The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show #60 with Forrest Griffin, Clint Wattenberg & Dr. Duncan French

00:00:01.000 My buddy from Australia gave me those and that head.

00:00:07.000 It's an Asian water buffalo.

00:00:08.000 It's an invasive species.

00:00:09.000 Are we live?

00:00:11.000 Oh, it worked.

00:00:12.000 Jesus Christ.

00:00:13.000 Ladies and gentlemen, the UFC Performance Institute boys.

00:00:16.000 Hey, what's up?

00:00:17.000 Duncan, Forrest Griffin.

00:00:18.000 Hey, Forrest Griffin.

00:00:19.000 Good to see you.

00:00:20.000 We've already talked over each other, so we've already blown it.

00:00:22.000 No, we've got it.

00:00:23.000 We've got it nailed.

00:00:25.000 Well, I'm really glad you guys are here because I was blown away when I went to visit the, you know, you hear the Performance Institute and you go, well, what is this going to be like?

00:00:34.000 You go there like, oh my god, they thought of everything.

00:00:35.000 It's like the ultimate state-of-the-art facility for training, for recovery, for nutrition. 0.98

00:00:41.000 It's fucking amazing. 0.94

00:00:42.000 I mean, I was so happy. 1.00

00:00:44.000 We're posting a link to that shit right there. 1.00

00:00:45.000 Say it! 1.00

00:00:46.000 Dude, I mean, it's amazing.

00:00:47.000 When we went on a tour and checked that place out, I think it was Della Gratze was with me?

00:00:52.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0.99

00:00:53.000 We were like, holy shit! 0.99

00:00:55.000 Can you imagine? 1.00

00:00:56.000 You have access to this fucking place? 1.00

00:00:58.000 You guys have really created something special. 1.00

00:01:00.000 It's very interesting.

00:01:01.000 I don't know much about other sports, but I know this never really existed in combat sports before.

00:01:05.000 Something like this.

00:01:07.000 You guys have athletes from all sorts of different walks of life come through there.

00:01:11.000 When I was there, there were many, many top-level fighters that were training out of there.

00:01:14.000 It's really, really interesting.

00:01:16.000 Yeah, cool.

00:01:17.000 Well, we appreciate the kind words, obviously.

00:01:19.000 I mean, ultimately, yeah, the vision of the UFC was to build a performance institute that was truly a world-class high-performance center that had everything that fighters would need.

00:01:29.000 But not only are we trying to align ourselves as the leaders in mixed martial arts, but certainly leaders in human high performance.

00:01:37.000 Yeah, Duncan, too.

00:01:37.000 Tell people what you do there.

00:01:39.000 My role is the Vice President of Performance.

00:01:43.000 I essentially direct the philosophy of how we're going to interact with the fighters, how we're going to support the fighters, and obviously manage our world-class staff that are working within the performance facility.

00:01:55.000 And Clint, you came from a background in amateur wrestling.

00:01:59.000 Tell everybody what your job is over there.

00:02:02.000 I'm the director of performance nutrition.

00:02:05.000 Anything related to feeding of athletes is essentially managed by myself and our ever-expanding team.

00:02:12.000 So it can be as broad as working with athletes for their general training plan, integrating within the other performance services, as well as feeding athletes on the ground, integrating within our kitchen at the Performance Institute, supporting athletes as they prepare for fight week, weight descents, etc., and then supporting athletes on fight week and preparing even at the last moment of fight day to fuel up and to be really well fueled for their performance.

00:02:39.000 My background is, like you said, in amateur wrestling.

00:02:41.000 I wrestled and coached at Cornell University.

00:02:46.000 Was on the U.S. national team with a number of actually current fighters right now.

00:02:50.000 So Daniel Cormier and a number of other athletes, Chris Weidman and some others.

00:02:53.000 And I used to train together.

00:02:55.000 And then I went back to school and got all my credentialing to be a registered dietitian.

00:03:00.000 And so that's kind of led me through developing a program at Cornell to the UFC with a pretty unique combination of the nutrition, the dietetics, and then obviously the experience in combat sports and weight cutting.

00:03:14.000 Yeah, and in my opinion, the most grueling combat sport.

00:03:17.000 I mean, I think wrestling.

00:03:18.000 We talked about it on the last podcast.

00:03:20.000 It's a crazy way for a kid to learn hard work and to learn real competition and the actual physical struggle of getting through wrestling practice and strength and conditioning grills.

00:03:30.000 Most kids that are coming up in high school and college, they don't really work that hard in any other sport.

00:03:36.000 I mean, it's a crazy sport.

00:03:37.000 I remember in high school like walking into the wrestling room and it's a bunch of gross dudes like in a sweaty hot room and then it was like basketball was right next to it.

00:03:46.000 I walked next to the basketball there's like dudes in tent tops and some like cheerleaders. 1.00

00:03:50.000 I'm like I know what I'm doing. 0.97

00:03:51.000 I'm not idiots. 0.92

00:03:54.000 Little did I know. 0.99

00:03:55.000 Little did you know.

00:03:57.000 In my opinion still, I think it's the most important skill because you get to dictate where the fight takes place.

00:04:02.000 There's no one skill that really overpowers all except for the ability to hold the guy down.

00:04:08.000 The ability to hold someone down and control them on the ground, it's so critical.

00:04:11.000 And everything else you can learn from that.

00:04:13.000 Submissions, ground and pound.

00:04:15.000 But the difference in an elite wrestler like yourself and a person who doesn't have that skill, it's so hard to bridge that gap It's hard to learn later in life.

00:04:24.000 GSP is one of the few people that's just like, I'll just take this up and be amazing at it, because I'm GSP, and then I'll become a gymnast.

00:04:31.000 Who knows?

00:04:31.000 I think that's the thing with him, though.

00:04:33.000 He had such physical abilities.

00:04:34.000 We were talking about this almost on the last podcast as well, that he used to do that karate blitz.

00:04:39.000 So he was so used to that lunging in stuff that he sort of incorporated that with a blast double.

00:04:44.000 And he's so physically strong and such a smart dude and so good at learning things that he just figured out the essential techniques that he needed to master and just got better and better at them.

00:04:55.000 Way back in the day, obviously, UFC 1 was kind of a discipline versus discipline kind of grudge match, and having been a lifelong wrestler, that's when I started tuning in, actually, and taking pride in all the wrestlers, taking names, and growing within the sport, and obviously with the evolution of the sport.

00:05:13.000 It's a different dynamic, and obviously...

00:05:16.000 Each athlete coming from their own discipline is really fun for us to work with as practitioners, having their own kind of sport culture.

00:05:22.000 But wrestling is obviously a core component to what each athlete's doing.

00:05:26.000 And when I'm working with athletes and talking through their weekly training plan and how to feed and fuel for each of these types of training sessions and hearing them bitch about how hard those wrestling practices are...

00:05:37.000 I always get a little bit of pride there.

00:05:39.000 Like, yes, it is hard.

00:05:40.000 And imagine doing it for eight months straight for a college wrestling season and grind that out.

00:05:44.000 But it's definitely been fun for me to watch wrestling as a component of MMA grow and be able to contribute to the sport on a few different levels.

00:05:55.000 Yeah.

00:05:55.000 I mean, I think the way I've always looked at it is pressure makes diamonds.

00:05:59.000 You know, there's no other way.

00:06:02.000 Those hard-nosed dudes, they come out of those environments.

00:06:06.000 If you think about guys with crazy determination and mental fortitude, there's a giant chunk of those you could attribute to wrestlers.

00:06:13.000 There's a lot of them in kickboxing and everything else as well, but it's such a unique sport in terms of hardening your mental toughness.

00:06:23.000 For sure.

00:06:24.000 I wouldn't do it.

00:06:27.000 I mean, at the Performance Institute, we always talk about mixed martial arts as the decathlon of combat sports.

00:06:35.000 And I think, you know, our philosophy is to try and understand all the respective components that makes a world-class MMA fighter.

00:06:42.000 I think, you know, if you're in the UFC, you've got some certain X factors that allow you to be world-class, and, you know, wrestling is a huge component of that.

00:06:52.000 But what we try to do is understand limitations as well.

00:06:55.000 Because in a decathlon, you're only ever as good as your weakest event, right?

00:06:58.000 So if you're a striker, if you're a grappler, or if you're a wrestler, we're trying to support each of those to understand how we can elevate the whole thing.

00:07:05.000 Now, how much input do you put into fighters, if any, into how they incorporate their skills and how they combine their skills together?

00:07:14.000 Do you guys offer coaching on technique and approaches?

00:07:18.000 Yeah, so break down the philosophy.

00:07:20.000 We don't do sports-specific coaching, so physical therapy, sports nutrition, strength and conditioning, sports science, and then Duncan oversees all those to make sure that they work.

00:07:31.000 All right, so our philosophy, anything that doesn't make you better in the octagon is pretty pointless.

00:07:37.000 So what I do is I'll just go over what your training schedule looks like with you, and then, you know, Where do we feed accordingly for this practice?

00:07:46.000 And then Roman, our sports scientist, when can you be recovered enough for this practice?

00:07:51.000 And that's the philosophy.

00:07:53.000 So it's not specific.

00:07:54.000 If you think about it, if you guys are fighting and the Performance Institute is working with both of you, we make you as big, strong, healthy, have the easiest time making weight, go into your fight as fueled as you can.

00:08:06.000 But if I start saying, hey, you know what?

00:08:10.000 He's pretty susceptible to leg kicks.

00:08:12.000 Then it becomes, you know, now we can't support every athlete.

00:08:15.000 So when you talk to people, it's just like, here's how to get the most out of your practices, right?

00:08:19.000 Here's the way to lay this out.

00:08:21.000 Just your training blocks.

00:08:23.000 I don't think a lot of people understand basic training periodization leading up to a fight.

00:08:28.000 And then, that's the other problem with the UFC. You don't always have 8 weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks.

00:08:32.000 Sometimes you've got 4 weeks, and it's like, alright, well, where's your weight?

00:08:36.000 Where are you at?

00:08:37.000 Where's your skill?

00:08:38.000 Where's your conditioning?

00:08:39.000 How can we put those things together in time to get you ready on, you know...

00:08:43.000 But never specific, like, instruction on how to deal with a certain fighter.

00:08:48.000 No, never, never.

00:08:49.000 That's...

00:08:50.000 It's almost like...

00:08:53.000 For a young fighter to have the access, first of all, just the access to the physical facility, just all the different modalities you guys have, and the strength and conditioning stuff, and the fact that you can...

00:09:06.000 One of the most impressive things was the camera setup around the octagon, so that you could film sparring sequences and technique sequences, and the fighter, you can back them up and rewind them and watch it, and you can see how you drop your leg here, see how your chin is up in the air, and all these different...

00:09:22.000 Different little factors.

00:09:22.000 Well, you think about the philosophy, right?

00:09:24.000 You have to get close to game speed once or twice a week.

00:09:27.000 So for 15, 25 minutes, you're going to risk injury.

00:09:30.000 You're going to take physical damage that you're not getting paid for.

00:09:33.000 Make the most out of it, right?

00:09:35.000 Like, review it.

00:09:36.000 Treat it like a fight.

00:09:37.000 Think about our athletes.

00:09:38.000 They fight two to four times a year.

00:09:39.000 So that's a very limited amount of actual footage they have.

00:09:43.000 But if you start recording your sparring sessions and treating them like it, Like a fight. 0.72

00:09:48.000 Like, oh shit, I did this wrong, I did that wrong.

00:09:49.000 Then you're going to end up with more like 80, 90, which is, you know, baseball, basketball, even football. 0.98

00:09:54.000 You've got 20 plus games to, you know, review.

00:09:57.000 Yeah, and I think it's really important for young fighters also to see themselves doing certain techniques.

00:10:02.000 Like, they might not notice.

00:10:03.000 They might think they look better than they do.

00:10:05.000 Like, it's good. 1.00

00:10:06.000 My coach is full of shit, man. 1.00

00:10:07.000 And then you, ah, the film, don't lie. 1.00

00:10:09.000 And you're like, yeah, okay, I see what I'm doing wrong there.

00:10:11.000 It's hard sometimes to mimic without actually seeing yourself.

00:10:15.000 Now, you guys, you've been Forrest Griffin, former UFC. No one can ever take that from you, sir.

00:10:23.000 How's that feel?

00:10:23.000 It's good, yeah.

00:10:24.000 Sure, yeah.

00:10:25.000 I've moved on.

00:10:26.000 I've moved on.

00:10:27.000 I'm over it.

00:10:28.000 And now I'm VP of Athlete Development at the Performance Institute, so it's much more important.

00:10:33.000 But you're still Forrest Griffin.

00:10:34.000 There's a lot of champions.

00:10:36.000 There's only one VP of Athlete Development.

00:10:38.000 We're still trying to find that job description to figure out what it actually does.

00:10:42.000 I change it daily.

00:10:43.000 Don't worry about it.

00:10:45.000 You've been involved from the beginning of this, right?

00:10:47.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:10:48.000 So it was going on about two weeks in.

00:10:51.000 I heard this was happening and I was like, oh, hey guys, I work for you.

00:10:55.000 I'm doing community outreach right now, but I've been trying to figure out the best way to train for mixed martial arts for the last 18 years.

00:11:02.000 I don't know.

00:11:03.000 Maybe give me a shot at it.

00:11:04.000 So, yeah.

00:11:06.000 Now, when you say that, that you're trying to figure out the best way, is there a best way?

00:11:11.000 Yes, for everybody, right? 1.00

00:11:13.000 And unfortunately, it's those bullshit answers. 1.00

00:11:15.000 Everybody's different, man. 0.99

00:11:17.000 Everybody's got a different ability to work, you know, like Usman might have X amount, you know, before he physically breaks down. 0.99

00:11:23.000 Because look at him, he's a fucking Ferrari, right? 0.97

00:11:26.000 He needs more high-end work or whatever. 0.99

00:11:29.000 Everybody's a little physically different.

00:11:31.000 The key is to get some subjective feedback to know, hey, all right, I'm in the red.

00:11:37.000 I'm good.

00:11:37.000 I'm not.

00:11:38.000 Do you guys do it on heart rate variability?

00:11:42.000 When you determine whether or not someone's recovered enough to- Tell them about Omega Wave.

00:11:47.000 Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of different ways to do it.

00:11:49.000 At the most basic level, it's just speaking to a guy and getting subjective feedback, right?

00:11:53.000 How you're feeling is one of the best questions that we can ask an athlete.

00:11:57.000 But, yeah, I mean, we're blessed and we're privileged with pretty high resource at the UFC Performance Institute, so we have some pretty involved technologies.

00:12:05.000 One of the ones that we use is a system called OmegaWave.

00:12:08.000 That gives us real insight and removes the subjectivity where it can get objective understanding around physiology, particularly looking at the DC potential of the brain.

00:12:18.000 DC? What is that?

00:12:19.000 The DC potential of the brain is an assessment of the autonomic nervous system.

00:12:25.000 So, if you look at the parasympathetic and sympathetic balance of your body, we're talking science now, I apologize.

00:12:32.000 Ultimately, that's one of the things that's really impacted.

00:12:36.000 There you go.

00:12:36.000 Jamie pulled something up on the screen here.

00:12:38.000 You can see the windows of trainability.

00:12:41.000 This is fascinating.

00:12:42.000 And this Omega Wave, is it something you wear?

00:12:46.000 Yeah, so ultimately it's a three to five minute assessment.

00:12:49.000 You wear something that resembles a heart rate strap, lying at rest.

00:12:54.000 We also have electrodes on the third eye of your brain, essentially.

00:12:58.000 So we're picking up cardiovascular stress, and we're picking up the autonomic nervous system, and we're looking at things like heart rate variability, which you've already mentioned.

00:13:06.000 But so, this isn't for everybody.

00:13:07.000 Some people love it, and they say, hey man, this is, you know, again, these are just tools, right?

00:13:12.000 So different tools for different people.

00:13:14.000 Right, yeah, for sure.

00:13:15.000 It's a first thing in the morning measurement, too, to understand how well you recovered from the day before and those windows of trainability for the next day, that coming day.

00:13:25.000 I think it all comes back to what Forrest says.

00:13:27.000 Ultimately, what we're trying to do is understand individual responses, right?

00:13:31.000 At the end of the day, everyone's on a pathway of performance mastery to be a world champion.

00:13:37.000 And people respond to the workloads, the intensities, the volumes in very different ways.

00:13:41.000 If we take a basketball team and put them all through the same workout, you've got 15 different guys that are responding in very different ways to the same workout.

00:13:49.000 So we're privileged in that we work with an individual sport and that's our mantra is that we're looking at every single athlete as an individual and we're building our programming strategies and our information in an individual way.

00:14:03.000 So you guys have been doing this now for how many years?

00:14:07.000 We're coming up on two years on May 22nd is our second anniversary.

00:14:11.000 And do you have like a log of all the different cases you worked with so you can kind of review like what methods were more effective than others and you're constantly trying to improve this protocol or...

00:14:21.000 How do you guys write it all out?

00:14:23.000 I mean, we've obviously been involved with numerous fight camps, but we're also working with fighters that are not in camp.

00:14:29.000 Last year, we presented this journal, our first journal, which is an overview, a cross-section of all the data that we accrued in our first 12 months, and we continue to aggregate that data.

00:14:40.000 Now one of the privileges that we have at the Institute is we get the opportunity to work with just under 600 fighters on our roster, so we can create real clear cross-sectional awareness of what different weight classes look like, what the challenges are to a fighter, and then the fighters can compare and contrast themselves against their immediate peers in their weight class.

00:15:00.000 So that's one of the most powerful benchmarking tools you can create.

00:15:03.000 This Omega Wave technology, can people buy that?

00:15:06.000 Oh yeah, it's just a commercial product off the shelf.

00:15:08.000 And it looked like it worked off an app?

00:15:10.000 Like you put an app on your phone?

00:15:11.000 Yep, yep.

00:15:12.000 It does everything.

00:15:13.000 Seems like it.

00:15:14.000 Seems like that's the future.

00:15:15.000 But again, we use many different types of technologies, you know?

00:15:18.000 Things like Force Plus.

00:15:19.000 Plates can look at neuromuscular responses.

00:15:22.000 Some of our nutrition variables will change across time.

00:15:26.000 So it's not just one tool that has given us all the answers.

00:15:28.000 The Windows of Trainability concept is something that really helps us on a day-to-day basis to understand can you go into a strength or power type session today and really maximize the opportunity to create the adaptations.

00:15:40.000 Another day, it might be an endurance emphasis.

00:15:42.000 So what it allows us to do is just give kind of kudos and credence to the athlete to understand where's the best approach and where you're going to optimize your responses.

00:15:50.000 Every other sport is easier to train for than MMA. If you think about it, I was a defensive end in high school.

00:15:57.000 Every defensive end needs the same physical abilities.

00:15:59.000 You think about the combine, the NFL combine, for instance.

00:16:03.000 They've figured out over a million years what they want to test for.

00:16:06.000 And the guys, they run the same, they jump the same per position.

00:16:12.000 So quarterbacks don't need to necessarily be that fast if they can throw.

00:16:15.000 But for everybody else, the numbers are kind of the same.

00:16:18.000 For our sport, and they've collected, I don't know, I don't know how many data points at this point, but it's a lot.

00:16:24.000 So they're anonymized, normalized, so you know what average looks like.

00:16:28.000 So you can give a guy like Anthony Smith, say, hey, look, man, and I bring him up because he's mentioned it before.

00:16:35.000 He's been outspoken about working with the PI. Hey, you know what?

00:16:38.000 Your force power measurements, they're pretty average for 205. You're not a weak guy.

00:16:44.000 You could think about going up a weight class.

00:16:46.000 So it's just objective information so the athletes and hopefully their coaches can make those choices.

00:16:52.000 Do you think they would benefit from more weight classes?

00:16:56.000 Oh, that's a great question.

00:17:00.000 So I thought, ah, 65, you know, look at the percentages.

00:17:03.000 And then, you know, I was talking to actually Dana and Sean, and I was like, well, this guy's going to go to 65. This guy's going to go to 65. Everybody's going to go.

00:17:11.000 So is it going to help?

00:17:13.000 I mean, there needs to be a percentage difference, but I don't know. 0.98

00:17:16.000 I think people would just say, well, shit, now I have to do an extra five pounds. 0.89

00:17:21.000 But again, so from a PI standpoint, That's not really a decision we have to make. 0.99

00:17:27.000 What we need to do is collect as much data as we can on that.

00:17:30.000 For individual fighters.

00:17:31.000 And then also to provide that information to third-party commissions.

00:17:36.000 There's just so many gaps.

00:17:38.000 I'm so PR these days.

00:17:38.000 I'm so good.

00:17:39.000 It's okay.

00:17:40.000 I know what you're doing.

00:17:42.000 When you go from 85 to 205, that's 20 pounds.

00:17:45.000 That is an enormous jump.

00:17:46.000 So how do you decide when a guy's a tweener? 0.99

00:17:49.000 How do you look at a guy who maybe weighs 215 and you go, damn, dude. 0.99

00:17:52.000 The numbers. 0.99

00:17:54.000 What's your power?

00:17:55.000 What's your speed?

00:17:56.000 Are you a good athlete for that weight class?

00:17:58.000 Maybe not.

00:17:59.000 What's your arm length?

00:18:00.000 How does that...

00:18:01.000 You know, how does your arm length and the way you fight, right?

00:18:04.000 So, you know, if you're a Tyson-esque guy, you can have short arms and you wrestle a guy like a Gray Maynard style, right?

00:18:09.000 That's fine.

00:18:10.000 You don't need super long arms, but, you know, if you're not a wrestler, you don't have the head movement, maybe you do.

00:18:15.000 Anyway.

00:18:16.000 We've actually had a number of athletes, I would say over the last year, come to us specifically, and sometimes it's matchmakers who are saying, hey, this guy wants to go down, come take a look, meet with the PI staff, see what you guys think.

00:18:29.000 All those things that Forrest said are really valid.

00:18:32.000 We do have a lot of battery of tests, both in the nutrition space around body composition, around metabolic health.

00:18:40.000 Function, oftentimes bad weight cuts will diminish and depress the metabolic rate, the resting metabolic rate, as well as it progresses over time through training.

00:18:50.000 And then, like we said, some of the energy systems, a lot of the strength and power diagnostics.

00:18:54.000 How does an athlete compare to the norms and the standards that are set for that division?

00:19:00.000 So first thing that I look at is how does their body fit into a division?

00:19:06.000 Everybody's body is broken into three components if you think about it in terms of bone, muscle, and fat.

00:19:11.000 And if somebody's fat-free mass, it's everything except for their fat, is bigger than 99% of the athletes in that weight division, it's not going to be a good fit.

00:19:23.000 So a big thing is benchmarking and understanding how somebody's body fits into their division compared to others.

00:19:28.000 So that's kind of step one.

00:19:30.000 Then we look through all these other different metrics to see how they compare.

00:19:33.000 And then we have a conversation.

00:19:35.000 So my job is never, especially working with independent contractors, they can use us or they cannot.

00:19:41.000 And we are a resource to consult and to have conversations with them about what makes sense on a scientific level.

00:19:48.000 Can I ask you how that works?

00:19:49.000 Say if someone like Henry Cejudo wants to do his camp at the UFC Performance Institute, how would they do?

00:19:56.000 Schedule it with you guys?

00:19:57.000 Tell you, I'm going to be here for eight weeks.

00:19:59.000 We've set up camp in Vegas.

00:20:00.000 We'd like to do it at the gym.

00:20:02.000 So it happens all the time, whether it's a week or eight weeks.

00:20:05.000 That filters into every single member of our team, especially as we're doing more and more on the ground at fight events.

00:20:11.000 But that gets filtered up to Duncan, and then Duncan handles the coordination of that.

00:20:15.000 He could literally be there with, say, if he was going to fight Marlon Marais, they literally could be in the Performance Institute at the same time.

00:20:22.000 For sure.

00:20:23.000 And that happens.

00:20:24.000 That's crazy.

00:20:24.000 We're a split-level facility.

00:20:26.000 They're never in the same zone at the same time, though.

00:20:29.000 So you schedule them differently.

00:20:30.000 The guy wouldn't be doing MMA in the octagon.

00:20:32.000 You schedule them first come, first serve.

00:20:34.000 Do you ever anticipate a problem with guys that are supposed to be fighting each other, like what just happened with Masvidal recently, where an actual fistfight breaks out?

00:20:45.000 Man, you find most of these guys want to get paid to fight, not pay to fight.

00:20:49.000 When the cameras aren't on, they're not so...

00:20:52.000 That fight, yeah, that's true, right?

00:20:54.000 When the cameras aren't on.

00:20:55.000 The other thing is, when you're leading into a fight, my thought was you cannot let that person think they intimidated you.

00:21:01.000 And if that means you actually have to hit them, maybe it does, but the idea is that I can't let you think that you have a mental advantage.

00:21:07.000 Right.

00:21:08.000 In any other sport, no one would ever want to see that.

00:21:12.000 Like, you've got to stop that.

00:21:14.000 But in fighting, it's like, oh, they're just doing extra fighting.

00:21:16.000 Yeah.

00:21:17.000 Right.

00:21:17.000 I was like, you guys are getting paid!

00:21:21.000 Yeah, like if it was a basketball player, sucker punches another basketball player in the face at some sort of a press conference like that, like Masvidal did.

00:21:28.000 I mean, you'd be like, what?

00:21:30.000 No way!

00:21:30.000 But in fighting, like, oh, they did extra fighting.

00:21:34.000 But you don't get extra money or extra credit for it.

00:21:38.000 But you kind of do, let's be honest.

00:21:40.000 Masvidal, for that performance, was going to get extra money.

00:21:43.000 He was a stunning knockout of Darren Till, who was one of the top guys in the welterweight division.

00:21:48.000 The way he KO'd him was crazy.

00:21:49.000 So he got it from that, and then to tee off on Leon Edwards after the fight like that, it's like another one.

00:21:57.000 Part of that is very good for him, unfortunately.

00:22:01.000 I don't want him to do that.

00:22:02.000 I don't want to encourage, but if you want to think about a fighter's Building their brand. 1.00

00:22:09.000 He's an, I don't give a fuck, I'll punch you in the face guy. 0.99

00:22:11.000 And like, well, a lot of people are. 1.00

00:22:13.000 No, he's a real, I don't give a fuck, I'll punch you in your face guy. 1.00

00:22:17.000 They're real. 1.00

00:22:18.000 They really exist.

00:22:19.000 And he's a world-class fighter.

00:22:20.000 Like, that's sellable.

00:22:22.000 That's unfortunate.

00:22:23.000 I wish guys wouldn't ever fight at press conferences. 0.96

00:22:25.000 Like, Cormier and Jon Jones, I fucking hated that. 0.90

00:22:28.000 But tell me that didn't sell more tickets. 0.97

00:22:30.000 No doubt.

00:22:32.000 That sold a shitload more tickets.

00:22:35.000 How many times did they show Connor throwing that dolly?

00:22:38.000 How many times did they show that, even in the promos?

00:22:41.000 I hated when that happened.

00:22:42.000 It was a terrible thing that Connor did that. 0.99

00:22:45.000 Goddamn, that sold some tickets. 0.99

00:22:46.000 That's a fine line, right? 0.98

00:22:48.000 That's kind of a funny thing.

00:22:49.000 Way over the line!

00:22:50.000 People that weren't even involved got cut.

00:22:52.000 They got hit with glass.

00:22:54.000 Fights got canceled.

00:22:54.000 I don't mean that.

00:22:55.000 I mean using it.

00:22:56.000 Promoting it.

00:22:57.000 Saying, well, here's the thing that happened.

00:22:59.000 Do we just try to avoid it and hide it?

00:23:01.000 Or do we let people know that this is a real thing?

00:23:04.000 They call all people involved and go, look, this is a business.

00:23:07.000 We're here to get paid.

00:23:08.000 Okay, we're gonna run it.

00:23:09.000 We're gonna run it every 15 minutes.

00:23:11.000 We're gonna show that dolly smash! 1.00

00:23:13.000 Oh, and that's Will Harris' company?

00:23:15.000 Is that the gentleman?

00:23:17.000 What is it called?

00:23:20.000 Anatomy of a Fighter?

00:23:21.000 Yes.

00:23:21.000 That's his YouTube show that I often thought was a UFC show.

00:23:25.000 I didn't even know that he had his own show.

00:23:27.000 There's so many good guys right now that are putting out good content.

00:23:31.000 Will Harris.

00:23:33.000 And he came in here with Kamaru Usman.

00:23:35.000 Super nice guy.

00:23:36.000 But his footage, that was his footage.

00:23:39.000 Oh.

00:23:40.000 Of that dolly smashing into the window.

00:23:42.000 So the thing you see over and over again, thank Will.

00:23:44.000 I think the embedded guys from the UFC were on the bus as well.

00:23:47.000 So they got the inside?

00:23:48.000 Nice.

00:23:48.000 Congratulations.

00:23:49.000 Will got the outside.

00:23:50.000 Jesus Christ.

00:23:51.000 So the Performance Institute's awesome.

00:23:53.000 Anyway, sorry about that.

00:23:55.000 Hey, listen, man.

00:23:55.000 This is how this show works.

00:23:57.000 It goes off the rails occasionally.

00:24:00.000 What you guys have set up, though, is kind of an unprecedented thing in the combat sports world.

00:24:05.000 There's never anything like this for boxing, where boxers can go.

00:24:08.000 It's closest to the Olympic model. 0.67

00:24:10.000 So we went around benchmarking, yada, yada, 60-plus facilities.

00:24:14.000 And you notice a lot of the people that we hired worked with international Olympic sports, and that's kind of our athlete model, right?

00:24:22.000 So Olympic athletes, they might go to Colorado Springs for two weeks or for four months or for a week and do like a skills camp or something.

00:24:31.000 We have the same model.

00:24:32.000 You come in three, four days and then go home with like a program, you know, a diet, strength conditioning program, PT program, your training load goals, et cetera.

00:24:42.000 So you'd leave with that, right?

00:24:44.000 And then maybe, you know, you don't want to move your life to Vegas.

00:24:47.000 You've got family, kids back home.

00:24:48.000 So you come out three days every other month, and they can actually monitor and tell you this is how your training is going.

00:24:55.000 It's just, again, just data on whether it's working or not working, as opposed to my old boxing coach, oh, you're hitting hard today, kid.

00:25:02.000 I don't know what you ate, but it's good.

00:25:03.000 It's working for you.

00:25:05.000 I was like, I ate cookies last night.

00:25:07.000 Should I just eat cookies every day and punch hard?

00:25:10.000 I don't know.

00:25:11.000 Yeah, the scientific approach of getting those little extra percentage points of improvement is really what it's all about.

00:25:18.000 And it could really be the difference.

00:25:20.000 And it's such a crazy sport because it's so wild and unpredictable.

00:25:24.000 And, I mean, you could speak to this better than anybody.

00:25:27.000 The results may vary. 0.99

00:25:29.000 It is a wild goddamn sport. 0.99

00:25:32.000 One of the best camps I ever had was Keith Jardine. 0.99

00:25:36.000 I was fucking amazing in the gym, though. 0.87

00:25:39.000 I was like, I am so good right now. 0.98

00:25:41.000 I've beaten everybody up.

00:25:42.000 This is amazing.

00:25:43.000 But, you know, it was a 14-week camp.

00:25:46.000 I started falling apart again.

00:25:47.000 There's no other sport with as many degrees of freedom as mixed martial arts.

00:25:51.000 Right.

00:25:51.000 In terms of execution?

00:25:53.000 Well, just in terms of stylistic background, weight classes.

00:25:56.000 You don't even know when Dana's going to give you a call to the next fight.

00:26:00.000 Let's look at Usain Bolt, right?

00:26:01.000 There's a reason why Usain Bolt is a 100-meter champion and he's not the 60-meter champion.

00:26:06.000 Alright?

00:26:06.000 Our guys, if you look at mixed martial arts, that is 6 to 36 seconds of high intensity work followed by 2 to 3 times as much low intensity work repeated throughout a 5 minute round.

00:26:18.000 77% of fights are won in those high intensity efforts, right?

00:26:23.000 So that's where the fight is won and lost.

00:26:24.000 But you don't know if that 6 seconds is going to be the first 6 seconds of the fight or the last 6 seconds of the fight.

00:26:30.000 So Usain Bolt knows that he's going 100 metres.

00:26:34.000 Our guys don't know if they need to be the best starter or the best finisher.

00:26:39.000 So you've got to prepare for everything.

00:26:40.000 So all these degrees of freedom, these external variable things that come into mixed martial arts make it the most complex sport to figure out and build a structure and a development pathway against.

00:26:50.000 It's so interesting too that so many different fighters have a completely different approach.

00:26:54.000 Like you've got...

00:26:55.000 A low-volume, high-power approach, like maybe a Tyron Woodley.

00:26:59.000 And then you've got a guy like Nick Diaz, who just smothers guys. 0.92

00:27:01.000 He just stays on you and keeps punching you and talking shit to you, and he sees you starting to lose your breath, and he keeps coming after you, and he can push a pace because of his long-term cardiovascular condition. 0.98

00:27:11.000 And you can't tell him he's doing it wrong. 0.99

00:27:14.000 He's not.

00:27:15.000 Everybody's doing it a different way.

00:27:16.000 Sometimes your physiology is going to determine the way you fight.

00:27:20.000 Like the arm length, John Jones, and the leg and arm length.

00:27:24.000 I can't fight like that because I'm not going to be at the end of everybody's punch just out of reach.

00:27:29.000 I'm going to be getting hit by everybody if I start throwing those teeps.

00:27:32.000 And also, it allows him in training to get better.

00:27:36.000 He's always got this advantage.

00:27:38.000 He's constantly getting better.

00:27:40.000 And he's also the best I've ever seen at utilizing that reach.

00:27:45.000 He's very good at keeping his opponent exactly where he needs him.

00:27:49.000 And in his range, and when they close up, he's very good at being defensive.

00:27:54.000 Thank you.

00:27:54.000 I mean, that's what the best fighters do, right?

00:27:56.000 They take the fight where they want it to go.

00:27:58.000 But it's just so interesting to see that everyone does have a different approach that they make work with their body structure.

00:28:04.000 It's quite unique because we've looked at a lot of our physiological assessments, and when you take the data and you compare and contrast, for example, people with grappling and wrestling backgrounds versus striking backgrounds, you can take something like power and you can differentiate between those two.

00:28:19.000 So, alright, I want to get a competitive advantage as a striker.

00:28:24.000 I might need to improve my strength work because the wrestlers are already stronger than me.

00:28:28.000 We can look at the strength characteristics.

00:28:31.000 Our data shows that the guys that come from a wrestling background are far and above stronger than the strikers, which you would expect, right?

00:28:38.000 But if you look at things like, can you differentiate our top 15 in the world versus the rest of the roster in that weight class?

00:28:44.000 It takes away any comparison.

00:28:50.000 And at the end of the day, ultimately in a complex, chaos-based sport, skill is always going to be the best determinant of performance.

00:28:58.000 So we're not saying that the physiological variables aren't important to the sport of MMA, but it's really hard to tease out where you need to push your strategy and where you need to optimise your training.

00:29:08.000 Because in a homogeneous population of world-class fighters, it kind of gets absorbed and it becomes invisible where the differences are.

00:29:15.000 That's such an important point.

00:29:17.000 We usually are a little more specific per athlete.

00:29:21.000 You just told me what not to do.

00:29:23.000 What do I do, though?

00:29:24.000 And that's where the individualization, personalization for every single athlete comes in.

00:29:28.000 We find their strengths and some of their gaps where it might be the lowest point-scoring component of their decathlon of MMA. And if it's a deficiency that maybe hasn't been taken advantage of yet, but will, that's where we fill those gaps so that they can start to fill those holes and become more complete, more comprehensive.

00:29:47.000 That might be strength, power.

00:29:49.000 It might be energy system. 1.00

00:29:51.000 It may be, it could be anything.

00:29:53.000 It could be orthopedic.

00:29:54.000 I mean, we have We're trying to assess every component of preparation that can support or limit that athlete's performance in the cage.

00:30:04.000 In terms of how all those things work together, it's really vital that if somebody's working on their strength and power, they're not feeding their body in a way that's actually limiting their ability to perform the high-intensity training.

00:30:17.000 Because then that limits the adaptation that we're looking for as a response to that training.

00:30:23.000 And that's a really critical point where nutrition really is a foundation that supports the development of all the other adaptations that are required to become that complete mixed martial artist.

00:30:36.000 So as the strength and conditioning plan is being laid out, as the physical therapy plan, as the recovery plan, all of those are coming to fruition.

00:30:45.000 The nutrition, obviously, is really near and dear to what I'm doing, is really critical at supporting the adaptation so that we're not pulling the athlete in two different directions in terms of the adaptation.

00:30:56.000 Now, in terms of when you take fighters and athletes into your performance institute, have you guys ever worked with young, junior, amateur mixed martial artists, kids that are coming up?

00:31:10.000 Do you ever do stuff like that?

00:31:12.000 Show them, give them a peek at what it's like to see the world-class fighters?

00:31:17.000 Well, we don't at the Performance Institute in Las Vegas because we're very much aligned to supporting our current roster, and it's a facility and a philosophy that's been designed to support our current roster.

00:31:28.000 What we're doing in June of this year, however, is opening up a facility in Shanghai, China, which will have a completely different business model in terms of that will be very much a developmental program for guys that aren't currently in the UFC. So obviously we're trying to improve the talent standards in China and develop that market and break that new territory, but the mechanism to doing that is going to be very much through talent development in the Performance Institute.

00:31:52.000 So over there, we will have MMA coaches and grappling coaches and striking coaches.

00:31:57.000 We don't have that in Las Vegas because we're currently working with guys that are already on the roster.

00:32:00.000 Well, it's such a unique sport in the fact that even though it is one thing when you get into the UFC, the paths to get there are so widely different.

00:32:09.000 And you really don't know what the right way is.

00:32:12.000 Is the Krokop path the right way to do it? 1.00

00:32:13.000 Or is the Daniel Cormier path the right way to do it?

00:32:16.000 No one can say.

00:32:17.000 And different fighters will win on different nights with different styles.

00:32:20.000 It's one of the only sports.

00:32:22.000 Where your pathway in, you could say that if someone is an elite kickboxer or an elite grappler, that going in with that one major advantage in that one skill set could take you very, very far versus an overall game approach that some guys have where they're really good at everything.

00:32:40.000 Right, and the true specialist, if you look at the day, the true specialist, the GSPs of this world, still hasn't necessarily risen to the top in the sport of MMA. You still see guys that are stylistically, they have a stylistic emphasis, and that's their X Factor that keeps them at the top of the game.

00:32:54.000 Yeah, and then there's execution, which is creativity, and their ability to perform under pressure, their ability to maintain their cool during camp where they never overtrain, and they stay in a good space, they stay in a good headspace, and I've When you first asked about, you know, something I've seen that I love, training partners, right?

00:33:23.000 Bring your training partners to the UFC PI. And we've had, I don't know, six, seven, eight guys that came in as training partners and are now on the UFC roster.

00:33:32.000 So that's why I'm not an asshole to anyone. 0.89

00:33:34.000 That's beautiful. 0.87

00:33:35.000 Because you never know.

00:33:36.000 It's also, you get the chance to see these.

00:33:38.000 I mean, every guy has to start somewhere.

00:33:40.000 Every girl has to start somewhere. 1.00

00:33:41.000 You get a chance to see these people that maybe never get this invitation there, and they see the holy ground. 0.98

00:33:46.000 They're like, God damn, I'm at the UFC. Well, to your point, too, about the facility. 0.96

00:33:50.000 World-class facility.

00:33:52.000 The services, we would argue, are even better than the facility.

00:33:56.000 But training partners, coaches, those that are on the Contender Series, those that came through for the Ultimate Fighter, they have all been able to use and to access the facility in short periods.

00:34:06.000 Training partners can come and access the facility, eat on campus.

00:34:11.000 Strength train with the UFC athlete, use the facility upstairs, and train in the MMA space.

00:34:16.000 And when they get the chance, when they get the shot, then they tap right into services.

00:34:21.000 And it's an opportunity for us to, you know, essentially influence the community even before we're working with them directly, which is a really huge component of our philosophy and really what we're looking to accomplish.

00:34:32.000 I think it would be massively inspirational for the fighters too, the young guys.

00:34:36.000 Yeah, I mean, our philosophy is to accelerate the evolution of the sport of mixed martial arts.

00:34:40.000 That's in our mission statement, as you've seen.

00:34:43.000 When you walk through the door, it's right there on the wall, you know?

00:34:46.000 And to do that, we're trying to shift the barometer in terms of, not the professionalism of the sport, but the expectations of fighters within the sport.

00:34:54.000 You look at someone like Brown Ortega, and listen, what we're not trying to do is take the wild out of the stallion, right?

00:35:00.000 We're not trying to just push science at fighters.

00:35:03.000 At the end of the day, these guys are world-class fighters for a reason.

00:35:06.000 But you can train and shape the stallion and it still has the wild at heart, right?

00:35:09.000 So what we're trying to do is shift the barometer so there's an expectation of what a professional athlete should really expect.

00:35:16.000 Brian Ortega has worked out in his garage most of his garage.

00:35:19.000 Sorry, it's American, right? 0.94

00:35:20.000 LAUGHTER But in terms of what's the expectation that a professional fighter should expect, the Performance Institute demonstrates that not everyone can have access to it, obviously, but that's an aspiration and it's where people should understand in the sport of mixed martial arts the standard that as a professional fighter you can expect.

00:35:38.000 And it's so important, I think, that you put all these things under one roof like that and create this environment because it seems to be trickling off into other places.

00:35:48.000 The level of training and recovery and everything is so intense and so severe that people are starting to try to mimic certain aspects of that in their own gyms, in their own different places.

00:35:58.000 The problem is you can't do things in isolation, alright?

00:36:01.000 If you just say, I'm going to really hammer the recovery piece and forget about the nutrition piece, it's a large machine, right?

00:36:08.000 There's cogs and all the cogs need to work together.

00:36:11.000 And that's what we truly feel we can offer and we can deliver is this, not necessarily a multidisciplinary service, but an interdisciplinary service where we have multiple aspects coming together to fill the whole picture of an athlete's portfolio of needs.

00:36:25.000 And that's what we can offer through the Performance Institute.

00:36:28.000 The other thing we want to do is figure out what the best practices are and disseminate them.

00:36:33.000 Like, we don't want to just know a bunch of stuff so we can keep it.

00:36:35.000 Remember, we want every other gym, like, hey, here's what we've learned.

00:36:39.000 This is how we do our recovery.

00:36:41.000 Take of it, try it, see if you recover.

00:36:44.000 See if you want a laser bed.

00:36:45.000 Maybe you do, maybe you don't.

00:36:46.000 This is what we found success in, you know?

00:36:48.000 So you want to, you know, what's the point of learning something and then hiding it away?

00:36:52.000 But for a young person, Yeah, sorry.

00:36:53.000 And everything's about assessment.

00:36:55.000 So it's not one recovery modality.

00:36:57.000 It's not one nutrition modality.

00:36:58.000 It's not one strength and conditioning.

00:37:00.000 It's assessing so then we can build that personalized approach.

00:37:03.000 And so here are the modalities.

00:37:04.000 Here's the philosophy that we've developed to help optimize athletes' needs around what we're measuring.

00:37:12.000 And we're not winning fights.

00:37:15.000 That's obvious.

00:37:16.000 That comes with the X factors, that comes from the fighters, their passion and their commitment to their sport.

00:37:22.000 But what we're trying to do, back to your original question, I think, around this 1% is so hard to measure, but what we're able to do is to help them to do it more consistently and to do it longer into their career so that they can optimize, they can maximize their ability to train, to adapt, to perform, and give themselves the best chance to be successful on fight night.

00:37:43.000 Yeah, and there must be so many fighters that come from a discipline, whether it's judo or something along those lines, and then they start fighting in MMA, so they get a boxing coach, and they have a few guys working with them with leg kicks, but they don't have a nutrition guy, and they don't have a recovery guy, they don't have someone who understands deep tissue massage.

00:37:58.000 They've got to find that guy.

00:37:59.000 They've got to find someone to organize a diet for them. 0.93

00:38:01.000 They've got to figure out how to cut weight healthy, properly.

00:38:04.000 And these things are so difficult for fighters to put, especially if you don't live in a place that has something like an American top team or some gigantic institution.

00:38:14.000 Yeah, I mean, there's fighters, even top fighters on our roster might potentially hire a nutritionist for a short period of time in the fight camp, you know, for an eight-week period.

00:38:24.000 This should be a 52-week fight camp.

00:38:26.000 We should be considering our development as fighters and as professional athletes 52 weeks of the year.

00:38:33.000 You trademarked that too.

00:38:34.000 52-week fight camp.

00:38:36.000 That's what our philosophy is, as Clint has already talked about, in terms of plugging the holes and being able to offer the services that you need as a particular athlete.

00:38:45.000 So there's large gyms out there, American Top Team, AKA, they've got their own guys.

00:38:49.000 That's great.

00:38:50.000 Jackson, they've got their own people.

00:38:52.000 But there's plenty of people on the roster that have an MMA coach and a grappling coach, and that's it.

00:38:58.000 So the Performance Institute, we feel we can help and support those guys as well.

00:39:02.000 You can bridge the gaps.

00:39:03.000 And we're not trying to displace the programs where athletes already have resources, but I don't know of another MMA gym globally that has the capacity around assessment that we do.

00:39:14.000 So yeah, we have some really great practitioners, but Bo Sandoval, our strength coach, and his team cannot write programs for 570 athletes.

00:39:23.000 It's not possible.

00:39:24.000 But what we can do is assess those athletes, provide that feedback back to their strength coaches, and have conversations about how those coaches can use that data to support the development of that athlete.

00:39:34.000 And that goes across the board for all of our performance services.

00:39:37.000 Well, it's a pretty amazing resource because if you're a young fighter and all you have is access to the people around you, if you're fighting in the UFC, you get to have access instantaneously to this gigantic group of people.

00:39:50.000 Forrest, when you were coming up, you were a real pioneer.

00:39:54.000 That was not available to a guy like you.

00:39:56.000 No, I mean, I tell the story all the time, but so I was actually a little bit ahead of my time.

00:40:01.000 I had, you know, I had an actual strength coach that had letters behind his name.

00:40:05.000 Went to college to be a strength coach, not that was like an ex-bodybuilder.

00:40:09.000 I had, you know, a relatively good nutritionist who at least had a degree in chemical biology.

00:40:15.000 I had a good physical therapist, but I didn't really have, like, I was my coach.

00:40:21.000 You know, at the end of the day, I was the head of performance.

00:40:23.000 So I'd go do jujitsu and, you know, jujitsu coach wants you to go hard and then you go kickbox, but you're going to go light, but it's kickbox, so you don't.

00:40:30.000 And then, you know, and now, you know, nobody's the strength coach and nutritionist on different pages.

00:40:36.000 So I think just understanding that everything has to work together, which I didn't really understand.

00:40:42.000 Well, what I'm saying is that you kind of had to pave a path.

00:40:46.000 Because when a guy like you was doing all that stuff with a real legitimate strength and conditioning coach, a real legitimate nutritionist, how many other people were doing that at your time?

00:40:55.000 Not that many, but I got to be around good people like Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell.

00:40:59.000 Those were kind of guys I got to hang out with and say, well, he does this, he does that.

00:41:03.000 Chuck actually wasn't into that much of this stuff, but Randy was.

00:41:07.000 I know what I'm doing, K. Alright.

00:41:09.000 Yes, sir?

00:41:10.000 Yeah, he just existed on pure savagery.

00:41:12.000 When you step back and look at your career, how amazing is it to be able to step off from there and Do something like you're doing now for the UFC Performance Institute, which is very meaningful for young fighters.

00:41:26.000 I mean, you really do get a chance to give back with your experience and your understanding of the right way and the wrong way, the mistakes that you've made.

00:41:33.000 I mean, it's huge.

00:41:34.000 I mean, that's the whole genesis kind of from my involvement in the PI. Like, look, here's the 10,000 mistakes I made.

00:41:42.000 You're going to make mistakes, too, but these are the ones you don't need to make, you know?

00:41:47.000 Again, the sport's changed, man.

00:41:48.000 It's 25 years old.

00:41:50.000 Every other sport so evolved, been around so long, our sport changes all the time.

00:41:54.000 I forget who was talking about it, but, you know, even the guys fighting 10 years ago probably couldn't compete with the guys fighting today, you know?

00:42:02.000 I mean, what I would say as well is not only for the fighters, Forrest is a huge resource for us.

00:42:07.000 The best piece of technology we have is the door handle that leads from my office to Forrest's office, right?

00:42:12.000 Because ultimately, he's a massive resource for us that are not necessarily coming from an MMA background and are trying to support the MMA community to bounce ideas off, to essentially beta test things from a thought process perspective.

00:42:25.000 And he's a huge part of the Performance Institute philosophy because we can use and call upon his expertise.

00:42:31.000 Here's another funny thing.

00:42:33.000 When we were putting together the team for the PI, I kind of shied away from people already doing MMA. I wanted combat sports.

00:42:42.000 Everybody that's done it has done judo, boxing on an Olympic level.

00:42:46.000 They've done combat sports, but I wanted a fresh set of eyes coming from a different...

00:42:51.000 Because I know really good MMA strength coaches.

00:42:55.000 I know pretty good MMA... You know good...

00:43:00.000 Get that fresh set of eyes.

00:43:01.000 You know, nutrition actually was a little different because the rest of the world does not understand a weight cut for an MMA fight.

00:43:09.000 It's not like, you know, you go to Exos, you go to any high-level facility, and you say, I'm going to lose 8% of my body weight and then compete on Saturday.

00:43:15.000 They're like, no, don't.

00:43:16.000 Just fight in the high-weight class.

00:43:18.000 I'm like, yeah, that actually isn't going to work out for me.

00:43:21.000 Yeah.

00:43:22.000 They just won't comprehend it.

00:43:23.000 They're like, no, no, you'll perform better.

00:43:25.000 Like, no, no.

00:43:26.000 Well, some fighters do.

00:43:28.000 That's another thing about having a limited amount of weight classes.

00:43:31.000 When you jump up, you have to make a drastic change.

00:43:33.000 Diego Sanchez. 0.98

00:43:33.000 He's crazy, man. 0.98

00:43:34.000 He's like 174 and 175 on fight day.

00:43:37.000 Yeah.

00:43:37.000 Fighting guys 190. Yeah, but with a lot of energy.

00:43:40.000 What's interesting is at his age, I think it's probably a good move.

00:43:43.000 He's missed no meals.

00:43:44.000 Yeah, I think it's probably a good move, though, at his age.

00:43:47.000 You know, I mean, he's back from UFC Ultimate Fighter 1. Dude, insane. 0.53

00:43:52.000 We knew, though, like on the show, that he was the one that would go forever. 1.00

00:43:55.000 We knew in the house that, I don't know, he's just crazy.

00:43:58.000 He's got so much enthusiasm, still.

00:44:00.000 Yeah, he's not going to stop.

00:44:01.000 I mean, when he beat Mickey Gall that way, I was incredibly impressed.

00:44:05.000 When I'm like, this kid might test him.

00:44:07.000 He didn't test him at all.

00:44:08.000 I mean, it was amazing.

00:44:09.000 It was a prime Diego Sanchez performance 15 years into the game.

00:44:13.000 I mean, that's just into the UFC. He had amateur fights, or professional fights rather, before the UFC. He's been in the UFC for 15 years, man.

00:44:25.000 Or at least 14, right?

00:44:27.000 2004?

00:44:27.000 2005 was season one.

00:44:29.000 Yeah, we shot it 2004, 2005, so yeah.

00:44:33.000 Somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 years.

00:44:35.000 Which is amazing that he's so enthusiastic about it still.

00:44:38.000 Yeah, they'll give him a vase for his top of his mantelpiece and above his fire or something.

00:44:42.000 Carriage clock or something.

00:44:44.000 Just to recognize his 15 years.

00:44:46.000 Yeah, that's a long time in a combat sport.

00:44:50.000 A long time.

00:44:51.000 So, that's the other thing, man.

00:44:53.000 That is not the norm.

00:44:54.000 That's a deviation, right?

00:44:56.000 A huge deviation.

00:44:57.000 I made it nine years in the UFC. Eight years, actually.

00:45:01.000 And, you know, I didn't have that many fights.

00:45:03.000 I broke down.

00:45:03.000 I fell apart.

00:45:04.000 It's pretty average.

00:45:06.000 You know, I was like, woe is me.

00:45:07.000 And then when you look at the data, it's like, oh, no, I'm just average.

00:45:11.000 35. That's when you start to fall apart.

00:45:13.000 When you look back now with what you know now and all the athletes you've worked with at the UFC PI, do you think you would have done anything different in terms of the way you prepared?

00:45:21.000 I couldn't even think about it.

00:45:22.000 I knew what to think about it.

00:45:23.000 Oh, yeah. 1.00

00:45:24.000 It's so dumb. 0.99

00:45:25.000 Why would you spar eight rounds? 1.00

00:45:28.000 Why would you spar eight rounds?

00:45:29.000 There's no eight-round fights for us.

00:45:31.000 What are you doing?

00:45:33.000 You're literally just getting slower, Forrest.

00:45:35.000 You're already slow.

00:45:36.000 I don't know, man.

00:45:39.000 It's...

00:45:39.000 Again, being a pioneer like you were, there wasn't really a whole lot of guys before you that were operating...

00:45:46.000 I had the other pioneers, like the Randys and the Chucks, and that's what they were doing. 0.93

00:45:50.000 So I figured, well, better be tough.

00:45:51.000 I better do what they do.

00:45:53.000 That's the craziest thing about MMA. They're champions.

00:45:54.000 I'm not going to question them.

00:45:56.000 Boxing had already figured out you shouldn't beat the fuck out of each other every day.

00:45:59.000 They had already kind of figured that out.

00:46:01.000 Well, and the other thing they figured out is...

00:46:04.000 We would work with people.

00:46:05.000 I would spar with Vanderlei, Chuck, Randy.

00:46:08.000 In boxing, they don't spar with people that are equals.

00:46:11.000 Past a certain point?

00:46:12.000 In camp?

00:46:13.000 Well, think about it.

00:46:14.000 You know a lot about it.

00:46:14.000 They start, like, is Floyd Mayweather sparring with, I don't know, really good people, his level?

00:46:20.000 No.

00:46:20.000 No, definitely not.

00:46:22.000 He's fighting with good boxers and he's tooling them.

00:46:25.000 Yes, yes.

00:46:26.000 Have you heard of them though?

00:46:28.000 They're not famous and rich, so they're not the best in the world.

00:46:31.000 They're not elite.

00:46:32.000 Whereas you think about like a gym, like our gym, like I'll just use Randy's because I don't want to talk bad about anybody.

00:46:38.000 You're fighting other champions every day?

00:46:40.000 Right.

00:46:41.000 Eh, maybe, maybe. 1.00

00:46:42.000 Dangerous as fuck. 0.99

00:46:43.000 Yeah, maybe drill together, sure. 1.00

00:46:45.000 Learn from each other, roll, wrestle, like control your training.

00:46:49.000 Especially guys that are in the same weight class as you that may someday fight you.

00:46:53.000 That's awkward, yeah.

00:46:54.000 Yeah.

00:46:54.000 And there was no guidebook.

00:46:58.000 Yeah.

00:46:58.000 Well, you know guys like Keith Jardine and Rashad Evans figured it out.

00:47:01.000 They're like, alright, we already had to fight each other.

00:47:03.000 We'll train together now so we won't have to do it again.

00:47:06.000 Right.

00:47:06.000 That is a good move if it works out.

00:47:10.000 The level of guys now is so extraordinary to see.

00:47:15.000 When you see the elite champions of today, you just have this insane level of fighter.

00:47:21.000 As a person who's been involved in the sport as long as I have, I still never cease to be amazed at the level of talent of these guys coming up.

00:47:30.000 Because some of these guys coming up, they just could do everything.

00:47:32.000 And they can do everything at such a high level, and you're realizing you're seeing the results of kids that started out learning MMA when they were like five, six years old.

00:47:40.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:47:40.000 I mean, you know, I have a personal gym, and I remember Ronda Rousey, they're like, man, she's going to change my bottom line.

00:47:46.000 All of a sudden, I got a mat full of young women, like, just training, like, legit fighting. 1.00

00:47:52.000 I was like, this is amazing!

00:47:54.000 Thank you, Ronda!

00:47:55.000 Yeah, she for sure changed it.

00:47:57.000 Gina Carano changed it a little bit before her. 0.97

00:47:59.000 You know, people had this idea like, oh, you could be pretty and fuck people up. 0.96

00:48:04.000 Like, oh, that's a totally different kind of girl. 0.98

00:48:06.000 That's like a superhero.

00:48:07.000 Like a real life superhero.

00:48:09.000 Now she plays it in movies, right? 0.98

00:48:10.000 Yeah, but it's just incredible, too, that the sport, when you look at women's MMA, like particularly Amanda Nunes, Chris Cyborg, that fight, I mean, that is as crazy exciting as any fight you will ever see in your fucking life. 0.62

00:48:23.000 And Amanda Nunes bombed on one of the greatest, if not the greatest, women's MMA fighter of all time and KO'd her in the first round in spectacular fashion. 1.00

00:48:33.000 Like, if you're not a fan of MMA or women's MMA after watching that...

00:48:37.000 Yeah, like, that's funny you mention that.

00:48:39.000 I just think about Holly Holm.

00:48:40.000 Like, what's she made out of?

00:48:41.000 Like, she's had a million fights.

00:48:43.000 Like, what is she doing so right?

00:48:46.000 Like, she's just, she's a, you know, GSP couture.

00:48:49.000 She's just a genetic specimen. 1.00

00:48:51.000 And I think, you know.

00:48:53.000 She just, again, she does that 52-week fight camp type deal, you know? 0.74

00:48:56.000 Yeah, you don't see her ever getting out of shape.

00:48:59.000 Never.

00:48:59.000 It's not happening.

00:49:00.000 Yeah.

00:49:01.000 You know, I still think she got a raw deal in the Durandamy fight. 0.97

00:49:04.000 Ah, she did.

00:49:05.000 That's because she did.

00:49:05.000 She did.

00:49:06.000 She got clocked pretty late.

00:49:07.000 Two times hard after the buzzer.

00:49:09.000 Yes, absolutely.

00:49:10.000 Two times.

00:49:11.000 And no points taken away, no nothing, and we were shocked.

00:49:14.000 We're like, that's crazy.

00:49:15.000 And then on top of that, she dropped her. 0.88

00:49:17.000 She dropped her with a head kick, and she dropped her with a straight left. 1.00

00:49:19.000 Like, in my opinion, she did the more damage in that fight, and I was shocked.

00:49:24.000 But that's...

00:49:25.000 I mean...

00:49:26.000 MMA judging.

00:49:27.000 Yeah.

00:49:27.000 It's never gonna...

00:49:28.000 That's crazy.

00:49:28.000 We cannot help you with that at the Performance Institute.

00:49:31.000 Well, at the Performance Institute...

00:49:32.000 Well, we got some data.

00:49:33.000 What I was getting at before when you were talking about little kids, when I was...

00:49:36.000 I was rather talking about kids coming up and amateur fighters.

00:49:41.000 There would probably be something that would be really beneficial of having some sort of a program like that in America where kids can understand the right way and the wrong way to do it so they don't have to repeat these problems and these mistakes that have already been kind of gone over.

00:49:59.000 That's your background in the British Olympics system, right?

00:50:01.000 You do it.

00:50:02.000 Set that up.

00:50:03.000 You've got nothing going on.

00:50:04.000 Would that be something that the UFC would ever think about doing in the future?

00:50:08.000 Because if they really wanted to ensure that they had a good pool of high-level talent, it would certainly add to that.

00:50:13.000 Yeah.

00:50:14.000 I mean there's no clear performance pathway into the highest level of the UFC for the sport of mixed martial arts.

00:50:21.000 But there's guidelines for training that I think kids might not have the resources.

00:50:25.000 Every gym has a curriculum, and what we're trying to do is obviously add to that curriculum from a training perspective, a recovery perspective.

00:50:32.000 But ultimately, what's the best pathway?

00:50:34.000 And as you've already contested to, people are coming to this sport with so many different backgrounds.

00:50:38.000 So are you going to chop that access route to the UFC in half, or are you actually going to promote it and find many ways to get into the UFC?

00:50:48.000 I think we can look at things like the Olympic Games.

00:50:50.000 Does MMA ever enter into the Olympic Games and create a pathway?

00:50:55.000 Who knows?

00:50:55.000 And I'm sure the UFC are looking into that type of thing in the future and trying to be ambitious.

00:51:00.000 But right now it's hard to define what's the optimal way and what is the optimal route into the UFC. I'm sure it's the same for other disciplines of martial arts, but I have a lot of experience in youth wrestling development.

00:51:25.000 And when MMA came along, it was a little bit of a fear.

00:51:28.000 We're going to lose a lot of athletes to MMA. And we did originally lose a lot of athletes on the Olympic level to MMA. Johnny Hendricks is a great example.

00:51:36.000 Promising young wrestling star, went to MMA, became a UFC champ, did not become an Olympian.

00:51:40.000 But what it's really done is it's created this popularity in wrestling in no small part to, I think, some of the feedback that you've provided around wrestling being so vital to the development of mixed martial arts.

00:51:52.000 But there's been a real boon, I believe, in youth wrestling and, you know, youth and high school wrestling because people realize and recognize that this is a pathway into, you know, into becoming an elite mixed martial artist.

00:52:08.000 Of all the athletes that are in the UFC, there's a very high level of champions right now that were 2008 Olympians.

00:52:15.000 But if you look at the roster and how many people wrestled in high school, it's staggering.

00:52:19.000 And so just getting this base, not only technique and the grind mentality, but the strength that you double-legging somebody from when you're 5 until you're 18, you develop strength that you can't develop when you're 22. And this core strength and the ability to do it.

00:52:33.000 Is a way to get into it.

00:52:35.000 And I know that other disciplines are likely receiving similar windfalls, but in terms of developing that curriculum for development, that's definitely part of what we're interested in, alleviating some of the big mistakes, but there's still innumerable ways to get into it.

00:52:53.000 Think about when you were doing jiu-jitsu.

00:52:55.000 You had to struggle to find people to roll with when you started, right?

00:52:58.000 Sure.

00:52:59.000 There's like six guys you could roll with.

00:53:01.000 Now, you can go anywhere.

00:53:03.000 You can be doing a show in any...

00:53:04.000 Just look up and go drop in on a local jiu-jitsu club.

00:53:08.000 Yeah, it's packed.

00:53:09.000 It's insane.

00:53:09.000 John Jock's noon class the other day had 60 people in it.

00:53:12.000 6-0. 1.00

00:53:13.000 Like, what the fuck? 0.99

00:53:15.000 There was nowhere to move. 0.99

00:53:16.000 There's your talent development pathway to the UFC. It's those kids' classes, right?

00:53:21.000 Yep.

00:53:21.000 Yeah.

00:53:22.000 It really is interesting, too, and it's dependent upon if a kid lives in an area that has a strong jiu-jitsu program or a strong Muay Thai program.

00:53:30.000 Oftentimes, that's what dictates what path they get into the sport from.

00:53:33.000 No doubt.

00:53:34.000 Or a good women's wrestling program.

00:53:36.000 I wrestle like a girl.

00:53:39.000 I'm on the advisory board, so I'm not only women's MMA, but women's wrestling as well.

00:53:45.000 What's really interesting working on the clinical side of what we do at the PI is every discipline has its own, not only sport culture, but physiology that goes with it.

00:53:56.000 As we talked about the strength dynamics for wrestlers, Are going to be different than the reactive strength for our strikers.

00:54:04.000 And then nutrition and just overall lifestyle type sport cultures is really interesting coming from the different disciplines that you came from.

00:54:12.000 Boxers, they do their road work. 0.96

00:54:14.000 They're doing a lot more fast and morning training.

00:54:16.000 Wrestlers have obviously a weight cut culture that they bring with them and have a little bit more experience there.

00:54:21.000 A lot of the Brazilian jiu-jitsu players, especially from Brazil, have their sport culture.

00:54:26.000 So it's so intriguing being able to We work with one sport, but with so many subcultures within that sport.

00:54:34.000 Really, really interesting to get to work with.

00:54:37.000 Obviously, working with the female athletes, like you alluded to earlier, adds a whole other layer in terms of the dynamics that we're working with in terms of the physiology with our athletes.

00:54:47.000 The female physiology and the weight cut, that's just the whole... 0.99

00:54:50.000 You really need to go to school for that.

00:54:53.000 Yeah, I would imagine.

00:54:54.000 That's a big difference.

00:54:55.000 Now, you helped them organize their weight cuts.

00:54:57.000 I know you worked with Kamaru Usman for his cut for his last fight.

00:55:00.000 So with Kamaru, we absolutely worked with him all the way through the fight.

00:55:06.000 Did you guys know he had a broken foot?

00:55:08.000 He was limping around.

00:55:10.000 No, we didn't.

00:55:11.000 And if we did, we wouldn't have mentioned it.

00:55:13.000 But no, I had no idea.

00:55:15.000 How crazy is that guy?

00:55:18.000 That's awesome.

00:55:19.000 I was actually happy.

00:55:21.000 He was in the building for the whole time.

00:55:23.000 And I didn't know that.

00:55:24.000 I was happy.

00:55:25.000 I was like, yes, good.

00:55:26.000 What happens in the walls stays in these walls.

00:55:29.000 Because if there's this place like the Performance Institute and it's run by the UFC, oh, the UFC that pays me to fight people, I'm worried that that's going to get to them.

00:55:39.000 That was one of the biggest things when we started this.

00:55:42.000 Like, I don't want to know.

00:55:43.000 Like, I'm the liaison from them to the other side of the half. 0.94

00:55:47.000 I don't want to know whose weight is what.

00:55:49.000 I don't want to know who's got a nagging injury.

00:55:52.000 That's your, you know, some of that is actually HIPAA, you know, information.

00:55:55.000 That's your private stuff, though.

00:55:57.000 Even if it's just how strong or weak you are, if you're having a bad day, I don't want that to ever get out of our walls, right?

00:56:03.000 So that's obviously.

00:56:05.000 Yeah.

00:56:06.000 You're a conspiracy guy.

00:56:07.000 That's, you know.

00:56:08.000 What does that have to do with conspiracy?

00:56:11.000 Guys always think the UFC is out to get them.

00:56:14.000 Me too.

00:56:14.000 I always thought, like, they're going to find out that I got this or that.

00:56:19.000 They won't find out for me.

00:56:21.000 The stress of preparation for a fight.

00:56:23.000 People are always worried, especially if there's a little tweak, something going on.

00:56:27.000 Something with the hand, something with the leg, something with the knee.

00:56:29.000 It gets out.

00:56:30.000 People find out about it.

00:56:31.000 They hear about it.

00:56:32.000 They target it.

00:56:33.000 That's a thing.

00:56:34.000 It's a thing.

00:56:34.000 Kamaru in...

00:56:36.000 Every other athlete we work with comes in with sensitive injuries, and we have a private treatment suite within the Performance Institute, the PT area.

00:56:44.000 So they can come get private treatment.

00:56:46.000 And then in terms of supporting him for his weight cut, that starts 10 weeks, 12 weeks.

00:56:52.000 For Camaro, three, four months in advance.

00:56:55.000 How much are you trying to get him down to before the day of the cut?

00:56:58.000 So every athlete is going to be a little bit different based on what their background is.

00:57:02.000 What he's comfortable cutting from.

00:57:04.000 Yeah, what their historical weight cutting practices have been, how hard they've been on the body.

00:57:11.000 So we're assessing somebody like Kamaru for their metabolic rate, where they fit in terms of their body composition into that weight division, their lean tissue versus their fat tissue.

00:57:21.000 Those that have a higher degree of lean tissue are going to have, muscle has more water than does fat and bone.

00:57:27.000 So you can push the body a little bit further.

00:57:30.000 For those that have a higher lean tissue.

00:57:32.000 And so all of that planning and preparation starts many, many weeks in advance.

00:57:37.000 And having heard Kamaru on your show a couple weeks ago, a lot of what we do with an athlete that doesn't have a history of missing weight We're good to

00:58:08.000 go.

00:58:08.000 Sticking to one style of feeding, regardless of the training style that they're engaging in.

00:58:14.000 So MMA athletes, they have to do high intensity training sessions, strength and conditioning.

00:58:19.000 They have to be doing sparring.

00:58:20.000 They have to be doing pads rounds that are crazy hard.

00:58:24.000 In every athlete, each one is going to have a different intensity relative to their body type.

00:58:29.000 And so if somebody's doing pads, it's a 9 or 10 out of 10 in terms of intensity, and they're doing that fasted or they're doing that without carbohydrates available to do that work, they can't, A, hit those training intensities repeatedly, And then they can't adapt as a response to that training.

00:58:45.000 So they end up just getting slower and more beat up instead of faster and more powerful.

00:58:50.000 So if they're doing high intensity, we need to fuel the body in the specific way that supports that training effort and then the longer-term adaptation to that bout.

00:59:00.000 Additionally, if they're doing lower intensity, we can adjust our fueling strategies based on what that dictates.

00:59:06.000 If it's kind of a base aerobic training session or if they're doing skills and drills, we want to be feeding the body to adapt differently than if they're doing the high intensity sparring, strength and conditioning, or pads, or whatever that might be.

00:59:20.000 So for every athlete, we're looking at how their body uses substrate energy, the energy that they're using, the substrate between carbs and fat, At each of these intensities.

00:59:28.000 And then we also need to base our recommendations on where their body fits into the division.

00:59:35.000 If they're 20% out from their weight division four weeks out, then we're going to have a little bit of a more aggressive strategy nutritionally because weight becomes a primary factor.

00:59:46.000 If they're 10% out four weeks out, then we're going to have a little bit of a different conversation and prioritization around the fueling strategies.

00:59:54.000 And all of these conversations integrate within our strength and conditioning program so that we're working in concert and tying in the workload into our own system as well as the training load that they're engaging with with their skill-specific training.

01:00:08.000 Now when you vary the diet that you give them dependent of the workout, what is that based on?

01:00:13.000 Is that based on a hard accepted science of carbohydrate versus protein versus essential fatty acids?

01:00:20.000 How do you determine that?

01:00:23.000 We use a philosophy, a system called metabolic efficiency.

01:00:26.000 You could call it metabolic flexibility.

01:00:28.000 I've heard it called as well.

01:00:29.000 And essentially, the body will use different substrate at different intensities.

01:00:33.000 And at low intensities and at rest, the body can and likely should be adapted for our sports athletes to fat at rest.

01:00:44.000 Now, it depends on the sport type.

01:00:45.000 Again, if we're a shot putter or if we're a 100-meter sprinter, Then we're going to be much more dependent on carbohydrates and really the creatine phosphate system.

01:00:54.000 We're not even getting into the glycolytic system.

01:00:56.000 And Duncan could talk a lot more about the energy systems.

01:00:58.000 But essentially, we're reliant upon glucose and ATP for energy at those lower intensity bursts, right?

01:01:05.000 So to hit repeated max or sub max efforts, we require blood sugar.

01:01:10.000 And without it, we will deplete our initial stores.

01:01:15.000 And then we can't We can no longer hit 90 or 95% of our max.

01:01:19.000 We start hitting 80 and 70 and 60 and diminishing our ability to do these high-intensity efforts.

01:01:25.000 Now, do you guys see anybody come in and try to fight on a ketogenic diet?

01:01:29.000 Because I know quite a few guys were doing that for a while.

01:01:31.000 I know Brian Carraway did it.

01:01:32.000 Matt Brown.

01:01:33.000 Yeah, that's right.

01:01:34.000 He has fought.

01:01:35.000 But he varies, and I think he does.

01:01:37.000 Yeah.

01:01:38.000 Well, I talked to him.

01:01:38.000 I think he did one pretty pure.

01:01:40.000 And then he did the one where you might take N60 or 80 carbs, but then you work them off to stay ketogenic.

01:01:47.000 I don't.

01:01:47.000 Some of those guys, like Zach Bitter, he's an ultramarathon runner.

01:01:52.000 He does eat ketogenic most of the time, but then on days of big races, he'll consume a lot of sugars.

01:01:59.000 Yeah.

01:02:00.000 And again, I'll...

01:02:02.000 Insulin sensitivity, too.

01:02:03.000 Yeah.

01:02:04.000 So essentially, the more we can regulate blood sugar at rest and low intensities, then we can expand and to support the development of that kind of aerobic oxidative system.

01:02:14.000 And by adapting to use fat as a primary substrate, we're doing a number of things.

01:02:18.000 One, we're balancing blood sugar at rest so that we can really limit the insulin spikes and essentially adipose development.

01:02:30.000 Driving the body towards the oxidative aerobic system.

01:02:35.000 And then as we increase in what we do is we assess how the body adapts through the training intensities.

01:02:41.000 And we'll repeat that kind of on a monthly basis to see how the athlete changes.

01:02:45.000 And then as they increase in the intensity of a training effort, then we will adjust the ratio of fat to carbohydrates as a fuel substrate.

01:02:55.000 I thought it was going to come up organically, but it didn't.

01:02:58.000 The trifecta fight prep system, you guys and your team are going to 22 events this year.

01:03:04.000 Indeed.

01:03:04.000 Take it away.

01:03:05.000 All right.

01:03:06.000 What are you doing?

01:03:07.000 I'm shooting a promo here, Joe.

01:03:09.000 Step back.

01:03:11.000 So, essentially, we're assessing and then we're programming based on each athlete's needs.

01:03:16.000 So, like Forrest said, one of our most valuable partners at the UFC Performance Institute is this meal prep company called Trifecta Nutrition.

01:03:26.000 And they essentially have an all-organic meal line that can be developed a la carte, ordered a la carte.

01:03:34.000 And so with Kamaru as an example, we worked together for his past two fights.

01:03:39.000 And many athletes, like I said, are not fueling the type of training in a way that leads to their long-term adaptation, but can lead to overtraining earlier in camp.

01:03:49.000 And so what we really want to do is to understand how that physiology works and then program and then provide those athletes with the nutrition, whether it's on-site at the UFC Performance Institute.

01:04:00.000 At the events as well is what I was getting at, like 22 events they go to.

01:04:04.000 So you think about, like, I would...

01:04:05.000 I would literally smuggle oatmeal into Brazil.

01:04:08.000 You're stealing food.

01:04:11.000 You get the little thing that says no organic, the little pass.

01:04:16.000 They can go to those fights and actually feed you throughout the week.

01:04:20.000 That's where I was going with that.

01:04:22.000 That's incredible.

01:04:23.000 If you had a fight in Stockholm, they would come to Stockholm?

01:04:26.000 If it's one of the 22 events.

01:04:29.000 Oh, okay.

01:04:30.000 But if it's one of those 22 events, they would go and you could get the UFC PI to fuel you through the entire event.

01:04:37.000 Yep, so there's a number of levels, so I'll get there in just one sec, but essentially we'll take them through the fight camp, fuel them for adaptation so they show up to the event.

01:04:46.000 We know exactly where they are.

01:04:47.000 They're fueled.

01:04:47.000 And then we could take them all the way through the fight.

01:04:50.000 So 22 events.

01:04:51.000 Most are domestic, except for the pay-per-views that are international.

01:04:55.000 So of the 22, the only international ones are the pay-per-views.

01:04:59.000 The others are the ESPN events.

01:05:01.000 And those are pretty much exclusively domestic.

01:05:03.000 But what we've done is we've outreached all of the athletes that have crossed paths with us at the Performance Institute.

01:05:09.000 So it's not roster-wide yet as we're working through a lot of the operational stuff.

01:05:14.000 As an example, we aren't able to get into the kitchen at every hotel.

01:05:18.000 So then we're working to find a community kitchen, trying to find contacts at local universities.

01:05:25.000 So, Trifecta hired a chef.

01:05:27.000 So, Trifecta, they're our partner.

01:05:30.000 They've been amazing in terms of, you know, trying to feed our athletes.

01:05:33.000 We identified this as a real need to, you know, we run a marathon with these guys, right?

01:05:38.000 Camaro has an example.

01:05:39.000 We work together for three months. 0.63

01:05:41.000 We get them to a week before the fight, and then it's like, pat them on the butt and say, good luck, right?

01:05:46.000 As we know, fueling is impactful all the way through the fight, including 30 minutes before.

01:05:52.000 And so instead of patting him on the butt and saying good luck, Trifecta hired a chef who I previously worked with.

01:05:58.000 He worked with me at Cornell University for a year. 0.97

01:06:01.000 He was an intern with me.

01:06:02.000 He worked at Exos for two years and then at a two Michelin star restaurant here in LA. And Providence is the name of it.

01:06:09.000 And he got hired.

01:06:10.000 He's their executive chef and is building out the Fight Week meals based on me and my team's programming.

01:06:17.000 So we work with every single athlete that we've connected with at the PI. It's gotten up to, on average, between 14 and 16 athletes at all the events that we're working.

01:06:26.000 and we provide comprehensive fueling.

01:06:28.000 So all of the food calories that they put in their body from the time they step on foot on Tuesday for fight or check-in all the way through 30 minutes pre-fight, including all the supplements, NSF third-party tested supplements for supplement safety to make sure they're not getting adulterated products.

01:06:44.000 We're keeping track of everything that they're consuming on the supplement side.

01:06:48.000 We don't sit in the sauna.

01:06:50.000 We're not there to be a weight-cut coach.

01:06:52.000 We are the sports dietetics team to support them on a programming and on a science evidence-based level.

01:07:01.000 So we will consult with their teams around what's the safest, what's the most effective way to support an athlete making weight.

01:07:08.000 And then we instantly, once they make weight, we have supplies that was developed Cooked, prepared by our chef that morning and the night before to support rehydration, electrolytes, to optimize the gut repopulation of gut microbiota, as well as balance the osmolality so that they're not getting gut cramping and issues that happen when you ingest a ton of sodium and glucose that causes a lot of water to rush into the gut.

01:07:36.000 And then we essentially feed them all the way through, like I said, breakfast, lunch, and then pre-fight to support their performance on fight night.

01:07:45.000 I'm an outspoken critic of cutting weight.

01:07:48.000 I don't necessarily think it's the best thing for the sport or for the athlete.

01:07:53.000 I mean, I think one of the benefits that we would get out of having more weight classes available is that fighters could get their body to the weight class where they're optimally at.

01:08:01.000 Has there ever been any discussion?

01:08:02.000 I know you guys have had discussions about PED usage and how to stop adulterated supplements from getting to fighters and making people test positive, but what about Some long-term goal of potentially eliminating weight cutting the way they've eliminated PEDs.

01:08:19.000 So, as we already talked about, I come from college wrestling.

01:08:23.000 Tragically, in 1997, three college wrestlers died.

01:08:27.000 In Florida, of course.

01:08:28.000 It's always Florida.

01:08:30.000 Was it?

01:08:31.000 No.

01:08:31.000 Two of them.

01:08:32.000 One was at the University of Michigan, and I'm not exactly sure where the other two were.

01:08:38.000 Let's pretend they were Florida.

01:08:39.000 Let's say Florida.

01:08:40.000 It feels like Florida.

01:08:41.000 Florida's just going to shake their head anyway. 0.78

01:08:42.000 They're not even going to check.

01:08:43.000 They'll accept it.

01:08:45.000 But the NCAA dramatically overhauled their weigh-in rules from the day before to the day of.

01:08:53.000 And there are a lot of similarities in terms of the types of athletes that are wrestling versus the types of athletes that are competing in MMA. But we work in and we work with professional athletes and we work for a professional fight promotion and the dynamics of a professional fight promoter is completely different than the NCAA. And the level of autonomy with our independent contractors versus the

01:09:23.000 NCAA athletes is different.

01:09:26.000 And we, as the UFC, you know, the performances too, we have the health and safety of our fighters in mind at all times.

01:09:33.000 And that's priority number one.

01:09:35.000 And I've had to literally call the ambulance on athletes that I've seen not doing well because of health considerations.

01:09:43.000 You personally, how do you feel about it?

01:09:46.000 About weight cutting?

01:09:47.000 I personally would like to make it safer.

01:09:52.000 There are less than ideal, I think, safety concerns that we've all heard of and a lot of us have seen.

01:10:04.000 And from my perspective, The closer that you can bring it to the fight, the better.

01:10:11.000 But because of the promotional nature of the UFC, it's limited.

01:10:15.000 And then we have limited ability to affect change with the UFC because the commissions really are the ones that are really making the rules. 0.95

01:10:26.000 I don't mean to sound like that asshole, but dude, pick your weight class, make the weight, or just say, you know, I'm not going to be able to do it. 0.97

01:10:34.000 I've got to move up, right? 0.99

01:10:36.000 You know, like...

01:10:37.000 It was always hard for me to make 205, but you know what?

01:10:40.000 I didn't really want to fight heavyweight.

01:10:41.000 And I made it, and towards the end of my career, I walked around like, you know, I used to get pretty big.

01:10:47.000 I was like, hey, I don't want to do that.

01:10:48.000 I want to be a professional.

01:10:49.000 Be a professional.

01:10:50.000 It comes back to the whole, I hate to keep saying it, but the 52-week fight camp.

01:10:54.000 All right?

01:10:56.000 Do you need to get 20% over your fight weight?

01:10:58.000 If you're 20% over your fight weight, that's not your fight weight.

01:11:02.000 You're making very good points.

01:11:05.000 I mean, there are weight classes, all right?

01:11:08.000 Maybe there needs to be a weight class like every... 0.79

01:11:10.000 Well, it is, like every 10%.

01:11:12.000 It should be every 10 pounds, I think.

01:11:13.000 Well, every 10%.

01:11:14.000 So I think percent's a lot more important than weight.

01:11:18.000 The other thing is...

01:11:20.000 Maybe in time it'll happen.

01:11:22.000 There's 570 athletes is not enough to fill that many weight classes.

01:11:27.000 And then, you know, you're a boxing guy.

01:11:29.000 Or, you know, then you get a weight class.

01:11:31.000 I'm just going to run around and we're going to have fights every three pounds. 0.93

01:11:35.000 And then it becomes a little...

01:11:37.000 Well, I don't know if that's necessarily the move.

01:11:39.000 Then there's like 27 belts.

01:11:41.000 How much value do they have?

01:11:42.000 My point, really clearly, is that it's an unnecessary risk.

01:11:45.000 It's an unnecessary risk. 0.98

01:11:46.000 To have a guy dehydrate themselves or a girl dehydrates themselves literally to the point of going to the fucking hospital 24 hours before a cage fight is insane. 0.98

01:11:54.000 If you could eliminate that, why wouldn't you? 0.99

01:11:56.000 That's the number one thing.

01:11:57.000 I think there's no benefit whatsoever to making people dehydrate themselves 24 hours before a cage fight.

01:12:03.000 It seems crazy.

01:12:04.000 Yeah, no, nobody's going to disagree with you, but we...

01:12:06.000 What's the best way to figure it out?

01:12:08.000 The best way to figure it out is to, first of all, you can definitely avoid a lot of struggle and tragedy by figuring it out, right?

01:12:15.000 I mean, the fights that happen where fighters in several organizations cut weight and died during that process.

01:12:23.000 That's heartbreaking, you know, if we could avoid that.

01:12:26.000 It's already a dangerous sport as it is.

01:12:29.000 We are collecting data at the Performance Institute.

01:12:32.000 We all have some opinions around what works best in terms of reducing the extreme weight cutting, creating some competitive parity in the cage, I think is a really critical point so that it de-incentivizes that weight cutting process.

01:12:46.000 If you can't be as big in the cage, well then there's not as much of a benefit.

01:12:52.000 Well, it is a very complex problem.

01:12:54.000 And the regulation in mixed martial arts is such that we're the promoter and we abide by the regulations of every single state athletic commission.

01:13:03.000 And so we're collecting data so that we can understand the issue better.

01:13:08.000 We're working to come to an understanding to then share with those that are the legislators of the system so that they can help make it safer as well.

01:13:18.000 Because it's not just a unilateral decision where we tell our employees, this is what you do.

01:13:23.000 We have 570 independent contractors.

01:13:26.000 Each of us has some strong beliefs and opinions in this space, and I value yours, and I really respect the passion you bring to it.

01:13:35.000 This is my passion as well.

01:13:37.000 This is why I came to the UFC, is to impact this culture, and hopefully on the policy side as well.

01:13:42.000 But it's a very, very complex system that we're working to infiltrate or to affect from the inside.

01:13:50.000 I truly understand that it's complex, but if you could wave a magic wand and not have weight cutting, wouldn't you do it? 1.00

01:13:55.000 Fuck yeah. 1.00

01:13:55.000 Yeah, yeah, but nobody's disagreeing with that. 1.00

01:13:58.000 So why not?

01:13:59.000 Listen, if the UFC can do that, they can do that.

01:14:01.000 One FC's doing it.

01:14:02.000 It can be done.

01:14:03.000 You have a program where you make sure that people move up a weight class.

01:14:07.000 You have hydration tests.

01:14:09.000 You make sure that they're never really taxing out.

01:14:12.000 Like some guys, I've seen guys shuffle to the scale because they couldn't walk.

01:14:18.000 We've all seen that.

01:14:19.000 Where guys are literally on death's door 24 hours before a cage fight.

01:14:22.000 That's crazy.

01:14:23.000 If you could eliminate that.

01:14:24.000 I commend 1FC for trying.

01:14:27.000 There's holes in that system just like there's holes in any system.

01:14:30.000 You're always going to try and game the system.

01:14:33.000 Nah, they're trying to game the system as well.

01:14:36.000 Remember, they're peeing on a stick that you or I could go buy in Walmart.

01:14:40.000 Those aren't that easy to beat.

01:14:41.000 Those aren't hard to beat.

01:14:43.000 The hydration tests.

01:14:44.000 No, they're not.

01:14:45.000 You're 100% right.

01:14:47.000 But it's more...

01:14:50.000 It's more protected.

01:14:51.000 It's more difficult to do.

01:14:53.000 They have a far different regulatory system than we have as well.

01:14:57.000 We have 50 independent state regulators.

01:15:00.000 We have Kambache down in Brazil. 1.00

01:15:03.000 We have different regulators.

01:15:05.000 It's very complex and I think that we, obviously here at the table and at the Performances too, have that as a primary kind of area of focus.

01:15:16.000 We're working to affect the systems that can implement change.

01:15:19.000 I'll sum it up.

01:15:20.000 What Clint and his team are doing is, let's see the data.

01:15:23.000 Let's collect the data.

01:15:24.000 Let's figure out what it looks like.

01:15:26.000 What Donna's been doing for the last couple of years, collecting every fight weight. 1.00

01:15:30.000 Let's look at the data and figure it out from there.

01:15:34.000 Yeah.

01:15:37.000 It's just such an unfortunate aspect of it that I get has been there from the beginning, or at least from the time the weight classes started being instituted.

01:15:47.000 But it just seems to me that, boy, if there was a way to avoid that.

01:15:51.000 UFC 6, they had it right.

01:15:53.000 It was the giant guys.

01:15:55.000 Wasn't that the one with the giant guys?

01:15:56.000 Oh, that was Adam and David versus Goliath.

01:15:59.000 We'll go back to that.

01:16:01.000 Cage fighting is pretty hard by itself.

01:16:03.000 Yes, it is.

01:16:04.000 I just...

01:16:06.000 We don't call it cage fighting.

01:16:07.000 We call it octagonal struggling.

01:16:10.000 Struggle. 0.99

01:16:11.000 Gotta PC that shit up. 1.00

01:16:12.000 Yeah, when you say cage fighting, people go, what? 1.00

01:16:14.000 You say, oh, mixed martial arts.

01:16:16.000 Oh, you mean like the UFC. I love Ronda Rousey.

01:16:18.000 I'm a big fan.

01:16:20.000 Hey, it's about your messaging sometimes, man.

01:16:22.000 Yeah.

01:16:23.000 I've accepted that.

01:16:24.000 Do you guys have long-term plans for expansion of the treatments and the different things you do?

01:16:30.000 Is this something that you guys are constantly working on and improving?

01:16:35.000 Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

01:16:36.000 The sports science landscape is vast, you know, and we try to keep abreast of all the latest technologies, the advantages in theory and philosophy.

01:16:44.000 So, yeah, that's at the heart of everything we do.

01:16:46.000 You know, we're trying to stay at the cutting edge of sports performance.

01:16:51.000 So, how does that, do you have to go to conferences and find out what the latest stuff guys are doing?

01:16:55.000 I mean, I did the math this week actually.

01:16:58.000 I always say the church isn't the building, the church is the people.

01:17:01.000 Our staff has got a combined experience in pro and elite sports of 106 years.

01:17:06.000 We've got 18 Olympic Games supported within our staff alone.

01:17:10.000 So our people, our staff are what is so precious to the Performance Institute, and we're very proud of our staff.

01:17:18.000 They're respective world leaders in their own individual areas.

01:17:21.000 But yeah, of course you have to go and speak to people.

01:17:24.000 Of course you've got to listen to seminars and collect and gather information.

01:17:27.000 They love their conferences, I'll tell you that.

01:17:29.000 What you've got to do is process it.

01:17:32.000 There's a lot of pseudo-science and bro-science out there.

01:17:37.000 You love that word, right?

01:17:39.000 Yeah, it's a real problem.

01:17:40.000 So, you know, the ability to process it is what makes the difference, you know?

01:17:46.000 No, no.

01:17:47.000 Not everybody can be fortunate enough.

01:17:49.000 I don't even have to be smart.

01:17:50.000 I just went out and found a bunch of smart people.

01:17:52.000 Do they make you take notes when they make you sit on these conferences?

01:17:55.000 I honestly used to really, like, try to upskill myself and everything.

01:17:59.000 And then at some point, I was like, nah, this is nah.

01:18:02.000 Just...

01:18:02.000 Hey, Clint, come here.

01:18:03.000 I got a question.

01:18:04.000 Now, in terms of recovery stuff, I know you guys had a hot pool like a sauna or a jacuzzi, rather.

01:18:11.000 It was right next to a cold plunge.

01:18:13.000 How much of that stuff do you guys do?

01:18:15.000 And what equipment do you guys keep?

01:18:17.000 Yeah, I mean, again, Bo Sandoval, who's our director of strength and conditioning, puts it intimately in terms of, in the UFC, everyone's training hard.

01:18:27.000 You know, you're not training harder than the guy next to you or in the gym next to you.

01:18:31.000 What is the key is how fast you can recover and train again at the intensity that you need to the day after day after day and be robust enough to tolerate that.

01:18:40.000 So, recovery and regeneration is just as important as the training exposure.

01:18:45.000 In fact, your body obviously changes and adapts during the recovery and regeneration process.

01:18:50.000 Yeah, listen, we've got hot tubs, we've got aquatic capabilities, we've got cryotherapy, we've got compression, we've got, you know, everything that you would expect in a world-class facility.

01:18:59.000 What we're starting to do is really try to be a bit more prescriptive around that, as Clint's already talked about, you know.

01:19:06.000 It makes no sense to us to look at a high neuromuscular striking session where you're hitting mitts or hitting bags and use the same recovery strategy as a high metabolic grappling session.

01:19:17.000 These are totally different physiology challenges.

01:19:20.000 So, yeah, to be prescriptive and to be a bit more strategic in our approach.

01:19:25.000 But at the end of the day, what is core to recovery, it's such a personal thing.

01:19:29.000 You know, some people don't like getting in the cryotherapy chamber.

01:19:32.000 Some people can't swim, so they're not going to get in the water and do hot, cold plunges.

01:19:36.000 It's going to stress them out more.

01:19:38.000 So, hey, go in here and potentially drown.

01:19:42.000 It'll help you recover.

01:19:43.000 It's not that deep.

01:19:44.000 Well, it's not that deep, but some people just fear the fear of water because you can't swim.

01:19:49.000 What do they do about baths? 0.97

01:19:51.000 Shower.

01:19:52.000 Shower is too crazy.

01:19:55.000 You'll know when you smell them, I guess.

01:19:56.000 Do you guys have sauna on premises as well?

01:19:59.000 We do.

01:20:00.000 Steam, sauna.

01:20:01.000 Do you have guys go from the sauna to the cold plunge?

01:20:03.000 Me, personally.

01:20:04.000 Do you do that?

01:20:05.000 Yeah.

01:20:05.000 It's supposed to be a great benefit of that, right?

01:20:07.000 For sure.

01:20:08.000 And again, you've had Andy Galpin on, you've had all these, Brian McKenzie, all these people, the breathing experts.

01:20:12.000 I read most of both of their books.

01:20:15.000 There's a lot of information now around recovery, but it's still a massive grey area.

01:20:20.000 What about massage?

01:20:21.000 Do you have that on staff as well?

01:20:23.000 Absolutely, our therapists can provide that.

01:20:24.000 Do they do like rolfing, that kind of deep tissue stuff?

01:20:28.000 Yeah, Graston and all that stuff.

01:20:29.000 How often do you guys recommend that for athletes?

01:20:32.000 Because the Soviets, for a long period of time, it was really shocking when we found out they were massaging their athletes every day.

01:20:38.000 And there's debate as to whether or not that's good or bad.

01:20:41.000 What are your thoughts on that?

01:20:42.000 Well, I think what Heather, who's our director of PT, will tell you is that the fascia and the fighter posture and the way fighters are putting their bodies through particular challenges obviously creates a lot of muscle tone, it creates a lot of tightness in the fascia, and just methods and mechanisms to free that up, to allow the joints and the articulation of the body to work effectively is huge.

01:21:07.000 If you have greater than a, I'm trying to remember the numbers, but a A 10 to 20% imbalance in the joint within your body, you now have a 70 to 90% chance of injuring that joint, right?

01:21:21.000 So just the difference in terms of symmetry and balance within the body and its influence on injury is massive.

01:21:28.000 So why not be proactive in trying to utilize manual therapies and recovery modalities rather than working in a reactive process and waiting for the injury to happen?

01:21:38.000 And again, that's core of our philosophy is that there's been a big shift in the barometer for some of the fighters that come through the Performance Institute.

01:21:46.000 You know, the clinic and the therapy is somewhere where you go and you're injured.

01:21:49.000 Well, you know, what we do is we promote it just as much as the strength and conditioning piece.

01:21:54.000 So when you're talking about range of motion, are you including flexibility exercises?

01:21:58.000 Do you guys incorporate a lot of that stuff as well?

01:22:00.000 Oh, for sure.

01:22:01.000 But again, fighters tend to be pretty flexible.

01:22:05.000 So again, it's on an individual level, but most strikers, most people can kick you in the head in the UFC. They're pretty flexible.

01:22:12.000 Individual orthopedic assessment, right?

01:22:14.000 So, hey, this is tight, that is tight.

01:22:16.000 All right, we need to loosen you up.

01:22:17.000 We're going to put that in your routine, right?

01:22:18.000 So everything is needs analysis driven, right?

01:22:21.000 So, you know, Brian Ortega don't need to be any more flexible.

01:22:24.000 He can put his legs – he just needs to maintain his current flexibility, right?

01:22:28.000 So it completely varies – And if you've got like a stiff wrestler, someone who's like just never really worked on it.

01:22:35.000 Yeah, and think about the combat posture, that internal rotation, that combat posture where you're constantly throwing.

01:22:40.000 I mean, just chronically doing that year after year is going to set you up for some amount of tightness in terms of fascia.

01:22:45.000 So again, I don't want to get outside of my scope of expertise, but we're very proactive in promoting fighters using modalities proactively rather than reactively.

01:22:55.000 So say if a fighter came in and they did a hard grappling workout, and after the training, what would you recommend and how much time?

01:23:04.000 Because there's some thought that the body should exist in an inflamed state post-workout.

01:23:09.000 Depends on, yeah.

01:23:11.000 Depends on the phase of training.

01:23:13.000 Yeah, right.

01:23:13.000 And also for a certain amount of time.

01:23:16.000 And then there's more of a benefit of going into cryotherapy after like an hour or so.

01:23:20.000 So what are the benefits and the reaction?

01:23:22.000 So again, if you're off camp, what are you trying to do?

01:23:25.000 You're trying to break down your body so it can be overloaded and recover better.

01:23:30.000 You know, you're using that supercompensation to take it to a new level of therapy.

01:23:35.000 Yeah.

01:23:36.000 In camp, when you're sharpening the knife ready for the fight, you want to remove any type of fatigue because you're getting close to the fight.

01:23:41.000 You need to optimize your training and obviously peak to the performance on fight night.

01:23:46.000 So, you know, there's got to be a strategy.

01:23:48.000 We've got to periodize your recovery as you would periodize your training loads in camp or off camp.

01:23:53.000 But yeah, there's different approaches and different modalities that you've got to utilize.

01:23:57.000 So if you look at grappling, And the metabolic demand that goes into the wrestling and the grappling, that's a lactate kind of response.

01:24:06.000 That's a circulatory issue in terms of those metabolites that are circulating around the body.

01:24:13.000 You've got to remove those.

01:24:14.000 So is that going to be something like a muscle pump type recovery strategy that will help it remove it through the liver and into the lymph system?

01:24:22.000 You mean like one of those compression pants?

01:24:23.000 Yeah, it might be a compression panel or it might be hot-cold.

01:24:26.000 If you go hot-cold, the vessels will expand in the heart and they'll contract in the cold.

01:24:31.000 You get a natural kind of muscle pump.

01:24:33.000 And how many times do you ask fighters to do that when they do a hot-cold thing?

01:24:37.000 Is there a sequence?

01:24:38.000 Yeah, I mean, we have a preferred methodology.

01:24:41.000 Right now, it's about three to four minutes, four times in each.

01:24:45.000 Just go back and forth.

01:24:46.000 Go back and forth, four minutes, finishing the call.

01:24:48.000 You look at other experts and other professionals in the field, they'll say, sit in the call bath for 20 minutes.

01:24:56.000 There's still not the science, not the data and information out there to really support some of these modalities.

01:25:01.000 How do you optimize?

01:25:03.000 How do you know whether or not it's having that much of a benefit compared to not doing that?

01:25:09.000 Ask the guy.

01:25:10.000 Talk to him, make a way.

01:25:14.000 Feedback.

01:25:15.000 Yeah.

01:25:15.000 Number one, subjective.

01:25:16.000 Do you feel better?

01:25:17.000 There might be no science around cryotherapy.

01:25:20.000 I'm not suggesting not, but there might be no data and no science on it.

01:25:23.000 But if the guy walks out three minutes later and feels like crystal mind and his body is fresh, it's kind of worked, right?

01:25:30.000 Yeah, well, the norepinephrine, the raising of the levels of it due to extreme cold exposure, I think that's been proven.

01:25:36.000 I think cytokine developed.

01:25:38.000 Kills pain, right?

01:25:38.000 Yeah.

01:25:38.000 And the heat shock proteins as well.

01:25:40.000 Yeah, cold shock proteins and heat shock proteins.

01:25:42.000 Both of them, that's all proven stuff.

01:25:44.000 Right, for sure.

01:25:44.000 In terms of measuring the actual inflammatory markers in the body, but some people don't like it.

01:25:49.000 I'm just making the point that if you like that stimulation and you like that sensation and you walk out, you can forget the physiology because now we're tapping into psychology and that's still part of the recovery process.

01:25:59.000 Yes, it's beneficial.

01:26:01.000 For sure.

01:26:01.000 What were you going to say?

01:26:02.000 I have no idea.

01:26:03.000 I'm sure it wasn't important.

01:26:05.000 No, I was going to say...

01:26:07.000 I will sidetrack.

01:26:08.000 Just in terms of recovery, nutrition is a core value of the recovery process as well.

01:26:12.000 So as much cryotherapy as you do, if you're not recovering, stimulating muscle, converting from catabolism to anabolism, providing nutrients for substrate regeneration, that's a critical component as well.

01:26:24.000 So that's critical.

01:26:26.000 What we aren't doing is providing tart cherry juice or high antioxidants immediately post-training as well.

01:26:32.000 We'll include that in other periods of the day.

01:26:35.000 In the evening or not immediately around a high-intensity training session for antioxidants.

01:26:40.000 What's the negative aspect of antioxidants post-training?

01:26:43.000 Similar.

01:26:44.000 It blunts the adaptive response based on the body's recovery process.

01:26:50.000 So if you blunt your immune response to micro-trauma, muscle tears that need to be rebuilt stronger and faster, well then you limit the adaptation.

01:27:02.000 So yeah, we want to provide nutrients to support recovery.

01:27:05.000 But we don't want to eliminate the adaptive response to the training session.

01:27:10.000 That's what's so fascinating about the science of it, that you can get that specific, that you know that if you consume the high levels of antioxidants post-training, it's going to blunt the recovery time.

01:27:19.000 You have to.

01:27:20.000 It's amazing.

01:27:21.000 Curcumin, tart cherry juice, there's a number of spices that are included in a lot of different things, whether it's cooking or in our supplement protocol, that we will include, but we're going to target them away from the high-intensity training.

01:27:33.000 How far away from the high-intensity training?

01:27:34.000 A couple hours.

01:27:35.000 A couple hours.

01:27:35.000 I mean, it comes back to, you know, can a fighter, can a coach process all this information?

01:27:40.000 Right.

01:27:41.000 You know, can they physically be aware of it?

01:27:43.000 Nope. 0.86

01:27:43.000 Just give me the die. 0.86

01:27:45.000 Right.

01:27:45.000 Just write it down for me.

01:27:47.000 So, again, let us do some of the grunt work for you at the Performance Institute and we can give you some of that education.

01:27:52.000 Write it down for me.

01:27:53.000 I'll tell you how I feel and then we'll come back.

01:27:55.000 We'll talk about it and maybe it changes.

01:27:57.000 Coaches and gyms don't have to feel like you're trying to poach them and take them away and bring them to a new player.

01:28:02.000 That's the beautiful thing about it.

01:28:03.000 It's like it's open to everybody who fights for the UFC. Yeah, and the other Another thing which I would say is this is at no cost to the fighters.

01:28:08.000 It's also their choice.

01:28:10.000 They're independent contractors.

01:28:11.000 They can decide how much they want to engage with us, as much or as little as they want.

01:28:15.000 And again, that's the same with the trifecta program for meal prep.

01:28:19.000 It's the same with our strength and conditioning program.

01:28:21.000 So again, it's all bespoke and customized programming at no cost to the fighters.

01:28:25.000 It's so exciting for me because having seen the fights and the sport and the level of sport evolve over all these years, it's so exciting to see constant and continuing innovation.

01:28:37.000 And when you guys came along and built this thing and I had a chance to go and visit, I was so excited.

01:28:42.000 I was like, this is what, man, every sport needs something like this.

01:28:46.000 But the fact that the UFC has this.

01:28:48.000 You should do some testing.

01:28:49.000 Come by and do some testing.

01:28:50.000 They're going to find out I'm old.

01:28:52.000 We knew that.

01:28:53.000 But where are you more old than others?

01:28:54.000 Yeah.

01:28:55.000 Right now, my left hip, I fell down skiing.

01:28:57.000 You make a great point because what's been one of the really exciting things for us and refreshing also for the UFC Performance Institute is that sports like the NFL, the NBA, the English Premier League, we're having representatives from all of these teams, NHL, coming through and trying to understand or just be...

01:29:16.000 Trying to understand what we're doing, how we're working our sports science into the sport of mixed martial arts, and to try and capture our philosophy and our approach from a facility development perspective through to kind of our educational processes, through to the way we're interacting with fighters.

01:29:29.000 And again, we're trying to shape mixed martial arts.

01:29:32.000 We're trying to influence the UFC. That's our number one mission.

01:29:35.000 But the global awareness around the Performance Institute is really exciting as well.

01:29:41.000 Now, I know you guys, you were talking about your place in China.

01:29:43.000 Are you planning on going anywhere else?

01:29:46.000 Well, right now, you know, the expectation or our desire is to influence mixed martial arts globally.

01:29:52.000 We're truly a global sport.

01:29:54.000 So, right now, we don't know what that's going to look like, but the ambition is to obviously have performance institutes around the world that can help the development process.

01:30:02.000 I want to build one like South Africa. 1.00

01:30:05.000 Badass over there.

01:30:06.000 Get the malaria medication ready, bro.

01:30:08.000 Cipro, right?

01:30:09.000 Cipro.

01:30:09.000 I don't know what that stuff is.

01:30:10.000 He just wants a red wine, right?

01:30:12.000 It's pretty nice, too.

01:30:13.000 What is cool about us operating and athletes being independent contractors and accessing us however they see fit is we have so many different case studies and utilization.

01:30:24.000 We'll have people come out for a week at a time.

01:30:26.000 Access our team, take that back.

01:30:28.000 We'll have other people come out for part of a camp or a full camp.

01:30:31.000 Others will come.

01:30:32.000 We had Macy Barber, actually, she talked about it publicly, but she worked with us quite a bit for her last fight. 1.00

01:30:38.000 She booked a flight from Nashville to Vegas to reconnect, to get updated nutrition, strength and conditioning, whatever metrics that we could update based on her health status, as well as orthopedic support post-fight.

01:30:52.000 So we were able to get a number of days post-fight as part of essentially the completion of her fight camp to get her ready for the next phase. 0.98

01:31:00.000 So there's a lot of different ways that athletes can utilize based on just whatever their needs are, whatever they perceive their needs to be, and then whatever influence we're able to kind of make over their preparation.

01:31:12.000 And Macy Barber is a perfect example of someone getting that kind of high-level treatment very early in her career. 0.75

01:31:17.000 She's only 20 years old.

01:31:19.000 Super exciting prospect.

01:31:20.000 And for her to have access to something.

01:31:23.000 She'll be 21 in like three weeks.

01:31:24.000 She's old already. 0.99

01:31:26.000 Over the hill.

01:31:27.000 That voice is Forrest Griffin, ladies and gentlemen.

01:31:30.000 No one else.

01:31:31.000 When you treat these younger fighters, how much emphasis do you put on giving them just a smart protocol to try to minimize the potential injuries, to get them to understand the relationship between range of motion and injuries, to get them to understand balance?

01:31:51.000 I know you guys have a machine that you actually can measure the muscles in the body and show the left and the right side what's weak and what's strong, right?

01:31:58.000 What is that called again?

01:32:00.000 I mean, we use force plates in certain particular...

01:32:03.000 There's something you lie down in, though, isn't there?

01:32:05.000 So we have the DEXA scan, which is essentially a low-dose x-ray that measures the mass of the tissue between bone mass, muscle mass, and fat mass.

01:32:17.000 And so we can get a balance of the musculature and the skeleton bilaterally.

01:32:24.000 When we see a big imbalance on that front, because that is a nutrition-related test, we will share that with both physical therapy and strength and conditioning.

01:32:32.000 And then physical therapy could break that into more nuance around strength imbalances around joints using the biodex.

01:32:38.000 And then strength and conditioning will do very similar kind of understanding using the bilateral force plates that Duncan was mentioning. 0.90

01:32:45.000 That stupid machine told me I had two pounds less muscle in my left leg than my right. 0.98

01:32:50.000 Your name is accurate. 1.00

01:32:51.000 Oh yeah, no, I do.

01:32:52.000 I blew my knee out a couple times, but I just didn't rehab it properly.

01:32:55.000 So when you found out, did you start doing like extra one-legged pistols on the left side?

01:33:00.000 Four, two weeks, maybe even three.

01:33:02.000 And then I was like, yeah, I got some emails to send.

01:33:04.000 Then your knees started hurting.

01:33:06.000 And now he just keeps running in circles.

01:33:08.000 Let me ask you this.

01:33:08.000 If you did see a fighter and they did have something like that and they were active, they were still competing.

01:33:13.000 It happens all the time.

01:33:14.000 What do you do?

01:33:15.000 Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of fighters that have imbalances muscularly.

01:33:18.000 That's not a nutrition-related issue.

01:33:22.000 Obviously, our support is going to be important for the adaptation.

01:33:25.000 And this goes to Heather around orthopedic assessment.

01:33:29.000 What's the imbalance?

01:33:30.000 What's the injury risk, like Duncan was saying, in terms of strength imbalances?

01:33:35.000 She and her team, Heather Linden, our director of PT, would do that orthopedic screen. 0.96

01:33:40.000 See what the imbalances are and break it down and then that would lead to probably programming in her space and then also to strength and conditioning to build programs around whether it's mobility, range of motion or just around kind of hypertrophy to make up for some imbalances.

01:33:55.000 So that's where the comprehensive approach comes in.

01:33:58.000 I might assess something and then kick it over to them.

01:34:00.000 There's many cases where they would assess something whether the strength coach happened this week So-and-so is having a bad training session.

01:34:09.000 They talk about low energy.

01:34:11.000 They talk about not being able to recover or get up for the next training session.

01:34:14.000 That's an immediate referral over to my side of the fence.

01:34:18.000 So that's where the integrated care becomes really, really critical.

01:34:22.000 So, if you had someone that had a two-pound weight difference between their left leg and their right leg, how much time would you give them to gain that weight back?

01:34:29.000 Would it be dependent upon the individual?

01:34:30.000 You would probably want that to be a priority before they went into a heavy camp or something like that, right?

01:34:35.000 You can't resolve that immediately, but that would be part of the...

01:34:39.000 I mean, it comes back to the return on investment, right?

01:34:42.000 What's the return on investment and the reduction of an injury risk to try and influence that two pounds?

01:34:49.000 Do you know what I mean?

01:34:50.000 That's a conversation.

01:34:53.000 We're going to have that conversation around how effective or influential that is going to be on the outcome of the fighters.

01:34:58.000 So, as Clint says, there's fighters that walk around...

01:35:01.000 We're truly imbalanced.

01:35:03.000 But what's the risk and the time and effort it's going to take to make that change?

01:35:06.000 If it's in a fight camp, we're probably going to just leave it as it is.

01:35:09.000 If it's off camp and we've got a little bit more time to try and address it, all right, now we can be a bit more proactive about that.

01:35:13.000 But with me, they were like, you're old. 0.99

01:35:15.000 We'll take you out back and shoot you. 0.99

01:35:16.000 No, they did. 1.00

01:35:17.000 We messed around with some BFR stuff.

01:35:20.000 Yeah.

01:35:21.000 BFR? Blood flow restriction.

01:35:23.000 The occlusion bands.

01:35:25.000 The katsu type approach. 0.98

01:35:26.000 But again, in physical therapy and strength and conditioning, that's not revolutionary anymore.

01:35:30.000 That's part of just another tool that we add to it.

01:35:33.000 It's a way to augment or accelerate hypertrophy.

01:35:39.000 So if you have someone that's coming back for returning from surgery or an injury, And you're looking to get muscle mass back onto the limb without necessarily loading it through free weights or whatever it may be.

01:35:49.000 You can use blood flow restriction methods to try and increase the hypertrophy mechanism.

01:35:53.000 What are your thoughts on electrical muscular stimulation, those little pads and shocks?

01:35:59.000 Now that is called Heather. 1.00

01:36:01.000 Well, they come by a lot with different machines too.

01:36:06.000 Do you ever use it?

01:36:08.000 I have not, no.

01:36:09.000 Well, no.

01:36:09.000 Actually, no, that's not true.

01:36:11.000 I was the test dummy.

01:36:12.000 We did it on my shoulder.

01:36:13.000 I was the test dummy.

01:36:14.000 Did it help you at all?

01:36:15.000 I think with a lot of those things, there's some short-term relief, and again, you're influencing the nervous system, the long-term changes are potentially not there.

01:36:23.000 Here's what I want to ask you about.

01:36:25.000 Cupping.

01:36:26.000 Is that legit?

01:36:27.000 Yeah.

01:36:27.000 Is it real?

01:36:28.000 Michael Phelps.

01:36:30.000 He's amazing.

01:36:33.000 If you think about massage, that's all decompression.

01:36:40.000 What cupping does is the opposite.

01:36:42.000 It lifts.

01:36:42.000 So again, when we're talking about fascia and changing fascia and releasing fascia, if all you ever do is massage and depress the tissue, You're not getting that mechanism of lifting and bringing it up into the cup.

01:36:54.000 So that's kind of the philosophy behind it.

01:36:56.000 And our therapists use it a lot.

01:36:58.000 But again, it's just a tool and they're going to use the tool for certain situations and they might leave it for others.

01:37:03.000 Is there any scientific research to back cupping?

01:37:05.000 Not that I'm aware of, but I might be completely wrong.

01:37:09.000 Do you ever do it?

01:37:10.000 I got a cup this morning.

01:37:12.000 Show him your leg.

01:37:13.000 Show him your leg.

01:37:14.000 What's going on with your leg, bro?

01:37:15.000 Forrest.

01:37:16.000 Forrest, what'd you do?

01:37:17.000 So, do you know...

01:37:19.000 Is that a compression from a...

01:37:21.000 Oh, so you had surgery.

01:37:22.000 Six weeks ago.

01:37:23.000 What'd you have done?

01:37:25.000 MCL, PCL, LCL. Jesus, man.

01:37:28.000 Do you know the single leg...

01:37:30.000 When you do the scissor defense to the single leg, that scissor... 0.61

01:37:34.000 I don't.

01:37:35.000 Oh no.

01:37:36.000 Not at all.

01:37:36.000 I just fell right on his leg.

01:37:38.000 Turns out you can't do a thing, you can't not do a thing for six years and just think you can do it.

01:37:44.000 It's not riding a bike.

01:37:46.000 It's a perishable skill, as me and Clinton now know.

01:37:50.000 So how long ago did you get this?

01:37:50.000 But I have three new ligaments, so I'm good.

01:37:52.000 Oh Jesus Christ.

01:37:52.000 Six and a half weeks ago.

01:37:53.000 Six and a half weeks ago, three new ligaments from cadavers?

01:37:55.000 Is that what it is?

01:37:57.000 MCL was able to be repaired down on itself, PCL, cadaver, LCL, cadaver.

01:38:03.000 I'm getting world-class physical therapy on a daily basis.

01:38:08.000 Cupping today.

01:38:10.000 I got grasped in yesterday, hurt like hell.

01:38:12.000 But literally, I'm just beta testing everything.

01:38:15.000 I was the test subject for Roman for all the exercise tests.

01:38:18.000 Now I'm the test subject for all the PT rehab.

01:38:20.000 What about stem cells or exosomes or anything along those lines?

01:38:24.000 We got our flights to Panama booked.

01:38:27.000 Dr. Neil Reardon on standby.

01:38:29.000 I'm sticking with physical therapy at the moment, but I honestly don't know that much about the other components.

01:38:37.000 I'm waiting for embryonic stem cells in the U.S. Then I'll do it.

01:38:43.000 They're doing a lot of insane stuff.

01:38:45.000 I have stem cells in my Achilles.

01:38:47.000 I have Achilles surgery.

01:38:49.000 It's fantastic.

01:38:50.000 Yeah, they're doing some pretty incredible stuff.

01:38:51.000 If you're really interested, you should talk to Dr. Roddy McGee.

01:38:55.000 He's also local in Vegas.

01:38:56.000 Hello, Roddy.

01:38:57.000 Rodney was the one that did my Achilles surgery.

01:38:59.000 Yeah, he's amazing.

01:39:00.000 I did a consult with him.

01:39:01.000 You sent me.

01:39:02.000 You and DC both sent me.

01:39:04.000 And he said for my shoulder, and he was like, yeah, there's nothing there for it to attach to.

01:39:09.000 I'll take your six grand, but it probably won't work.

01:39:12.000 And I was like, oh, I appreciate the candor, Doc.

01:39:14.000 Yeah, he's very honest about the potentials.

01:39:18.000 But your shoulder's been operated on how many times?

01:39:21.000 Three.

01:39:21.000 Yeah.

01:39:22.000 That's rough.

01:39:23.000 Now, what are the options when something like that happens?

01:39:26.000 I know they do shoulder replacements, but what does that entail?

01:39:29.000 Yeah, I'll probably do that eventually.

01:39:31.000 And what does that mean?

01:39:32.000 They just put a different socket and joint?

01:39:34.000 The ball and socket, yeah.

01:39:35.000 What do they do with all the surrounding ligaments and everything?

01:39:37.000 I don't know.

01:39:39.000 That's terrifying.

01:39:39.000 I think a lot of those are still intact, so I don't think the range of motion would improve.

01:39:44.000 As long as I go mess around in RPT once or twice a week, it stays functional.

01:39:49.000 So when you say mess around, what kind of stuff are you doing?

01:39:52.000 Stuff for mobility or stuff for you doing like clubs?

01:39:55.000 I like where you're actually moving through with them pressing on the muscles and you're actually lifting the weight.

01:40:01.000 What's that called?

01:40:04.000 Where you're lifting weights or someone's manipulating your muscles?

01:40:07.000 I forget.

01:40:08.000 I'll think of it in a second.

01:40:09.000 No worries.

01:40:09.000 Physical therapy?

01:40:11.000 Let's call it physical therapy.

01:40:13.000 Did they have you do a lot of band stuff and a lot of shoulder guys get band work?

01:40:17.000 I do them as a warm-up every day.

01:40:22.000 Whenever I work out.

01:40:23.000 Except for today.

01:40:24.000 I just jumped in cold.

01:40:26.000 Let's see what happens.

01:40:27.000 Now, how much time do you spend on sort of educating fighters about having to strengthen up all the surrounding tissue around knees and shoulders and necks and things along those lines?

01:40:39.000 Things that are commonly your core, your lower back, commonly injured?

01:40:43.000 Tissue resilience is massive in our sport because, again, it's end-range resilience, right?

01:40:48.000 With the submission and the grappling exercise techniques, obviously you're taking a tissue and the tolerance of that tissue to its end range.

01:40:57.000 So by being able to train that over time in a progressive fashion, of course it's going to have an influence.

01:41:02.000 And yeah, part of our programming is going to approach that for sure.

01:41:06.000 Now, you guys have been in action now for two years.

01:41:09.000 You've had a bunch of different fighters move through and do their camps there.

01:41:14.000 We've had a roster of 570. We've had over 430 of the fighters have already been through in the first 22 months.

01:41:21.000 And we have a retention rate of about 73%.

01:41:24.000 So they're either coming back for repeat visits or they're getting remote programming from ourselves.

01:41:28.000 Now, how much has this changed over the two years?

01:41:31.000 How much have your protocols changed?

01:41:33.000 Your programs have changed?

01:41:34.000 A lot.

01:41:37.000 We're learning more about the sport.

01:41:39.000 The data is showing us more.

01:41:40.000 Again, just the opportunity to speak to more coaches, more athletes.

01:41:44.000 We're servants to the fight community.

01:41:47.000 We're sports scientists, therapists, clinicians.

01:41:51.000 At the end of the day, the IP sits with the coaches, with MA coaches and people like Forrest.

01:41:55.000 So just being able to understand how we can collect that information from a technical, tactical perspective and try and fit it into our philosophy of sports science being complementary to that, that's evolved all of our processes extensively over the last two years.

01:42:09.000 Have you guys ever thought about putting any of these sessions online?

01:42:13.000 Yeah, I mean, I always say the Performance Institute's got three responsibilities.

01:42:19.000 The first responsibility is to service athletes, to service our fight community, either face-to-face or remotely.

01:42:26.000 The second thing which we're trying to do, something like this, is to aggregate more information and more insights around the sport.

01:42:32.000 Is this available?

01:42:33.000 Anybody can buy this?

01:42:33.000 No, but you can get it online through...

01:42:36.000 It was sent to every fighter on the roster.

01:42:39.000 The average person?

01:42:41.000 A fan?

01:42:42.000 You can go to our Twitter accounts and things like that and find it on there.

01:42:45.000 There's links out there on social media.

01:42:46.000 Everybody knows a UFC fighter, right?

01:42:48.000 Just go find one.

01:42:50.000 But the second thing is we need to understand the sport.

01:42:53.000 The sport of mixed martial arts is only 25 years old professionally.

01:42:56.000 So aggregating data is the second thing.

01:42:58.000 And then the third thing off the back of that data is dissemination and education across the global fight community.

01:43:04.000 So we're called the Performance Institute for a reason, not the Performance Gym, because we are truly trying to do project work, do research work, work with partners to try and aggregate that information and our awareness and our understanding so that we can push it out there.

01:43:19.000 So the plan is obviously moving forward to really ramp up our educational platforms to support the global community.

01:43:24.000 And hopefully we'll have kind of certifications coming online and those types of things as well.

01:43:29.000 So Strength and PT are filming stuff to put online to like a full, like, this is the way this exercise is properly done, these are things to look out for, for physical therapy and strength conditioning, you know?

01:43:41.000 Do you guys have a YouTube channel?

01:43:42.000 We don't.

01:43:43.000 We're working on all this stuff.

01:43:45.000 What?

01:43:46.000 Here's the thing.

01:43:47.000 We don't want to act quickly.

01:43:49.000 We're not like a YouTube thing.

01:43:51.000 We want to like, hey, when we release something, we stand behind it.

01:43:54.000 This is tried and true.

01:43:56.000 These are practice methods.

01:43:57.000 We don't need to rush it. 0.99

01:43:58.000 Also, these jerks are always busy working with athletes. 1.00

01:44:04.000 Freudian slip! 1.00

01:44:05.000 Freudian slip!

01:44:07.000 Well, I think what you guys are doing is amazing and it would be even more amazing if young fighters, people coming up really could influence a lot of folks.

01:44:16.000 You're right.

01:44:17.000 And again, it's in our ambition.

01:44:18.000 We're just two years into this thing. 0.99

01:44:20.000 Our first year was just, shit, let's just get operational. 0.94

01:44:23.000 We don't even know what this What kind of mandate did the UFC give you? 0.98

01:44:27.000 What do they say? 0.96

01:44:28.000 Hey man, make a fucking awesome place. 0.99

01:44:30.000 Do their best. 0.98

01:44:31.000 Alright, this is Dana.

01:44:32.000 High five.

01:44:33.000 I'm going back to work.

01:44:34.000 How does that work?

01:44:35.000 How does it get set up?

01:44:36.000 It was like, hey, we want insights into the athletes.

01:44:39.000 We want...

01:44:42.000 It's origin was like, hey, can you guys make people stop missing weight and getting injured so much?

01:44:48.000 And more importantly, when somebody does get injured, can we get them back quicker?

01:44:52.000 Can they not work with a mom and pop car accident chiropractor to get a professional athlete? 0.94

01:44:58.000 Can we get them back quicker?

01:44:59.000 So, the goal, right, so the mission statement is to elongate careers, to help athletes make their weight class, stay within the weight class, fight great at their weight class.

01:45:10.000 So, again, specific mandates like the exact KPIs, I forget what they are.

01:45:16.000 They were some.

01:45:17.000 Just off the back of the bar, so what I would say is that we can legitimately say in the first 19 months of our existence, we've saved 22 fights.

01:45:28.000 Either through medical intervention or the work that Clint has done around someone that's behind their weight descent and we've really expedited that process.

01:45:36.000 That's amazing.

01:45:37.000 We're proud of that number and it's hard to build KPAs around that but that's why the Performance Institute was implemented.

01:45:43.000 KPAs?

01:45:44.000 KPIs, key performance indicators.

01:45:46.000 So we're not a fight team, right?

01:45:47.000 We work with the whole roster.

01:45:48.000 So we're not judged on wins and losses, although you would look on social media and some would think.

01:45:55.000 But our KPIs are around things like how can we support fighters make weight?

01:46:00.000 How can we get them to the door of the octagon in a healthy fashion?

01:46:03.000 And again, 22 fights, we can absolutely say, they probably wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the work of the Performance Institute.

01:46:09.000 So there's, you can put a financial cost potentially against that, and that's kind of the philosophy behind the Performance Institute.

01:46:16.000 Alright gentlemen, any last words, Clint?

01:46:17.000 You want to say something?

01:46:19.000 I was just going to add that a lot of what we're doing and the athletes that we get to interact with are the cases that require huge interventions.

01:46:28.000 You know, people that are coming off a six-fight win streak are not looking for how to fix their metabolism or how to stop missing weight or how to improve their power because it's a deficiency or an orthopedic injury.

01:46:41.000 So we're working with Those that are really successful and those that are struggling and everything in between.

01:46:47.000 So it's around those interventions that have led to fights actually happening.

01:46:53.000 There's a huge amount of, I guess, risk for lack of a better term, that we're taking on as we're really working with the athlete's best interest at heart and doing everything we can to support that athlete to be more consistent and to be able to do it longer into their career.

01:47:10.000 So they could, you know, do the best for themselves, for their family, and for, I guess, the UFC. Beautiful.

01:47:18.000 Anything, Duncan, to add to that?

01:47:19.000 No, I mean, this is a trip, you know.

01:47:21.000 In terms of where we're at with the Performance Institute, our ambition is to really affect and support the global fight community.

01:47:27.000 That's what we're about, and hopefully, you know, moving forward here, people are going to see the value of what we're trying to do.

01:47:33.000 Well, I think they already see the value.

01:47:34.000 I certainly do.

01:47:35.000 I'm very excited that you guys are around.

01:47:37.000 I thought you thought it was going to be a waste of money.

01:47:38.000 It's definitely going to be a waste of money, but in a good way.

01:47:42.000 What does that mean though, right?

01:47:43.000 It costs money.

01:47:44.000 But I think ultimately it's great for the sport, for sure.

01:47:46.000 Thank you.

01:47:46.000 And it's just an amazing resource, and I'm glad you're a part of it too, man.

01:47:50.000 It really means a lot.

01:47:51.000 It means a lot to have a guy who's a former champion who's been there since Ultimate Fighter Season 1. I mean, it's creepy.

01:47:58.000 Your fight, I mean, everybody says it.

01:47:59.000 It's a fact.

01:48:00.000 Your fight...

01:48:01.000 I say it all the time.

01:48:02.000 I say it at least once a day. 1.00

01:48:04.000 That fucking fight made the sport. 1.00

01:48:05.000 What? 1.00

01:48:06.000 You were in...

01:48:06.000 He was in a fight once.

01:48:08.000 That fight made the sport, man.

01:48:10.000 It really did.

01:48:11.000 That fight was so crazy.

01:48:13.000 People were calling up their friends.

01:48:15.000 When they started doing...

01:48:16.000 Nielsen numbers are all shenanigans, right?

01:48:18.000 You get like a hundred people.

01:48:19.000 They're checking their... 0.99

01:48:20.000 They don't really know who the fuck's watching what. 0.99

01:48:22.000 But they know that something crazy happened during that fight. 0.97

01:48:25.000 They have estimates that there was as much as 6 million people changed and started tuning into that fight while it was happening.

01:48:33.000 They don't know what the real numbers are, but it was chaos.

01:48:35.000 And then afterwards, I never saw anything like it.

01:48:39.000 It was like all of a sudden, people wanted to watch the UFC. It was almost instantaneous.

01:48:44.000 The season finale of The Ultimate Fighter went on the air, and then the door opened and people started pouring through.

01:48:50.000 It was crazy, man.

01:48:52.000 And that's you.

01:48:53.000 You and Stefan Bonner.

01:48:54.000 You guys are responsible for literally the birth of this explosion that we're all seeing right now.

01:49:01.000 We're seeing with this ESPN deal.

01:49:03.000 We're seeing with these incredible fights.

01:49:05.000 No, it's cool.

01:49:07.000 And I, you know, I love that, that I got to kind of be that cornerstone.

01:49:12.000 But, you know, now the PI, the UFC itself, the stars today, it's only building.

01:49:16.000 You know, that was the beginning.

01:49:18.000 There's, you know, there's so much more to come. 1.00

01:49:21.000 There's so much more to come, but you're a bad motherfucker, Forrest. 1.00

01:49:25.000 And we're there. 1.00

01:49:25.000 Just don't ever drill jujitsu or wrestling in. 1.00

01:49:30.000 We're worse.

01:49:30.000 You fall on people.

01:49:32.000 But seriously, I mean, I'm super happy that you guys exist.

01:49:35.000 It's awesome for me.

01:49:36.000 Thanks, Joe.

01:49:36.000 It's been a treat for me as a fan.

01:49:38.000 Thanks for having us. 0.66

01:49:38.000 Dork out with you. 0.66

01:49:39.000 Appreciate it. 0.98

01:49:40.000 And to learn all the inside stuff.

01:49:41.000 It's very exciting.

01:49:42.000 So thank you.

01:49:43.000 Much continued success, gentlemen.

01:49:44.000 Please come visit us again.

01:49:45.000 I would love to.

01:49:46.000 Welcome anytime.

01:49:46.000 I would love to.

01:49:47.000 Thank you very much.

The Joe Rogan Experience - December 07, 2010

JRE MMA Show #60 with Forrest Griffin, Clint Wattenberg & Dr. Duncan French

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