Nick Kurson is a strength and conditioning coach who has worked with some of the most elite fighters in the world, including Rafael Dos Anjos, Ruslan Provodnikov, and more. He's been around the business for a long time, and has been a part of the UFC for a lot longer than most people realize. He has been in the business since the late 90's, and is one of the best at what he does, which is helping to develop and develop young fighters. In this episode, we talk about how important it is to have the right mindset and training to be successful in the UFC, and what it takes to be a top-level athlete in the sport. We also talk about what it means to be an elite fighter, and why it's so important to have a good amount of gas in your tank, and how important endurance is in order to be great at what you do in the octagon and in the ring, and in life in general. Click here for the full video version of this episode Click here to listen to the full audio version of the full episode Click Here for the complete audio version Click Here to see the complete video version Click HERE for the entire video version If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your favorite streaming service Subscribe and share the podcast! Subscribe and Retweet the podcast with your friends! Thanks for listening and sharing it! Timestamps: 0:00 - What are your thoughts on the podcast? - Rate/subscribe 5: 5:30 - What's your favorite moment of the week? 6:40 - What do you think about the UFC or UFC? 7: What's the best training coach? 8: What are you looking for? 9:15 - What is your favorite UFC fighter? 11:20 - what do you would you'd like to see in the next fight? 12:00 13:00 | What's a good training day? 15:30 | What is the best moment? 16:40 | What do I think you're most important thing to train? 17:30 18:40 19:00 What s your biggest challenge? 21:00 / 16:50 - what s your favorite training day of the past week so far? 22:00 & 17:00 +16:30 +17:10
00:01:19.000That's what everybody was hoping it would be.
00:01:21.000I was like, you guys are out of your mind.
00:01:23.000You don't know what you're about to watch.
00:01:25.000You guys are spending millions of dollars.
00:01:27.000It's going to be like the biggest gate ever.
00:01:28.000And what you're going to watch is a Floyd Mayweather exhibition on movement and jabbing and straight rights, lead right hands, clinch, get out of the way.
00:01:39.000I mean, that's what you're going to say.
00:02:16.000Yeah, that Matisse and Provanica fight with something else.
00:02:19.000So you're a strength and conditioning coach, and one of the reasons why I wanted to call you in here is because I am absolutely fascinated by the Marinovichs, the guys who Taught you a lot of what you know and I'm also fascinated by just the boundaries of human potential when it comes to strength and conditioning because as As an analyst as a guy who sits there and watches fights and I've seen I don't even know how many fights but I've probably professionally called Several
00:02:51.000I don't even know how many it's been really.
00:02:53.000It's been at least 1500 or something of the best fights ever, right?
00:02:58.000And you start seeing things over and over and over again and occasionally there's these outliers And these outliers are guys who just have way more gas than anybody else.
00:03:11.000Guys who have way more ability to push deep into the fourth and fifth rounds.
00:03:16.000And you wonder how much of what we're seeing in terms of what a fighter can do inside the octagon or inside the ring, how much of it is how much endurance they have.
00:03:28.000And I maintain that it's a significant amount.
00:03:36.000Because it seems like everybody is pretty skillful once they get to the upper levels of the UFC. When you're dealing with a Pettis or a Dos Anjos or, you know, all across the board.
00:03:48.000When you hit those high-level guys, they're all very skillful.
00:03:52.000Some are better at certain aspects of fighting than others.
00:03:54.000But it seems like the ones who can win and win the way Pettis and Dos Anjos went down, the way Dos Anjos just dominated Pettis.
00:04:12.000So, yeah, Rafael, when he first came to me, this was after the Cerrone fight, he'd tried several other strength and conditioning coaches, and after he came to me about two or three workouts in, he's like, wow, this is already amazing.
00:05:29.000So if your anaerobic systems aren't trained properly, you won't get that recovery in between the bursts.
00:05:34.000And some guys will go their entire career without ever correcting that, and you're always going to be in this weird limbo state where you're scared to push it too hard.
00:06:51.000I think, and I hate to make excuses, but I think if people understood what Rafael went through before that fight, they would be a little more accepting of the fact that he might kick Khabib's ass the next time they fight.
00:07:05.000A lot of people are already saying Khabib's the new champion.
00:07:08.000Rafael almost had his freaking eye gouged out.
00:07:11.000The whites of his eyes, like this was during the training camp, so he had to take another couple weeks off in the middle of the training camp.
00:07:16.000The whites of his eyes were literally hanging down from a guy's fingernails.
00:07:21.000They were sparring, the guy poked his fingernails into his eyes, and the whites of the eyes, strips of it, were hanging down below his eyelid.
00:11:29.000I mean, a fighter's career, like somebody pointed it out once, I think it was on mixedmartialarts.com, that there's like a nine-year period where a guy can really fight great.
00:11:56.000He's got all these, like, GQ magazine things coming up, and I don't know how much money that guy's worth now, but he doesn't need to fight.
00:12:59.000But you look at that Diego Sanchez fight, I maintain there's very few people ever that fought at 155 that could fuck with BJ when he was in that mode.
00:13:12.000It's funny because I just talked to Gary Marinovich about this the other day, you know, just to clarify why, what happened with those guys.
00:13:18.000And it came down to what Gary explained to me was they'd reached a point in training where they were doing their strength training in the morning, then they had, you know, the sparring was going on in the afternoons, and PJ approached them and, you know, he wasn't like a dick about it or anything.
00:13:32.000He was totally cool, like, hey, like, you know, How would you guys feel if we did the strength training on another day so I can do my sparring, you know, and I'm fresh for sparring?
00:13:42.000And I think Marvin Gary took that as, you know, he wasn't ready for that.
00:13:47.000He wasn't at that level yet where they're ready to back off the conditioning training and let him do that.
00:13:52.000So, I mean, there's a method behind their training and it's very rational.
00:13:56.000So I think the fact that he was questioning them at that point was just like enough.
00:14:00.000Maybe there's some other stuff going on, I don't know, but I think the questioning of their abilities as trainers at that point, like as if they didn't know what they were doing, was enough to turn them off and kind of...
00:14:12.000I think the mindset of fighters when it comes to strength and conditioning versus skill work is that it's very important to stay sharp with the skill work.
00:14:23.000It's very difficult to do that if you're already exhausted from strength and conditioning.
00:14:55.000Maybe one of the most skilled fighters we've ever seen in the UFC. I was a fan of his before he was even in the UFC. I told people, this dude, when I saw him at tournaments, he's a blue belt.
00:15:04.000I'm a black belt in jiu-jitsu, by the way.
00:15:07.000So, I've seen these guys from the start.
00:15:10.000I said, this kid's going to be freaking phenomenal.
00:15:12.000I said the same thing about Nick Diaz, too, years ago.
00:15:15.000When he was a purple belt, I'd see him at tournaments.
00:16:00.000For folks who don't know what we're talking about, BJ had adopted this very strange style that I've never seen before, where his feet were very close together...
00:16:14.000Instead of like the classic style of a stand-up fighter.
00:16:17.000I mean, there's variables when it comes to stand-up fighting for MMA because you have a more squared-off stance because you want to have your hips in place for takedown defense.
00:16:27.000But the classic stance is shoulders are up high, hands are right by the face, you know, head movement.
00:16:35.000BJ did this weird thing where he looked almost like a guy playing, pretending to be a fighter.
00:18:33.000I think Frankie is one of the best conditioned guys, and I would love to find out what he does for his strength and conditioning, because he's never fucking tired.
00:18:41.000He's always able to push that same pace every round, and that seems to be what separates the greats, the truly greats, from everybody else underneath them.
00:18:50.000You know, it's funny, a lot of people are talking about the Dos Angeles Pettis fight, but between me and you and the rest of the world, in my opinion, Rafael was in better conditioning, better shape for the Benson Henderson fight.
00:20:55.000I kind of knew, like, at the end of the training camp, the difference we'd made in that training camp in terms of speed...
00:21:02.000And power and his stamina I just knew like I knew where he was before and I knew where he was after and I said he's just gonna destroy him like I hope I almost Wanted to go five rounds so he could show like what he was capable of wow yeah Well, that's pretty crazy that he you know when we found out after the Pettis fight where he won the title and just won by just Dominating the champion and a guy who Dana White had been pretty public saying he thought was the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport and And,
00:21:32.000you know, I didn't agree with that necessarily, but I certainly did think the kid was spectacular.
00:21:37.000I mean, the way he stopped Donald Cerrone, the way he stopped Joe Lozon, I mean, he was capable of just unleashing these kicks out of nowhere to put people away.
00:22:04.000If you watch that fight, I watched it several times, Pettis had caught him several times with some pretty hard shots when Gilbert was coming in, because he knew Gilbert's strategy.
00:23:11.000I have the hypoxic altitude simulator, not the little Velcro masks, but this is the actual one that thins the air and changes your blood oxygen levels.
00:23:19.000So, I mean, it takes time to build up to that.
00:23:22.000I wouldn't, like, recommend anyone go try it at 12,000 feet right now.
00:23:25.000You're going to have, like, a seizure or something.
00:23:54.000And just keep pushing them and know what they can take.
00:23:57.000Is that a factor, a big factor, when you're working with an athlete that you have to know what this athlete is capable of and where you're gonna break them?
00:25:15.000It also depends on their past like conditioning too, you know what I mean?
00:25:18.000So like if a guy's never had a certain type of aerobic or anaerobic training in his career, of course it's going to take a few more days to recover.
00:25:27.000It's going to take a lot longer to develop.
00:25:29.000That was one of the things that Uriah Faber said was one of the reasons why his team, that team alpha male, has so few injuries.
00:25:37.000There's some camps that have amazing records as far as their fighters.
00:25:43.000The fighters win great, but they have a giant amount of injuries.
00:25:47.000But his camp, Team Alpha Male, occasionally guys get hurt, like TJ had to pull out of the head and burrow fight because of a broken rib.
00:26:31.000If you've got a good program and it helps maintain the health of the athletes, then that's something.
00:26:38.000Now when you say that heavy weightlifting destroys the equilibrium of the athlete, what exactly do you mean by that?
00:26:44.000So what I mean by that is, let's say you're doing bicep curls, for example, and you're doing heavy weightlifting, you're doing heavy bicep curls, you're shortening that bicep.
00:27:10.000So if you do, like say if you're doing something along the lines of bicep curls, it must be critical that you do tricep extensions or dips or something along those lines.
00:27:33.000It requires a certain amount of eccentric overload.
00:27:36.000Eccentric would be like the movement coming downward.
00:27:38.000Like when you do a bench press, the negative portion of that, that's the eccentric portion of the lift, has to come down with approximately 40% greater force downward than it goes up to maintain muscular equilibrium.
00:29:56.000So this thing is, I've seen this on the BJ Penn training things.
00:30:00.000This kid is sitting with his back, he's lying on his back rather, but his butt has a bounce ball under it and then there's this padded thing above him that he keeps kicking up.
00:30:09.000And what's the philosophy behind that?
00:30:12.000First of all, you learn how to control your limb better.
00:30:14.000When you're upside down like that and there's no load, you get greater control of your limb.
00:30:19.000At the same time, you can work the full extension of the foot, which is crucial in pretty much every sport.
00:30:27.000So he's catching these, he's got these things for arms too now.
00:30:30.000So that's like a plyometric movement right there for the upper body right there.
00:31:23.000That's, you know, Taekwondo has its faults, but goddamn, when it comes to leg dexterity, some of those guys have the most unbelievable leg dexterity.
00:31:32.000And if you could teach them all the other skills, Muay Thai, wrestling, all this stuff, they have such a weird advantage with their legs.
00:32:41.000The best athletes are the ones that have the highest rate of force development.
00:32:45.000The ones that can produce the greatest amount of force in the least amount of time.
00:32:50.000So that means like a guy that can, you know, I don't know jump and touch his head on the ceiling versus a guy you know in a split second versus a guy would take him three or four seconds to get up there right so that would be the comparison between a plyometric bench press like I just showed you on the video there as compared to like a 225 250 pound bench press so you're a big fan of doing everything just exploding and everything absolutely that's interesting because there is a school of thought especially along with jujitsu guys where they like super
00:33:28.000Pretty much that's an isotonic contraction.
00:33:30.000I don't see how that even helps jujitsu at all either.
00:33:33.000Well, the idea is that if you get someone's back and you're working the choke, you know, like your arms might gas out, but this way they won't.
00:33:39.000Matt, I'll tell you right now, as soon as...
00:33:42.000The whole thing with BJ Penn opened my eyes to so many different things.
00:33:46.000And what I felt when I was training with him was there was no strength.
00:33:49.000His technique was so precisely timed that he needed absolutely no strength.
00:34:13.000And then I went to the Machado School in Redondo Beach.
00:34:16.000And I went there at a time when you show up on Saturdays, John Jock, John, Hegan, Hodger, they're all on the mat there training with the students.
00:34:24.000Plus, you have Bob Bass, you have Rick Williams, you have all these great black belts underneath them who are there training with all the students.
00:34:57.000I was okay when I first got my black belt.
00:35:00.000And then after training with BJ and those guys, man, being in that training camp, it completely opened my mind to, fuck, I've been doing everything wrong for the last 20 years.
00:35:59.000But what about guys who want to bulk up?
00:36:02.000Like Mackie Shillstone when he trained to Vander Holyfield to get him up to heavyweight and he had him do all this crazy weightlifting stuff.
00:36:37.000Plus, yeah, you have to look at the genetics of the athlete, too.
00:36:40.000But if you take a guy like, perfect example, maybe like Michael Jordan.
00:36:44.000When Michael Jordan was playing against the Pistons, like one of the things he realized, like, Jesus fuck, I'm getting pushed around, I'm getting my ass kicked.
00:37:05.000I think there's too much of an emphasis on getting bigger.
00:37:07.000And it might have been more advisable to train your body.
00:37:11.000Maybe there were certain weaknesses in his hips or his feet or lower back or obliques that were making him weaker.
00:37:18.000I've seen plenty of guys whose bodies are working as a unit, like with the type of training that I offer, that can literally bully guys that are way bigger, more muscular, and it all comes down to the efficiency of the movement.
00:38:09.000That's actually a good point because that's been proven that...
00:38:13.000Repetitive bouts of absolute strength training, which is like your maximum strength training, like maximum bench press, the heavy lifts, will deteriorate a boxer's punching power and accuracy.
00:38:33.000Okay, so like say if a guy goes through your conventional strength program, deadlifts, bench press, that can deteriorate his punching power.
00:38:45.000Because it deteriorates the speed strength qualities.
00:39:38.000That's a funny way to look at it, but I think you're right.
00:39:40.000You know, when he landed that straight left in the first round, and you see Pettis' head snap back, I was stunned, first of all, by the speed in which he threw that shot.
00:39:50.000I was very impressed with his speed, but also...
00:39:55.000That, you know, he was able to keep that speed up through the fourth and fifth rounds.
00:40:00.000I mean when he nailed him in the first round, I mean Pettis said from then on he was having a hard time seeing out of that eye.
00:40:06.000He was getting pretty much fucked from then on.
00:40:08.000That was super impressive because if you go back and watch his earlier fights, like go back and watch him against Jeremy Stephens early in his career where he lost by knockout, like the THE Stephens highlight reel, He just was a different guy.
00:40:24.000I mean, very few guys, when you look at their early UFC career and then look at their peak performance, which Dos Anjos clearly is in his peak.
00:40:32.000He just won the title against one of the best guys ever in that division.
00:40:35.000But he's a different human being all around.
00:40:38.000The funny thing is, I don't really read too much on the internet, but I had to with this one, you know, with people saying PEDs and all this shit.
00:40:47.000I see comments, there's no strength training program that can do that.
00:40:51.000If you look, it's been going on for a year, you know, we've been building it up.
00:40:56.000So if you compare, like I said, like his fight with Cerrone, he's really stiff.
00:41:00.000He told me himself by the third round he was like gassy, he was fatigued.
00:41:04.000And so this isn't like one training camp.
00:41:08.000I mean, this has been going on for a year of really good training where he and I are training like three or four times a week.
00:41:13.000I mean, you know, granted, except for the times in between fights when he's got his downtime.
00:41:18.000But I mean, he's been very consistent with it.
00:41:21.000And after about three months of this is when you see the tendons, ligaments, and everything really start working as a unit, and that's when the power and everything really come into play.
00:41:32.000So say if you took a guy, like, let's just pull a guy out of the roster.
00:41:37.000Let's go with Matt Matreon, big heavyweight, fast guy, moves really well for a heavyweight.
00:41:43.000What would you do with a guy like that?
00:41:45.000First thing, the guy comes to me the first day, I'm going to do muscle tests on him and find out what's going on with his body and find out if there's any types of weaknesses like in his feet and the rotational power of his hips, lower back, especially a big guy, lower back and lower abdominal cavity, flexibility in his shoulders.
00:42:02.000I can't stress that enough for punching power.
00:42:05.000There's an optimal range of motion where you produce the greatest amount of force in all of your joints.
00:42:13.000I mean, that's pretty easy to understand, right?
00:42:16.000So if my shoulder flexibility is here, I'm going to lose speed.
00:43:19.000And that goes back to the muscular equilibrium thing I was talking about.
00:43:22.000So let's imagine you're doing heavy front squats every day or like three times a week, you know, 80% of your one rep max or whatever, and you're doing your maxes on one every other week or whatever.
00:43:33.000You're developing those quadriceps at the expense of the hamstrings.
00:43:36.000It's not even a running movement, really.
00:44:33.000The strength in the feet and what it does for the nervous system are crucial for athletic performance, and yet it's like one of the most neglected areas.
00:44:42.000The feet, like the neural impulses, so the sensory and motor nerves are very highly active in the forefoot.
00:44:50.000And this can actually help speed up your reflexes by hyper-training the feet on different planes, like balance exercises and stuff like that.
00:45:00.000We'll actually speed up that circuitry between the reaction between the foot and the spinal cord through, you know, as you speed up the neural impulses.
00:45:09.000Speed up the neural impulses by strengthening the feet.
00:46:46.000So you're training over and over these movements that are not practical for a sports movement, which pretty much every sport is played on the forefoot.
00:47:15.000Like, Marv's been preaching this for years, you know, and people just kind of scoff at it, and you say, oh, no, I've got to get my heavy back squat in.
00:47:23.000Yeah, that's fine, but maybe this can help you with it.
00:47:26.000You know, start training the feet, looking at what we're talking about here, and the sequence of muscles that you're going to start firing when you do start training the feet.
00:47:36.000A better option for squatting would be a front squat.
00:47:41.000And now let's say you take a couple 45-pound plates and you put them under the balls of your feet.
00:47:45.000So now you're engaging more of a sports movement.
00:47:48.000You're on the balls of your feet and you're loading up the front instead of the back.
00:47:52.000Back squat is technically a lower back exercise.
00:47:54.000It really hits the lumbar and hits the lower back a lot.
00:47:57.000The front squat is going to hit more quadriceps, more muscles required for jumping, you know what I mean?
00:48:02.000As well as the core and stabilizing the spine with the abdominals and everything.
00:48:07.000So that's just a thought, like maybe you can do that.
00:48:10.000You think like start thinking in that process where you're training from the feet up, the forefoot up, not just the heels, but the forefoot up and you'll start connecting different muscles required for sports movements.
00:48:23.000We were talking before the podcast that I'm really getting into yoga recently, the last couple weeks.
00:50:05.000He said it's like you're sort of almost like learning from people around you to walk and stand a certain way, and it's almost like a laziness of the posture of your foot.
00:50:26.000For a guy like you, like I said, like the balancing type exercises we have and the foot strengthening modalities that we use, well, definitely...
00:50:48.000Okay, then take your shoes on and try a few without your shoes and really accentuate the movement in the toes to the tip of the toe, not just to the pad of the toe, but to the tip of the toe, and see the difference you feel in your Achilles and your calves.
00:51:00.000Okay, and I guarantee you it's going to blow you away.
00:51:04.000Tremendous difference when you just use that little bit, that little extra inch of your toes, and you feel it all through the arch of the foot, and you feel it all the way up through the calf.
00:54:26.000The way he fucking keeps coming and bombing and moving and throwing bombs, like, Jesus, what a fight that was.
00:54:32.000Well, yeah, and the cool thing about that was...
00:54:36.000I like Ruslan, but the fights prior to that, you know, he had a tendency to fade after three or four rounds.
00:54:43.000And whatever that was, you know, focus or conditioning, I don't know.
00:54:47.000But even if it's mental focus, you need to condition that as well.
00:54:50.000And so this training camp, I really dedicated a lot of time to learning how to push him into the later rounds and getting to bring it more and more as the fight progressed.
00:55:01.000Now, Freddie Roach trains him as boxing?
00:55:05.000And what was, like, Freddie's assessment of, like, the difference in his performance from training with you, like, what he can get out of him in the gym?
00:57:59.000If it's fresh, you'd think they'd kill the whole horse and someone would spoil, or do they just, like, take off limbs at a time and then, like...
00:58:08.000When you buy, most beef that you buy from the store is fresh.
00:58:12.000I mean, they're not freezing your steaks, for the most part.
00:58:15.000Some fish is frozen, but almost all beef you're buying has been killed fairly recently.
00:58:21.000Some of it's dry-aged, but this horse was, you know, I guess actually they killed the horse in America, but you can't sell it in America in stores, but you can kill them in America, and then they export them to Canada.
00:58:34.000It's very tricky, you know, because people have very strong attachments towards them as animals, as pets.
01:00:28.000I want to get in the shower, and I'm holding him in one arm, and I hit the The dimmer on the light switch, it doesn't work properly, so you're always messing with it to get it to work.
01:02:01.000When she was three, we're packing all the stuff up, we're getting ready to leave, you know, we're leaving the trip, and we're in the hotel, and she's got her little bag zipped up, and my wife goes, we forgot to put the helmet in the bag, and the little kid, she's three, she goes, shit.
01:02:19.000And my wife looks at me, and her eyes light up, and I had to fucking turn my face and run out of the room, because I couldn't stop laughing.
01:03:21.000Like, we're babies with our fucking language.
01:03:23.000And it's so dumb because it's all just by television.
01:03:26.000It's all, like, the censorship that we've imposed upon ourselves with television is the same censorship that we bring into the household and you expect from kids at school.
01:03:35.000Like, I don't give a fuck about language.
01:03:37.000I appreciate how people treat each other.
01:03:43.000If you're friendly and you say, fuck, I feel good about talking to you.
01:03:46.000If you're a rude person and you don't use bad language or you're uncomfortable or you're not kind or considerate, then I feel gross about talking to you.
01:03:56.000But if you're a normal person and you say, fuck, what kind of a weirdo cares about that?
01:04:02.000But we've, like, imprinted it into our brains, and the same retarded shit, we pass it down from parent to child and parent to child.
01:04:20.000Because I know that it's not, like, when people are alone, when they're comfortable, when they're together, when they're out drinking, when they're, you know, at a bar or restaurant, they swear.
01:04:59.000Yeah, it drives me nuts man because I've had like people come on my podcast and Like the podcast like someone will say it was a great podcast except for Rogan's language in my language Like he asked great questions if you get past the language.
01:05:27.000And when you're the adult, when you're a grown person, you're a fully grown adult, you pay your own bills, you feed yourself, the whole deal.
01:06:41.000The point of this podcast is I have just so many questions for you.
01:06:44.000I have to get back to this because it's really fascinating.
01:06:46.000What do you think when you watch those countdown shows and you see guys doing the battle ropes and there's a bunch of very specific things that you see.
01:07:36.000I think it would be more about leverage of the leg, the placement of the leg and the leverage and the power of the foot, which we go back to the strength of the feet.
01:07:44.000The strength of the foot cannot be understated.
01:07:47.000They've done studies like on Olympic weightlifters.
01:07:51.000That show that the foot actually produces the greatest amount of force in the Olympic weight lifts.
01:08:31.000I think something that you can't do quickly and incorporate the stretch shortening cycle.
01:08:37.000Like I said, plyometrics, in my opinion, are the king for strengthening the body.
01:08:42.000So box jumps, those type of exercises where you're doing the descending bench press and catching it and Anything where the muscle is being put on stretch and then firing back at a faster rate.
01:08:55.000So you can even do that manually, like to exercise for the hips.
01:08:58.000You can do that with a hand, throwing the leg down and work it in different angles.
01:09:02.000So imagine strengthening every muscle in your body plyometrically.
01:09:06.000Then you've got like a fast-twitch animal that's highly trained.
01:09:09.000Can you take a guy who's slow and you can make him fast?
01:09:34.000And what he's doing, he's testing for any kind of abnormalities that might be in your spine or might show up in your nervous system.
01:09:42.000It could be some other kind of disease or whatever.
01:09:44.000But what it's doing is it's sending a neural impulse through the tendon, all the way up through the muscle into the spine, and then it inhibits the hamstring.
01:10:05.000So if you hit right on the patellar tendon, your leg kicks...
01:10:11.000It's actually switching off your hamstrings simultaneously at the same time it's activating the quadricep.
01:10:18.000So you get a greater contraction out of the quadricep without even trying.
01:10:22.000That's where the efficiency that you've been talking about comes in.
01:10:25.000So by training the stretch-shortening cycle, you can duplicate that throughout the entire body as long as you're training every muscle like that.
01:10:34.000So do you have like a standard MMA fighter protocol that you follow?
01:10:39.000Or does it vary depending upon what the athlete brings to you in the first place?
01:10:43.000Do you try to get them to a place and then work from there?
01:10:56.000For example, I'll hold your toes and I'll have you try to push me back and I'll feel like it's like a manual muscle test, like something a chiropractor might do or a physical therapist looking for weaknesses.
01:11:07.000And then the hips, you can test the abduction and adduction.
01:11:10.000You can turn the person over and you can test the rotation of their hip here.
01:11:13.000And all these things play into the mechanics of sporting movements.
01:11:18.000So the rotational muscles of the hip If you've got, let's say, you're right-handed and you've got weak rotational muscles in the left, in your left leg, that's going to affect your left hook.
01:12:29.000First of all, I'd probably want to turn him over and feel what his spine feels like and feel for what the vertebrae is lined up like and his hips.
01:12:39.000And then I did a visual assessment of his lower back.
01:12:42.000He's an extremely flexible guy, right?
01:13:16.000His leg dexterity is very unusual in his hips, his ability to, you know, like what he calls jailbreak, like say if you have him in side control.
01:13:24.000He can pick his foot up without even grabbing it with his hand, bring it across like that, get a deep butterfly hook, and then turn and face you.
01:13:47.000I don't want to be sued for anything, you know what I mean?
01:13:50.000But there are some traction stretches you can do, like some manual therapy stuff that I've learned from a very well-respected neurologist and physiologist, crazy Russian guy, scientist.
01:14:04.000So we've implemented a lot of that stuff for the health of the spine.
01:14:09.000Yeah, there's some stuff you can do to relieve the pressure there.
01:14:13.000Because back and neck, those are really common with grapplers.
01:14:16.000I know so many wrestlers who have fused discs.
01:14:19.000Like Tito Ortiz, I think he's got three fused.
01:14:22.000He's got one in his neck fused and I think he's got two in his back.
01:14:25.000One in his lumbar and maybe one thoracic or something like that.
01:14:29.000Yeah, I had to have the steroid injections in my neck.
01:15:26.000He actually had some significant neck problems for years, and then he was, I think it was on Sons of Anarchy, one of those shows, where he was doing a stunt, and they threw him on his head.
01:15:50.000Yeah, he had the the nerve opening They they go in there and they sort of carve it out clear clear the opening to relieve the pressure on the nerve and even that like he probably did it all too late in his arm had been atrophied for so many years and That it just,
01:16:09.000it's a long process to rebuild the nerves.
01:17:55.000Schaub didn't even realize he was hooked on him.
01:17:57.000He was taking him every day for like three or four months and then his friends apparently intervened and said, hey dude, you're fucking whacked out all day.
01:18:30.000No, I think I'm looking at a different thing.
01:18:31.000It's kind of like an ATV, but a little bigger, and two guys, like a dune buggy, like a miniature dune buggy with a cage around it, and guys go up hills, like you can see all these fucking guys in the south, love them.
01:18:41.000And yeah, so you know where I'm going with this song, it's fucking gnarly.
01:18:44.000So this guy, a couple of my buddies buy a brand new one, they're like, come on out, it's going to be a great weekend, man, let's go fucking riding this weekend, whatever.
01:18:52.000Long story short, these guys ended up in the hospital.
01:18:55.000They flipped the thing, and one guy busted his scalp open.
01:18:58.000He's got a hole like the size of a golf ball.
01:20:44.000They cleared it all out, cut the turbinates out, stretched open the openings, like, put splints in there and shit, and actually it kind of widened the physical look of my nose.
01:20:53.000It kind of changed a little bit because it was, like, a little more sucked in.
01:24:08.000You can see in that one, I think that's that seems like after the Kung Lee fight, that's tough to tell there, but for a lot of the fights like his nose was just useless.
01:29:35.000Actually, one of the things I wanted to ask you about is, is it because, like a guy like Vladimir Klitschko is just this massive person.
01:29:43.000I always wondered, like, does it take longer to develop efficiency of movement and the ability to move your body better, to understanding your body, if you have more of it to learn?
01:29:55.000If you're dealing with a much larger frame, much more body mass, is it more gravity?
01:30:52.000I always felt like they're just, they're dealing with more gravity.
01:30:55.000Like it seemed to me like lighter weight guys, especially back in the kickboxing days, I had noticed that the lighter weight guys seemed to learn quicker.
01:31:04.000They seem to pick up the skills quicker.
01:31:26.000If you watch Mighty Mouse, Demetrius Johnson, the UFC flyweight champion, the guy who, in my opinion, is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, I think...
01:31:34.000When it comes to taking the least amount of punishment, the ability to make great fighters look average, the ability to impose his skill set, and never runs out of gas, and is always technically in the best position.
01:32:21.000Unless you bring it in, you'd have to bring in like a Vinny Magalais, like someone who's like a really, and only specifically work the ground aspect of it.
01:32:29.000Because Vinny can't hang with Verdum on the feet.
01:33:23.000When you go back to his fight with Junior Dos Santos, or even before that, his fights in Pride, and you see the rudimentary striking he had back then, and then you look at his abilities now, pretty goddamn impressive.
01:33:42.000But if you look at the best fighters in the world, the two best guys in the heavyweight division currently, the best of all time, I kind of got to go with Fedor.
01:33:52.000I just think Fedor, yeah, I think he's the best of all time in the heavyweight division.
01:33:56.000I mean, maybe Kane would have beat him.
01:34:42.000Because that goes back to what we're saying about the rate of force development and how...
01:34:46.000If you look how explosive Fedor is, despite not looking like Hercules, that goes back to what we're talking about, the rate of force development and how the nervous system...
01:34:56.000You know, plays the greatest role in how much force you produce, so how explosive you are.
01:35:02.000He's an interesting case, too, in that he started off his career early on.
01:35:06.000He was into heavy kettlebells, did a lot of lifting, and he was a thicker, bigger guy.
01:35:18.000He just would wrestle and do sambo and kickboxing and all that stuff.
01:35:22.000I remember you asking, I think I heard a show where you're asking, you know, you're wondering what the Russian guys are doing, like these wrestling guys, like what are they doing for their conditioning?
01:40:02.000I was having this problem with my back and this guy gave me advice.
01:40:07.000This guy was a strength and conditioning coach to do a lot of windmills.
01:40:12.000He was like, windmills, you know, kettlebell windmills, like dropping down like that, are really good for stabilizing the spine, stabilizing the shoulder joint and, you know, anything that is in the thoracic area.
01:40:33.000But I'm not big on like the neck bridging.
01:40:35.000I think that the discs are so small in the neck that, you know, you put, man, I used to do like 45 pound plates on my chest and do the neck bridges on the back of my head.
01:44:24.000I think, actually, I believe they use them at the Disc Institute or the place in L.A., you know, Marina Del Rey, the spine or whatever, disc or something like that.
01:44:37.000Because there's a lot of different, like Kelly Starr again, I hate to bring him up again, but he hates a lot of these machines that are out there, like those machines where you can lean inside.
01:44:50.000Yeah, four-way neck, flexion extension, all that stuff.
01:48:54.000I don't load guys up with weight unless the quality of the movement and the speed will not be compromised.
01:49:02.000So if that's compromised, then there's no sense in moving it up.
01:49:05.000For me, it's all about getting the guy faster, producing more force.
01:49:11.000So when you have a guy like Dos Anjos, and you obviously got him in incredible shape, do you incorporate any traditional exercises that people are familiar with?
01:49:20.000Like, say, hill sprints or sandbags or anything?
01:49:24.000Hill sprinting is kind of, like, that's old school, you know?
01:49:28.000Like, I used to do that shit like crazy, but fuck, man, I pushed myself to the limit.
01:49:32.000Like, oh, my heart rate's like 190. Wow, I'm really pushing it, 195. But it slows you down.
01:49:40.000Your sprinting should be done for speed.
01:49:48.000It's actually been shown that it's proven.
01:49:50.000You can look this up in the strength and conditioning manuals, whatever, that downhill sprinting has been shown to increase the top speed in sprinter's performance.
01:50:17.000I think the biggest misconception with all the resistance type training is that somehow you're gonna put the weight down and you're gonna move faster.
01:50:36.000Wasn't there some sort of a study on power lifters that they found out that power lifters that increased their ability to do vertical leaps and all sorts of other different explosive exercises just because of power lifting?
01:50:47.000There might be some truth to that and Olympic lifting as well.
01:50:52.000But you would say that that's strengthening of the feet?
01:50:54.000I'd say that has a lot to do with it, but also the strength of the quadricep in relation to the leg in relation to the rest of the body, but how do they move laterally?
01:51:08.000Well, when you see a really big bulky guy in the UFC, it becomes super obvious when they fight a guy who can move, you know, moves real good.
01:51:19.000When you see, but you know, for some guys, like their style, like Husmar Palhares, you know, he's a guy where that big, beefy fucking build, all he's trying to do is grab ahold of your leg and rip it apart.
01:53:58.000First thing I do is get a movement, dynamic movements.
01:54:01.000Getting him to move a little quicker on his feet, learning how to do more coordination exercises, but keeping him loose and dynamic rather than anything that's tense and going to tighten him up.
01:54:12.000Even the shadow boxing a month ago, it looks like slow motion.
01:54:28.000I'm not going to say it was easy because this is one of the harder cases.
01:54:30.000Usually it takes about two weeks before I start seeing a difference.
01:54:33.000But, no, once you get that breakthrough and you start seeing them moving differently and quicker, man, it's on from there.
01:54:39.000It's like, okay, now we can start really progressing and hitting the nervous system with really, like, intense biometrics and stuff like that.
01:54:46.000Now, how cutting-edge is this style of training?
01:54:50.000I mean, Marinovich, did he invent all this?
01:54:55.000Uh, scientific studies from, from what the Russians had developed back, you know, during the Cold War period, and he translated into his, his exercises.
01:55:05.000And so, I'd say at least 80% of what I'm doing is, is stuff that he's come up with.
01:55:55.000You're a guy with an open mind, you'd be blown away at the difference.
01:55:58.000Well, I would love to, just from the point of view, I mean, first of all, for a person, I'm always trying to work on, you know, different things and improve different things about my performance physically, but I also, as a commentator, I think...
01:57:58.000When that guy got in there and started rolling his knuckles, he knew you were gonna see some shit.
01:58:02.000I'm so happy that he got that lifetime ban rescinded.
01:58:06.000I don't know whether or not he was on, I don't know what the fuck he was on, but I do know that the vast majority of those guys are doing something to help them recover and when you take a guy and you take away his livelihood forever, you say you can never fight again.
01:58:28.000Kung Lee, they were going to give him a one-year suspension.
01:58:33.000They were going to give him nine months, and they tried to shift it to one year.
01:58:36.000He had agreed to nine months, and then when they tried to shift it to one year, that's when he started hearing all these people on the internet that were saying that the tests that they did were not proper.
02:02:27.000Do you think it exists because of improper training or because guys want to get an edge?
02:02:31.000Because I think that, man, Joe, if you and I are trying to reach for that cup of coffee and you take something and I know you took it and I want the coffee, I'm going to take it too.
02:02:40.000If I think it's going to give me a benefit.
02:03:12.000I think if it's a medical thing, and like you've been to a doctor and they say, hey dude, this is it.
02:03:16.000I think if it's regulated to the point where it doesn't put you above an average level of testosterone, then I don't see how it should be a problem.
02:03:27.000It gives you quicker recovery, allows you to train harder.
02:03:30.000Right, but I'm saying as long as it's not above an average level.
02:03:33.000So if you're deficient, let's say your total testosterone is 100, and the doctors are monitoring it thoroughly, and you show up every week and they're doing a test, and they can show, like, hey, this is his thing, and it's 300. That's it.
02:04:23.000Testosterone, your body goes, all right, we got plenty of this, and it stops its natural production, and so then you would do that, and then go get tested, and then the doctor would say, oh, your natural production is way down.
02:04:43.000Like, Raphael, like, the guy saying that, I don't know who he is, but...
02:04:48.000You have to understand there's a reason he's the champion, and it starts with his mind and his discipline and his dedication to the fighting.
02:06:56.000I don't even understand what drug he would need to take to have, like Rafael, I don't even know what drug he would need to take to have great stamina.
02:08:33.000So if you took a guy, like a guy that was known for not having the best stamina in the world, a guy who fades, how much time would you need to get him to a point where he had a fight?
02:08:43.000Like, say if he's fighting a title fight.
02:09:22.000How come you only need that much time?
02:09:24.000I'm just kind of trying to base that off of like past experiences.
02:09:28.000I'd say about three weeks to get him up ready for about five rounds.
02:09:33.000He might struggle a little in the fifth round, but you give me a full training camp with a guy, he'll do like seven or eight rounds hard, no problem.
02:09:40.000What is a full training camp for you, ideally?
02:09:45.000So if you had a guy and you wanted to get a guy to the best possible shape for five rounds, he'd say he's going to be fighting Robbie Lawler for the title.
02:09:53.000He's got to go five rounds through fucking hell.
02:11:05.000If the striking sucks and he's good at jiu-jitsu and he's good at wrestling, he's got no stamina, then you've got to devote a little more time to the stamina and the striking to try to build that up.
02:11:15.000Again, with a skill, there's only so much you can do in one training camp.
02:12:00.000Yeah, they can do like they can you can tell what you want like a menu or something like that I think I think it's called Sun Foods or something because I would think that the more things you could take out of the athletes mind that they have to think about the more resources they have yeah, right?
02:13:55.000Like, I showed up looking like a 24-year-old beach model, man, you know what I mean?
02:13:59.000Like, 41 Mexican, 41 Mexican, you know, it's like been through wars, like, you know, I mean, it's like, you guys showed up, that was ridiculous, I mean.
02:14:07.000Yeah, and it might be, that might have been a fight where Pacquiao was clean for the first time.
02:15:02.000You know, you can tell, Joe, by looking at a guy's calves.
02:15:05.000So the gastrocs, the two calf muscles on the side of the calf right there, if they're really underdeveloped, the guy's chances are the guy's got poor balance.
02:15:13.000Those two are fast twitch muscles that control your balance.
02:15:17.000So like Pacquiao's footwork is freaking amazing, right?
02:18:45.000He'd do a lot of stuff with rubber straps and stuff, pulling on them and resisting and stretching.
02:18:51.000You know, at this camp, he was doing all the same stuff that basically that I'm doing, that I do with my guys, like the dynamic stretching.
02:18:58.000A lot of the exercises on the stability ball and workouts in the pool, like stuff they use for rehabilitation, but you can progress that and use it for performance as well.
02:19:08.000So if it's good for rehabilitation, you know, you take it to another level, it's got to be good for performance.
02:19:13.000What is your education background when it comes to this stuff?
02:19:17.000I went to continuation school in high school.
02:19:55.000I went to supposedly the best physical therapist in the area, and six months later, I've got a huge bill and no results.
02:20:02.000So I just took it into my own hands, started researching it, finding out what to do, and then within a month or two, I'm already back at work feeling great.
02:20:11.000And how long have you been training fighters now?
02:20:14.000You know, like, before I started training the fighters and strictly doing conditioning, you know, I was also working with, like, football athletes and soccer.
02:20:21.000I've got a ton of college athletes, you know, I don't think I can talk about them because of NCAA rules or whatever.
02:20:38.000So I've always been in the mix with the Jiu Jitsu scene and MMA scene and stuff like that.
02:20:44.000So now I've just had so much more success with the conditioning that I've just gone that direction.
02:20:50.000Well, one of the things I like about this conversation is there really is no straight consensus about what's the right way to train athletes and fighters, and especially fighters.
02:21:00.000I think when it comes to strength and conditioning, fighters, I think, is probably the most varied.
02:21:08.000I mean, I think the NFL kind of has an idea of how to train football players.
02:21:13.000NBA players train in a very similar fashion, but with fighters, man, it's across...
02:24:10.000Yeah, when I knew I was going to talk to you, I think that's when I watched it.
02:24:13.000But it's fascinating to see a guy with that much knowledge take his son and turn him into this fucking super freak athlete.
02:24:22.000I mean, in certain ways, it was vindicated.
02:24:27.000His techniques, his strategies, I mean, look how good his goddamn son was until he got crazy with the drugs and the partying and all that stuff.
02:25:43.000And there's also the reality that when you push your son or your daughter or anyone, any human being, people have a resistance to some of that shit.
02:25:52.000And they don't want to do what you want them to do.
02:25:54.000And they develop a distaste for something, even something that they're really, really talented at.
02:26:29.000So he had that drive and that intensity in him, you know what I mean?
02:26:34.000It's kind of like shed some light on some things right there.
02:26:36.000Well, hey man, you know, whenever someone comes out in a weird way, there's a lot of people trying to point blame in a lot of different areas, whether it's the friends or the family or the...
02:26:47.000It seemed like his college coaches had a real issue with him as well, right?