Building BJJ Strength with Kettlebells & Clubs w/ Pat Damiano

Coach Pat Damiano is a former CrossFitter and powerlifter who’s now built a reputation as a leader in kettlebell and club training for real-world strength and longevity.

We talk about why he walked away from barbell-centric training, how unconventional tools like kettlebells and heavy clubs have transformed his performance on the mat, and how minimalist strength work carries over into life—and business.

We also dive into:

• Common myths about kettlebells
• The real benefits of club training
• Strength protocols that actually transfer to BJJ
• Why mental discipline matters more than motivation
• How physical training supports entrepreneurship

This one’s packed with practical advice, mindset insight, and lessons on building strength that lasts.

Start building resilience for the mats with BJJ Kettlebell Resilience!

Learn more at seekprogress.com and follow us at @orderandprogress

Sign up for weekly BJJ performance and longevity content here.

Transcript

0:05

Hey, welcome back to the Order in Progress podcast, where we explore fitness, juujitsu mindset and more. I'm your host, will Safford, and in today's episode I sit down with coach and entrepreneur, pat Damiano, to talk about training that goes beyond the conventional. We dive into how tools like Kettlebells and heavy clubs can be used to build real world strength, not just for the gym. But for the demands of juujitsu and for life, we also get into the business side of things. What it takes to carve your own path, run a brand, and build something that lasts. Whether you're a grappler, a coach, or just someone trying to level up, this conversation is packed with valuable insight. But first, as always, you can find us@seekprogress.com. Where you can sign up for our Saturday newsletter and join thousands of grapplers who get weekly info on jujitsu, resilience, performance, and mindset. With that, let's welcome Pat Damiano to the show. Welcome back to the Order in Progress podcast today with Pat Damiano. Pat, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. So you are known online, I would say, as the kettlebell, maybe unconventional fitness guy. Sounds about right. But you weren't always. Unconventional you, you have a CrossFit background, power lifting. Why the change? What happened there? So I've been, long story short, I've been into fitness since I was 13. I'm 32 now. So I've always just liked fitness. I've never been obsessed with a specific goal. Or aesthetic I should say. So I've always just kind of liked the new thing or liked something different, which is what got me into CrossFit and Olympic weightlifting. And then when I started Juujitsu in 2020, or, no, I take that back, I started to dabble with like on it and Kettlebells and that vibe, which is what introduced me to Macy's and clubs for the first time. But when I first bought them, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing with them. I just thought they were kind of cool and different, and I just like to explore fitness. So they were always kind of like they got thrown in the mix a little bit again, didn't know I was doing 2021. I started jujitsu and that's when I was like, okay, I kind of wanna cater my training to be a little bit more towards that side of things and make myself a little better on the mat, a little bit more athletic for the martial arts side of things. So that's just kind of what got me into them of like actually learning how to use them, progressing with them, and then eventually they just became fun. So I just stuck with it. Right on. So. Do you think that kettlebells and clubs kind of add to your athleticism? Do you, would you say that they're more functional, if you will? Yeah. I always like to put the air quotes around the word functional as well. I. And I, I use the word athletic very loosely.'cause I think it depends on what you're doing, right? If you're a basketball player and you want to jump higher swinging clubs, maybe not. But if you are a Jiujitsu guy and you want some more mobile shoulders and you move in some different directions, then yeah, I think the Kettlebells clubs, Mac's is Bulgarian bag, sandbags, all that stuff is going to. Allow you to be a little bit more athletic in your sport and in your endeavor. And I, I do think they have carry over to every sport, but I always like to use the word athletic loosely because I do think it's very dependent on what your actual sport is and the type of athleticism that you are looking for. But yes, I definitely do think they make you a little bit more functional, um, by my definitions of the word functional fitness, right. So then why do you think that they're still considered know if they have all this benefit and they do help you with your athleticism, they do help you become more quote unquote functional and like, let, I mean, let's define functional, right? Yeah. Because functional is this broad term and I mean. People think like, alright, if you're gonna do some kind of machine movement, like a barbell curl or like some kind of like something in, in like a machine that it's, it's not functional. Mm-hmm. Well that just isn't true either, right? Right. You're building muscle, you're building strength. Almost any kind of movement you do can be functional. But like, what is it about kettlebells or, and clubs that makes them quote unquote functional. So they do what I define as functional fitness, which to me is building strength. In full ranges of motion. So like exactly like you said. Yeah. The person who can deadlift 400 pounds is still pretty functional. They can move a couch pretty well, but they're taking a bar from the same position every single time. They don't develop any maybe lower back mobility or deep ranges of motion to say, if you were to pick up a bar like an inch off of the ground as opposed to six inches off the ground where it's coming from your shin. So like that's how I kind of. Define the word functional as having the range of motion and the strength in deep ranges of motion. Your muscles, your joints, which for a club is gonna be your arm going all the way back for, you know, picking up a sandbag or doing a kettlebell is gonna be maybe a little bit more round in rounding in your back, lower from the ground windmills. That's how I define it, which is why I think they do build functional strength because they tend to get you to train in a way where you're gonna be moving a little bit more, rotationally, a little bit more in. What would be transverse plane to use my science there in the transverse plane. They just kind of lead towards that style of training A little bit more. Yeah, a little more rotation in the shoulder and whatnot. So that's what I define as functional strength, which is why I think those do develop, that they just get you to train in that way and move in different ways and build strength in those deep branches of motion. Yeah. Well, if you think about actual athletic movement. Nothing is in straight lines. Right. The the only sport that you do in a straight line is actually weightlifting. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So if you were thinking of applying your strength training to actual movement like you're doing in Juujitsu, if you look at Juujitsu, the movement is juujitsu. It's you're twisted, you're turned, you're on your back, you're, mm-hmm. You're one leg is extended, the other leg is flexed. Right. You have a lot of asymmetrical loading. And the way I see it is that the kettlebell allows you to do more of those positions and get into some of these more naturally quote unquote athletic positions that you're gonna experience like on the mat. Absolutely. The other thing too is that you're working more muscular chains, right? Right. You're working chains of muscles working together, uh, to produce strength to produce movement, where if you looked at my example before about doing a barbell curl, you're doing one. You know, one joint, and it's one single isolated movement where when you are actually doing something like juujitsu or grappling, you're, you have multiple muscles that are working together to perform a, an action. Exactly. And that's how the body's gonna end up moving, especially in something like juujitsu. It's way more fluid, it's way more flowing. There's more moving parts, or there's more parts moving together at once, which is what's gonna be happening. When using a kettlebell club may sandbag, stuff like that. So it's just, to me, it just makes sense that it translates to them. Yeah. Yeah. One thing that I noticed, like, so I'm gonna be 40 next week. Are you really? Yeah. Oh, you look great. This is a hell of a drug. That's, that's right. Good for you. You gotta find the right training. That's great. And stay consistent. So, but one thing that I noticed, and I am actually, as I'm kind of working more with my peers, people who are entering their forties, is that a lot of people just naturally get rid of the barbell. Yeah, we're just like, this doesn't feel right anymore. Right? So like from a longevity standpoint, you see all these people online who are, oh, you gotta barbell lift heavy, right? You gotta be doing your squats, your deadlifts. I don't really buy that anymore. Completely agree. Yeah, I think there's a lot of, there's so, there's so many ways we could go about this. So one, just the simplest one in my opinion is the barbell just locks you in place. Yeah. If you have shoulder problems, there's probably a chance at pressing a bar over your head or pressing or bench pressing with a bar just doesn't really feel that good. It doesn't feel good on me. The reason I don't really barbell bench that often having a kettlebell or even dumbbells just allows you to turn your wrist a little bit, tends to feel better. Deadlifting again, if you want to deadlift 500 pounds'cause he thinks that it's awesome, then go for it. But like most people don't need to. They don't care to. And there is a level of, depending on what you're going for, whether it's in a sport or just life, there's a level of strong enough that other pieces of equipment are going to let you do. You know, if you can single leg RDL two 70 pound kettlebells for five or six reps, you are definitely, your glutes and hamstrings are definitely strong enough to live life and do most sports. And that's where I think that comes into play. And it's just gonna, it's gonna feel better at the end of the day. It's not 400 pounds on your spine, whether it's back, squat, deadlift, it just feels better when you take them out. And that's what I think so many people gravitate. Or why so many people tend to gravitate away from them is they take'em out. They're like, let me try this out. And then all of a sudden they're like, I feel pretty good. Yeah, my back doesn't hurt, my knee doesn't hurt, my shoulder feels good. And they're like, you know, at some point in your athletic career, whether it's, you know, I'm 32 now and it's kind of my goal, you're almost 40 or 50 or 60. There's, you reach a point where you're like, I don't want to deal with. Aches and pains and annoying shit anymore, I'm just gonna not do that and I can get strong doing so many other things. Right. Yeah. I think there's this misconception that like, if you stop doing barbell lifting, like you're not going to be able to get strong. Right. That's like, that's the only way to de develop strength. And I think you, you said an interesting point, like there's a, there's a strong enough for sure, and I mean one of the great things about the barbell is that you can continually to get strong, right? But you can do that with anything. Mm-hmm. But specifically for juujitsu. I don't think that this idea of chasing strength constantly is actually that necessary. Mm-hmm. Right. Like we do have weight classes. You're never gonna run against, run up against a 500 pound manpower, you know, like unless you're fighting the gorilla. Right. But you can get to a level where you are strong enough, your joints are resilient, uh, you have enough strength to handle anybody in your weight class, maybe your weight class above, or two weight classes above, and you don't have to do. Your barbell lifting. Mm-hmm. So getting back to kettlebells, right? What do you think are some misconceptions that people have about kettlebell lifting? How much time we got? So, I mean, the first one is gonna be kind of that you can build, and I always tend to put like strength and muscle kind of together because that's what most people freak out about online or when you're switching your training style, is that you can't build strength or muscle. And the common misconception is that people just don't, I wanna say they don't know enough about kettlebells, but I don't blame. Them because they might go to a lifetime. In the heaviest kettlebell, there's a 50 pound kettlebell. So it's like, yeah, if you're a 200 pound guy, 50 pound kettlebell is not gonna do much for you. You probably see people doing tons of swings in like a CrossFit class or something. Or you just see people using them for conditioning, cardio, CrossFit ish hit type of workout, right? So they're doing a ton of reps and they just view that as that's what kettlebells are. Because that's all they know about them or all they have access to. You know, there are people who are, will comment on my videos of me using a 1 0 6 and be like, that's the heaviest kettlebell I've ever seen. I didn't know they made'em that big. I'm like, wait, really? Because there's a one 20 fours, 1 40, 50, and so on. So I think people just don't know that they go heavy enough. There's so many other things you can do besides just an insane amount of swing. You clean and press, you snatch. You can obviously do rows and squats and single leg delis and Turkish scouts. You do all of that stuff. You're just going to build strength the muscle. It's just, there's tension. That's all the body cares about. Yeah. So I think that's, that's the number one biggest misconception is. They just don't have access to heavy enough kettlebell, so they don't realize that they come heavy enough for them to build muscle and strength, or they're just using them for super high rep swings, which both of those things tend to go hand in hand, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people look at the kettlebell and they're like, oh, this is for explosive movements. Right. But as I've, I mean, I've been training jujitsu for 15 years. I have just a laundry list of injuries and, you know, dealt with pain. Yeah. Especially like once I hit 35, it was like, man, I, I was getting hurt almost every other session really. Once it, it was, it was insane stuff. And that's when I knew that, and that's, before that I was doing a lot of barbell lifting. Mm-hmm. And just straight line, linear. Kettlebell lifting even. And that's when I was like, all right, something's gotta change. And so what that did was it forced me to understand how can I use tools that are gonna be a little bit more forgiving on my body mm-hmm. But still build the qualities that I need. So with Kettlebells, you can manipulate your programming, you can do slow eccentrics, right? Mm-hmm. Like you can do isometrics, you can you can do like, um. You know, you, you go into like a strength lift and then you do an explosive lift right after, right? There's so many different ways to elicit the adaptations that you want. Just by using kettlebells. You don't have to go to the barbell, you don't have to go to some of these other things. So I think that just adds to the versatility of'em all. Yeah, and like to that point as well, something I always say is, you know, they're not completely perfect apples to apples, but at the end of the day, if I do a heavy set of three snatches with my kettlebell, that'll probably be whatever, one oh six, let's just call it. Right? That's still gonna build a ton of strength. I'm gonna be explosive. It's 106 fricking pound kettlebell. But if I needed to do a similar difficulty. Of barbell snatches, let's say.'cause I wanted to just compare them. I'm gonna need a lot more than 106 pounds, and that's just gonna put a ton more tension on my body, which is just not gonna feel good over time. And then besides the fact that barbell snatches and shoulders and stuff like that, if you don't have great shoulders, whatever. But at the end of the day, I'm using just about half of the weight, maybe 75 5% of the weight, and it's just gonna be less tension overall on my body. But I'm still getting a very difficult and high explosive movement in there. I would also argue that. Kettlebell training is actually more similar to the type of training you need for a combat sport like Juujitsu. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean that's would completely agree in that sense as well. Absolutely. I actually, I have this opinion that I don't think, like strength is not the most important quality for a combat sport. Not at all. I learned that the hard way on many occasions. It doesn't matter as much as you think, right? Try to bench press off your, your opponents doesn't work when they're at two 20 in a purple belt or it doesn't work if you, you know, have to do it five minutes. Into a round. Right. And it's your third time benching this person off you. Right. They're still glued to you somehow. It's not. Exactly. Yeah. So I think, I think strength endurance is actually much more important for a combat sport, and I don't think that. There's a better tool to build strength endurance than the kettlebell. Completely agree. Yeah. You do, you know, 3, 4, 5 minutes of snacks as you're clean and press as awful as that sounds. Yeah. It's gonna translate very well. It's just total body. You're gonna have tension throughout your most of your body the entire time if you're doing 3, 4, 5 minutes of any kettlebell exercise, and it's just going to flow better than most other pieces of equipment, in my opinion. Yeah. So you just don't have that, um, that sh that. That need for that strict, precise technique that you need with a barbell. Yes, that too. Right? There's a lot, there are a lot more forgiving. Yeah, for sure. But um, so let's get into one of the big misconceptions with cattle bells, which is that you can't really build muscle with cattle valves. Yes. Tell us about that. Love that one. Um, look at the end of the day, tension is tension, right? If you're doing slow controlled. Yeah. Dumbbell movements or whatever. Yeah. Like the only goal with that is to build muscle, right? And the whole misconception with this is can you build muscle versus what is the most optimal way to build muscle, right? Mm-hmm. That's the argument and that's why using the proper language is so important when you speak on the internet, and I understand being polarizing and getting clicks and getting people to pay attention, but at the end of the day, if we use the proper language. If you say that Kettlebells cannot build muscle, it's just literally scientifically wrong. If you say they're not the most optimal way to build as much muscle as possible, I'm not really gonna fight you on that one, because yeah, if you wanted to build as much muscle as possible, go into a gym, use dumbbells, use barbells, use slow controlled movements, just look for the pump. But at the end of the day. If I'm doing rows and strip presses and cleans with a heavy kettlebell 70, 80, and a heav heavies relative, so I'm just gonna use those numbers as an example. At the end of the day, my muscles are working. They're going to build. There's no arguing that it could be a chair, it could be a rock, could be another person. I always like to use wrestlers. Look at wrestlers. They're freaking jacked. From mostly just throwing people around. Yeah. So at the end of the day, if the tension is there, the muscles are gonna grow. We just need to use the proper language of what's the most optimal way possible. I'll agree. Probably not kettlebells, but can you Yes. And many people have proven that it is possible to build muscle using kettlebells. Yeah. It's just proper language. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's important. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Like the, the language is super important. But also. Getting like understanding the goal, right? Like so what is your goal, right? Yeah. If your goal is to just build muscle, kettlebell is probably not the best way to do green, right? But if your goal is to throw people around and also have, you know, cardio and a gas tank that doesn't quit, and you know, you want to build strength, and also what I think is one of the two of the greatest things about Kettlebells is that you can do'em anywhere. It's nothing better. We're in, we're in your gym, your garage gym right now. Fantastic little space, but it's, there's, um, there's nothing, oh, we do have a rack, but there's no machine. Machine. It doesn't, it doesn't get used that much. It's holding up the laundry room. It's a pull up bar at this point. Yeah. But I mean, you can do'em anywhere. Yeah. And, um, and the time aspect of it as well, right? Like you can, you can pick up just even a single kettlebell and get a phenomenal workout in. 10, 20, you know, 10, 15, 20 minutes, that's it. Easily. And at the end of the day, that's what people are looking for. And the, what's nice about that is in that 10, 20, 30 minutes, you can touch on everything. You're not gonna win. I always say, you're not gonna win any gold medals. Mm-hmm. I think in fitness, most people are looking for jack of all trades, maybe master of none. They want to be. A little muscular, a little strong, little mobile, have some conditioning, and they want to do that in a way that they like to do. It doesn't take up a ton of time, and a lot of cases doesn't take up a lot of space. And that's what they let you do. You know? I mean, I'm fortunate enough to have too many kettlebells, but most people can get away with having five or six and basically throw them in their living room and have a gym for the rest of their life. Right. Unless they got insanely strong and then you just go buy another one. Yeah. Which. It's fun. Yeah. And it's a good problem to have, right? It's not a bad problem. I love when people are like, oh, I just joined your program, been on it for three months. Like, I need to have your kettlebells. I'm like, I'm not sorry. Absolutely. Yeah. It's what, what people say kettlebells aren't good at is actually what most people are looking for. Yeah. Which is a nice, well-rounded program. Nice, well-rounded piece of equipment that they can do in a short amount of time. And any, the convenience of doing it anywhere is very beneficial. Yeah. And there is another piece of equipment that I think compliments the kettlebell perfectly. Mm-hmm. And actually hits a ton of those boxes that you just said as well. And that's the heavy club. Yep. So why do you. I, I mean, that's, that's pretty much your other tool of choice. Yep. Why do you use the, the Club Bell as well? They're really fun on, on Well, they're, they're awesome. I think they, you know, mark says this all the time, as the kettlebells do get at a lot of, they check a lot of boxes, but the very few boxes that I think the Kettlebells might not check. Very dependent on how you're using them. The club is gonna hit, which is where we get a little more swinging in front of the body. A little bit more rotation in the shoulder. Mm-hmm. A little bit more, um, explosive rotation with the torso. Mm-hmm. I would say. Mm-hmm. And just hitting the grip in different areas I think is really beneficial. And something people, I. Don't think about, you know, hitting different parts of your forms, your wrists, your hands that allow you to get out of the, just grabbing something, how we would normally grab anything. Barbell, dumbbell, kettlebell that rotation in the wrist I think helps a lot. And they're just fun. I just think it's cool they're, maybe it's something primal in us that just likes to swing a weapon looking thing, but I just enjoy them. Yeah. And on top of the fact that they hit all of those boxes for me. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. They are fun. And like, one thing that that brought to mind was. In, um, you know, the, how you said earlier how barbells just sometimes make you feel like crap. Yeah. You swing a club and not only are they fun, you feel better after every time. Right. Every time. It's, and so it's because they're opening things up, they're mobilizing the body. They're getting you in this rotational, transverse plane that you're not being exposed to when you're doing those other straight line lifts. Yeah. They, they hit areas that most other pieces of equipment aren't. Again, it's very, you could. Sure you can grab a kettlebell and do some halos. You can do a halo with a plate or a barbell, or not a barbell. Don't do a halo with a barbell, but with a plate. It's just not the same. They're just gonna get you moving in ways that your body hasn't. And quite frankly, your body wants to move. Every joint rotates. Yes. Your wrist wants to rotate. Your elbow, your shoulder. All of it wants to rotate. It's why they feel good. Yeah.'cause it's making your body do what your joints want to do, but they just never do it. This episode is brought to you by the BJJ Kettlebell Resilience Program. Available now@seekprogress.com. If you're a grappler looking to build real strength, mobility, and durability without spending hours in the gym. This program is for you. It's designed specifically for jiujitsu athletes. Using just a kettlebell, you'll build the qualities that actually carry over to the mat. Joint control, core strength and mobility, and durability for the mats. Whether you're training for performance or longevity, this is a smart minimalist training program that works. Check it out@seekprogress.com and start building resilience today. Yeah. That rotation that is really like the sweet spot of, of swinging clubs. And like you said earlier, you can swing kettlebells, rotationally, you can even do some rotational stuff with barbells. But the way that the club is designed and the way that you load it, it allows you to, to rotate and swing it in a way that's just, it's more mechanically sound to swing a club like that. And so it opens up a lot of different planes of motion that. If you tried to swing a kettlebell that way, you're gonna hit yourself in the leg, probably, which I've done, so I completely agree. And I think they get the body moving in a way. It's used to moving, I know he said about the joints, but like. You know, they're not as complicated to teach When you know what you're doing, as people might think, it's just different. And then once you can do that, it gets your body moving in a way it wants to, which is just a throwing motion. Yes. You know, you've heard Mark say this a bunch. Yes. And it's just true. Like everybody has thrown a ball in their life. Yep. And if you can just kind of make that connection of this club is just throwing a baseball. You might be terrible at throwing a baseball, but you still know how to throw one for the most part. It feels natural. Yeah, it feels normal. My nephew's two years old. Nobody taught him how to throw, but he can still load up and throw. Yes, it's not good, but the motion is there. It's just inherent in us. Yes, I think, which is why clubs, I think, just feel good for people. Yep. Well, so I hold the opinion that there's a misconception on the natural movements of the human body. Okay. So most people think of squat, push, pull, hinge. Mm-hmm. Right? And like they'll tack on rotate at the end. Yeah. Rotate is actually number one for sure. So you're, if you think of the design of the human body, it was designed to walk, run, and throw. That's like the primary functions. That's it. Yet somehow over the course of. You know, the last a hundred something years, we took all of that out of our training. Mm-hmm. And we sat people in machines. We got them under barbells, moving in straight lines, not rotating at all. Yep. So exactly what you're saying, like there is this innate. You know, desire in us to actually turn and twist and rotate and that throwing motion, mark Wildman always talks about this. Mm-hmm. That throwing motion is what has allowed us to conquer civilization. Right? Yeah. It's true. And become what we are today. Yeah. Which is,'cause we could fight, we could build and then we could also throw things, throw and fight. Defend, kill things and then build civilization all require this swinging and no other animal in the whole. Yeah. You know, animal kingdom can do that except us. It's the reason we're not, I, I don't know evolution that well, but I'm pretty sure the reason we're not monkeys anymore is'cause we can throw, like monkeys can't throw, they can't throw a rock, they can't throw a spear. They get other shit, but it's not, but that's it. You know, it's, it's as weird as it sounds, if we really brought it back far enough, that's what kind of separated us. Yeah, no, it's absolutely true. So I, here's also the thing, like people will get very dogmatic and just say, ah, you gu, just gotta do this. And Yep. I don't, I, I'm more along the lines of, do whatever you're happy doing. Mm-hmm. Right. If you want to just deadlift. Just deadlift. Yeah. But I think. My opinion, if you're gonna do a combat sport like Juujitsu, you can do your deadlifting, you can do your squatting. But I think you should also do your, your throwing patterns, your rotational patterns. And in my opinion, there's no, you could do rotation with bands and medicine balls, but there's no better way to load rotation. Right. Than with a club. Exactly. I can't throw a 60 pound medicine ball. Yeah. Like maybe, but it's not gonna be very effective. Right. You know, I can throw, I can spin around a 60 pound club. It's just. Yeah, it, it makes more sense. So let's, let's, uh, let's turn to Juujitsu. Yeah. So you, uh, you're a blue belt and I think one thing that's really interesting, and I, and I'm, I was guilty of this, is that. I'm, you know, I was always naturally a little bit stronger. Mm-hmm. A little bit more athletic. Right. So I use that to my advantage a lot. Yeah. In, from white belt to blue belt, right? Mm-hmm. And I think a lot of people can do that. You're a blue belt. Do you think that using these, this, this, these tools and this type of equipment has given you an edge over people to get to your blue belt? I think so I was already pretty strong when I entered, so what I credit a lot of this stuff for is it's, it's definitely made me more, you were talking earlier about the muscular endurance part. It's definitely added that,'cause I was already pretty strong going in. So like the basic, you know, hip explosion probably got a little better from swinging heavy bells, but. Most of the overall quote unquote generic strength was there. I think it made me a little bit more explosive. No, I think I know it made me more explosive. It allowed me to have a little bit more of the muscular endurance. What I think this really allowed me to do is I could be in some weird positions a little bit better, and I can maybe get out of those positions better in a more like explosive way. And I think that allowed me to train a little bit. Better or smarter because I wasn't getting, you know, if you're getting stacked and you have a terribly, a terribly tight back, all you're thinking about is my back hurts. Mm-hmm. Right? If you're getting stacked and your back is not super tight, you can actually do stuff from there. So I think it gave me a lot of ability to. Train better in that sense, if that made sense. Yeah. I mean that kind of gets back to the whole functional aspect, right? Exactly. So it made you more prepared and more resilient and capable in these kind of awkward positions mm-hmm. That you're gonna experience on the mat and you might not. Ever train, anything like that. If you're just doing sagittal plant type lifts, never. You're never, you're never gonna do, if you're just regular lifting, you're never gonna do a windmill. Yeah. You know, it's something like that. You're never gonna do a Turkish get up, maybe, like, it's just not gonna happen. Yeah. What do you, th What are some of your favorite exercises with the clubs? With the kettlebells, I'm. I'm a traditionalist, I guess with, when it comes to those exercise, I just like clean impresses and snatches the best. I have an Olympic weightlifting background, so I've just always loved clean, impressing and snatching. Um, anything that's a horizontal row I like, which isn't specific to the cabell. So clean, impress, snatch, the clubs. I like Mills and 360, or however you wanna call it. Shield cast. Yeah, I, I don't get too deep into the weeds on that. I also really like a super heavy just club front squat. Yes, it's my favorite. Squat variation. I'm not obsessed with getting my legs overly strong, so I don't need to put 300 pounds in my back. Yeah. But with my biceps and shoulders and chest and everything, and abs and lats are just on fire and I'm doing a heavy club squat. I love that. Yes. That's one of my favorites for sure. That is, that is an underrated exercise. Very underrated. Everyone's really big on the zercher squat right now. It's trending hard, right? Yep. Man. A heavy front squat with a club. Yep. In my opinion. Lights up that anterior chain, the front, front line of the body, almost better than anything else. Completely agree. And it's not as uncomfortable as throwing a barbell in your elbow pits. I've noticed that. Absolutely. I've noticed that with a zercher squat. My mobility's a little limited. Yeah.'cause your elbow is, you know, unless your feet are wide, depending on your belt, your elbows have to go in. I don't like it. And to that point as well, I also believe that squatting a club is for their everyday person is gonna give them the perfect. Squat for their lower body.'cause it's a lot of just the way down front. Same concept as like a goblet squat. But still, it's like when you're doing a squat, you can't be lazy with your upper body. If you've ever back squatted heavy, you know the deal. It's like your upper body and your upper back has to be there. When you throw a heavy club in somebody's hand and tell'em, don't hit yourself in the face with this as you squat, everything just kind of turns on the way it's supposed to. So their upper body's working and the weight in front just lets'em get lower than they ever have in their life. I've noticed from working with clients with like not great hip mobility. Yeah, it just. It's the perfect, the best squat for that person I've found. Yeah. Yeah. That, that counterbalance where you can kind of sit back against the weight a little bit more without shutting everything off Exactly. Right. Is, is huge. What about specifically for Juujitsu? Is there any movements that you found or like your bread and butter for Juujitsu? I'm a big half kneeling windmill guy. Nice. So any sort of windmill variation, I like to mess with them standing half kneeling. Um, I have like. And I'm not gonna say I took it from somebody like a, it's like a leg out, kneeling windmill variation. Yeah. Like something like that. I like that. And then honestly, anything with the club. Anything with the club and just the grip, the shoulders, obviously, again, the mills, the squats, and the, uh, the 360, I think you're just gonna be great. And then any, any, anywhere you can throw in like a little bit of a twister rotation I think is great. Yeah. But those are gonna be, in my opinion, the bread and butter of those. I would say same with me for Juujitsu, with the kettlebell windmills. Turkish get ups are kind of my, like my go-to and then, you know, swings. Like you can't really beat swings. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So I feel, I feel like that's like a given. Yeah. It's like those are just automatically part of the equation. Right. And then, um, yeah, I mean three sixty's or Shield cast, I don't know if you've ever done, mark calls'em Wildman. Athletica, he calls'em uh, um, pendulums. Which is kind of like an outside clean. Okay. Where you casting to the side. Mm-hmm. And then you're like countering it as you Yes. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. That's another good way to kind of get a little rotation in there. Yeah. I mean it specifically for like, it's almost the exact position that you would use if you're doing like a hip throw. Yeah. Juujitsu t. Mm-hmm. So you're getting that it's, it's kind of like a. Loaded, explosive side, dead mill, clean. That's a mouthful right there, right? Yeah. Like that's, yeah, that's what it would be. And if you're, if you're thinking about what you were saying earlier, having this mobility in your lower back mm-hmm. That is the movement for sure. That's going to give you that exact, that that exactly what you need right there. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. Love it. I'll throw one more in'cause I forgot. I call it a lateral clean. Where it's basically just like going back and forth between an inside and outside circle. Mm-hmm. I've heard some people call it sword swings. Okay. There's, there, I feel like there's a, a lot of different names out there for different exercises, but I like that one too.'cause that gets like the concept of a kettlebell swing, but side to side as opposed to front and back. How would you, so it sounds like you take a little bit of a minimalist approach Yes. Toward your training. Mm-hmm. Which, I mean, this day and age, everyone needs that. Who, who has two, two hours a day to spend in the gym? Right. Like, I don't even want to do that. My whole life is revolving around the gym. Exactly. Right. It's just like you want efficient. My whole thing now as I've gotten older is like, how can I get the biggest bang for my buck Right? In the least amount of time with the least amount of learning curve, right? Mm-hmm. And also the warmup factor too, like we were saying with the club, it kind of mobilizes you Yeah. And strengthens you at the same time. So my warmups are pretty much all club-based warmups, right? Yeah. And you're, you're getting right into the movement. But how is your, your programming? Like, is that also minimalist? Like how do you program? Yeah, so, well, for myself, actually no, I'm gonna say for myself and my programs and other people, I mean. When I have my in-person clients, it's different. I've access to a whole gym. We're there for the hour. But when it comes to other people who are doing my programs, and for myself, it's four times a week, 40 minutes, you know? Mm-hmm. Maybe 45. If I had the extra time and want to, I'll go to the hour, but I'm almost never going over an hour, just strictly out of desire. And I try and combine specific exercises to put together where you can do them in a circuit fashion. So you're lifting, but you're kind of moving from one exercise to the other, not in a. Overly hit CrossFit conditioning type of way, but in it just like, you know, do some single arm rows, do some goblet squats, and then do some single arm push presses. Right? Yeah. So you're still getting your lifting in, but the heart rate's getting jacked up in there. And that's a big part of it.'cause it just lets me do both at the same time, which is what I'm looking for. I don't. Need to or necessarily want to like lift for 45 minutes and then go for a 30 minute run. Yeah, right. I just like to combine everything. It's fun, it keeps me moving, and I don't need a lot of space or equipment as you can see. Yeah. And then we were talking earlier before we started about. Trying to throw in Juujitsu at the same time. Right. So like juujitsu, the class is a minimum an hour. Yeah. Right. You gotta driving there, you gotta warm up all this stuff. A lot of classes are 90 minutes, some two hours even. So now you're adding that into your workload. Mm-hmm. Right? So it's like how do you expect to. You know, be consistent with Juujitsu. Mm-hmm. I mean, especially a lot of guys who wanna compete or, you know, really progress at Juujitsu, you, you kind of have to put the time in on the map. Yeah. Have to, right? Yeah. And then also this, this is kind of like this, uh, catch 22, right? Where you, you have to do juujitsu, but you. In order to get resilient for jujitsu, you have to put in time off the mats. Right? Right. So like you need to do things off the mats so you don't get hurt. Yeah. And now how do you balance that with your strength and conditioning, right? Yeah. All this stuff that we're talking about and jujitsu in a family and a business, if you know that's what you, without what you do. And that's why, that's why I've always leaned toward the minimalist tools like the Kettlebell Club for sure. It's, it goes back to something I said earlier. It's like all the things that people hate on this style of training for is actually why people like it, right? It's like, yeah, I can do a tough kettlebell workout for 30 minutes, still get strong mobile and all this. Yeah, I'm not gonna win any weightlifting competitions, but. It allows me to, then, it's not as taxing on my body, so it allows me to go to Juujitsu maybe later that day or the next day and not feel completely beat up. Right. That's the beauty of it. Um, it's still very difficult because at the end of the day, I tell people is you probably have to pick one. I don't think you can do either one of them. At a hundred percent. Yeah, you're gonna have to pick one, which again, is okay. It's dependent on what you want. But you know, if you want to go to Juujitsu two times a week and then hit your workouts pretty hard three or four times a week, you can do that, or you can FlipFlop it. It's just being mindful of. Doing that. But like you said, it's just, it takes up time. Yeah. And for a lot of people it's difficult to do and you kind of have to pick and choose where you want to put your one mental energy and also your physical energy.'cause there's only so much in the cup. Yeah. And you can't, do you, I don't think some people do. I don't know how, I can't go to Juujitsu four or five times a week. And work out hard for, or five times a week. Right. I'm just, maybe I'm not built like that or I just don't want to be. Yeah. It's tough. Yeah. I want, I want to get to recovery next. Yeah. Because you're still, uh, still a young chap over there and you know, um, like I said, like once I hit 35, the recovery, uh, just things changed for me. Right. Yeah. And it was like a different ball game. But before we get there, one thing getting back, you could say that, you know, maybe if you're a professional athlete, this is, this wouldn't be the ideal, you know, setup for you. But I would actually argue that if you're gonna, if you wanted to be a professional athlete in the sense of like a combat athlete mm-hmm. I honestly think you could get away with just doing this. Oh, I completely agree. I saw a hilarious critique of a world champion's, a jujitsu, world champion's strength and conditioning routine the other day online. And this guy was. You know, basically judging this world champion because he was not doing heavy barbell lifts and he was not very quote unquote strong. These barbell lifts. Mm-hmm. The he that this particular world champion focused more on quote unquote functional stuff. Yep. Explosive training, you know, ply metrics, kettlebell work, a lot of just like rotational stuff. Right. And he was getting kind of like all of this you know, I don't know what you would call it, but people were just, you know, critiquing him.'cause he wasn't very quote unquote strong. Mm-hmm. He won the world championship at heavyweight. Oh. Which is like, everyone is super strong at heavyweight. Yeah. So to me it's like. This guy won without having to do all of the, the heavy barbell lifting and stuff like that. Right. You don't actually need to do that. No. Now if you take someone who's a hobbyist like myself mm-hmm. And you Right. Or someone who is just doing juujitsu every once in a while they've got a business and a family like it, it just seems even more perfect for someone like that. For Yeah.'cause like we were, we said earlier, before you especially, we'll take that world champion, it's like there's a level of strong enough. Right. And there's a level of. He doesn't, he doesn't want to get hurt or beat himself up too much. He needs to do supplemental complimentary strength work so that he can still train hard. Yes, because especially when it comes to something like Juujitsu is like your sport is a workout. No matter how good you are, how much you can flow, your sport is a workout. There is no denying that, and there's only so much energy you've got. So if you're going to strength train on top of it, which you have to, to stay healthy. The main goal is, and you know, I was, uh, I was listening to this guy, um, I'm blanking on his name, Jordan Shallow, who trains with a lot of like high, high, high end athletes. He's like, your number one goal is to not fucking hurt them. Yeah. When you're training Steph Curry, the last, you're not really trying to make sure that he can jump an inch higher, trying to make sure he stays healthy. Mm. And for a lot of guys, that's what they need. Like, yeah. That guy who, if you won worlds at heavyweight, you do not need to be stronger. What does he need to do? Hip, throw somebody harder, right? Like he probably doesn't need that. He needs to make sure he can move and stay consistent. Yeah. And just keep his muscles, joints, and ligaments strong. And that's what this stuff is gonna do without beating him up so much. I have this, um, this opinion, or, or I notice this, this kind of idea or this misbelief in combat sports that you can somehow like. Work out your way to being a better martial artist. Right. Hasn't worked for me. At least. I'm not that good. But there's no way strength and speed and, and endurance helps. Right. For sure. But it doesn't help with your technique, right? No. Like you can't like deadlift your way to a world championship. No, not at all. Um, we, I, I think this is always hilarious where these guys right before they fight in the world championships, they show like how much they can lift. Right. And then they'll take third. Yeah. And it's like. Well that did, that wasn't the answer. Right? Yeah. Maybe it like, certainly helped you, you didn't get injured, but like to be a better martial artist mm-hmm. You gotta put that time on the mat so you're absolutely, you're absolutely right. Getting back to recovery. Yep. Yeah, I think one of the, you just mentioned it there, like that world champion, he's not focusing on those heavy barbell lifts because maybe he's trying to manage. The energy that he has. Yeah. Right. And so do you do anything for nervous system management, recovery, anything like that? Uh, not as much as I should. I definitely try and school when I can. That's probably the main thing in terms of re, I mean, yeah, I sleep pretty good. I get my electrolyte, I hydrate, I eat pretty good. Like all of that stuff. I kind of just throw that in is like obvious ones. Yeah. Yeah. Or standard ones. But I would say sauna is probably the next best one. And I care about my mobility, which I think ma in a sport like martial arts or. In any martial art or juujitsu matters, I think that is a form of recovery. Mm-hmm. Because if your mobility's there, you're not getting as beat up, getting stacked or put in certain positions or so on and so forth. So I view that as recovery. I could probably do a little bit more, but I think I have the basics Pretty locked in with some icing on the cake stuff. That is good. But. I think a lot of people think is like the main stuff when it's like, no, just sleep, eat your water, get your electrolytes and eat well. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Um, I want to talk about the, the mental aspect of training. Yeah. So this is like, I think just a hugely unexplored, massive opportunity for people. And I think what you're referring to there, the mobility training is. A lot of people lack the discipline Yeah. To do what needs to be done. Mm-hmm. And again, like I said, once you get older, like you can't get away with it. No. Right. Like, you have to put that time in if you want to stay on the mats. Right. If you don't want, if you wanna get hurt all the time, right. You want to give up juujitsu, like fine, don't, don't put the discipline. But what I have found is that as I've gotten older. You can't get away with that stuff that used to. So what it takes is actually more mental discipline on your part as you, as you get older. And I'll, I'll piggyback off that'cause something else I was thinking of that I think I've gotten pretty good at, and I think other people struggle with, especially someone like me or you, or someone who's maybe in physical endeavors their entire life is, I'm pretty good, or I'm, I'm at least better at living to fight another day. Mm-hmm. I will not roll, I will not do the extra roll. If I'm feeling it. I will not do the extra set or two if I'm like, I feel like I should, but I wanna feel a little better the next day. And I think that goes a very long way.'cause I struggled with that, you know? And I'm sure there's a little code of conduct like, Hey, do you want roll? Be like, you know what, I'm actually good for today. Or like, I don't wanna roll with you'cause you are an asshole. Like I you, hundred percent. It's a real thing. And that. When I was doing jujitsu and working out probably my best combination of the two, I was very mindful of that, like, I'm gonna get my solid workout in. I'm gonna do three setss instead of four, or I'm gonna go a little bit lighter, even though I know I can go heavier. I'm gonna say no to that next role because I. I wanna come back tomorrow, or I want my workout to be good. And I think that was a really big thing that helped me out. And that is way so in the mindset, especially when it comes to working out in Juujitsu, there's a lot of bravado, a lot of, I want to be that guy. I don't want to say no, I want to see if I can do this. I think that's a huge thing for people that people struggle with. And that's something that I. It's gonna take a mindset because if you're working out hard or doing juujitsu, you probably have a certain mindset of like, one more, one more, one more. Which works until it doesn't. Great point. Yeah. Fantastic point. Uh, that was, that was very well said. And that's, that's huge that you have that, that ability to do that.'cause I feel like a guy like you who's got all the strength and ability in the world, like that's a challenge. Yeah. Like that. This is my point about discipline. It's like also the discipline to say no. Yeah. Right. It's not like the discipline, like. You me, we have no problem doing the work. Mm-hmm. Right. That like, that's not the discipline. It's like, how do I say no to something that could potentially end up bad? And as you get older, you're absolutely right. You have to pick and choose those, those smart roles at the gym. Mm-hmm. You have to even pick and choose days when you're like, man, the back just feels off today. Yeah. And I mean, I've had enough back injuries where I know like, today, this is gonna end up bad. If I go to class today, this is not gonna end up well. I need to take a day off, do my mobility, check out for a day. So, hugely it's hard. Valuable lesson there. Yeah. It's hard. I was, I was proud of myself for a period of time when I was saying no to roles and chilling outta my workouts a little bit.'cause it's difficult to do. Yeah. You have a, uh, a sign up here in your garage that says if you want to take the island, burn the boats. Yes. What is that about? That is definitely not about saying no to roles. So, um, actually the story behind that is I trained one of my, I did train one of my friends for a period of time. He loves like the motivational things, the Tony Robbins of the world and Tony Robbins. Hijacked that quote. I don't think that quote anybody knows where it actually originated from the story is that, you know, somebody was conquering some land and then they were like, are we gonna be able to do this? He burned the boats. It's like we had no option. We have to take the land. Right. So, or the island in this case? Mm-hmm. Basically, it's just about like not having a plan B, which. In certain scenarios, I think is beneficial. It's kind of like the go all in, like don't have, you know, one foot, uh, one foot still in the door. It's like, just kind of jump in head first. Go for it. Physically, mentally, entrepreneurial entrepreneurially your sport. If like you really want to pursue something, you have to give yourself no plan B. In a smart way. Yeah. Right. Uh, like being reckless is different than being calculated. Yeah. I would say. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you can use that all the time. Just, I, you know, I do certain little things like to make sure that I get the work in. Mm-hmm. Right. Like, I'll put a club in my front seat of my car. Yep. Uh, before the night before I go to Juujitsu. Just so I know, all right. You have to do a club workout before Jiu-Jitsu's Smart. There you go. There's no option. It's right there. There's no option, there's no plan B. You threw it in there and now that's your only option is exactly. So you mentioned, uh, entrepreneurialism. Yes, a mouthful. And, uh, you are an entrepreneur. You have your own business. You are an online coach. You also are due in person as well. Let's talk about like some of like the, uh, the mental. Yeah. Battles. I mean,'cause this, this idea of discipline mm-hmm. That extends far beyond the gym. Right? Yeah. I, I always look at the gym as just like the way, the place where you can put the discipline into action Yeah. And kind of like earn it. Mm-hmm. And then you take that and you apply it to other things in life. Yeah. I like to think of, I heard somebody else say this, I can't remember who, but like fitness is like the gateway drug for growth for a lot of people, right? Yeah. Yeah. Guys get into the gym at 14 and you guys are women, anybody, right? But. People get into the gym early, they start to learn what consistency does for them, what discipline does for them, what waiting for results to come and knowing that you're constantly chipping away. And I think the gym is such a good analogy of it and it, for most people who are in an entrepreneurial space, a lot of them started with whether, whether it was just their own fitness journey. It teaches people a lot and usually at a young age, hopefully. And I think just that analogy of. How much work you put in is exactly what you get out. Mm-hmm. And I think that's true in business. I think it's true in life and just in everything. And the gym was just kind of like the first introduction to that. And I think it's given me that mindset of like. If I put more in, obviously we wanna work smarter and harder, but overall in a theoretically, you put more in, you do it for a while, you stay consistent, you keep learning, you get better. It's just going, going to work out in the end. I just try and take that mindset into business and entrepreneurship'cause you need it. Or you're just going to fizzle out. Yeah. Yeah. Hard work goes a long way. It does, you know, effort, effort generally is always rewarded. So, um, it is. With that said, we will wrap up here with, uh, this would probably be a difficult question for you, but if you could start over. You know, in, let's say in 2, 2, 2 aspects. Okay. If you could start over your fitness journey. Yes. What would you do differently? And if you could start over your business journey, what would you do differently? I'll go fitness first because I actually don't think I would change much, if any. Yeah. Because I've enjoyed my ride and I think. My journey is what got me into my philosophy, which is like, dude, just do something you like to do and if you really enjoy, like I have nothing against bodybuilding. If that's what gets you into the gym five times a week, then awesome. My whole shtick is. If that's not fun for you, there's 48 different things you can try. Yeah. So I think that trying so many different things, whether it was a little bit of bodybuilding, functional bodybuilding, juujitsu, CrossFit, Olympic weightlifting, I found my philosophy through that journey of like the only reason I've stayed consistent so long is'cause I've liked what I was doing and if I just stopped liking it. I was like, okay, I'll just go do something else. So I would probably wouldn't change anything in my fitness journey. I'd say business wise, I would get help sooner. Yeah. I would be way more open. I'm a little too, I'm getting better now, but for a very long time I was lone wolfish. Mm. And that has its ups and downs. Yeah. But as I've gotten deeper into business, I realize the negatives of that is I would get help, whether it's from a coach or some sort of way, a business mentor a little bit sooner. Yeah. I wish I did that. Yeah. But hindsight's 2020. Of course. Yeah. But I think that's the main thing I would do, and something I encourage a lot of people to do is if you're thinking about starting something and you have this passion, but you don't really know what to do, hire somebody that's gonna point you in the right direction, or at least just get the ball rolling for you.'cause. That's been a complete game changer for me, uh, the past two years, and it would've been cool if I did it maybe a year or two before that. Yeah. Yeah. That's good advice, man. And, and I think that can be applied even to, to anything, any pursuit that you're doing. Even fitness, right? Yeah. Like, I think especially in this world where you've got, you know, people who are high performers, we're minimalists, we're, you know competitive. We want to go at it alone. Mm-hmm. And we want to prove to everyone that we can do it ourselves. And being able to say, there's actually a lot of value from people who are two steps ahead of me. Yeah. A couple years ahead of me, whatever it is. Like I can learn from all these people. I think that that is, uh, that's gonna have a lot of reward for, for you in anything that you do. Yeah, absolutely. And especially if you are a coach in one aspect. So hiring a business coach made me appreciate what I do for my fitness clients even more. It kind of gave me that. Oh, that's why they hire me. You know, that's why people train with me is because if I didn't have my vis coach, I probably would've fallen off, or I would've needed somebody, you know, he's talked me off the ledge plenty of times. Yeah. Or both of them have. I have too. And I think that gave me a better appreciation of in my fit as my, as a fitness coach of. No, people need you.'cause sometimes we've been in the fitness industry forever. Sometimes I think I'm to myself, you really need me here to tell you to do some bench press and kettlebell swings. I'm like, you really need that. Yeah. And I feel that from my business coaches of, yeah. I needed him to tell me, yeah, go make this lead magnet, or whatever the hell it is. Mm-hmm. It's like, yeah, you needed that. So it gave me a better appreciation in that side of things. So, and I think that's very important for coaches.'cause if you're a coach, you've probably been in your industry for a very long time and sometimes you lose sight of things and how much people actually need you. And if you have a coach in another aspect, it helps you out. Juujitsu actually did that for me too. Big time. Yeah, yeah. Fresh eyes, outside perspective, all that stuff. Certainly else super helpful. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, uh, thank you so much for doing this. Yeah, this was great. Where, uh, where can everyone find you? What do you got coming up? Anything going on? YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are all just at Pat Damiano underscore coming up. Just continue what I'm doing. Trying to put a little more effort into YouTube, but in terms of everything else, it's just kind of continuing what I'm doing, just trying to spread the word. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks again, pat. My pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Order in Progress podcast. If you got value from this episode, please share it with a teammate or training partner who needs to hear it. And as always, you can find us on Instagram. Please follow and feel free to send us a DM as well for programs and more tools to build strength and resilience for the mats and for life, including the free newsletter, head to seek progress.com. Until next time, train smart, stay resilient, and just keep showing up.