you see guys like John Fitch tangle up with them?
01:17:20.000I mean John Fitch is an elite wrestler elite Took him down and cranked on his leg in the first round.
01:17:26.000I mean, John never got out of the round.
01:17:28.000He just couldn't get out of the round.
01:17:29.000All of a sudden, he's leg locked and just didn't know what to do and got his leg hyperextended.
01:17:34.000But these performance-enhancing drugs they're catching guys for, some of them I've never even heard of.
01:17:40.000Oh, they're getting so sophisticated and stuff now.
01:17:42.000There's so many new cocktails that fall kind of just within the...
01:17:49.000You know, borders of legality, you know, because people are always discovering some new way to hop up or, you know.
01:17:56.000I was just curious what your take, you know, because you're around these guys all the time.
01:18:00.000Well, I think there's a lot of guys that are taking things when they don't think they're going to get tested, you know, when they need to recover.
01:18:08.000Just for the training and all, just to get through the training.
01:18:26.000You cannot engage in an extreme sport like MMA. And maybe to a lesser extent, jiu-jitsu and judo and wrestling at that competitive level without the tweaks.
01:18:41.000You cannot do a combat sport without paying the price to the body.
01:18:46.000But I wonder if a protocol will eventually be established, the most intelligent protocol, similar to what you're getting with these Russians that have developed this program for wrestling, where they're just doing a lot of technical training,
01:19:03.000not nearly as much sparring, but a lot of technique, a lot of repetition and drills.
01:19:09.000I wonder if that will slowly work its way into MMA and be established as this is the way to do it, the way they're doing it, say, in Russia.
01:19:19.000Yeah, well, I think it's going to have to at some point because, you know, the career window for a lot of these guys right now is like, what would you say, like two years maybe?
01:19:29.000Well, nine years seems to be the magic number for everybody.
01:19:36.000But don't you see a lot of these guys pretty much burning out within about two and a half, three years?
01:19:41.000It seems like there's a lot of guys that, you know, flare to the top and then they're gone.
01:19:46.000Yeah, there's also the issue where they're kind of forced to keep competing on a regular basis once they become successful, especially you break into the top ten and you want to keep competing and winning, and so you win a big fight and say, okay, the UFC calls you up on Monday, hey, we've got blah,
01:23:53.000I'll retweet the link later today after this podcast is over for folks who want to help out Mark.
01:23:59.000But he, you know, his body is just all banged up from the years of wrestling, high-level wrestler, and then from there, all the years of competing in MMA, he's getting his hip replaced too.
01:24:13.000I believe both of them need to be replaced.
01:24:16.000So that brings us back in full circle to where we started with the jujitsu for a lifetime.
01:24:22.000I really do believe there is a way that you can train and have a lot of fun with this stuff.
01:24:27.000But you've got to keep it really light, you know, like the grandsons of Elliot Gracie.
01:25:11.000And I think you can extend your grappling career well into a band stage.
01:25:16.000I think of all the martial arts, you can pretty much do jujitsu and submission wrestling, if you're smart, well into a band stage, unlike a lot of other things.
01:25:28.000Well, it's ironic that you say that because Hickson himself is very banged up, like really badly banged up.
01:27:59.000Pull up the video, see Mark Schultz disqualified wrestling, but it's a classic double wrist lock, you know, catch wrestling, double wrist lock.
01:28:09.000And he uses it to flip the guy over and just destroys his arm in the process.
01:28:14.000And he went on to learn a lot of submission techniques.
01:28:18.000Oh, the guy was an absolute frightening animal towards the end, wasn't he, after he learned those submissions?
01:29:08.000It's really interesting, but I saw Kimura on one of those old black and white pre-World War II judo videos do the same exact takedown with the gi.
01:30:48.000When I was a kid, York Barbell was like the mecca for strength training in those days.
01:30:53.000And Bob Hoffman, the father of American weightlifting and weight training, he had this system called the heavy light system.
01:31:00.000Where you would use heavy weights during one session and then lighter weights the next.
01:31:06.000But the lighter weights weren't that light.
01:31:08.000They just felt light because you had used heavy weights before.
01:31:11.000And sometimes even the same session you would hold a really heavy weight and then when you go to your normal weight it felt ridiculously light.
01:34:45.000And there's really a difference in this in comparison to striking arts because, you know, if these guys were kickboxing after a few leg kicks, Well, as long as you know how to do your breakfalls, you can...
01:37:51.000Even a professional like Dean, and I mean, Dean probably knows a hundred escapes from a headlock, but man, you get caught by surprise and get locked up in that thing, man.
01:39:37.000I mean, he's way thicker than when he was fighting at 205 in the UFC. I don't know what he's walking around on, but he looked to me to be like in the 240s or 230s at the very least.
01:40:06.000And, you know, that's grappling, right, on any given day?
01:40:10.000I love also the different approaches that Josh has a different approach and you see that that different approach that cast wrestling approach can be just as effective if he gets you in one of those positions You know it's it and it might be something you're not accustomed to so you haven't trained to get out of it I remember one of the first pro Grappling matches.
01:42:32.000It's like, if a guy has a footlock or something like that, he just has down.
01:42:37.000He just knows how to do it, and that becomes his thing.
01:42:40.000I mean, some guys just have certain positions that you're not really well versed in, and they go to it over and over and over again.
01:42:47.000Like, Eddie Bravo, before he got famous for doing the twister, one of the things I remember in Jean Jacques, Eddie Bravo would do a toehold.
01:44:22.000Yeah, it's really interesting when guys get super sharp at one particular technique.
01:44:27.000And if you're not aware of that particular technique, it could become really dangerous.
01:44:31.000You know, Braulio Estima is famous for having that very bizarre guard as well, where he'll, you know, do those reverse triangles or inverted triangles.
01:44:40.000And he gets himself into a position where, to the outside observer, it looks like, wow, this guy is like on his neck here in this weird position.
01:44:48.000And then all of a sudden he's got a triangle on the guy and he's tapping people.
01:45:15.000Did you play around with head kicks and you say they don't work?
01:45:17.000Because you know how many times you have to drill a head kick to get it effective?
01:45:21.000But then you get it up to, like, a point where, like, an Anthony Pettis has it, or an Anderson Silva has it, and it becomes a real dangerous weapon in your arsenal.
01:45:32.000Crow Cop drilled that damn head kick to the point where he could throw it out like another guy could throw out a straight punch, a standard straight punch.
01:45:39.000That's how good and fast his head kick was, and still is.
01:45:43.000And when you discount a technique simply because you don't have the proficiency in it, you can really get caught, because you really can sort of define the world in an inaccurate light, and then you see a guy, like maybe this Barambolo guy,
01:47:01.000If you don't know how to cinch up a choke, if you don't know how to cinch up an arm bar, you're never going to know exactly what you can get away with when you're defending.
01:47:10.000And once you get adapt at offense, then you'll truly understand defense because you'll understand what would I be trying to do to me if I was in this position and how do I stop this guy from doing that.
01:47:21.000All those little details, it's like so, so important.
01:47:25.000One of the most beautiful things about jiu-jitsu is there's so many techniques.
01:47:31.000Yeah, and you see certain guys who have a very small wheelhouse of techniques that they utilize, especially attacks.
01:47:37.000Like Marcelo Garcia is, of course, one of the best of all time.
01:47:41.000But he has a very, if you look at his, if you took all of his jiu-jitsu matches that he's won and look at how he won them, it's a very small number of chokes that he's used.
01:47:50.000I mean, it's almost all, I mean, Rico Rodriguez, I think he got him with a leg lock.
01:47:55.000Most guys, he got Jake Shields with a wrist lock, I believe.
01:48:01.000I remember Rico Schiaparelli had a professional jiu-jitsu tournament thing that he was doing in Los Angeles.
01:48:08.000Jacare competed against Randy Couture, and Marcelo competed against Jake Shields.
01:48:14.000And I believe he got Jake in a wrist lock, which is, you know, he's got some crafty shit in there.
01:48:44.000Maybe submission wrestling would be more like regular chess.
01:48:46.000And then jujitsu with the gi, with all the different ways you can manipulate the cloth, almost like three-dimensional chess.
01:48:53.000It's just such a huge variety of stuff.
01:48:57.000Yeah, the only problem I have with the gi is that I think a lot of people get brainwashed into thinking that you need to learn the gi to be good at jiu-jitsu and MMA. And Eddie Bravo in particular is very adamant that that is a ridiculous idea.
01:49:09.000He's like, that's like saying you have to be really good at racquetball to be good at tennis.
01:49:13.000Yeah, it's two different sports altogether.
01:49:15.000Well, there's just so much to grip, and you see so many guys that are world champions or that compete at a very high level with the Gi, and then they fight in MMA, and everyone's sweaty, and they have gloves on, and they can't grab things, and they seem lost.
01:50:14.000Because, you know, Halston, his English wasn't the most, it was hard to understand sometimes, you know, plus he mixed it with the Hawaiian slang.
01:50:23.000When I know I can win the fight, I can pretty much, you know, be that nice guy and kind and, you know, loving and all that towards other people.
01:50:32.000Because, you know, I had that confidence with myself that I know I can protect myself.
01:51:45.000Well, some guys, you know, be aggressive and rude about it, but some guys can do that with jujitsu, where you kind of have to think yourself through every step, and you're not kind of aware.
01:51:56.000I mean, that's how I always feel when I would roll with guys who are like at a really, really high level.
01:52:00.000It's like, I'm not prepared for all the steps that you could take to counter my step.
01:52:05.000You know, I will do a move, and you will do your move, but you also have all these other...
01:52:09.000You're already anticipating to counter this, I've got to do that, so I'm going to stop this by putting my hand on your knee here, and putting my foot on your hip here, and now you're going to have to try to get out of it, but I'm not going to let you get out of it, because I'm already anticipating that.
01:52:40.000It was amazing because the guy was pretty profound in his own very simple way.
01:52:44.000The way he'd explain things was pretty amazing.
01:52:46.000But somebody was complaining how easily he was catching them.
01:52:52.000And Halston says, look, I know everything you know and everything else.
01:52:57.000laughter I was like, yeah, absolutely.
01:53:01.000He says, maybe, maybe if I got sick or injured and was in the hospital for like three years and didn't train, maybe if I came back, you might have a chance.
01:55:55.000If she got in there with a guy who doesn't have that good a technique, just because he's a man, the physical strength and the benefits of being a male, whatever advantages that he may have, Aren't necessarily going to counter the technique that she has when they're the same weight.
01:56:13.000Now, if you're dealing with a guy like, you know, she competes at 135. Okay, if you deal with her versus a guy at 170 like Johnny Hendricks.
01:56:22.000Like, Jesus, of course that's a mismatch.
01:56:24.000Johnny Hendricks is a powerful, big, strong man, and he most likely would beat her up.
01:56:29.000But you're talking about a guy who's her weight, and then even if he's physically stronger, maybe he can hit harder, but how much of a technical advantage does she have on the ground?
01:56:40.000She could easily catch you in something in a scramble.
01:57:11.000And usually women are pretty flexible, so their guards are a nightmare to get, you know, some of these girls with their De La Havis and spider guards are like, wow, controlling those feet is a nightmare.
01:57:23.000Yeah, and you think about someone's guard, someone's legs have to carry their body around, you know, say if they weigh 140 pounds like Rhonda or 135. And, you know, you're carrying 135 pounds around all...
01:57:34.000By the way, she doesn't really weigh 135. She weighs 135 on weigh-in day.
01:57:38.000And then I would imagine she rehydrates up to around 150, close to it.
01:57:42.000She carries a lot of muscle in that frame.
01:57:52.000So you're dealing with someone who knows how to manipulate their body and they have these legs that are carrying around All of this weight all day long.
01:58:29.000Even a small woman has very strong legs.
01:58:33.000Well, the difference between male and female legs is a very small percentage, you know, in studies that they've done.
01:58:39.000Upper body, there is a significant difference, but with a trained woman, she can close that gap.
01:58:46.000And I'll tell you, for you older guys listening out there, you know, you guys over 40, or if you're a guy that's been injured, start seeking the girls out for sparring partners, and you will have a wonderful technical spar session.
01:59:00.000You also look like a little bit of a creep.
02:03:08.000Him and that Sanjay Gupta guy from CNN, they're all coming around.
02:03:11.000Man, if I came around, you know, it's like now that you're seeing it get legalized.
02:03:15.000But yeah, I was a little concerned because I wasn't sure, is it going to be like a Howard Stern thing where they try to make you look like an idiot?
02:05:37.000I analyze photographs for structure, you know.
02:05:41.000Postural stuff and then you get a custom workout program and you send me training logs and I review them and send the information back and do progressions with people and so forth.
02:05:52.000Well, I can't recommend you highly enough.
02:05:56.000All the years that we've been friends, I've just gained a tremendous amount of information from you and all the times we worked out together.
02:06:08.000So anybody who's interested in any sort of strength and conditioning workout, if you want to mix it up or just want to just tap into the database of knowledge, that is Steve Maxwell, maxwellsc.com.
02:06:19.000And all of these upcoming seminar dates are all available there.