Joey Galazzi is an American Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter who has been a member of the Muay Thai and Karate community for over 30 years. He has been involved in MMA, Karate, and mixed martial arts since the early days of his martial arts career. He is now a full-time MMA fighter representing the UFC in the Middleweight division and has been in the UFC for the past 15 years. He has also represented the UFC at the UFC Hall of Fame and is the current UFC Light Heavyweight Champion. In this episode, Joey talks about how he got into MMA, how he became a UFC fighter, and what it takes to be the best at what he does. We also talk about his background in martial arts and how he has been able to get back in shape after years of injuries and injuries sustained in the sport. This episode was recorded in Los Angeles, California. Thank you to Joe for coming on the show and for being a part of the MMA Family. I appreciate it greatly. See you soon! -Jon Sorrentino and Joe Rogan If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, Like, Share, and Share and Retweet! I am a big fan of Jon Rogan's work and I appreciate the support. Jon is a very much appreciates it. -Shoutout to Jon for being out there! -Josie -Joey and I hope you enjoy this episode. -Jon and I are having a great day! -Jon & I appreciate your support. Thank you Jon for coming out here! -Sergio is a lot! -A very much -Sue and I am looking forward to seeing you back in the next episode of the podcast! - Thank you so much! -Drew is a little bit more than usual! -Tom and I really appreciate it! -P.S. - Thank You Jon! -ROBY and Joe is a great guy! -Joby -A.B. -S.J. -AJ & D.A. & A. Love ya! -K. Thanks for listening? -D. -J. & B. XOXO -JOSY -BJ. . -R. & R. & P. & J.Y. -PJ
00:00:54.000You know, I've been going to Alberto, and Alberto is the man in Burbank for tactical fitness.
00:01:03.000They do it in the mornings and the afternoon, but the one kid, Coach Robert, you know, he would just, after class, he would say, Joey, what are you going to do?
00:01:12.000Are you going to go home, or do you want to do this for a little while?
00:01:14.000And at first, the first two weeks, the movements were difficult.
00:01:17.000But then, you know, level one stuff, man.
00:01:56.000And one day I was getting caught and the guy was pulling me into his guard and magically my hips flew up and I just mysteriously got into sight control and something made me look up and Alberto Crane's jaw dropped and he goes, that's from doing that stuff.
00:02:13.000You couldn't do that when you walked in here.
00:02:14.000But I kept going to these 30-minute things.
00:02:17.00030 minutes, five exercises, three minutes.
00:03:35.000I said, OK, I want to get back in contact with these guys.
00:03:38.000I want to understand how things can help him.
00:03:41.000So I went back to him and it blew my mind.
00:03:44.000It blew my mind and helped me to get back in the best shape of my life.
00:03:48.000I feel now I'm 47. I feel like I can move better, do things better than I used to do when I was 20. So I promised him, you know, I'm going to make these things happen in Europe.
00:03:58.000You're my coach, you change my way to fitness and I'm going to do that.
00:04:02.000So between my job and security, I was introducing this to my teams and then I see changing on people, people being able even to just to go moving easier, you know, and then Transfer to whatever it was, our training,
00:04:17.000handgun or whatever, skills and stuff, everything was easier.
00:04:24.000I started to believe, basically, and I started to say, okay, I want to help more people that I can.
00:04:28.000In my line of duty, in the army, because I still have a different contract as a consultant in the army back home, as a physical trainer, and sometimes also end-to-end combat training.
00:04:41.000And I start to introduce these things from basic, right?
00:06:16.000I put that on the ground, and I do, like, bridges on it.
00:06:19.000I lie on my back on it, and I put all my weight on that ball.
00:06:23.000For people just listening, it's a rubber ball that's, like, the size of a softball, and it's really hard, and it's got, like, this textured outer surface, and Kelly developed this to help.
00:06:41.000I take one of those everywhere with me on the road.
00:06:43.000Every time I go in a hotel room, that goes in my bag, period.
00:06:46.000Because if I work out and I get stiff, if I got something locked up, I need that fucking thing.
00:06:51.000That's what I have too in my bag, because all the trouble in flight, every time I get off on some flight, my infraspinatus, my neck, my lower back have the same problem.
00:09:01.000You know, everybody wants to do something that looks like tough guy stuff, that looks awesome on your Instagram.
00:09:05.000You know, everybody wants to do deadlifts with fucking 450. But the reality is, if your body has any weak links, yoga will find those links.
00:09:21.000And this is something that Nick Kurson said as well.
00:09:24.000Nick Kurson, who's a really well-respected strength and conditioning coach, speed of sport down in, I think he's in Huntington Beach, somewhere in Orange County.
00:09:31.000But he trains Joe Schilling, Rafael Dos Anjos, Fabricio Verdum, big-time MMA fighters.
00:09:40.000And kickboxers, and works with Aaron Pico, who's a top-level wrestler, and just a long line of real high-level combat sports athletes.
00:09:49.000I asked him, I go, what do you think that the one thing that a lot of athletes have that is something they need to improve on?
00:10:13.000If your foot's broken in a fight, you're severely limited.
00:10:17.000One of the things that I found out almost instantly when I started doing yoga and when I started skiing, my fucking feet would be killing me.
00:10:23.000In the beginning of skiing was because my boots were too small, because I have really wide feet, and so my feet would be smashed in there, and it sucked.
00:10:31.000And I was like, you know, well, fuck skiing.
00:11:12.000Before you do anything, he started stretching his feet, and I could see him playing with his toes, and I'm like, you know, I guess this is the...
00:11:40.000We're building the capability to Grabbing the ground, understanding the stability of the foot, the mobility of the toes, and the ankle mobility is mandatory.
00:11:50.000Because I'm going to transfer power through my feet engagement to the ground, to my leg drive, to my hips, and to my core.
00:13:00.000I try to work with them to realize something specifically for flow, because sometimes when they have some rubber on the side, and for some specific flow, especially if you want to focus on your knee, understanding how my knee and my hips work, they get too much friction.
00:13:29.000But if I train like I do sometimes in the concrete, I need something to really protect my foot in the beginning.
00:13:35.000Yeah, and dirt and rocks and stuff like that.
00:13:38.000You know, years ago you told me one of your biggest fears was getting old and feeling weak, you know, and then you and I traveled a lot together.
00:13:46.000A lot of places we would go to jujitsu places and we'd see the jujitsu guy, the main guy, and he'd be walking a little funny.
00:14:10.000Yeah, that's one of the reasons why Eddie's gotten so into yoga, too.
00:14:13.000Eddie's doing yoga three times a week now.
00:14:15.000And he realizes it after he had back surgery.
00:14:19.000When people get older in particular, you start realizing the limitations of some of the things that you're doing.
00:14:23.000You're putting tremendous stress on your body in very specific areas, especially jujitsu.
00:14:27.000You're attacking the joints all the time.
00:14:29.000You're attacking the joints, you're attacking your neck, and almost everybody that I know either has a back problem or some sort of a knee problem or a neck problem.
00:14:36.000It's just a constant issue when it comes to jujitsu.
00:14:39.000And I feel like the only way to mitigate that is, first of all, roll with people that you know.
00:14:43.000Like, people that you know, they're good people, they're not gonna try to hurt you, they're not crazy.
00:14:48.000You know, like, it's not even their fault, but young people in particular.
00:14:51.000Like, you get, like, some young 20-year-old kid who's all full of fucking, just...
00:16:58.000I'm thinking always that everybody of us, we know what our point is.
00:17:02.000So if I ask you, When you come to the gym, what is your goal?
00:17:06.000Most of the, especially young people, they know I want to be, I know what is my point B. I want to become faster, stronger, leaner, whatever.
00:17:22.000We don't know about our hormone tracker, about estrogen, testosterone, cortisol, whatever.
00:17:28.000We don't know exactly how the fascia Smith set up with us or the joints.
00:17:33.000If you don't think about that, we're never going to reach point B, or probably we're going to reach it, but going zigzag instead to go straight line, and we're going to face what?
00:17:41.000Injury, plateau, go back to the losing power, imbalances.
00:17:46.000That's why I think something like yoga is very important because it highlights those imbalances.
00:17:51.000And it seems like this kind of particular motion, like your flow like that up there, that would also highlight those particular motions.
00:17:57.000I see flow, like for me, at the beginning of everything.
00:18:07.000So also your breathing will tell you exactly when you're forcing your breathing through some of the movement, you should be starting to understand and investigate why do I force through this range of motion?
00:18:43.000When I see you standing or do a couple of movements, I can interpret it yourself a little bit, but when you move, Freestyle, now I can understand exactly what's going on with you.
00:18:53.000Do you drop your knee when you're squatting?
00:18:55.000Do you know your feet is not connected?
00:18:57.000You cannot torque your knee when you...
00:18:58.000You cannot even understand loading one side, unilateral power to one leg to the other.
00:19:03.000So for me, it's all information that's...
00:19:05.000For me as a coach, okay, I start to plan out what you should be doing, what kind of exercise, what kind of strength training maybe is needed for you, more stability or more yoga.
00:19:16.000Because until you are not ready, I will not let you lift or load your body if your body is not even able to hold in your own weight.
00:19:24.000Most people don't know what their body is capable of doing.
00:19:26.000There's a lot of people that walk into any kind of a class and they start working out and they might not even know what deficiencies they have because they've been overcompensating for that or compensating.
00:19:36.000You might have something wrong with your hip and because of that it's putting extra pressures on your knee.
00:19:40.000You know, one side might be overbalanced.
00:19:42.000That's one thing you see with a lot of people that have done very specific sports.
00:19:46.000Like they're very strong on one side, and then the other side of their body is weak.
00:19:49.000And when you do that, you create these imbalances.
00:19:52.000You can get some serious injuries because of that.
00:21:47.000And if you ask how many of you, 10 out of 10, got shoulder injury, probably now they say, yeah, I got an issue if I've been involved in sports.
00:22:03.000I think hanging is something that people have been really concentrating on over the last few years for shoulder mobility and alleviating impingements.
00:22:11.000And people listening to this, if you have anything going on with your shoulders, I'm telling you, grab a chin-up bar and hang from that thing.
00:23:45.000You remember what I was going through?
00:23:47.000Falling asleep on your steering wheel.
00:23:50.000And that sleep apnea, like whenever my heart gets going in jiu-jitsu, like no other place does my heart get going like that when I'm on the bottom.
00:23:59.000And so at first when I joined jiu-jitsu, I overcame the panic attacks.
00:24:03.000So I had to just go, stand on the bottom.
00:24:06.000Like, I'd force myself to get on the bottom.
00:24:08.000I'd get like a, whatever you call it, a bridge or whatever they call it, a frame.
00:24:12.000And I'd breathe and I overcame my fear.
00:24:15.000But the other fear I had was when I get too wound up, I can't control my breathing.
00:24:20.000It's when I would get up from the sleep apnea.
00:24:23.000So I kept thinking about something you said about a couple of podcasts ago about sports psychiatry or something.
00:25:50.000I don't leave my ass on the floor, so I basically pick up my hips as a hip escape, and then I hold that breath, but I pull myself up, I stay there, and then as I alleviate my hips back is when I accept Exhale.
00:28:19.000It's like if you breathe correctly, especially under stress, and you need to regain access to your cognitive presence, especially if you need to do something that is more complex.
00:28:30.000Some people, they're just thinking, okay, under the gas response, you know, when my fight or freeze situation rises, and the situation is on, I probably go to my gross motor skills.
00:28:42.000Yeah, but some people, like an advanced fighter, an operator, they need to go to access to gross motor skills and fine motor skills.
00:28:51.000I'm going to run across this room, and I need to use my gross motor skills to run faster, but I need to understand where am I going to find cover and maybe shoot him back To a target.
00:29:00.000So now you have fine motor skills on and gross motor skills.
00:29:04.000I need to be able to get my vertical view on because I can't stay in my tunnel.
00:29:09.000Your English is tripping me up a little bit.
00:29:12.000So what you're talking about is big motor skills like running and sprinting and then being able to shoot like a gun and be able to be very precise and very accurate.
00:29:21.000And understanding and also interpreting what is the people shooting at me from.
00:29:53.000Four seconds in, holding for four seconds, releasing for four seconds, holding for four seconds.
00:29:58.000It's a very basic way to learn how to get back from the high intensity to above your RA max to, let's say, 85%, something that you can bring back to a cognitive presence so you can make the right decision.
00:30:10.000So that's what you tell people to do, take a four second in and a four second out so you're like slow controlling of the breathing.
00:30:16.000That's the beginning of understanding, you know, because we're going to be going...
00:30:20.000I need to start going into my nose and maybe taking a pose, go out through my mind so that my heart rate would be slowed down.
00:30:29.000In through the nose, out through the mouth.
00:30:30.000Yeah, that does seem to somehow or another slow down your heart rate for some reason.
00:30:47.000And that, obviously, when you're training soldiers, it's got to be one of the most important things to do, to be able to operate under pressure and under, like, physical pressure.
00:30:59.000The survival response will tell you, do the things that maybe is more logical to save your life, but sometimes, like, I always use this example.
00:31:07.000We're going to cross the street right now.
00:31:09.000You're going to cross, you see the car, you're going to freeze, and then you decide to jump back or jump forward, whatever, is the response to see...
00:31:18.000But maybe that takes like 12 milliseconds.
00:31:22.000And if you've been training more to that kind of alarm, you're going to see the car and you want to do, before you jump in and out, you're going to look and see on the other side.
00:31:32.000Because maybe you see the car, you jump back, you didn't see the car coming from the other part.
00:31:36.000And you got killed from the other car.
00:31:37.000That takes a response of 300 milliseconds.
00:31:41.000So, the amygdala will tell you to do whatever is needed to get out of the problem faster.
00:31:48.000But the long way of your brain response, if you've been training and you're becoming resilient to the kind of alarm and shock situation, you're gonna make the right choice.
00:31:58.000And for an operator, for a fighter, whatever, it's logical.
00:32:44.000Yeah, the ability to become under pressure is something that very few people have, and it's not something that they exercise.
00:32:52.000They don't get to do it on a regular basis, they don't get severely stressed, so that when they are in a severe stress situation, and they have to make a critical decision, or they have to use fine motor skills in a critical situation, most people are just completely incapable of handing that emotional and physiological load.
00:34:09.000You can't tie your shoelace because you're all out of whack.
00:34:13.000Yeah, breathing in, one of the things that you really learn that, like during yoga class, in particularly stressful situations, it's so hard to breathe smooth.
00:34:23.000It's one of the things that I've learned how to do is to try to concentrate only on my breath, and it actually makes the exercise easier.
00:34:30.000Which doesn't seem to make any sense because before I'd just be concentrating on the exercise and what I realized somewhere along the line is my breath is not very smooth and I'm not doing a good job of controlling myself.
00:34:42.000So now when I'm in a situation like a really difficult standing bow pose or something like that, What I concentrate on more than anything, more even than the posture, is just my breathing.
00:34:51.000Concentrate on big, slow, deep breaths.
00:34:54.000And I swear it makes it like 10% easier.
00:34:57.000Just concentrating on the breathing makes everything easier.
00:35:00.000And Chrome Gracie said that too when he was in here.
00:35:06.000And once you can control your breath, once you understand how to control your breath, it makes those positions better, makes jiu-jitsu easier, makes everything better.
00:36:17.000Like, I started getting anxiety at the store.
00:36:20.000So now when I walk up to the original room, like on Tuesdays, or when I did the will turn, I force myself to breathe in and out of my nose.
00:38:21.000You know, and when you get nervous, your adrenaline kicks in, and when your adrenaline kicks in, everything tightens up.
00:38:29.000Physiological stress, like yoga positions, can kind of mimic that.
00:38:33.000When you're in a position like when you've got your hands over your head and you're leaning your whole body to the side, it's very hard to stay smooth with your breathing when you're in those spots.
00:38:42.000That's the number one thing that I concentrate on.
00:38:44.000Holding my body in that position is not nearly as hard as holding my body and breathing smoothly.
00:38:49.000Breathing smoothly is the most difficult part of that posture, like a lot of postures.
00:38:55.000And as soon as you change your breathing, you start to change inside and you change outside.
00:39:57.000It's like a lot of people, they misinterpret it, or they all think, okay, we go tactical training, we do this, and we can control fear, reaction.
00:40:20.000So it's different physiological things going into your body.
00:40:24.000So the only thing that people do is misunderstanding that doing some kind of high intensity workout, we can control also the fear, real fear, because real fear is another thing.
00:40:36.000Well, one of the things you see with fighters is they perform better when they're more active, when they fight more often.
00:40:41.000So if a fighter fights like three times a year, they're used to fighting every few months and they get that feeling of competition becomes a normal, natural thing for them.
00:40:49.000And it's also something that happens when you see a fighter lose.
00:40:52.000When you see a fighter lose and they come back, they're very tense and they fight, a lot of times, they fight different.
00:41:15.000Because they didn't recover for the shock, for the situation they've been through.
00:41:18.000Sure, and that's also one of the biggest factors when you talk about the difference between the way someone performs in the gym versus the way someone performs in competition.
00:41:28.000We've all known these guys that were phenomenal in the gym, but for whatever reason, they weren't able to win in competition.
00:42:21.000When you are fighting, when you're at your best, you're sort of just in this empty space.
00:42:27.000You're not thinking about the moves as much as they're just happening, and you're just relying on your training, and the best thing you do is stay calm, because as soon as you get emotional, as soon as you get aggressive, you might win being emotional and aggressive.
00:42:40.000You could catch someone and knock them out, but you also might get knocked out yourself.
00:42:44.000You might do something that's not smart, like when you were talking earlier about playing chess.
00:42:49.000Martial arts is a lot of ways like very much like chess, but way more complicated because your physical consequences are so severe.
00:45:06.000Like, I remember when I lived in Aspen, they have the ESI Bodyguard Academy in Aspen.
00:45:15.000I don't know, but the guy supposedly was in a room, 6x12 room, and he killed 12 Mexicans at night point with his bare hands, so he opens up this ESI thing, and it's, you know, it's 20 G's, you know?
00:45:29.000It's a summer long program, and you learn how to adjust up at the high altitude, and drive, and evasive driving, and shooting.
00:45:38.000Then they have a course on maritime, how to defend people out on the ocean.
00:47:14.000Because four years of Charlie in the bush is a lot better than 12 weeks of you hanging out with some white dude with suits shooting people, targets in the mountains.
00:47:29.000Don't you think though it's better than nothing?
00:47:31.000I would think that it's better than nothing.
00:47:32.000I would think that the best thing would be actually being in boot camp, actually going to Bud's, actually being in some sort of a situation where you realize this is life.
00:48:17.000And I'm like, I fucking hate when people say that kind of shit.
00:48:20.000Because listen to me, the stuff that works on trained killers is the real shit.
00:48:25.000And if you think that you're gonna come in and you're gonna throw some fucking karate chop at someone's balls, and you're gonna somehow or another be able to stop Anderson Silva from kicking you across the room, you're out of your fucking mind.
00:49:02.000There was a guy at the store who used to pinch down on, literally, this is the biggest phony I've ever met in all my years of meeting phony martial arts guys.
00:49:11.000He used to pinch down on your thumbnail.
00:49:14.000He was like, there's a pressure point on your thumb.
00:51:59.000That's a big thing with, again, what we were talking about with fighting.
00:52:03.000I had one time where I tore a muscle and I didn't compete for like six months.
00:52:07.000It was like the longest time I'd ever gone without competing because I tore the muscle that connects the groin to like, I think it's called the sartorius muscle.
00:52:56.000You know she likes you, so it's not an issue.
00:52:59.000But if, you know, if it is, like you said, a girl that you've been thinking about for the longest time, and you're, I'm gonna ask her out, I hope this goes well.
00:53:06.000And then you finally get where they're like, yikes!
00:53:12.000The human penis is such a fucking odd thing in that regard.
00:53:29.000To make sure that your dick does not get hard if you're fucking panicking.
00:53:33.000It's not like a rhino horn where it's armed and ready at all times.
00:53:38.000No, it's like a very specific physiological process has to be in place where the softest part of your body becomes hard like a fucking rock.
00:53:49.000When you look at your dick when you're going to pee and it's this soft little spongy thing and then you grab your dick when it's that full mast And it's like, how is that the same thing?
00:54:00.000Because it's this crazy physiological process that only works if you're ready to rock.
00:54:13.000I don't know how you translate it in English, but there is a book that explains it so well, so simple about those reactions of the body and the stress.
00:54:20.000And you say, think about the zebra and the savanna.
00:54:24.000You know, that's exactly, you know, when someone is chasing you to hit you, and when you are under stress, high stress, your body starts producing hormones, like testosterone.
00:55:34.000And so for the longest time, they thought, well, maybe when you're looking like a lion is looking at a zebra, The lion is seeing this zebra's body, and there's all the lines, confuses it so he can't see it.
00:55:46.000Then they realized, no, no, no, what it actually is, is you can't pick out individual zebras.
00:55:53.000So, like, if an individual zebra, like, looks different from the other zebras, that's the one they get after.
00:56:01.000Like, if one zebra's bleeding and has blood on its body, and it looks different from all those other white and black lines, that's the one they target.
00:56:54.000So when you see these zebras and we see these lions, what it's designed to do is confuse the lions so that they don't know which one to target, which is crazy.
00:57:04.000But if one of those motherfuckers had an ear tag, a big old yellow tag hanging off their ear, the lions would be like, there you are, bitch.
00:57:21.000The lions look like the brown grasses, you know?
00:57:25.000And leopard, or excuse me, tigers, apparently, that whole stripe thing with them is also to make them blend in with all their surroundings.
00:57:35.000All the trees and the sticks, you know, they live mostly in the jungle.
00:57:40.000So you were asking me before this about the fights.
00:57:52.000A lot of people were like pissed off, it was boring, but I think that's because they just want to see people beat the fuck out of each other, which I understand.
00:57:59.000That's why you tune into cage fighting.
00:58:01.000But to me, the way I always describe martial arts is it's high-level problem solving with dire physical consequences.
00:58:09.000And if you run in on Tyron Woodley, you got some dire physical consequences.
00:58:15.000And if Woodley charges at Thompson, There's dire physical consequences because he was getting tagged when he would he said it to me after the fight He's like he caught me a few times as I was charging towards him so Woodley has a different style than Thompson Thompson has that wide stance that karate style and he's excellent at moving in and moving out and almost like point fighting you He's just jabbing you hitting you with these Clean left hands,
00:58:41.000sliding out of the way, occasionally throwing kicks, but mostly what he's doing is making you wonder what he's going to do and when he's coming at you.
00:58:50.000And Woodley had to pick his battles and figure out when he could launch himself at him.
00:58:53.000So, at any moment, something could have happened.
01:01:01.000They're moving around, and they're fast, and they could go to his left, and he could be over here, but something could be happening on their right, and he doesn't even see it.
01:01:46.000Woodley was so aggressive because he was down on the scorecards, at least in his corner's eyes, and in my eyes he was as well, and he had to charge forward, and he had to connect, and he did.
01:01:56.000But to make that happen, a lot of things have Right.
01:02:15.000He was standing in the southpaw position with his right leg forward.
01:02:18.000He throws that front leg side kick to the body.
01:02:20.000He throws it really well because he picks it up from the ground like low and it sort of scoops up.
01:02:27.000So you don't see it coming until it's too late.
01:02:29.000It might not be the most powerful application of the front leg side kick, but it's very sneaky because he slides in with that foot low and then it comes up and stabs you.
01:02:39.000And you don't know if it's going to come up as a sidekick or if it's going to go up and over your shoulder as a round kick.
01:04:05.000So he's the guy who's gonna get the money.
01:04:07.000Whereas Wonderboy, who essentially had a draw with him, proved that he was At least close enough on one fight and just a hair under on the second fight, he's gonna make a fraction of what Woodley makes, likely.
01:04:22.000So, those consequences have to be taken into consideration when you're watching these guys fight, is that they know there's a win bonus and there's a loss.
01:04:35.000But if you win, you get twice the money.
01:04:37.000A lot of guys, the way their contract is structured, they'll make X if they win, and they'll make X plus X. They'll make X plus X if they win, but if they lose, they only make X. So they might be getting $200,000 for the fight, but another $200,000 if they win.
01:08:27.000But once you get up to the top, like look at that picture where you're seeing the ocean, Jamie, like up in the right-hand corner, upper right hand, yeah, like there.
01:08:34.000That's what it looks like once you finally get up there, you're like, wow, it's so pretty.
01:09:07.000You can get it, though, and I think one of the reasons why you can get it is because probably people have come over there and wanted it, you know?
01:09:12.000Do you remember that episode of Zopranos and the guy ordered...
01:12:44.000That's what we're talking about to drive up.
01:12:45.000The Amalfi Coast, they had amazing seafood.
01:12:47.000But the pasta was like a very light sauce.
01:12:50.000Like, you know, if you went to a good place and got like linguine vangole, they'll give you a linguine with a very light olive oil and garlic sauce with the linguine and like that is the kind of pasta.
01:13:03.000Like it's a very much more delicate pasta.
01:13:05.000Yeah, because you want to taste the fish.
01:13:10.000That's why if you try to go to a real Italian restaurant, you ask for cheese, like grated cheese on linguine vangole, they'll look at you like you're a fucking monster.
01:16:34.000Muay Thai, I started to compete in Muay Thai.
01:16:36.000Yeah, karate style with the shin, where the instep rather, when you're kicking with the top of the foot, everybody had this idea like that was the way to do it.
01:16:44.000And then the moment you get kicked with a shin, you go, oh, all right.
01:16:51.000And I got a lot of injury for kicking on the instep.
01:17:48.000I think he's right, but he's also not right.
01:17:51.000Because I think he's right in the sense that your mindset must be correct in order for you to apply any sort of martial arts in actual competition.
01:19:58.000Like, there's certain techniques that people learn where they don't learn how to do pool correctly.
01:20:02.000You only play in billiards, you stand the wrong way, and you get used to it.
01:20:06.000And when you're in a match and there's a lot on the line, you go right back to the old ways, even if you take lessons.
01:20:11.000It's so important that when you learn things in life, to learn them right the first time.
01:20:17.000That's why when you're growing up as a human being, I think it's been an issue with me, I think it's been an issue with you as well, when your childhood is kind of fucking crazy.
01:20:27.000Like you develop these ways of thinking and acting as a child that are very difficult to break.
01:20:33.000As you get older and as an adult, it's like you have this foundation that's very faulty.
01:20:40.000You have to be consciously aware of that, okay, this foundation is fucked up because I grew up with domestic violence and I grew up with, you know, no dad.
01:20:49.000And so I have to make sure that I don't fall into these...
01:20:52.000Patterns that I had established in my head when I was 8, 9, and 10, and 11. As you're growing up as an adult, this is the way you're looking at life.
01:21:00.000And then you have to kind of restructure it.
01:21:02.000It's almost like you're starting over.
01:21:04.000But if you meet someone who has like...
01:21:06.000Great father and a great mother and they grow up and they have like a great fundamental balance But there's those people used to always make me nervous when I was a kid Because I was always like God like these how do they I don't even know anybody like that I don't know like I would feel like Inferior to them like when I was around people that had like a good childhood.
01:22:01.000I look at those people and I go, I wondered what their parents did with them to have that ability to want to help people and go out of their way.
01:22:12.000I always think about that shit, especially now as a parent.
01:22:17.000You're like, what is the fucking chemistry of love for them to understand?
01:22:22.000You know, we were talking on the way up here when my mother died.
01:22:53.000When you're Italian, everything is mama.
01:22:55.000They would come to that wake, and I would short-circuit them, because they never could think of that situation happening to them.
01:23:03.000And I'm still friends with those people today.
01:23:06.000And I always wondered why, you know, who raised them, that they're super great people.
01:23:12.000And then you come here, to a place like California, and you meet people, and they have nice parents or whatever, but they're just the biggest scumbags in the fucking world.
01:24:24.000Well, you know there's people that grow up with horrible environments and they come out amazing and then their brothers and sisters are all in jail.
01:24:30.000It's weird how a person makes choices in their life...
01:24:33.000That really establishes their entire life.
01:24:37.000And a lot of those choices, man, I hate to say it, but it could be luck.
01:24:41.000They could have made a lucky choice early on, and that lucky choice led them down a better road than someone who's made a poor choice.
01:24:49.000Like kids that get involved in the juvenile detention system when they're really young, boy, that fucks them up so hard.
01:25:03.000Even if it's hard when it's telling you the truth.
01:25:07.000It sounds like a smack behind the head, but make you open your eyes, make you say, you know what?
01:25:12.000Once you put a kid in one of those gladiator prisons, the percentages, it's like we were just talking about that movie that came out, Sleepers.
01:27:14.000And so it gave me the understanding that if you've never worked hard and you don't know what the fuck hard work is, then all of a sudden you're 18 and then you're in college and then you got out of college and then you have to get a job.
01:27:25.000You have no real experience with actual difficult work.
01:27:29.000I just don't think you appreciate what it takes to get by.
01:27:33.000Growing up, seeing people that had a strong work ethic and realizing that that wasn't something that I had, but maybe it was something that I need to consider as being a very important skill, a very important trait.
01:27:47.000The ability to, like, just actually get shit done.
01:27:50.000To get up in the morning when your alarm clock goes off and go.
01:28:25.000You just gotta fucking get things done.
01:28:27.000And for so many people, like you were talking about at the beginning of the podcast, Joey, that book, The War of Art, where it talks about resistance.
01:28:33.000There's so many people that just fuck off.
01:28:36.000They fuck off, and they don't get the things done that they need to get done, and that haunts them.
01:29:11.000Yeah, I panic every fucking week every week when I go on the road I panic because I do not have a full 50 minutes that snow I got a couple fucking minutes and I'm trying out new shit constantly constantly, but it comes together slowly but surely together But it's just like anything else.
01:32:12.000It's all about, for me, when I train people, you know, I try to say, okay, you're doing 10 push-ups, and if you come to the 8, the number 8, and you see that you start to struggle, that's it.
01:33:14.000Like, say if I could do ten reps or something, I do five.
01:33:17.000And then I wait like ten minutes and I do another five.
01:33:19.000Then I wait ten minutes, I'll do another five.
01:33:21.000Then I wait ten minutes, I'll do another five.
01:33:22.000And the idea being that it's more important to do more workouts in the week with low repetition than it is to do a high-repetition workout.
01:33:33.000Where that guy's like, come on, spot me!
01:34:22.000And, yeah, that's what I'm doing for myself, even because of those old flights, you know, my jet lag, my CNS, my scenario system is already...
01:35:37.000But now, I'm lucky that I have weights at home, so I have kettlebells at home, so I can do it four days a week, five days a week, and I'll work out for an hour.
01:36:13.000I know I'd be fucking wrecked for like two or three days.
01:36:15.000So I'd be really nervous to lift in the morning and then do jiu-jitsu at night because I would know that I was going to be operating at like 50% or 60%.
01:36:25.000But if you do kettlebells with low repetitions, even with heavy weight, you could do a real good workout and then that night you could work jiu-jitsu and you could be 100%.
01:37:26.000And then I'd do five sets of cleans with two 35s, and then strand, and then jump rope, and then try to do sit-ups, and then for three days, I'm dog shit.
01:37:41.000I'm only going to do my weights now on the road.
01:37:44.000When I go to a hotel now, every two weeks, I work every other week, I'll hit the dumbbells and do the elliptical, but when I'm in town, I'll just do the tack fit in the beginning, a little jujitsu, and then I'll do a tack fit at the end.
01:38:19.000The movement, you know, if you look at when...
01:38:21.000If you look, even the kids rolling around when it's in this early stage, you go to some, you know, double S, they can transfer to a shin box or whatever.
01:39:18.000Lando has only been striking for six years and he's phenomenal.
01:39:23.000But what happened was he started with a BMX background.
01:39:26.000He was a pro BMX racer and was like apparently like a national champion BMX and that pumping, pumping bike legs, you know, just being able to like generate extreme speed off the line.
01:39:38.000He developed this explosive ability to use his legs.
01:39:41.000And so that, like, having cross-training, whether it's through tack fit, or whether it's through yoga, or whether it's through kettlebells, or breakdancing, or anything else.
01:41:05.000Yeah, and Nick Curzon we were talking about.
01:41:08.000What he's into is all plyometrics, man.
01:41:10.000He barely has these guys lifting weights.
01:41:13.000He's got guys jumping over hurdles and stuff and doing all these leaping back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
01:41:20.000He's all about movement in a plyometric way, in an explosive way.
01:41:24.000And that's one of the reasons why he gets such great results out of his fighters.
01:41:28.000It's because they developed this extraordinary ability to close the distance.
01:41:32.000Extraordinary ability to get out of the way.
01:41:35.000You know, the ability to move and then to stop what you're doing and then counter quickly.
01:41:39.000You know, all that stuff is just so giant, man.
01:41:41.000Now, how does this CrossFit fit into everything we're discussing right now?
01:41:45.000Because Studio City is the fucking capital of CrossFit.
01:41:50.000You know, you can't go anywhere in Studio City without seeing five guys my age running down the street with a 50-pound plate over their head.
01:41:58.000And I'm sitting there going, something's not right here.
01:42:54.000You can't do that kind of athletic jazz movement so fast, even if you reduce the weight, because you can't control one, two, three reps, and then you might be using up.
01:43:49.000But if you just take it as a sport, It's just conditioning you for that part, such as CrossFit.
01:43:55.000You can, in conditioning for Jiu-Jitsu, try to do a CrossFit wood with the cup time, because, like you say, you're going to destroy yourself.
01:44:32.000They need to rebuild the site, the website.
01:44:35.000And put more power because people, they go, when they wake up in the morning, they're going to see, okay, what is the word of the day this time?
01:44:44.000Then when they go to work, they're going to go online again and see, okay, East Coast, they already probably did, all right, that's the average time.
01:45:11.000Well, Steve Maxwell said that he believes that what you're doing is when you're lifting and you're doing these Olympic lifts, you should be doing Olympic lifts to get you stronger for another sport, for a competition.
01:45:23.000He doesn't believe that it should be a sport in itself.
01:47:15.000That'll give you phenomenal endurance.
01:47:17.000But strength, I am of the opinion, and this is just from the last few years of me operating this way, that you should do low repetitions and you should do it more often.
01:48:05.000For example, since January till now, I've been in Australia, I've been back to Italy, then I went back to Brazil, Brazil, back to Italy, Italy, Panama, Panama, Mexico, Mexico here, then I go back to Italy,
01:50:41.000And, you know, they only do it so that they can keep them on those trucks longer and drive around the country with them and keep them on the shelves in the grocery store longer.
01:52:52.000So it sucks this hole somehow or another.
01:52:55.000When the water level gets to a certain point, it develops this hole in this lake, and it wasn't there for 10 years, and now it's finally back again for the first time.
01:53:08.000Yeah, so for 10 years, the water level wasn't high enough for that actually to be happening, and now it's finally happening again, and people are all excited.
02:00:26.000You and I have been talking about this, too.
02:00:27.000That in town, it's maybe sometimes even best to not go out on the weekends and work.
02:00:33.000Because even though it's good to work, and it's good to get your stand-up in, on the weekends, everybody's there to see the big show, right?
02:00:38.000But for us, especially now, for me, it's only a couple months since my special came out.
02:00:43.000And for you, it's just a month and a half, right?
02:00:48.000Yeah, so for me, it's three months, too.
02:00:50.000So when that happens, or four months, when that happens, your shit comes out, and then you're in this scramble mode where you're trying to create.
02:00:58.000And what I like, what you're doing is you're going to these hole-in-the-walls, go to these weird places.
02:01:03.000Show up and work your material out in these joints.
02:01:06.000You go to the comedy store on a Friday night, there's 400 fucking people.
02:01:10.000It's packed to the gills, and everybody's doing their best 15 minutes over and over and over again.
02:01:14.000And one of the things that I noticed when I went there recently is a lot of these guys that aren't doing specials.
02:01:19.000You know, there's a lot of young guys coming up in particular that they don't have any specials.
02:02:04.000Just the way my office building is, I can't go in there in the daytime and smoke a pound of pot and play loud music.
02:02:11.000I just can't do it, and I don't want to do it, so I prefer to do it at night when I don't have a gun to my head.
02:02:17.000If I come here at 1 o'clock, Joe, and we have to sit here until 4, from 3 to 4, I'm going to be fidgety or out of control because I'm thinking about that fucking traffic.
02:03:18.000So he had to meet him, and the Iceman, the only reason why the Iceman contacted him was because he heard he could get different guns, and he was ATF. So when the Iceman contacted him, he wanted Sinai.
02:03:30.000So he kept saying, bring me to Sinai, and then he was going to sell him arms.
02:03:34.000So for 18 months, this guy had contact with this guy.
02:06:19.000Jesus Christ, that's a fucking scary book and it details this guy was a Mob boss was it in the 70s?
02:06:27.000Yeah in the 70s and this It details how he slowly started killing a bunch of people Like slowly but surely and then they would cut him up in their fucking bathtub And then they had this one apartment where they would take these people to that was above this bar that they would go to.
02:06:45.000They'd take these people upstairs and fucking kill them.
02:07:42.000And the more comfortable they get with it, the easier it is.
02:07:45.000And then they start getting a rush out of doing it.
02:07:46.000And there's also this power to know that there's this guy walking around, and his wife thinks he's coming home, and you're like, you know what?
02:11:08.000And they were like, what Joey has done to that poor guy?
02:11:11.000He's like, every time he sees him, he's forcing him to eat mushrooms, he's got to take acid, he's giving him pot, he's giving him edibles, he's lying to him about the dosages.
02:13:13.000I go, listen, I just put the acid in the sugar cubes, and I put them in the Tupperware, and I put a lid on it, and I left, and when I came back, the lid had blown up.
02:13:21.000So whatever's in that acid is going to be really fucking strong.
02:13:24.000I go, I put aluminum foil over it with holes so it could breathe, so the acid won't fucking go into...
02:13:30.000Oh my God, I had him going for three weeks.