Learning to Fight - Rory Singer - Episode 14

Learning to Fight Podcast — Conversations in Combat Skill

After a year-long hiatus, the Primal MMA Coaching Podcast is back—Rebranded, and refocused as the Learning to Fight Podcast: Conversations in Combat Skill.

Your hosts are:

Adam Singer — Co-owner and head coach at SBG Athens, BJJ black belt, long-time MMA coach, with years of developing novice to elite level fighters. Student of Matt Thornton and SBG's philosophy of 'aliveness'.
Scott Sievewright — Co-Owner at Primal MKE, MMA skills coach and obsessive student of how humans learn to move and fight. 

Together, we dive deep into the art and science of coaching, training, and skill development in combat sports.
 Expect honest conversations about MMA, striking, grappling, practice design, contemporary research, traditional approaches, ecological dynamics, and the messy realities of learning under pressure.

No gurus. No dogma. Just two coaches trying to understand fighting a little better each week.

Same curiosity. New lens.
Learn how to learn.
Find your own style.
Thrive on the mats—and in the cage.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

So I gotta get I gotta be on here now.

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Okay, I feel like Derek Sayus is a bald gentleman. So I noticed two mixed matches today. Your trousers and your t shirt, your beard and your hair. I can usually spot a pin job a mile off Rory, but is that natural upstairs?

SPEAKER_00 0:18

What this? Yeah. Okay, this is all me. Now, just can't get on the top view. So you can't. But this is all me. I had a grandfather that I had.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

I'm glad to hear you've been, and I like to take other men down with me.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

See, you should. Yeah, I got I mean, I wonder if that's yeah, because I have that same white beard. But I don't have any hair though.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

No.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Rory Singer, FC Vet, partner of the Singer brothers, SBG Athens. Welcome. I'm gonna try and mediate today so I don't just have you two assholes squabbling all day.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

No, I got some I got some questions to ask them and stuff. I think it's a good it's good. Did you guys see that they put a fly in a computer?

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Well, you were mentioning that to what to me the other day in the office with.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Scotty, I thought you'd be all over this and and the existential crisis it might cause. I'm lost here. I fly in the computer. Yeah, so they mapped the all the neural connections in a fly's brain.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

I was looking around the screen here to see if there was a fly. Okay, right, go ahead. I'm with you now. We're talking science.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Talking science. That's what this podcast is, right? Learn how to fight with science. Okay. And they they they map the fly's brain and they put that that map in a computer and they put that it in a simulated fly's brain, and without any instruction, allegedly, the fly is flying around the simulation and grooming itself and acting like a fly.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Okay, and maybe it's too early. You have to what are the what are the takeaways? I don't know what the takeaways are. So wait a minute. They they modeled the fly's brain on uh in a computer. Yeah. And it's behaving like a fly. Allegedly. In a computer fly or in a computer. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

The files are in the computer? Alright, let's skip the fly for a second. This one's how about this one? They took a petri dish of neuronal cells.

SPEAKER_03 2:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

And they taught it how to play a video game. They taught it how to play Doom, you know the video game Doom?

unknown 2:21

No.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

You shoot you shoot demons and stuff. Which I think there's an irony to that because what if the petri dish of cells is conscious and now they're living through the hell of being chased around by demons in a video game? So what we should have started with science. Maybe we should have started with Charles Old Bear.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Hair dye and bowling. Um so does that map on to what we talk about?

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Or is it very much so that's that's why I bring it up. Although the Petri dish playing video games is I don't even know what to think about that. But it a aren't we waiting for some type of neuronal explanation for certain things? Like, wouldn't that be something we want to happen at some point?

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Yeah, I don't think if I i i if I listen to uh Louis Flavella and stuff and he talks about you know Gibson's ideas of ecological psychology and whatnot. I don't think he ever discounted the brain as being important. I think he just glossed over it because it was so complex at the time they were gonna they were gonna wait for that kind of research to catch up.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Sounds like the truth now. Yeah. Um I just finished Michael Poland's book on consciousness. And I think that the people that listen to us might enjoy it. Um he's a very good writer and he writes it, it's very accessible. Uh but there's still it's like writing about something you can't even hold in your hand. It's like writing about trying to hold, you know, water in your hand. And so it's it's it's not wholly satisfying, and it glosses over a lot of the things that we talk about when it comes to thinking about consciousness. Um, but I recommend it for anyone that's interested in just reading about consciousness.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

I think we're coming back there, we keep coming back to this idea of uh definitions, right? We throw a lot of words around, we throw a lot of words around, and you know, I was listening, I'm not a big fan of Peterson, but when he when he gets into these, you know, linguistic things about well, what do you mean by this? Well, what do you mean by that? I think it uh you know I'm finding myself getting there too, especially when we talk uh, you know, these fighting words. I saw a post today talking about redefining fundamentals, and I didn't think it was a very good definition. What was it? It was just kind of changing the words between again. I've got my own definition, right? I I I have no claim on the truth or expect people to adhere to my definitions. I do think I take the word fundamental pretty seriously. I think the definitions of sport are the rules. Because I think if you change the rules, you change your behavior. So so uh we see that in the gym, we see that in uh rule changes in fights and across different organizations and stuff, cause across different disciplines. So I like thinking of fundamentals as the rules of the game.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

So wait, uh if you might back up a sec. You said you believe the rules are the sport. I believe the rules. The rules are the fundamentals of the sport. Fundamentals of the sport.

unknown 5:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

The rules are the fundamentals of the sport. From which the behaviors and actions emerge.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

So we we create rules, and then we're we're playing the game to those rules, and therefore those fundamentals are being expressed.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

I think when the behavior emerges from these fundamentals. If you change these fundamentals, even in subtle ways, the behavior changes. And there's that could be the length of the round, could be the size of the cage, could be a ring, could be a cage, could be the scoring criteria.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

I think what people end up doing is they go through this iterative process. It's like we were talking about with intentionality. It's like there's if the rules of the game are the fundamentals, then people are always going to work backwards from those fundamentals to and clarify their definition of fundamentals, and they'll just they'll just keep going levels. So there'll be the fundamentals you say the rules of the game. And then someone will say, well, these tools are fundamental, these positions are fundamental, these movements are fundamental, these techniques are fundamental. And I saw the post you were talking about today, and we've spoken about that gentleman before. Yeah, I think one of I think the first one he had was like base. If if you lose base is a fundamental. If you lose your base, you'll you'll you know you'll lose your position or something. But it's I don't even know if that's a truth claim.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

But but that's also not a rule of a game.

unknown 6:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Well, I think that's what Scotty's point was, that this guy was trying too hard to define fundamentals is something that were. I think people want to define fundamentals to make them actionable so that you can make games around them, right? Okay, so we're talking about games.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

We're getting to the enable games pretty earlier, but uh that's why I prefer the word foundations. But again, just a word.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Okay, and when you say game, you mean the games that you're playing inside to to bring out these behaviors. You're not necessarily saying the rules of the game, not saying the rules of a sport, you're saying the rules of those things we're doing inside the in our in our academies that bring out behaviors. Now now I've gone off the track. Well, you're saying a lot of words.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

I'm gonna take them as disrespect. Well, that's what Scotty's point is, I think, right? We sit here and and people are pontificating about words, and then you say, Well, what is what is skill? Like we throw around this word.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Yeah, I still struggle with that one. What is skill, Rory Singer?

SPEAKER_00 7:34

What's skill? As far as I've read, you know, no, no. What do you think? Is your ability to perform within the confines of your sports? So that if I say this fighter A, if we're because we're talking about mixed martial arts, the name of your podcast, if fighter A is more skilled than fighter B, then they are better at their sport than the other fighter. Is the winning and losing part of it? Can you lose and be more skilled? So I've heard you ask that question before, and yes, so if I say yes, that a person can be more skilled and lose in a moment, excuse me, in the moment, in a freeze frame, so to say, of a of an encounter, someone could do something that causes them to win. Throw the big overhand right, that lands, KO. Uh up until that point, Fighter A might have been crushing it, might have got so overconfident in their strikes that, you know, and didn't notice that this person was actually maybe feigning being hurt, or maybe they weren't as hurt as you thought they were, and you sort of dropped your guard. Does that make you less skilled? I don't know if that makes you less skilled in the totality, but it certainly gave that person that person notice and took advantage of something. So in that moment, they might have been more skilled, but is there an overall skillfulness or is there a momentary skillfulness? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

I think uh yeah, touching something I like that, Rory, that skill can be like specific in the moment and more general, and it ebbs and it flows, and it's interchangeable through a fight. There's moments of you know skill expression from one fighter and then it goes back and forward. So yeah, I think that's a good not a bad way to look at it. But like a general skill and then like specific, discrete kind of moments of skill.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

But then we start we start doing the same thing we start doing with fundamentals. Yeah, it's all bullshit. Right. It ends up all being bullshit. And I wanted to say, I I immediately thought, maybe this is from last week's conversation with Matt, I know it when I see it. But am I still am I being biased towards an aesthetic? Right? And MMA, uh, you can be more skilled in certain areas and have a weakness in another. So overall, and if the other person can exploit that weakness, then you lose the fight. And maybe you had beautiful striking, you got beautiful jujitsu, but the other guy just grinds you out. That's still an application of his skill. So is it possible that skill in MMA is not something we define, it's something we chase, if you will. Like it's the pro how about this? And Scott, you may not be familiar, but there's a coach named Nick Saban who Yeah, which is insane. He is the greatest, he is the greatest college football coach of all time. Yeah, of course. He makes this very strong distinction. I'm gonna send you some stuff because I think you'll really like it. His idea is that when coaching athletes, the process is the most important thing. It's not the outcome, it's the process of reaching whatever goals that they have. And so I wonder if skill is just a process that we use to guide our practice, but it's not something necessarily definable. Is it even important? Well, maybe it's only important from that aspect, the functional aspect. Maybe the rest of it is naval gazing.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

We it's a word we use so much. Yeah, it's illly and loosely defined. And I think Lori actually I think this is an interesting conversation for me because part of my one of my assessments at the end of the semester is coming up with a um assessment tool through our framework. And uh I mentioned you, Adam, I have a new gentleman at the gym, Sam, and he's been really helpful. I've been in discussion on how we might do this. I don't feel I'm getting it closer, but he's helping me there. He he brought up one thing um yesterday, and like instead of trying to assess skill broadly, we pick a couple of things to look for, like the development over time. So maybe we identify a deficiency in a certain athlete, some problem they're having, and through our framework we work on it and we kind of observe over time are they are they achieving their objective more or less skillfully. So if it feels like I'm a little confused about what I'm talking about, it could be right. I'm really happy. This is this is the biggest challenge I've had at school yet is how I'm gonna present this assessment tool for our framework. Because I think it's enormously complex, and I'm not sure how I get the data and what the fuck I even do with the data when I get it. We can generally highlight this as coach, we have a sense as coaches, right? Someone's getting better. Yes, the training partners are getting better, so that's relative. And sometimes the training partners are having a good day, and that's relative. And so, yeah, I don't know how powerful or useful the assessment tool will be. Whether it may be motivational or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

I have a conversation with our students all the time. Like, if they're judging themselves according to their training partners, and like there are some nights on Tuesday night where Rory and I are coaching the MMA group, and the guys are just getting good. And so you'll have someone that is is also getting good, but maybe they're not as physically gifted, or maybe it's just slightly slower, or you know, people just walk in and they just they just some guys, when you put pressure on them, they just their learning curve is exponential. I was trying to explain to one of our kids, and we're gonna know who I'm talking about because I think he spoke to him also, that it's not that you are failing, it's not that you are not good. It's like if you look around, the guys you are sparring with and training with are all getting better. Just and sometimes the best we can do is just keep up a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

And a lot of those guys, you also have to take account guys that have been in a room longer. And they're fighting. So maybe, you know, so maybe skill, we talk about skill, but maybe it's just performance, you know, and I don't want to rag on anyone, but let's let's talk about their, you know, big Derek Lewis, right? I think that's his right name, right? All the knockouts. Okay, sure. Do we look at his ability to knock people out? We could look at that ability as a skill. He has a skilled ability to knock people out, but and that wins fights. But the moment he faced someone who was like, well, I'm not gonna play that game and took him down and beat him up on the ground, took away any advantage he had on his feet. So is it that in those fights he was more skilled than his opponents? Again, in totality, or is he able just to keep a fight in a range that works for him so he can put hands on people and knock them out? So again, skilled in some areas, not skilled in other areas. So isn't it just at the end his ability to perform and keep a fight on its feet, which affords him a better opportunity to knock people out?

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Yeah, I like that too. I think it's what we have going forward. Um I like the idea.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

I've written down just process and performance, and maybe the process of is what we as coaches are trying to work on and trying to guide, because that's all we can do is really guide the process. We're not helping them acquire anything. I don't love that word. Um and the only place we can really judge and assess is whatever level of performance. Because if you watch, like if you watch the Holloway Oliveira fight, which is I think fresh in people's minds, Holloway never got a chance to show how good he was at striking because his ability to grapple when out anti-russell was so outshined by Oliveira.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

Man, did Oliviera look so fucking strong? Wow, that was and I'm curious, I'd like to I'd like to come on to that because I want to start developing that in my team. Um sorry if I'm jumping all over the place, but I'm getting I I'm kind of leaning towards this idea of uh old man's strength, right? And I'm speaking to a couple of my partner Ben, a couple of the older athletes in the room. It just feels fucking different when they grab a hold of you. And I think that maps on well to over time, the kind of the all these kind of synergies and stuff that develop. If you think uh power lifters and whatnot, it can take years and years to get all that kind of neural recruitment to get that pure strength. And I think that's what we're seeing in older athletes.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

So when Oliveira just grabs Holloway or even around his arm, locks his hands, and just lifts and slams him. There's almost like a moment you see Holloway is like, this is not what we were supposed to be doing.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

This is for the BMF.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yeah. We're just supposed to be standing in the middle, wanging it out until someone falls down. And his that was it. I mean, I just saw that and I'm like, oh, this is now 25 minutes of this. There's no more BMF belt after this. Um Old Man's Strength is an interesting thing because what we're really saying is someone who has grabbed and squeezed and lifted and done all these things for a long time in a sport-specific context. But give me a guy who has spent his whole life working like wrenches or hammers or things, they don't need it. Like the first time they they come to jujitsu and they start grabbing people, everyone's like, oh my God. This is terrible.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

And I I think that's a better explanation because if you if you look at Bo Bassett as an example, he's like 19 now, just won his third Pennsylvania State Wrestling Championship, has already won a bunch of like U17 or whatever stuff. He's you see him, he'll grab people, I'm sure, and he will feel just as strong. And he's 19 years old, but again, he's been wrestling his entire life. So grabbing and squeezing and holding, I bet his grip would feel very similar to another 126, 30-pounder in the room. And people just like, like, who is this kid? Be like, yeah, but he's been he came out of the womb and a single head and ear things, and he's just been grabbing people his whole life. So it's the it's someone's ability who's grabbed someone their whole life to know how to adjust in those moments and just lock something in and be like, yep, you're mine now. For others, that might take more time. So now they're older and we see it as old man truth. And there's possibly even, there's still probably a part of that as we age, we get stronger, we get into our prime and stuff. But it's probably just the hours in doing that that really gives someone that ability.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

You just tweet, you just tweet, you just press the button in my brain. I want to write something down for myself. I wonder if there is like we never say old man power or old man speed.

unknown 18:08

Right?

SPEAKER_01 18:09

We're not like, oh, that guy got old, that that old dude is so fast, he got faster. I wonder if as we get older, our attributes change a little bit from not attributes, that's not the right word. Because there are there are types of strengths. I don't and I don't want to misspeak. How about I think we change from our uh more to a static strength. Like we're not able to move as fast as we can, but we start to get better sort of isometrically. We start to get stronger grabbing, because that's always what it is, right? Old man's strength is always a grabbing strength. It's a squeezing strength, but it's not a speed strength. I wonder if that's just a process of aging, that old man's strength is actually like a real thing. To talk to someone about this.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

Can we can we bring that back to just the experience of having done the thing? Because early on, one of my earlier guests, Israel Halfpern, he's a uh kickboxing MMA coach. He's a PhD over in uh over in Israel. Last time I heard anyway.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

He was talking about Wait, his name is Israel and he's in Israel?

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Yeah. Okay. I think he he's been back, I think he's back in Tel Aviv. Anyway, the last time I spoke in. Anyway, he was talking about this test he was doing, he's more in the strength and conditioning, and he was and I'm paraphrasing here, so if I don't get the percentages correct, there's there's a there's a general concept here. He was having these uh students or um study participants practice an isometric hold, and then they were looking at the transfer, the strength transfer test. And he found just by change, I think it was like on a knee uh flexion extension test or whatever, but it was an isometric hold. And then he found just by changing the degree of the knee extension of flexion by 10 degrees or more, that there was no transfer. And he came away from it saying these isometric strength is very, very specific. So we think about that, and I think about an older grappler, a grappler who's just been grabbing fucking people and squeezing them in all different configurations for years and years, that's probably where that's accumulated and come from. So I guess the question could be, and this is for I stay as out of my wheelhouse, but is isom this this isometric strength that we're talking about, like this ability to grab and squeeze and hold, like the Dagestanis have, like Oliviero just showed a tremendous uh capacity for that. Is that just can that be trained in isolation by squeeze and medicine balls or whatnot? I'm not so sure. I think you just have to have that kind of style of grappling. And I guess as you age, your I guess as you age, your grappling kind of behavior changes a little bit too, right? You have to switch to a more a slower, more grabby, holy game than than some of the young dudes. I don't know. This is all just pure speculation.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Sure. I also think that if you were to look at a guy like uh Mika Galval, who how old is he? He's 21 at this point. But he's certainly not much older, it's not much older than that. Maybe he's 22. I remember checking out him, their story, him and his and his wife and all that. I just think they're an amazing couple, to be honest, but neither here nor there. I bet if he grabbed a hold of your gi, it would feel like the dude down at the dock a little bit. And he's 20-something years old. But again, he's been doing that and in the gi and playing that game for many, many, many hours. So as you just stated, maybe it's just the fact that we're people are doing that. My grip has gotten better in the gi because I'm doing it more now, just because I'm playing a different type of game and I'm trying to be a little bit more grip-heavy in the gi. Obviously, without it, can't be. And I'm starting to find out my grip is getting very troublesome for certain people.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Stadi, I think, I think you nail it though. It's it's not necessarily parsable. Um, someone, but there are probably some, I almost use the word fundamentals, there are some aspects of grappling that cross the lines, if you will. Like grabbing and squeezing or grabbing and squeezing. And so if you have a if you have built that strength doing something else, it's probably very easily translatable to our sport, you know. Um but the flip side is you like people. Tell me that I'm strong when I'm grappling. And I'm like, if you come in a weight room with me, it's embarrassing. I'm one of the weakest people. But over the years, I learned how to apply my own strength to take advantage of whatever I have. But how to apply, use gravity, how to use whatever it is. I don't know even how it I did, and I couldn't teach it to anyone else because it's mine. But I think you're talking about, you know, form and function and function and form. I think we can't parse those out.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

You can teach it to someone else if you wanted to. You just need like a nine-hour DVD. You'll be all right.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Yeah, I'm going to start recording that. But I guarantee a power lifter can still bench press you off them. They can just throw you off them. And I was going to ask Rory about his football experience, but maybe we can do this. But Rory and I, before he talks about his current experience, because I think it's cool for this podcast, uh Rory and I have worked with some different football players. And there are certain positions in football where they do, they call it a punch. And those football players are able to take their football punch and punch people with boxing blows on and it hurts. Or they're able to take their lateral footwork and all of a sudden you're trying to run away from a guy who's 6'8 and 320 pounds and he doesn't know anything about cutting off the cage, but he has trapped you against the wall in the corner because he because lateral footwork is lateral footwork, and punching seems to be punching. So this idea that there are donor sports or attributes or things that give someone a leg up at the start, you know, you talk about that all the time, Scotty. Like those football players that we've worked with in other things, if they came into the room to try MMA, they're not beginners.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

Heck no. Yeah, I want to be careful talking about this. We had a guy who just he just moved on last week. So and I tried to give away. No, no, no, no. No. He's he's he's going to another another place. It wasn't a it wasn't a good fit for him. Oh he's dead to you then. He might have been the most incredible athlete I've seen come through our doors. Oh, sorry. Early 30s. He was a running back. I'm not sure if he was like a starter or whatever, he was a running back for the Colts. And just a fucking freak athlete. And he wanted to come in and uh, you know, I I really clicked with him. I got along well with him, but he just wasn't aggravated with guys. He could not turn this power off. And we don't have that culture. So constantly getting into it and people complaining and whatnot. So he's he's he's moving on to another gym that's more appropriate for him because you get this feeling sometimes on the mat. So there's couple sometimes you get this feeling on the mat when you there's just a discomfort where it is like a you feel this kind of sense of danger where there's a recklessness on the mat, someone's bringing it onto the mat. And I don't like that culture. Sometimes I can tolerate it if it's a visitor or one out, because I think for the guys, it's not a bad thing. You're going with someone here for this round, and the anxiety is going to be a little harder, the a little higher, the risk is going to be a little higher. I think that's good now and again. But it just was an uncomfortable feeling hugging this. Like had this fucking idea like you're kind of fucking stroking this tiger out just a win for it not to erupt. And so I have mixed feelings about moving on because I hate to lose anyone. And just I mean, the the athletic qualities he brought to the gym were incredible. But he just didn't have the control yet. And I don't think he had the patience to really start again from the bottom and and and and and find out control and be a good training partner. So that's making a soft room.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

So I think no. I I I think that you you what you said, and then I think this message this leads us into talking to Rory about his players. Um, I think what you said is that occasionally someone comes in, right? And then your guys have to learn how to deal with someone, which is something they'll have to, you know, the first time they when they lock the cage door and they say go, there's a pressure, there there may be a conservativism that they need right at the start. There, I I think the fact because some people, if you said that you don't let allow visitors, you've totally insulated your room, then maybe I'd have a question. But you're just saying on a day-to-day basis, you you just can't have that. And and we've dealt with that before. I I had a guy that was really good. Um, he was a world-class wrestler, and I don't have that in my room. And I'm like, this is gonna be great. But he injured some people really fast. And and what I said to the guys was I can't run a practice where I have to watch every one of his rounds.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

Yeah, that's where I was.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

And that's it, yeah, it sounds like where you were, and so it's not about making a room soft, and no one was like, oh my God, this is you know, I can't believe you you got rid of this guy. They all understood that it was taking away. But if you allow visitors and you let them train with the commensurate guys occasionally, then I'm I'm for that. And you you have a lot of open mats at your place, so your guys get exposed to a decent number of different people.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

Yeah, but I feel for it, so our open mats are both striking and grappling in the different rooms, and I feel like people come in, it's just now that they they tend to jive with the culture. Um, I just want to be clear that this guy wasn't malicious. Uh, there's no malevity in it in his movement. He just he was at a different fucking level of athleticism, and he hadn't, you know, managed to establish that control yet. Yeah. Now, if I get someone like that who can use that control, um, then we're off to the races. But yeah, so I always hate to I really I genuinely I I'm always trying to either fix people or find a way to make it work. And this is a mutual this was a mutual agreement. And at the end of the day, it's not me on the it's no me on the mats getting clubbed in the head. So I have to listen to my team too. If they're uncomfortable, then they speak for me, you know. For sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

You're the you're the guy, you're the leader.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

So speaking of mismatched and athletes and people like that, uh Rory, tell us tell us about how you work with professional football player who's interested in MMA without naming names.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

So I'm working with a uh two-time Super Bowl champ, uh, three times to the Super Bowl. Then we started working uh together last year, and then seasons happened, so now we're back at it again. And he is, I guess what, six seven right now. He's like six seven, two seventy. So he's a big dude. Oh, no. He is no, he's six, he's six four at best. No, he's gotta be by couple each. So I'm gonna give him six, I'm gonna give him six five, maybe then close to this. But he's about two seventy now, a little bit bigger than he wants to be. And we do MMA. I put on small gloves with him, and we do chest and shoulders because there's no chance I'm gonna let him punch me in the face. And he actually he's doing a great job. Uh he doesn't kill me, but he's definitely long and he's fast and and he's strong. And on the feet from striking range, I can still hold my own. Uh, when we get up against the cage or we get into the clinch, he's definitely a handful. When we're on the ground and he's on top, he's definitely a handful, especially because he's just big and I have to protect myself. If I could, when we put him on the bottom, I do much better. But I'm teaching him MMA and I'm teaching him jujitsu. And he has stated numerous times that all this hand stuff we're doing, the wrestling and the and the boxing and the striking really helped him to, for lack of a better word, perceive these things on the field better and see and be able to move through blocks and and get around people. He is super good at getting around the elbows.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Pause for one sec, because you use the word, use the word that we're careful about on this podcast. You said you're teaching him. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

But I'm not teaching. Right. But what are you, what are you right? So we are sparring, right? Not anything quotes. We are taking the quotes out. We are sparring. We put on small gloves, I give him some things to play with. We play with front hand, we play with front hand or rear hand. We sometimes will, you know, say, hey, if we get a little too close and you want to try and clinch me, and then you know, it's to try and get inside elbows or get around elbows. Well, we've only got back together this one time since he's been back to Atlanta. Uh, we'll add picking up legs in the future. We'll work on the cage, you know, holding me there, trying to get off, all the things we've done with some of the other ball players. And we end up doing MMA for an hour. And I feel it the next day because we're really doing it. Now, he's not trying to kill me with the hands, and I know how to not let myself get hurt by not trying to struggle to keep him. Like, if he's gonna win, I'm gonna let him win. He's 28, I'm 50 in a couple months. So I'm okay with him winning. Uh, but we get a good workout. I we we push one another and we have a great time. And if he wanted to do this, like if if he was done with football, football, we're done with him, and he wanted to do this. Give me three years and he would he'd he would probably be able to start wrecking people. Certainly at a you low, maybe not quite UFC level just yet, but give me a couple years with his athleticism, his football mentality, he'd start beating some dudes up.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

See, so I just want to throw some in here. Um, this is third hand, maybe fourth or fifth hand. I was at fights a couple weeks ago, and I have there's a manager there, I won't mention names, and he's involved with one of the big management teams, and he was telling me, I knew and you you you might be privy to this, but the UFC is uh recruitment and selection now. They're looking for at least six finishes on the feet and no older than 32. Does that make sense the way the UFC is going? Does that sound like bullshit to you? They you gave me a specific example of a kid that had six uh wins, but they were all grappling finishes, submissions. And apparently UFC are less interested in that.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

I I you know what, I can't speak for right now what the hell's going on with the UFC. And as someone and and there are other, you know, I can't speak for what's going on in college football right now. I don't like that. And if I was a fan of the NBA, I I wouldn't like what's going on there. So maybe it's part and parcel of when you cross sports and entertainment and money and and you lose some level of purity. So I I can't speak. I don't want to badmouth the UFC, but I think they're struggling right now trying to like I can get it. If you want, if you want to put these guys on Paramount, and Paramount paid all that money, then you're trying to find exciting guys. But then you put on the BMF fight and you get that terrible thing. And if the sport, if you have to win to make money, then why would anyone be exciting? And so the rules of the sport, like you said before, fundamentally is it is not to be exciting, it's to win because you need half your money. Rory, did you ever when you fought, and it's all but you all of your professional fights, even before the UFC, were win and show, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:53

Yeah, I don't think yeah. I know that that's changed a little bit, I think, because sometimes you see that a person. Some guys. Some guys, but it was always, but that's something we've always talked about. Losing wasn't all losing itself wasn't always awful. I mean, certainly you want to win so you can find your way to the top, at least some people did. That was never my mentality. So for me, losing was I lost half my paycheck. You know, I was just trying to fight, travel, try and be the best I could be. And if that took me somewhere like the UFC, which it did uh through the show, through TUF, then great. But you know, there are some people that they they want this to be their livelihoods. And you try and steer a young man or woman, be like, hey, you know, you still need a full-time job in the beginning. You still need health insurance, trust me on that. And you might fight for three and three or five and five or six and six, and you might lose that fight, and now you've taken home half your pay. And that's not going to be enough for you to pay rent and pay bills and do all those things in the beginning. Uh, but yeah, that's that whole idea of show and win, which is something boxing doesn't appear to have, no, you know, uh, is is I think is like you said, it's a detriment. You know, you go back in the day when I fought in Pride or Pride Best, that was supposed to be their theater show to Pride, and it never really panned out that way. They, in the be in the room before the fights, the owner of Pride, because again, it was sort of the smaller show for them, was just like, go be a warrior. We don't honestly care if you win or lose. You know, be a warrior, fight hard. The fans will love you, we'll love you, we'll have you back. And it's the reason why I fought Dajiro Matsui on the tail end of his career because he was in some of the most exciting fights there were at the time. You know, but he got his ass handed to him in a lot of those fights, but they still went to decision because he just kept getting up. You know, it's like Captain America, I can do this all day and Dairo Matsui could do it all day, but you won or you lost, and it didn't affect you financially.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

So I want to come back to you. I want to ask you a personal question about that after, but I I want to go back to the football thing for a second. Scotty, when he's describing what he's doing with the this high-level athlete in MMA, what does that sound like to you?

SPEAKER_02 33:47

Sounds like uh, well, I do all my athletes.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Right, but wait, but you coach, you coach primarily found you you also coach foundations in your in your room. You coach the beginners. Does that sound any different than your beginner practice might be? No, no.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

I agree. No, it doesn't. Uh and then uh jumping back here, uh you mentioned uh you perhaps you thought the BMF fight, and given the fact it was a BMF fight, there was an expectation for it to be fucking fireworks, right? I really appreciate it. I enjoy the I enjoy these fights. I enjoy the Dagastani style. I enjoy that. That's that's uh that's an area that I'm driving my team towards. Because I think 40 odd years at MMA have shown us what's most effective, and that might change. Um but going back to the financial rewards and how generally underpaid fighters are, and they want longevity and they want lives after their careers and whatnot. I mean, it's a lot of it's it's it's tough for fighters out there. Keep your job to be exciting and not fucking end up with every fight being a bloodbath after bloodbath. I have no issues if my guys can go in the cage, take motherfuckers down, hold them down, beat them up a bit, and submit them. I that is I'm I'm I'm that's that is my goal. Because the hardest then a heels that might not be that might not be fitting with the UFC's direction.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

Right, because the hardest, most dangerous, the hardest, most dangerous path to victory is exciting. Right? It is it is striking. We we just had our our a pro fight and he fought a very exciting fight because he likes to sell tickets, and that's in his consciousness, right? He wants to excite and he wants to be a fan favorite. But he even though he barely got hit, his legs just took such a beating from kicking this guy. And he hopefully he realizes now that he took the hardest path to victory. That's striking all you know, and again, like this goes all the way back to skill. You could be the smoothest, you could look the most skilled, aesthetically pleasing, and some just wanker will just put his eyes closed and just wait to eat something and throw something back, and you get knocked out. Chris Levin style. Chris Levin's style.

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Um maybe that's a purist to me. I like this. No, I'm with you. Yeah, yeah, tactically and it this isn't just to be like the the Pollyanna and everything should be, it should be, we should be making the sport safer. I really enjoy watching Ratlin dominance. And I know they get jeered, I know they get booed, I know the the the business model is is on the backs of casuals. Uh I'm speaking just from a purest of the sport. I think that's a I I just love it. And that's that's that's where I weight my team towards. Especially as there's because of the way we strike, because of uh, you know, politeness and maybe some of the conservatism that we have in the room for striking, I think that's all gonna catch up. I don't think you can do enough grapples. I don't think you can practice enough holding another motherfucker down or escaping from underneath. In the amateur levels and small fights, they they inevitably go there. I want my amateurs, uh six, seven, eight fights in if they decide it's not for them, to go on and have healthy lives. I'm not expecting them to go in there and have fucking odd baths and amateur amateur matches to excite the the the amateur crowds. So maybe that's what biases, you know, what I'm looking for or what I appreciate in fights. But I I really appreciate that. You can go in and make your money and win within the set of rules and and we've heard this a bunch of times, right? But if if you don't like the grappling side of MMA, there's other combat sports to watch.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

It's mixed martial arts. I don't I don't think Rory and I would disagree. I think that we gear our practice towards um the the I you know principles of play, I think is what they they say in other other sports. And maybe I I might say my principles of play are the next sort of level of fundamentals, right? Like the rules of the sport, and then how you in your room or you on your team look at the principles of play to achieve those goals. And and we spend the majority of our time. We don't have a striking only class. We we everything's MMA, and I would say we spend a majority of our time, especially with our younger guys in the instructional practices um shoot boxing, you know, getting up off our back, holding people down, pushing to the cage, holding against the cage, taking down, holding against the ground, and all the reverse of all that because you can't get enough of that. And you can win fights when you are outgunned on the feet with that path to victory. And you can protect your brain and you can protect against wild you we talk about this, the chaos. The chaos is no more apparent than in the early striking amateurs.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

And I don't want chaos. I think the better point that Scott made, he used the word dominance. So what what he said was watching a guy take a guy down, beat him up on the ground a little bit, finish with a submission, that dominance that that he enjoys. I think that dominance, especially as a coach, you know, when we watched our our pro James the other night uh fight, for the most part, on the feet, he was dominating the exchanges. He might have taken some leg kicks and he certainly beat up his leg kicking a lot. But when you go, when you watch that fight, he really landed the majority of the strikes. He didn't take a lot of head damage, had a tiny little cut, which is a bit different for him in his last from his last pro fight, and he dominated. And as a coach, when you see that, you you certainly like that a whole lot more than all the exchanges, and we're both getting hit a lot, and there's brain damage. So I I personally, as a coach, dominance for me is always going to be the thing that wins in my head or makes me happy because that means that they didn't take a lot of abuse.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

See, I was furious in that fight, and you know that because you could hear me, because I'm not a yeller in the corner because I don't think we can joystick people. But I was furious in that fight, and the reason was because I think he was, I think if you are striking, you are always in a position where one mistake can end the fight. And so when I when I watch a young pro put himself in a position where for 15 minutes something can go wrong, and I'm just waiting for something to go wrong, I see the things that missed by this much, and I'm like, is it gonna miss next time? He's gonna fatigue a little bit, he's gonna slow down, and I just want you to take the easiest path to victory. Right? And and and I think there was a headbutt, and and that was an issue for him in the third round or the second round that changed his mentality a little bit. But I'm watching that fight and I'm like, Jesus Christ, put him against the cage, grind on him a little bit, and just win a safe fight. Now, I know that's not what he wants to do, and he constrained himself from doing anything ridiculous for cheers. So that was a big step up. But yeah, I'm I'm Scotty, I'm with you. If you can win, but again, what we are now talking about is not what the UFC wants our young fighters to do. So are we are we doing are we being detrimental to their future careers?

SPEAKER_02 40:25

Well, who knows? Like in my in my room, where we're still probably several years out of getting anyone to the high show because we started with it like from from scratch with amateurs. Um I'm okay right now. Sort of wait this maps on well to some of you were saying, I'll circle back to Adam. Like I don't have a strategy right now in my room to deal with fighting down brawlers, right? I just don't have it because it's just not something we practice. And I know that's what I know that's going to be the problem set they're going to be frequently exposed to in fights. So am I prepared and well? Well, what I would say is that I'm happy to let the the the striking development maybe lag behind the the uh clinching and grappling development early on, um, because I think they'll continue to get better at striking. And you spoke about the rhythm of professional fighting. I mean, speaking of that, I was watching uh Rod Tang Hagar fight uh yesterday again, and it's more apart now since you mentioned Adam, but you could say it was like I'll just say like Rod Tang was a he and I'll just say they for for uh agri. He went, then they went, he went, then they went, he went, and they went. Occasionally he would go twice and they would go twice, but it was just back and forth. And I think again, it's all speculative, right? But the way we spar and approach striking, then my guys are going to be better prepared for that rhythm. And I'm struggling to prepare them for the the that initial 30 seconds to a minute of uh of pure chaos in the fights right now. And I don't have a great answer for it, but um, as I said, driving my guys towards getting a hold of their opponents, getting them down against the fence, beating them up down there, not taking damage. That's that's this that's the strategy we're going with just now, and then we'll we'll see where we'll see where the team goes in a few years.

SPEAKER_01 42:00

Part of their ability to deal with chaos early, later, whenever, whenever it shows up at the beginning or or even anywhere in the fight. I think part of that is just experience, and part of that is them. Right? Because there are guys who are who we've seen really good swimmers drown in choppy waters. You know, and I I remember when I was in the military for a little while, um the guys who were really good swimming in the pool the first time we went in the ocean, a lot of those guys had never been in the ocean, they failed the first couple time trials. And guys who had been in the ocean and grown up near an ocean, myself included, just understood you don't fight the waves. You just you you you you ride them, you go with them. And once the pool swimmers figured out how to swim in the ocean and they figured it out very quickly, then all of a sudden they were back at the top of the class again because swimming was swimming. And so some of it will just come. And and you know what? I don't I don't drill specifically for like, hey, one guy just swing until your partner falls down, or you but they get into occasional chaotic scraps, and I watch it, and I just as soon as the scrap is over, I'm like, all right, let's let's re-center ourselves. Let's let's even even to the point of saying, okay, time out for a second, just step back, take a deep breath, re-center yourself. So I think it happens even in a room with a culture of care, especially when it's two guys that know each other and love each other, sometimes you'll see a little chaotic. And but I don't I don't program for it, and I think you're the same way because of the danger of it. And so I think it's just something that they'll have to figure out how to swim in the ocean at some point.

SPEAKER_02 43:43

When we when we talk about striking and looking at through maybe a different lens and looking at different things, um I want to ask you about the rhythm step and the L step and why it has seems to be so fucking profoundly insightful. What what do you mean insightful? That's why why it appears to be. Why the why the Well the comments and the and there's you know, um Barry Robinson, who's having a debate with Greg here coming up shortly, I believe. For real? Yeah, yeah. So Barry made some um one of his usual reels about being vehemently opposed to the ecological and and it's it's boxing's always been ecological because all the ecological coaches will sit in the corner and go, yeah, yeah, great, yeah, yeah, pump that jar. I mean it's all bullshit, right? And he's challenged um Greg got in the comments and they've agreed to have a discussion. I thought you were joking about that. No, no, finally. I don't know when it I don't know when they're arranging it, but there's no way that's that's valuable.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

I'll bring uh I'll bring my lighter for all the straw men that'll be uh be talked about. I'll bring the popcorn. I light that shit up.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

Um so here's here's all I say to guys. When I'm watching guys develop some type of pattern movement that's pointless and and they seem to be doing out of like it's a kick almost, then I might ask them why they're doing it. You know, hey, every time you throw a jab cross, you're doing this every time. Do you even know you're doing it? Or is there a reason for this? Are you and 90% of the time they have no idea, it's just like they don't know what else to do with their feet afterwards. And I'm not saying I have a better solution for them, and I'm not saying that even, but sometimes I you draw attention to something people don't know they're doing, and they can stop doing it. Like if I just kept doing something with my hands now, and Rory's like, hey, you're doing something weird with your hands in the chat, I'll stop doing it. Now, maybe I'll do it on the next podcast, and we'll have to figure out a drill to keep my hands down. But the point being, I don't like I don't know what those steps are. I don't know like why people are the only reason I could see paying attention to the way anyone steps is if they're doing something that is highly uh repetitive and mindless and puts them in danger.

SPEAKER_02 46:02

But there's one thing identifying and there's second- another a completely different thing to be able to exploit it. And I'm not saying it's not exploitable. He wants sunshine, I'm a huge sunshine fanboy. He's always fixing his shorts. But he fixes his shorts when he knows he's safe. I've yet to see him get punched in the mouth while he's fixing his shorts. So we could plan for all that all day.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

Rory and I have this drinking game, and Rory's Rory's really good at it. It's the OCD. Right, but it's Rory's OCD. So it's it's a it's a drinking game. We don't drink, but here's the drinking game. We we watch a OFC fight, and he's usually at his house time at my house, we're texting her on the phone, and and he'll immediately be like, dude keeps touching his nose, or dude has a tick, or dude, and the the fun part about it is or or the shorts, poor A with his shorts.

SPEAKER_00 46:43

Fuck, so awful.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

Right. And some people pull down, you see boxers keep pulling down their shorts, and you see kickers pulling up their shorts, and you see nose, and and there are all kinds of guys in UFC with weird Perez-type ticks. And the fun thing is to figure out if it is a tick or it's a tell. Now, most of the guys in the UFC, it's oh it's just a tick. Because they probably would have gotten beat out of the sport if it was a tell. Or or they're doing it in when they're in danger. Like you just said, he steps back when he's safe. Pourrier does it after something's over. We picked up my wife and I, I got my wife involved in the game. We picked up a guy the other day who kept he kept doing this, and I'm like, did he get hit? And he's like clearing his nose, and then we saw a couple times when he didn't get hit, he just had this like this nose touch thing. So object is pretty funny.

SPEAKER_02 47:31

Well, object could be a tell, but I've correct me if I'm wrong. I've yet to see Dustin get punched in the face while he's fixing his shorts. No, he does it when he's safe, I think. That's what I'm saying. They do it when they're safe. Do they with them step? They all step when they're safe.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

I'm not sure Dustin's always safe. I just don't think anybody's capitalized on it. Because I've in that one fight, there was one fight in particular, it was just like this, I I I messaged Adam. I said he just he just keeps grabbing his shorts. And he did it so very often that I think it could have become problematic. And it might have been a couple exchanges become problematic. But again, it's does someone else notice it? Can they act upon it? Are they willing to, you know, do anything while it's happening? Uh, but you're not going to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_02 48:12

Well, it's one thing identifying the problem, being able to exploit it. I I would imagine for the last half dozen fights, none of Dustin's opponents have gone in not realizing or not being uh cognizant that he fixes his shorts after exchanges. But I don't see anyone exploiting it.

SPEAKER_01 48:29

Not nearly enough, probably. No. And who knows? Maybe maybe he is doing it in a manner that he he perceives safety and it's it's not as exploitable as we think it is. I've never seen anyone, I'll tell you this, we've never heard anyone say part of my game plan is when he fixes his shorts, I'm gonna punch him in the face. You know, when he has some kind of weird tick, and is Magulev, I think, was the fighter who had like some tick where he just like and I never no one is ever like as soon as he looks off his shoulder, I'm gonna punch him in the face. But he had a real he has a real thing. I think there's a lot there's this innate sense of safety that they have. Right. You see in boxing a lot because I think that's the first time they've ever worn those ceremonial shorts. And I just don't think they always like fit right or they're they're not comfortable with them because they don't know. So guys keep pushing them down. I think you see it in boxing a lot, the shorts thing. Yeah, they get prior and higher, right? Yeah. Well, some guys try and start with them higher, so everything's a body shot, but that's everything's a low blow. So tell what do you think about this? Like this and I I I we're assuming our listeners know what this is, but I guess this guy, Barry Robinson, has identified some footwork patterns that he thinks are dangerous and he thinks should be not part of the sport. And what he does is he cherry-picks videos of guys, and so he has it both ways. He'll cherry-pick a video of a guy doing it and paying for it, and then he'll cherry-pick a video of a guy doing it, and then say the other guy should have exploited it. And so he has his cake and he eats it too. And my only thought is we should be careful of any mindless repetitive actions for a fighter because another fighter should be able to perceive those and take advantage of them. And it's I have a, you know, in my head, I have a list. Like we've talked about this. Like dropping your hands is different than bringing your hands somewhere else. Now, I'm not saying we could fix either one of those. I mean, I'm not saying we could fix dropping the hands because we've talked about synergies and things like that. But to me, there is a difference between a fighter who lowers his hands because that's what he wants to do, like borrow the other night, right? That was a really good strategy, versus a fighter who throws one punch and then instead of protecting himself, the other hand drops. I'm not saying we can tell them to just keep it up or pick it up, but we need to be aware. They need they should be aware of of what the uh and the sport may tell them, but since we don't want to kill each other, I want to be careful how much the sport has to teach them.

SPEAKER_02 51:00

Yeah, I'm not so sure I care where their hands are in between exchanges. I care where their hands are, uh the hands are where they're meant to be when they're meant to be there.

SPEAKER_01 51:09

Okay, but don't don't mistake what I'm saying. I'm just making it I am separating the idea of intentional actions versus unintentional actions they may not even be aware of. And so sometimes there's a value in just drawing their attention to something that they may not even be aware they're doing. I don't know if that fixes it. I don't because, like we've said, I don't know what words have value. Maybe the room fixes it, and maybe it doesn't need to be fixed, it never gets fixed. But I do want to make a distinction in some places between intentionality and whatever you would call the other thing.

SPEAKER_02 51:52

Yeah, I think this is it. The beauty for me in martial arts is it's it's it's such a big it's such a big uh state space that there's there's so many ways to move. I don't know how many fighters are in the UFC, what 5600? Sure. No, one of them moves the same.

SPEAKER_01 52:08

Which bears the question, what the fuck are we teaching?

unknown 52:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 52:11

No, Rory and I were just having this discussion the other day about um details. Someone had had Hodger Gracie had written a uh an article or he was part of an article, and his contention was that 99% that's that was his number, 99% of all people fail at jujitsu because they don't know what the the details. And I was like, that's that's pretty presumptive that you know the details. But every black belt has different details, so there really are no details. There's there's your application, there's the way you do it, the way your body functions, you and the environment, all that shit. There's no parsable details.

SPEAKER_00 52:51

There's also the whole idea about strength. You know, don't use strength, use technique, and we're parsing out someone's strength and size and physical abilities from their jujitsu or from their fighting or from anything they're doing, as if you could do you could take mount, not be heavy, not be strong, not grab some kind of grip and grab a traw. Like you can't do any of these things and somehow try to do them in a state that is your weakest and least, you know, whatever. It just it's it's silly. But hold that for a second, because we're still talking about we were talking about footwork and we're talking about that was my point. So I think there are things that you can see in the room, because we've seen it before, we've talked about it in the past with what is that, like that little that step, I come in, I come back, I come in, I come back. Is that what he's talking about? That's rhythm step. So the rhythm step, that's what it was. So certainly if someone is just doing something for the sake of doing it, doesn't necessarily know they're doing it, I believe you have to draw their attention to it because it might even be, because even if you get popped, chest, shoulder, space, whatever it means, even if you get popped, that might not be the thing that keeps you from doing a thing if you are conscious, conscious, you're not consciously aware that you're doing it. It just becomes this again, it becomes a tick. It becomes the looking away, pulling up the shorts, touching the nose. If you are unaware that you're doing this rhythm step and that you just keep moving in and out of range for no apparent reason, you're not punching, you're not moving, your head's not moving, then yeah, you might pay for that. You might pay for that in a room, you might pay for that in in in in the fight in the cage, and you still might not change your behavior because you are consciously unaware that that behavior is even occur. That's detrimental. The the funny thing is, I think the bag breeds that step.

SPEAKER_02 54:32

I was just the way I say that. I was just going to make a case for these habits. If if if we're to make habits on this reset, blah blah blah, reset, blah, blah, blah, reset, can probably be fostered the very thing you're trying to fix.

unknown 54:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:44

It's getting stabilized and reinforced on isolated work. And I don't see I don't see that. I don't see that in my I don't see that in my room. Now I see the clunkiness and the tripping over the dicks and everything when they start. They've kind of come in full circle assessment. I'd like to ask you, Rory, because you're working uh you work with a foundation group as well, right? From time to time, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 55:00

I'm I'm all levels in my gym.

SPEAKER_02 55:02

Yeah, so I'm like it's it seems very subjective, but I I can't see it now. There's just this fluidity, this, and we talk about stability here. Again, how do how we define that? I just see this this this system as it's going back and in and this this interaction start to stabilize. It looks more fluent. It looks more uh it looks less clunky. And so that is a metric for metric for development.

SPEAKER_00 55:21

So what when I when I even in in my in in a higher level class, like a Wednesday night class, which might have, you know, the our our second and third level, our fighters and that that second tier that are still chest and shoulders. What I will just draw attention to, and and you'll tell me if you agree or disagree, I'm sure Adam will, whether here or offline, uh, I will at least draw people's attention to not planning their feet, again, not all the time, not always rule, just recommendations. Hey, I'd like you to play this round when you're throwing your jab. I'd like you to throw your jab from motion. I would like you to try and just be moving around and instead of stopping one Mississippi jab, just try and throw it from motion, your feet maybe not even permanently set, and then see what comes out from behind it. So that we're not always in our stance, we've stopped in front of someone, we're throwing our punches, now we're moving. We come back to the where we want to throw our punches, we stop, and we throw our punches. Now that not that won't get corrected. We know that won't get corrected in that moment completely, but maybe over time, if we just draw their attention to striking from movement, at least the first strike, and then seeing what can follow up behind it, we won't be as uh they won't see it as easily because every time you stop your feet, they know you're gonna punch. Every time you stop your feet, you're gonna punch. So I just try and play with some different things from time to time like that.

SPEAKER_01 56:33

So here's here's where I disagree with you, and I I challenge you to to look at it differently. I don't think telling them that stuff is very valuable, especially for the newer people. So, what I would rather see you do as a coach, what I would do is you have this idea that people need to be able to punch in motion and people need to be able to punch from a stable position. And we talked about this with quarterbacks in the NFL, and we were saying that Patrick Mahomes, he can throw from what they call off structure. No matter where his body is, no matter how his body's moving, no matter what his balance point is, he can throw the ball. He just changes his arm angle and he can do crazy things. There are other quarterbacks who have to be very rhythmic rhythmic's not a word, Jesus Christ. Rhythmic, they have to take four steps, plant their feet, and throw the ball. And the best quarterbacks can do both of those things. I think I'm up some beautifully in his arm complaints. Yes. And so for the people that are just learning how to not step on their dicks, if you have this idea that they should be able to punch out of motion, create a game that forces them to move in and out, move around to punch in motion. That they are punished if they stop their feet. I think the sniper game is perfect for that. So James is a good example. James punches out of nonstop motion. But we've never told him that. But what I saw in the case the other night was him playing the sniper game, him playing the dancing bear game, him playing whatever it is. He may not even know it. But so to me, I love, I think your idea is correct. We want people to be able to punch in motion, we want them to be able to move in and out of motion. But how can we get them to do repetitions of that in an alive environment? Your words may work with a couple people, but I think in general, the majority of our people hear words and just are like if they're beginners, they have no idea even what motion is and stability and not any of that stuff, even what a jab is for some of them. And for the older guys, they just it goes in one ear and out the other, and they just do what they want to do. So can we force them into doing those things by playing?

SPEAKER_00 58:42

So the one time I played that game with them, and I think I I might have satisfied some of that, is as you explained it, is I said to the person who was on the other side, I said, What I want you to try and do is pay attention every time they they plant their feet, you throw a punch. Just punch them in the chest, especially because we're mostly chest and shoulder. So every time the person's moving around, I want you to pay attention to them stopping and see if you can hit them before they hit you. So I have played variations, I I've tried that with some again, different games, different people at different times, just playing to see what works out. But I have played it in in the past where I was like, other side, I want you to really see if you can pay attention to when they stop moving and can you hit them? So a version of probably sounds like a version of sniper game, but if someone's moving around like James, it's a different version because James's never really playing a speed on his first punch. So can you can you pay attention to them stopping in front of you?

SPEAKER_02 59:30

I think that's I think that's the case we're making this whole approach, right? That the games are almost infinitely more powerful than than the words. And it's again, it's unclear to me. I'm going through this at the moment. I talk about this a lot. It's unclear to me the power or the effect of my words during the exchanges and the stickiness there. I would need to identify something over time and create interventions and games that that tease that out. Um to your to your point, uh shit. I had a few things to say about that. Oh yeah, yeah. Do you are you you'll know Audie Osborne? Do you make any sensation? I think he's a flyweight UFC kid.

unknown 1:00:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:01

He's from Wisconsin. Great kid. There's a highlight knockout wheel, and I forget who he's fighting, and he's on his way back and he's completely out of balance, and he just manages to to reorientate himself and he knocks the guy come out. This is for me, this is a beautiful um expression of metastability, right? He's on the way back and he's able to change state and get that knockout punch. Beautiful accuracy, power, and everything. So I'm a very unbalanced state. So when you mention Mahomes there, Mahomes or Mahone, whatever, is able to be able to achieve his goal in all sorts of different kind of uh structures. That is what I think is developing continuously and constantly through these live exchanges. And I think that's what skill is.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:42

Right, full circle. I like it. But and and Rory, Rory, and we'll just use James as an example because you know, the same way that Greg uses DeAndre to guide sort of his practice design. A lot of times I'll use James or or Ron, I'll use one of my pros to guide the practice design for that night. If James ever wants to knock people out or get on his front foot, then we will need to I I can't tell him that. We will need to do more drills that put him in a position where that's how he has to approach the game is by being on his front foot, is by being more stable. I can't tell him to do that because once the pressure's on, he he he won't do it. So if a person's system is geared towards one thing, we have to find these perturbations and make them really uncomfortable to try and sort of get them to even be able to understand what I'm talking about. It's not gonna be words that do it. I would love to say, hey, sometimes set your feet for the second or third punch. But he's not gonna do that because his brain only has so much to do with that. And again, in in a I think the more unstable the situation is, which is striking, the less anything goes on up here. I think it's easy in grappling sometimes. Hey, when you get on top, get an underhook. Everyone you got time to think about that. In striking, you don't. So I think we're all in agreement that the best remedy, the best teaching tool, the best correction tool, the best remedy, whatever it is, is going to be alive.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:18

I think I have a last question here, and it's for Rory. We uh I and Maya have been talking a lot about what is flaw, what is being, you know, just attuned, uh just being switched on, or whatever. Is there any particular flight in your career that you just felt like you were fucking on, everything was clicking? And if there was, do you do you can you identify or attribute something that underpinned that? And did you ever chase that again? Could you recreate it again? I know that was ten questions rolled in at one.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:47

Uh it's actually it's it's funny you say that because I probably would say that one of my best fights, which was only four minutes and fifty seconds long, or four minutes, yeah, four minutes and fifty-five seconds long, was my last fight uh in Canada, which actually wasn't that long ago on my memory is on the book, uh, where I was fighting Brian Baker, who I probably had by at that point, I might have been nearing 10 years. Excuse me, is that R.I.P. Brian Baker? Did Brian Baker pass? Yes. Really? Yeah, I didn't know. I I apologize. I did not mean that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:20

No, it was after I thought it was after that fight.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:22

I don't think it was quite right after, but uh it was uh go ahead. Rory's giving guys cancer. It's possible. Uh here neither here nor there. We'll get back to that later. Different different podcasts. So I was fighting Brian Baker in the MFC in Canada, in Edmonton, and I was, again, I was quite a bit older, and I was having the fight of my life when I have watched that and only probably watched it once or twice. I was out striking, I was out working, I almost had them finished, which uh is the most upsetting part of that, and uh got knocked out when I went through the ropes uh and I was on my back through the ropes. It is what it is, but it was a I was having a phenomenal fight. Uh again, it's in great shape. And uh I I want to say that the thing that I can probably, if I can think about what was different about that fight, it was probably the same thing that was different in my fight against Naira Matsui when I went to Japan. We talked about that earlier, is just an immense level of confidence that I just felt that there was no way I could lose this fight. I've and I went out there and was able to perform at my best because I gave no consideration in that to any negative possibilities. There were no negative outcomes that I even considered. You know, when I fought Daijiro, another fight uh that was some years earlier before I even got to the UFC. I was in the back yawning and just like even I was told by some of the Americans that I was with, uh they were just like, you know, you were just you were just so calm and relaxed. And I think that calm and relaxed state ahead of time is really just uh a level of confidence that, you know, sometimes you have it in some fights, sometimes you don't have it in others. But I thought uh uh okami, you're speaking about grabbing, right? Adam knows this. I thought you should okami. And again, I was doing pretty well uh going into the third round. It was it could have been one-one, it could have been two-o, who knows? But it was at one point when he grabbed me and he picked me up and he didn't quite take me down, and then he picked me up and he took me down, that I just felt that strength. And I think in feeling that, it probably again, I probably got it in my head a little bit. So that eventually when he moved through and mounted me, I kind of just was like, I didn't fight through it enough to get my guard back or to escape position. I kind of quit on myself in that moment. So I think when a guy is having that fight, or it's me, many others, is that you're so confident in your abilities to win that you are moving and you're you're flowing because if you are the better skilled athlete, and I believe I was in that fight against Brian Baker and just got caught with my head through the ropes in the last few seconds and knocked out, unfortunately, and that was the fight. Uh, but up until that point, everything was going my way. And when things start to not go your way, and we've had a fighter like this. Sometimes when things don't go his way, he sort of starts to quit on himself. I saw it in a fight recently, uh, where that moment happened. We talked about it afterwards, like, yeah, that's where it happened. I was like, you know, I wish I would have said something maybe more about it in the corner. But I think when when you are hit with some adversity in those moments, what you do is really just a part of do you believe that if you can get through this in this moment that things will start to turn back in your favor, or in that moment when it starts to go bad, do you start to just consider that this is going to be the inevitable outcome? It's a lot of post hoc, but there are those moments and fights.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:33

Yeah, and I it is post hoc, but if we if we take that out of a post hoc, I think it's part of the it's on it's unparsable from skill, the mental aspect. And so that leads me to a question. I know the answer, but I think people would enjoy hearing it. What do you wish you could have? Maybe the word developed isn't the right answer, but what do you feel like you were missing during your your professional run that you sort of have now that you wish you had then? What piece of the system or the puzzle?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:04

I think there were moments in time when I wasn't, and I've shared this before on other podcasts. I just, there's a there was a there's just there was a period of time that I just wasn't as confident as I needed to be. And I don't know if it had, but like there was a there were some moments in my career where I didn't let my hands fine. I wasn't, you know, I didn't I didn't pull the trigger as much as I should have, even though I likely had the better stand-up. Uh there were moments in time that I just wasn't mentally tough enough where I should have thought through some things that maybe that could have kept me in a fight longer to change outcomes. Uh I don't know. It's just I just it's again, it's hard to parse that all that apart, which is the conversation you and I have a lot. That just some people are gonna be good in the room. And no matter how much you put on them in the room, they're gonna go into fights and they're gonna question themselves. They're gonna question what's happening. They're just their practice players are not, you know, game time players. And I don't know how much we can control that even in the room, because unless we're fighting someone else in the room and that's your practice, how do you then prepare someone for someone else who is truly trying to murder them? And what comes with the fact that someone else is trying to murder them on fight night, where in the room no one's trying to murder them, and if we have it in a room where someone's trying to murder them, then you've left most of their fight career in the room and you can't be that representative.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:27

I don't think you can truly create that sphere of murder in the room, no matter how physical. I like I I keep coming back to this, um, you know, because this I'm always again trying to rationale our reasons for not sparring hard in the gym, notwithstanding the the longevity of it. But I still uh I'm I'm unconvinced we can even recreate that in the room.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:46

I I don't believe you can, and and I've seen it, I've seen it. Like you have guys who are gonna get hit some adversity in that cage and they're gonna power through it. They are they are that dog, right? They're gonna meet the scratch and they're gonna meet the scratch and they're gonna meet scratch, and the other person might win because they're better, and that's fine, but they are never going to give up on trying to win. And then some guys are gonna hit that adversity again, fights of mine. And Brian Baker, I didn't hit any adversity. I just fell through the ropes, I let my guard down for a moment, and I got struck once or twice. I got knocked out. There was five seconds left. Uh, when I fought Jason McDonald, I probably gave up a little bit on myself. When I fought Yush Okami, I probably gave up on myself a little bit. There are there are those moments in those fights where you see it, even in UFC, you're like, he just quit. He just quit. You see it on your 70-inch TV, but you know it. Like, and you're like, you say to your friends you're watching it with, this fight's over because that dude got hit with something or felt something emotionally or physically, and it was just like he does not or she does not want to be there anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:42

And that's why Holloway, I thought Holloway did that the first time he was randolved, and you see the picture of his face, and he's like, you could see, he's like, This is not what I signed up for.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:50

Well, we were gonna just point at each other in the middle. You know, you could see it back in the day with Brock Lesnar, you could see it with Ronda Rousey back in the day. Like these were the champions, and they felt a little bit of something that they probably never felt in a room, and they were like, I am not ready for this.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:05

And there was a lot of them hadn't felt in the cage.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:08

Right, but I know for a fact, I know for a fact that Brock Lesnar was not allowed to be punched during training. Like they he was not being like, so when he got punched in the cage, it was sort of novel to him. Uh, it's one of one of our very close friends we were talking the other night about, and he was asking me, he's like, How do you get guys? He said, I have some guys that are great in a room and they just don't do it in the cage, and I have some guys who suck in the room and they do it in the cage. What do you do? And my answer to him was yeah. Yeah. I and I said, I said, maybe you don't. Maybe there's nothing you could do, maybe there is. I don't know. It's going to be personal, it's going to be situational. I bet I bet that guy you're talking about that's great in a room, and his last fight he wasn't good in the cage. The last five fights he was good in a cage. So maybe it's not all about your guy. Maybe it's everything. And we can't do something about everything. We can just try and get them the most prepared we can. And sometimes they step into the cage, and the other guy just makes it all fucking pointless. All that hard work, all that mental preparation, all that weight cutting, and you just get in and the other guy has a say in how it's gonna go.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:26

I think we keep coming back to this, right? The complexity we can merely constrain it, we cannot control it. And I said it was going to be my last thing, but I think we've identified Rory Why is it your last thing? We're saying we can take this kind of attentional, emotional baggage in the cage with us. Say us very, very um, however, I think you you can accumulate that baggage while you're in the fight. I had one of my guys a couple of weeks ago lost a relatively fair fight. Um but he was telling me between rounds, his girlfriends in the fucking front row. And I'm like, what do you do with you guys here? Do you I mean I I I don't it's something they gotta get over, right? They're their friends, their fans, their mom, their dad, their girlfriends are watching. I I I'd I I'd rather they weren't there at all. I want his little uh tugging of the attention away from the fighters in the cage.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:18

But so we had we had a guy fight, and every one of his fraternity brothers was there front. And when they announced him, his fraternity brothers went crazy. And I said to Rory, this isn't gonna be good. Because he now was no longer fighting his opponent, he was fighting for his fraternity brothers. He was performing for them. Yes, and so he was so amped in the warm-up. So amped up into warm-up, he was so amped up when he got in a cage, and he and I think it was a winnable fight, and he had times when he was winning and he was doing just fine, but he was just like it was just pressuring him so much. Or you fight in Athens and the people are screaming and cheering, and I want them to shut the fuck up so my fighter can maybe hear me. Or other people should their friends are yelling at moves and stuff, and I'm just like, shut all of you, shut up. Right, some shit like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:13

So yeah, I it's yeah, you can't fix it. I don't think there's anything we could do to tell that. Like I'll use Alex as an example. One of our 125-pounder, he's a black belt. He had taken like seven years off, never left the room. He's always been in the room, he's been with us for, I don't know, 15 years, right? He's grown up with us, got married in the gym by me. Uh, but took a lot of years off, came back into it, had won what four fights. One of those. Wait, what was he? What was his record when he took off? Oh, he was like what, two, three and four, two and four? I think it was two and four. One and five. Okay. So he was one and five, stopped fighting. And those are all amateur, some advanced eye amateur, and then came back and started winning fights, won a belt, defended a belt, won his, and then just won his pro debut against the guy who had had some fights, right? It wasn't his pro debut, right? He had I think he had some pro fights. Yep. And when you just when you before the fights, he's smiling, he's happy. He's not excited. He's he's excited about fighting. There's no excitement, there's no like anxiety. He doesn't care, right? Again, like he's confident because he's been in a room with all these young guys, and and he is the elder guy on the mat most of the time. But he's in a room with all these young guys and he's training with them. And yeah, some of them are more athletic than he is, and some of them might be better at some stand-up or some of this or some of that. But he puts it together very well. And when it's fight night, it's like, I want to fight, I enjoy this, there's no pressure. He's happy his fans are there. He certainly wants to put on a show for his fans in that regard and win for them, but he's not fighting for them. He's just fighting because he now enjoys it. And he's not looking to go to the UFC. He's not looking to make this career. He's got a wife, he's got a job, he's taking care of his kids, and he just goes out there and he performs well. There's like, you know what it's gonna be. Everyone knows what it's gonna be. Get into the clinch, grind you down to the gray to the ground, out jujitsu you, choke your neck out. And that's pretty much how he won a lot of those fights against kids who were like 10 years his junior.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:58

Well, the the the reason kids now teach you better adversity.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:02

Yeah, for sure. The reason he came back and wanted to even have an amateur fight again is to show the young kids. Like he wanted to just show them that he was a part of this with them. Like he was going to put in the work that they were going to. He was going to cut the weight, he was going to suffer, he was gonna just he wanted to reestablish his place as not the old sort of coach guy, he wanted to be a part of the team, right? And so, yeah, like Rory said, I mean, it just his mentality just completely changed. And it was it's beautiful, it's beautiful to watch.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:37

There's nothing, I don't, again, like we've talked about, I think we all kind of agree, there's nothing, I don't believe there's anything you can do. Now, you can get a guy better, but is that guy gonna step to the scratch? Is that person, guy girl, is that person gonna get in that cage and like Forrest have zero self-preservation and win at all costs, and regardless of what happens, the abuse you take, and let outside of being knocked out or killed, are you gonna keep coming back, coming to the corner? Stitch is gonna fix your cuts, put you back in the middle, and you and Stefan Bonner are gonna throw down and wrestle and grapple and beat each other up and come back in and do that again. Or are you gonna find a way out? It's like when I fought Josh Haynes, won the first pretty handedly, nearly kicked his face off. Second round, he dropped me. Now he's back in it a little bit. Third round, I go back to doing what I can do, and I win that fight 29-28. Like those are those moments where you're like, okay, I can win this fight. I am confident, even though I took some adversity, it doesn't get into your head. It's just a moment that you can get through. And I don't think there's anything you can do in the room about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:38

No, and it's funny that this wasn't a linear process for you where you were you were not confident and then you were confident and then you weren't confident. Like it wasn't linear. You're you're I know the the chronology of these fights, and you're saying I fought this fight and I battled through adversity and I was confident, but I fought this fight and I couldn't battle through adversity, I wasn't confident. I fought this fight and I was confident, and so your point is totally made. Some of it has nothing to do with you, some of it has to do with everything, right? Dr. Matsumi, you fought in Japan on short notice. You had no time to build that into something else. You you fought the Canada trip was relaxed. It was me and you and Dave, and it was fun. The Ireland trip was pressure because if you didn't win this fight, you're not in the UFC. The Okami fight was pressure. If you won that fight, you took the next big step up. And we had three guys fight that night, and it was in Vegas.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:32

And again, Chase, you know, I I when I was tired in that second round, you know, I could have yeah, I'm tired, but like this is still winnable. But instead of saying to myself, this is still winnable, I was tired and didn't fight, you know, to the point where I was exhausted, like really trying to stay in it, regardless of how tired I was in that second round.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:51

You also knew him, right? There was a familiarity with what he could do and couldn't do. We were in Florida, we stayed at our mom's house for like a couple of days. Like, you're talking about Josh.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:01

I was talking about Jason, but yeah, you're talking about Josh.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:02

My point just being yeah, you're talking about Josh, like when you went and fought Jason in Ireland, like I wasn't there with you. It was travel. Like, I think that it's really important that people hear this point that it's everything. It's ecology, everything everything. Say it again, Scotty. It's ecology. It's ecology, and it and it it's not just ecology. We have to believe that it's ecology all the time. Not we have to believe, but we do believe that it's ecology all the time. And from the room to the fight night. It is a huge complex system, and we can only control so much of it. And that takes me back to this idea of of the process as an as as maybe what we're really trying to do with skill is control what we can control. And uh what we can't control, we just we let that happen, sort of.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:56

Yeah, I'm going back to one CI. I mentioned you the other day, um, I think we rather than ecological traditional, uh I see this perspective or what we think we're capable of as coaches, and I'm now thinking of it as two CLAs. We have the constraints-led approach, we appreciate the complexity, we realize our limitations as coaches, where I think more traditional is the control-led approach, where we think we can control it. I've been on this investigation now for five or six years, and I'm just getting more and more comfortable in appreciating that complexity and just saying, I just gotta do the best I can.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:26

Get out of their way, you know, get out of their way. We can help, we can guide people, we can hopefully with words, we can be like, hey, have you just considered that you are better than you think you are? Like maybe things, there are some things we can help with. Certainly, we don't just sit in a corner and say, F around, find out, right? As a lot of people on a straw man us about. But there's there's like I said, it's so complex. How could you possibly control something that is so complex? And to think that you can is so egotistical. And the more I start to consider how much variability there is in this system, how complex the system is, how uh, you know, from from the room, like Adam is saying, from the room to the night, to everything in between, to weight cut and family and friends and blah, blah. I mean, how could you possibly believe for a second you have that much to do with it? You know, it's like parenting. What do they say about parenting? You have this much to do with how your children are raised, as long as you're a good parent, you have this much, you can be a bad parent and you can really screw them up. But as long as you're just a good parent, they are gonna be what they're gonna be. How could you possibly do anything more? After you fertilize the egg, all bets are off.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:37

Good luck, cross your bangs. And it's um yeah, I I I agree with you. I I think that I like I like fuck around and figure it out. Sure. That's what I'm talking about. I thought about that, for sure. Do you think this uh and wait, one one sec, Scotty? Um I was talking to our our baseball friend, and he was saying that um a lot of times when they looked at a player that was struggling, that that had you know gone below their their normal, and they talked to them and they tried to figure it out, a lot of times it was a relationship issue. And so what the coach has nothing to do with that, right? So you got these billion dollar, multi-million dollar baseball players who forget how to hit a ball because they're thinking about problems at home. The coach has can't do anything about that.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:23

Sorry, Scott. No, I was just saying, uh what do you think the value is on having our fighters themselves appreciate that? Or do we we need do they need to be a little bit eluded in feeling like they have a sense of control? Otherwise, I I guess it could be quite it could be quite discouraging for a fighter to realize it is what it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:41

I think I think what I think we we have to let them know that they control what they can control. And we can make a list of what they can control with them. Right? I mean they're they can control their preparation, they can control their if their weight cut is easy or hard, they can control uh how the day goes, their travel, their they can control a lot of things, and that's what we focus on. You know, they can control whether they show up to every practice well rested. They can control if they leave practice and eat the right thing. They can control how locked in they are at practice at least, right? How present they are. And and that list of things they can control is bigger than we can make that so that they have these actual items. And I I spend a lot of time with them on that. I think I end every practice, especially a hard practice, with hey, go eat the right thing and go to sleep.

unknown 1:22:36

Right?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:37

Because those are things they control. And then let them let them be aware that there are things that are outside their control. I've told fighters for years that there are four things that can happen on fight night. You can fight really well and win. You could fight really well and lose, you can fight really shitty and win, you could fight really shitty and lose. Those are out of your control.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:55

So once the cage door closes But paradoxically, they have indirect control over the uncontrollables by controlling sound aspects.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:04

Sure. And that's the process. That is maybe what skill development is. Control we can control. Right? Because how they sleep the night before practice is part of their skill development. How they weight cut, like if they're too heavy coming into the weight cutting period, their practices suffer because they're dragging ass, because they're thinking about eating. Or they're weight cuts they haven't eaten, right? Um which is what I think like I think Ramadan is an interesting thing because the fighters' number of calories don't change at all. It's just when they eat those calories. And a person who's used to intermittent fasting or eating only at one meal a day is like, what's your problem? But then our guys who are used to eating all day, like we have one fighter dealing with it right now, he's probably used to eating whenever he wants to all day, whatever he wants to, and now he's being forced to be disciplined, and all of a sudden that's a struggle. And I get it. So these are all, yeah, control we can do, and maybe the the more we focus on the things we can control, maybe we can control more things, if that makes sense. Right, that though. Can I say one thing to wrap up before we go? You were talking about assessments earlier. And last week, the best sport in the world gets all their prospective athletes together and assesses them. And it's called the NFL Combine, and it happens in Indianapolis. And it's amazing to me because part of what they do is measure all of the athletes' physical attributes, hand size, arm length, height, weight, all that stuff. And then they start to talk about this guy's arms are too short, this guy's hands are too small. And that's based on you know statistical averages. And then they put them through attribute testing physical. Like they run, they jump, they lift. And again, they talk about this guy's on average not fast enough, this guy on average is faster than everybody else. And that all makes sense to me, right? Because we're talking about action capacities, we're talking about physical constraints, things like that. But then they spend a bunch of time doing unopposed drills with bags and footballs on a stick and mimicking what they're the requirements of their position. And then they they judge how they move through these unopposed drills, and they use that to determine who they're going to choose in the NFL draft. And what doesn't make sense to me is these guys have footage of them in their sport. There is no reason to watch them change direction because there are cones on the ground. It just surprises me that the organization, the NFL, which is the biggest sports organization in America, it's a trillion dollar probably valued organization, places so much emphasis on unopposed drills to make decisions.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:03

Wasn't the tough tryouts didn't the tough tryouts have pired work as part of their criteria, Rory?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:08

Uh so when you say tough tryouts, do you mean like to get on the show? I believe so. Okay, so no, so the I did not for season two.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:20

You did not. But when they had open tryouts in places, they had they brought in a bunch of high-level pet high-level pad holders for the stand-up phase. And the only live stuff was grappling. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:30

Was that season three? Even as as far back as season three? I don't know. That might have been something newer. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:36

I think the first couple of seasons they were choosing guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:38

Yeah, because Forrest got selected, you know, and then I got selected with other people. We just went and like those people, some of the uh castmates went and did interviews and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:45

Open try-outs that they held for some of the seasons had pad holding. And Scotty, the UFC does a combine of their own uh at the Mexico and China fiat. And the grappling and wrestling portions are all live. They start in positions and then they go live. So I think it's starting a single leg, starting an overunder, I can't remember what the other ones are, and then all your normal grappling positions. But the striking, I think, is all on pads because they don't want guys killing each other. Because yeah, because so I think they're still using a fair amount of pad work to judge people's stand-up.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:24

Well, my guys will be fucked. Yeah. For sure. My guys too. Because I've spoken so much about pad work not transferring to striking skills. I'm definitely seeing that the other way around. I think I can make a better case for it the other way around.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:37

I think it may since I know you guys want to wrap up, so maybe for next time, I since I likely won't be on, you'll get a better guest, I assume, won't be as handsome. But uh something I discussed, talking about pad work, something that Adam and I discussed, you can take this up next week, is just thinking about what pad work, the detriment of pad work, and how it actually might be. So we want to talk about skill crossover. There actually might not be any skill crossover, and I think the three of us are agree on that. But it might actually be causing people harm because of the way in which a person holds pads and a way in which a person is forced to hit pads, not unlike hitting the heavy bag. So it might actually be not even increasing skill, but it actually might be making people worse on the other side of things.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:19

We've chatted about this a little bit just as a steel man. And there's a conversation I had with Connolly once. The easiest way to steel man, I said, how many guys are there? Like if you can make pad work alive, if you can make pad work close to representative, how many guys can actually do that? And so in a normal class where people are holding for each other, most people are getting a suboptimal expression of this suboptimal exercise, if you will. So maybe there are a couple pad holders in the world who are amazing at it. You can't even tell you're not in a fight. But that would be few and far between. So everything else is just garbage compared to that, possibly. Allegedly.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:58

Or hurting them, possibly. Or hurting them.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:01

And I think I I think what you're pointing out is I think we're seeing we're watching more guys fight in a manner that looks very similar to pad work, almost, if you will. It is you can sort of see some of the hallmarks of pad work. You know, just like your your teachers can see if something was written with AI, I think that we're starting to recognize some people who have really learned how to strike on pads.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:25

I see this being a part, it's not my job, it's usually your job to shit on women's MMA. I'm very supportive of it. But I see this a lot in in women's MMA. I've never shit on women's MMA. I've shit on the talent levels. Shit, Joby. But I I uh I I I see this. This is the most important, I think. Like they'll be throwing combinations that are fruit short.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:46

Right. And they're pretty or they're stopping, throwing a combination, and then stopping again. You know, not necessarily rhythm stepping out of the combo. Rhythm stepping or moving in to stop, throw their combo, and then moving out, or or stopping and not moving, because sometimes you just stop in front of your partner when you're holding hand heads. Uh so I think the interaction feels off. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:09

You know what's interesting though? And maybe this is something we we can think about just separately. When I see ties hit tie pads, that looks more similar to the striking in a tie fight than and when I see boxing coaches hold hand pads for boxers, it looks a little more like a boxing match. I don't maybe MMA doesn't even lend itself well to pad work, if that makes sense. I don't know. I I need to think about this a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:39

I I understand what you're saying because if when we when we are training in the room, we're almost always including almost always, not always, always, but almost always including some threat of a takedown. Well, not even that, because you could do that in pad work.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:51

I think that in the room, MMA, we just fight at a longer distance. We are more mobile, we're more movement oriented. The ties really just stand in front of each other and move a couple inches forward, a couple inches back in the first couple rounds. So that's more easy to replicate on tie pads, I assume. I don't know. That may be a dumb.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:11

I keep going back to this. They I'll grant all day that boxing looks cleaner than kickboxing in Muay Thai, and Muay Thai looks cleaner than MMA. But that is completely explainable to me by the the degrees of freedom in the state space. Yeah, uh totally.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:24

The more it would make sense that the more things you add, the more it looks. Yeah, the more yeah. All right, that's two hours. That was great. Rory, great job. You're welcome. Best episode ever. You're welcome. When I I wanna I I can do it offline. I'm gonna let you make the decision. And most people have tuned out by now, but can I tell a story about the Brian Baker fight? Oh, it's what I tell all the time, but you can tell it. I'm gonna tell. So Rory has this fight. You were getting kicked in the leg more than I was happy, but you were dominating the hands. You get taken down, you throw your best submission. And forget how to finish it? You throw it and forget how to do it. He he tries to do a triangle on the wrong side, then he comes back to the right side.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:08

And I was like trying to armbore him or something as well in there.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:10

No, he didn't. I think you could have armbared him. He's just sort of it's all very chaotic, like everything, trying to finish this triangle, and then he just sort of stops fighting for a second when his head goes under the ring, and Baker just lands a couple punches.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:21

That was later in the fight. That was later in the round. But yeah. This is the end of the round.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:24

The triangle is the end of the round. Probably ended up back on a feet, but okay. No. Okay. You try the triangle, you go the wrong way, you go the right way, you can't finish it, you don't combo off. The triangle opens, your head gets pushed under the cage, and he unconscious. They wave the fight ball. They they pick Rory up, they bring him back to the corner. I have his mouthpiece. We're there for like two or three minutes. And then Rory says, Where's my mouthpiece?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:50

I need my mouthpiece.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:51

Rory says, Where's my mouthpiece? Because he thinks that he's about to go out for the second round. And I said, Rory, Rory, this fight's been over for five minutes.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:00

I was on the ground with the refs or the doctors for like two or so minutes. Yeah, they picked me up.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:04

And in the corner sitting for a couple minutes because they wouldn't let you up. And then you were like, All right, give me my mouthpiece.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:09

Where's my mouthpiece? And then I think that made me realize in that moment, or later on, makes you realize why when fighters get knocked out, when they come to, they start fighting the ref. Because the last thing I heard before I got knocked out, again, it was four minutes and 50 seconds into the fight, you hear the 10-second clapper. Right. And then the last thing I heard, because five seconds later I got knocked out, was the 10-second clapper. So when I finally came back to reality, the fight had the round had just ended. So it was time to go out for round two. And then I come to find out that I had been knocked unconscious.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:41

So canary is in the coal mine. You look sharp, you sound sharp. How old are you now, Rory? 49?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:46

Uh, I'll be 50 May 28th, so I'll be 50 soon. Yeah. That match is that match is officially listed as four minutes and 56 seconds. Right, exactly. Yeah. I kind of let my guard down through the ropes and heard the bell, the clapper, and it's like, oh, this round's over. And then he hit me once, he hit me twice.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:02

That was MMA and a ring, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:03

It was MA in a ring, and uh he his his elbow was wrecked for like nine months after that because I did try some kind of weird triangle armbar thing instead of just bringing the arm across. You did some weird stuff. By the way, 20 years in June, I have the fastest triangle, the fastest submission in middleweight history in the UFC, and then some months later, some some year or so after that, I forgot how to do a triangle joke. Twenty-year record in the UFC submission. And I forgot to be a triangle. Isn't that crazy? That's rights, man. That's the chaos of fighting. That's it. This was a pleasure, gentlemen. I appreciate you having me on. Thank you. You too. All right, see you next week. Well, not me, because no.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:38

You're always welcome back, Lori.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:39

Who's our guest next week? Who we're gonna try and get?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:41

You're gonna get a guest. I'm trying to get Professor Smith from the UK. He was the skill at guy. So see if it does.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:47

Oh, he helped write that book. He helped write that book.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:50

Yep. Okay, I'll be watching. And a jiu jitsu enthusiast, so there you go. Okay, guys.