Georges St-Pierre, John Danaher & Gordon Ryan: The Greatest of All Time #260

Transcript

00:00:00 Humans are fascinated by violence and you’ve got to ask yourself. Why is it the rash guard? Yes

00:00:07 And I talk so much shit that I’m like man if I lose this is gonna be rough. You’re learning this shut the fuck up

00:00:12 I got you man. You were powered by McDonald’s and Coca Cola

00:00:16 I want more and then I expect them and he didn’t want to fight anymore. I’m not impressed by

00:00:22 if George st. Pierre and

00:00:24 And Khabib Nurmagomedov face each other in their prime who wins? I’m

00:00:31 Here with three individuals each of whom are considered by many to be the greatest of all time in each of their respective disciplines

00:00:40 The greatest MMA fighter of all time George st. Pierre the greatest martial arts coach of all time

00:00:47 John Donahue and

00:00:49 the greatest submission grappler of all time

00:00:51 Gordon Ryan

00:00:54 So, let me ask the first question. You guys didn’t see the question. No preparation here

00:00:59 What is the key to your success each of you one thing or multiple things that come to mind?

00:01:05 John go first

00:01:12 Is it the rash guard

00:01:15 Yes, I

00:01:17 I like that you choose John right off the bat. I seem the most nervous

00:01:26 For me it’s about

00:01:29 Finding a way to work in

00:01:32 A world where most of the answers are already known

00:01:37 Okay, and in any developed sport by the time you enter that sport most of the basic precepts the

00:01:44 the the major techniques that the major mechanical understandings of the sport are long since worked out and

00:01:52 in a highly developed world

00:01:56 The key to success is to be able to identify

00:02:01 Some area of the industry that you’re in which is currently undervalued

00:02:07 To do what the other people are not doing

00:02:10 deeper than that you’re

00:02:12 Everyone has a view of okay. These are the the main skills of the industry. I work in

00:02:19 at any given time

00:02:21 some set of skills attributes

00:02:26 Will always be somewhat undervalued they’re underappreciated by the people in the game

00:02:32 You see that at any in any given industry there are always trends which change

00:02:38 The nature of the industry over time so

00:02:43 fashion trends in the clothing industry, you’ll see at any given time is a

00:02:49 General wave of fashion which pushes most of the people in the industry in a given direction at a given time

00:02:55 What makes people stand out is the ability to look at the various possibilities out there and say here is something which is genuinely

00:03:04 useful, but which is currently being underused underutilized and I want to bring that back in and

00:03:12 develop it and

00:03:14 Because it’s an inherently useful product

00:03:17 It will be very very successful in its initial applications against people who aren’t currently using it

00:03:27 If you can do this in whatever industry you’re in I believe you’ll be highly successful

00:03:31 successful to the supplies both for actual specific like techniques and

00:03:37 the also tactics as well in the case of

00:03:40 Jiu Jitsu, so for example in my sport leg locks have always been around

00:03:46 Okay, there’s there’s no shortage of people you can look back in history who applying leg locks

00:03:51 Nonetheless as in across the industry

00:03:54 Leg locks were undervalued and underappreciated. There was a general sense in which most of the leading figures of the sport

00:04:00 For most of the history of the sport of Jiu Jitsu tended to deemphasize leg locks and

00:04:08 When I looked at them I said there was immense potential but it wasn’t being realized and needed to be changed

00:04:16 Since then that has more or less occurred now most people coming into the sport understand that leg locks are an important

00:04:23 Aspect and they’re no longer undervalued if anything it’s gone too far the other way and now perhaps they’re a little overvalued

00:04:31 this kind of

00:04:33 fashion trend exists in every industry and

00:04:37 The job of anyone who wants to excel in a given industry is to be able to identify

00:04:41 okay, what are the things that are currently out of fashion and undervalued and then

00:04:47 Look at what is their actual objective value and then work

00:04:52 To to to bring them back to the forefront. So John brought up fashion

00:04:56 George is wearing a really sexy shirt. So

00:05:01 Assuming that’s not the reason is there

00:05:03 Is there something that comes to mind as the key to the success of your incredible career?

00:05:08 Well, of course everybody knows the famous and sort of every athletes are saying oh, it’s could be genetic

00:05:14 I was maybe gifted that certain predisposition. I worked really hard

00:05:19 but I think

00:05:21 something that

00:05:23 People don’t talk enough is when everybody sometime go, right? I

00:05:29 Was never afraid to try to go left and I felt many time trying to do things that were not

00:05:39 Known to be things that would bring me brought me success, but I tried it, you know

00:05:44 I was very often I was the first of trying new things and I felt many time but certain times

00:05:50 it gives me a certain advantage and

00:05:55 for example, I

00:05:57 was sometime fighting guys that add much better wrestling background and than me on paper and

00:06:04 nobody before that fought those guys never nobody had there to try to

00:06:10 Take them down because their wrestling pedigree were so good and I didn’t have on paper

00:06:16 the wrestling pedigree to take these guys down in a fight, but when everybody

00:06:23 Tried to go right I was going left I fought them in a different way and that was

00:06:29 The blueprint to beat certain some of these guys, you know what I mean? You know what I mean?

00:06:33 So yeah, so we’ll actually talk about a few fights where that you did just that this is fascinating

00:06:38 But let’s say at the high level so Gordon again sticking on fashion

00:06:42 I may compliment your incredible badass hat trying to fit in here

00:06:48 We should say we’re in Texas now, so he’s

00:06:52 Become a Texan overnight. So what is there something you can speak to that you would attribute to as the key to your success?

00:06:58 yeah, so first of all, it has to be a role where you don’t ask us all those same questions because

00:07:03 How am I supposed to compete with the answer? John just gave

00:07:06 There’s nothing I can do that’s gonna top that. Yeah, but uh, I think it’s uh, there’s many things

00:07:12 But I think the number one thing is just is John

00:07:14 When I came in, I was a blue belt and I was beating brown and black belts in competition already

00:07:20 But he really changed my way of thinking about the sport

00:07:23 I would just come in and if something wasn’t working

00:07:25 I would just do it harder and faster and more aggressively and that just degenerated me into a degenerated into me

00:07:33 spastically knee sliding into cross hashi garami against Eddie Cummings for six months and then just getting heel hooked repeatedly and

00:07:39 I’m like, this is not working and Eddie like when I met him was like a chubby

00:07:43 Librarian looking guy and I’m like, there’s no I’m like six to like a jacked like 170 and I’m like

00:07:48 There’s no way I’m losing to a guy who looks like this, but he just kept heel hooking me

00:07:52 So I would just go harder and harder and it wouldn’t work and then John’s like well

00:07:56 If you learned leg locks, you might you might have some more success

00:07:59 And then I was like, yeah, that probably makes sense

00:08:02 And from then on I kind of just changed the way I thought about the sport instead of doing doing things harder

00:08:07 I would actually try to get better at jujitsu. Do you remember like a turning point where?

00:08:13 You became as opposed to being mediocre not just in technique but an approach to

00:08:20 To great. Um, I think it was somewhere around brown belt level when I was training consistently

00:08:26 So I trained full time with John when I was purple belt mid level purple belt and towards the end of my brown belt

00:08:32 Days, I was beating up like legitimate like ADCC champions in the gym. Um,

00:08:38 so I think like

00:08:40 Brown to black belt was a big thing for me

00:08:42 And then when I won my first EBI and I was I submitted Yuri who won ADCC and I beat roost them

00:08:47 Um, so I think that was like my turning point as a competitor

00:08:50 But I think I started to to reach world level a little bit before that

00:08:54 I think somewhere around brown belt mid level to late level brown belt

00:08:57 It was some of that mental like it was there a moment when you like after a training session you realize

00:09:03 I can actually do this

00:09:05 Like I could be at the top of the world world class

00:09:09 The critical moment for me was when I think it was right

00:09:12 Right when I got my black belt, maybe a few months before I got my black belt

00:09:16 we had a former ADCC champion come into the gym and

00:09:20 we did a hard round together and I think I submitted them like four or five times and

00:09:24 No one knew who I was. I never won anything up into that point and I was like, okay

00:09:29 Like if this is like one of the best guys in the world and I could submit him multiple times around

00:09:33 I think that this is like something that I actually could do professionally and make a make a career out of this

00:09:40 Okay. So the actual performance was the like you don’t need to believe before you could perform like a lot of Olympic gold medalists

00:09:50 They have to believe before they can perform because like they’re getting their ass kicked for a long long long time

00:09:57 I think but the best way for me to believe in something is to have

00:09:59 Repeated success doing it against high level guys

00:10:02 Like I’m not gonna just believe I can do a double leg if I can’t a double leg on anybody

00:10:06 So for me the the belief came from the repeated success in the gym

00:10:10 Yeah, but to get to the point where you’re submitting somebody like your ASMO is like one of the the greatest grapplers ever

00:10:17 It’s like a long journey

00:10:19 Yeah, but I had the confidence

00:10:21 I had the belief in myself because of the success that I had in the gym prior to that got it

00:10:26 Even and it’s one step at a time first. It’s the brown belts then it’s the black belts and it’s world class. Okay

00:10:32 George was there a turning point for you when you you thought like I can actually do this

00:10:37 Yes, I I always dreamed to become champion

00:10:42 but I think the turning point that there was that there was two turning point and

00:10:46 And there were my two losses

00:10:50 First my losses to Matt Hughes I went into that fight

00:10:56 Just to not lose I was not fighting to win and it’s after the fight when I watched the

00:11:04 Replay of the fight. I realized I was like I was doing pretty well

00:11:08 But during the fight in my own mind, I was not seeing it that way

00:11:12 I I thought I was getting dominated by Hughes like a hundred percent, but when I watched the replay I

00:11:20 Was like man, I can I can beat this guy. I was beating him until I made that stupid mistake

00:11:27 so I was very frustrating but but I

00:11:31 That’s what gave me the mentally the the championship level

00:11:36 mentality and then I became a little bit overconfident because I start beating everybody after that and

00:11:45 Start to believe the hype of people when they look at me. They were like, oh, he’s the new

00:11:51 Upcoming superstar and he’s gonna be unstoppable and and then when I became champion, I I

00:11:58 lost to to to Matt to Matt Sarah, so

00:12:02 before I believe

00:12:04 my first failure was because I had a lack of confidence and

00:12:10 My second failure was I was because I was overconfidence. So I think it’s there’s a perfect

00:12:18 Center of confidence. I mean, I mean it’s good to be confident because John taught me like confidence

00:12:23 It’s it’s like money in your bank account if you you can have all the skills in the world, right?

00:12:28 and and if you’re

00:12:30 If you don’t have the confidence, it’s like you it’s like you can you can be a millionaire?

00:12:35 But you don’t have access to your bank account. So it’s that’s a little bit the analogy that John told me

00:12:40 So that’s how I feel a confidence plays for Natalie but to be overconfident

00:12:44 I think it’s always good to to be aware to be afraid of what can happen

00:12:50 So to have a perfect balance of confidence and fear to me

00:12:56 That’s what mentally gave me the edge to become I believe successful in my sport playing off that

00:13:03 John gave me a speech one time and he was like you have to be able to

00:13:08 like flip a switch and turn it off where like a guy like Mayweather or someone who goes out who’s super confident and

00:13:14 He plays the character of someone who’s like no one can beat me

00:13:17 I’m the best that there ever was and that’s it

00:13:20 But if you look at me actually trained very hard

00:13:22 You can’t you can’t play the persona of no one can beat me and have it translate into your life and just think that you’re

00:13:27 So good that you don’t have to do anything and no one can ever beat you

00:13:29 You have to be able to play that public persona of no one can beat me

00:13:32 But then you have to actually do the training to make that happen

00:13:35 You can’t just you can’t believe your own hype and say say that you know, I can just do whatever I want

00:13:40 No one’s ever gonna beat me if the able to switch between the persona and the actual athlete and that made a big difference for me

00:13:45 it’s tough because

00:13:47 like you’re you you dominate such a large fraction of the world and

00:13:53 grappling and

00:13:54 The George to just the perfect dominance after those two

00:13:59 it’s hard for the confidence not to just

00:14:03 Like how do you avoid the confidence not becoming a thing that weighs you down where you completely

00:14:09 deludes your mind

00:14:11 For me, it’s just number one the guys in the gym are so tough

00:14:15 So the guys in the guys in the gym that I train with are always like nipping at my butt and always giving me new

00:14:20 New problems to solve and for me, it’s really just about trying to learn new stuff over time

00:14:25 So that keeps it interesting for me and it’s not really about

00:14:29 You know, no one could beat me I don’t have to train or have to do it I could do whatever I want

00:14:33 It’s more what keeps me in the gym is more about the fact that I’m learning new stuff all the time of working on something

00:14:38 new and progressing to new levels at all times

00:14:40 it’s not I don’t just come in and do the same thing over and over again and

00:14:43 That gets boring you just come in and you don’t learn anything new and you just do the same stuff for years at a time

00:14:49 And okay, okay

00:14:50 This is boring

00:14:50 But when you have new stuff to work on and new goals short term and long term goals to reach then it makes it interesting

00:14:56 it’s a

00:14:57 For me, it’s a little bit like Gordon says is the fear because sometime in the gym even before I when it was competing

00:15:04 I was I was getting my butt kicked

00:15:06 But I don’t care what happened in the gym

00:15:08 I mean it hit my ego, of course because I’m a proud person I’m a competitor even in the gym

00:15:13 but it’s not a malicious competition competition in between each other when you fight you have to be malicious you go there to hurt the

00:15:21 but it it hit it hit me in terms of my pride when I get

00:15:26 beat in a gym, of course, but

00:15:29 that fear

00:15:31 That I don’t want it to happen in public

00:15:34 especially not during a fight that what keeps help me keeps the balance between confidence and and and and fear

00:15:41 You know what? I mean? It’s kind of weird. It’s a mix

00:15:44 It’s a mixture of both that I believe I to me

00:15:49 Help me

00:15:51 Succeed to have the right mindset to fight and I talk so much shit that I’m like man if I lose this

00:15:57 This is gonna be rough. So yeah, you put a lot of I mean

00:16:01 that’s that’s the hard thing to do when you talk shit when you when you play the heel is

00:16:05 Is so massive perform. He’s the pressure is I mean you have to be good under pressure

00:16:11 It’s the Conor McGregor thing, you know, the reason I actually started talking shit was actually like indirectly because of George

00:16:19 because

00:16:20 Because I will become the opposite of George

00:16:22 I won I won my first DBI and I I didn’t talk shit and everyone was like being like, oh, you know

00:16:28 you only beat Yuri because because he was tired or

00:16:31 you know this or that and if they have a rematch under any of the rules that he would have lost and

00:16:37 I’m like trying to figure out what I’m gonna do

00:16:39 So I’m strolling through George’s feed one day and he posted a clip of him beating someone and I look at the comments

00:16:45 And I’m with this in mind. I’m like George is the nicest person of all time

00:16:48 and if you look at the comments, it’s like 10,000 comments and like

00:16:52 9,000 and 900 are just people calling him like all you do is lay and pray you pussy

00:16:58 You suck you can’t finish anybody and I’m just like I’m looking at this and I’m like people are gonna say

00:17:03 What they’re gonna say regardless, they’re gonna talk shit regardless. So you may as well just say whatever you want and then just be yourself

00:17:10 Is there some aspect that’s I mentioned Conor McGregor. He he crossed the line with Khabib

00:17:17 At least in the eyes of Khabib

00:17:18 Is there something you ever regret about crossing a line or does that you ever feel like there’s a line?

00:17:24 Or do you just keep pushing the line?

00:17:26 Uh, I basically play it per per person

00:17:30 I just I basically fire back with like one step above what what they do. It’s always plus one. Yeah. Yeah, okay

00:17:38 So I go I usually go hard like they fire a bullet then I drop a Duke

00:17:42 And then and then after that initial shot then we go back and forth and I’ll just keep one upping them

00:17:47 So, you know, there’s a lot of people that love you, but there’s also a lot of people that love to hate you. Yeah

00:17:53 it’s so like what do those people like energize you or do you just

00:18:00 Or is it funny to you? Like what as an athlete as a performer? You should not think about them

00:18:05 It’s like a fun thing

00:18:06 It’s like it’s just like a fun thing that keeps me occupied

00:18:09 Like because like because most of them that like talk shit they like just say stuff that’s factually incorrect

00:18:14 So then I just argue with like actual statistics. Yeah, it’s just like

00:18:19 You suck or you’re not gonna beat this person. I’m like, I’ve already submitted that guy

00:18:23 Yeah, so I just it riles them up and it’s just it’s just a fun thing for me to do my my downtime

00:18:28 Yeah, your responses are usually very factual. It’s very scientific. I appreciate

00:18:33 Thank you. You actually you start by talking trash, but then you respond with science. Yeah, it’s great. Okay. It’s good mix. That’s a good mix

00:18:42 Mean a topic of haters are more specifically sort of doubts within yourself of doubts around you as you’re coming up

00:18:49 Maybe George you can comment. Oh, we’re just ignoring John completely in this conversation. I

00:18:58 Was gonna ask you another question, but let me just ask you on this on this topic

00:19:02 Are there times in your life yet?

00:19:04 You were surrounded by people that that doubted you all the time

00:19:08 And so what is there something you could say as in by way of advice how you overcome?

00:19:13 The doubt either yourself or others around you all the time the first time I

00:19:21 Manifest my desire to become a professional

00:19:24 Mixed martial art athlete everybody doubt me

00:19:27 Just not even I’m not talking about the UFC just to become a professional fighter

00:19:31 Everybody doubt me and I became a I became a professional fighter. I had few amateur fight

00:19:37 I won them all then I I fought my first fight in

00:19:40 In Montreal, I won and I became a professional

00:19:44 Then I I told people that I wanted to fight in UFC. Everybody doubt me again. So it’s a normal thing

00:19:52 So I work my way up beat a few guys then I at the time Pete Spratt was

00:20:00 just knocked knocked out Robbie Lawler with leg kick and

00:20:04 The person who was my agent at the time did a great move

00:20:07 For me, so he brought Pete Spratt in Montreal to fight me Pete Spratt came to Montreal

00:20:12 I and I believe he didn’t know who I was

00:20:15 So he thought that he was coming to collect an easy paycheck and I and I end up beating him

00:20:20 So that gave me the opportunity to fight in UFC

00:20:24 Then after I was in UFC, I wanted to become champion of the world, you know

00:20:27 but Matthews was there and he seems invincible at the time so

00:20:31 Everybody doubt me again, and I became world champion and after when you when I was world champion, I wanted to be I

00:20:39 was competing against other world champion of other weight class

00:20:44 For the title, you know for the legacy and everything. So it’s not no longer competing against my opponent

00:20:50 I was you know as a competitor you always you never wanted to be you never want to be satisfied because when

00:20:57 Satisfaction is the death, you know when you’re satisfied you better retire because it’s over

00:21:02 So always I have to find motivation what you can have more. I want more don’t be satisfied in life. So I wanted to be

00:21:11 Like the best, you know, I want as I was competing, you know

00:21:14 Like to become the best and and you know, of course that people doubt doubt you all the time

00:21:19 Every time you say something that it’s outside of the norm of the normality

00:21:25 I want to say there there’s nothing normal, but I’m talking about when you you manifest your desire to do something that

00:21:35 Special attribute to to to succeed or that is something that is hard to to do

00:21:40 It’s for sure you’re gonna always have people that doubt you it’s so strange that people don’t

00:21:45 They don’t lean into supporting like people that love you, too

00:21:48 yeah, even people that love me used to doubt me and I believe I I you need to use that as

00:21:56 Positive positive thing as a motivation to prove them wrong

00:22:00 Yeah, so for me that that was a thing when someone doubt me nothing gave me more

00:22:06 There’s more energy because I want to prove him wrong

00:22:09 I want to look at him in the face and say hey, you see I got you man. I I did it

00:22:15 John do you ever use this in one way or the other by saying I don’t think you can do this to motivate them to

00:22:21 prove you wrong or more general question of

00:22:25 You know the mental toughness required to achieve or confidence required to achieve greatness

00:22:32 Like what’s your role as a coach when you have these two athletes with regards to your your first question?

00:22:37 Would I ever say to someone you can’t do this as a kind of reverse psychology? I know

00:22:44 My job is to prepare people first and foremost with their skills and

00:22:50 as Gordon pointed out earlier if you’re

00:22:54 In any way a rational human being and you’re noticing that you’re getting tremendous success

00:23:01 with a given move in the gym against high level opponents who

00:23:05 Give a good read on what your actual opponent in a competition is like

00:23:09 You would have to be a moron to not

00:23:13 Recognize that kind of success and say this is something I should be building into my game and you will carry the confidence that

00:23:21 You earned in the gym into the arena

00:23:24 So I never try to use reverse psychology. I build up

00:23:30 Everything I do in terms of confidence is to give people physical skills

00:23:33 I know people say all this physicality on the one hand is mentality on the other and confidence is squarely in the the mental

00:23:41 Aspect of the game, but all the underpinnings and beginnings of confidence are physical

00:23:49 okay, a rational human being will see where they’re having success and where they’re having failure and

00:23:55 confidence will

00:23:57 Surround those areas where they’re having success and will degenerate in cases where they’re having failure

00:24:04 so my job as a coach is to set them up for success in the gym with a given set of skills and

00:24:10 I don’t have to do anything

00:24:14 psychologically after that I just

00:24:16 If I can set you up to be highly successful

00:24:19 With a given move or a set of tactics ten times in a row against quality opposition in the gym

00:24:25 I don’t have to do a damn thing when it comes to instilling confidence. I

00:24:29 Will tell people hey, you’re doing a really good job with that move. It’s working well for you

00:24:35 When they nod in agreement, I’m not trying to force anything on them

00:24:39 They’re recognized they or they already recognized that long before the words came out of my mouth

00:24:44 but on the other hand intelligent rational people will recognize when they’re failing with given moves and no amount of talk on my part can

00:24:52 ever change that if

00:24:54 I teach Gordon

00:24:57 a given arm lock and

00:24:59 15 times in a row. It tries it over a month and all 15 of failures

00:25:04 There’s nothing I can say verbally to come up to go and say hey, you’re really good at that move

00:25:08 He’s gonna look at me say bullshit

00:25:09 I’m terrible at it and that will create a crisis of confidence where Gordon no longer believes the words coming out of my mouth

00:25:15 So I will never compromise that but isn’t there a lot you just said 15 there you have to believe

00:25:24 Doing this arm lock 15 times over a period of a month is worth it because eventually you might get it

00:25:30 I think yeah, that’s a separate issue that that’s a separate issue

00:25:37 There are times where I’ve more or less pushed athletes to go in a certain direction for example

00:25:45 When I first met Gary tone and he never had a guillotine

00:25:47 Strangle and I I would say don’t carry, you know, you’re a scrambler

00:25:51 like one of the greatest weapons of scramble can ever develop as a guillotine like it should be in your arsenal and

00:25:58 He was like, yeah, I just grab off of the back and I said, well, there’s gonna be a day

00:26:02 You can’t take someone’s back and it’s always good to better strangle from front and back

00:26:07 Okay, of course, we all prefer a strangles on the back that makes sense

00:26:11 But there’s gonna come a day where it’s gonna be useful for you

00:26:14 and so that was one of the few times where I put my foot down and said you’re learning this shut the fuck up and

00:26:20 Like literally wouldn’t teach him any anything else until you got a guillotine. Yeah, Gary like asked him a question

00:26:25 he’s like, let’s say you’re guillotine and

00:26:29 For the first three months as gifted as as Gary tone it is and learning most moves most moves Gary gets it like

00:26:36 in minutes, there was something going on with Gary just couldn’t get a guillotine on people and

00:26:42 Finally after around three months, he started having some success until ultimately became one of his best weapons

00:26:50 We had to go through like 15 different variations of guillotine

00:26:54 until he found one which actually worked reliably for him and

00:26:58 That was one of the few times where I put my foot down and said no

00:27:01 Do you have to learn this the long search had to do more with the physical characteristics?

00:27:06 I couldn’t figure out the right like it made sense. It made sense in the case of Gary tone because there were more opportunities per minute

00:27:12 Of his grappling for guillotines

00:27:15 The investment and time was worth it for another athlete. I might have said well

00:27:19 He hardly ever gets in the situation the front headlong so guillotine so it’s not even worth investing the training time

00:27:24 Let me ask you a question on the on the competition side mentioned haters

00:27:28 And do you think about this aspect of the competition with athletes?

00:27:32 If there’s a great question and the answer is no

00:27:39 You can see that you could you couldn’t find two more polar opposites

00:27:45 psychologically than than George St. Pierre and this monstrosity on my left and

00:27:52 I’ve I’ve never said to my athletes. Hey, I think this is the sort of demeanor you should carry yourself with

00:27:59 I’m myself a very flawed character and I’m the last person on earth

00:28:04 Who should be delving out moral advice to other people?

00:28:08 The only thing is that I you know, of course, I believe some things are off limits

00:28:13 But as long as it’s done in the context of sport with no one’s physically attacking people or do anything crazy

00:28:18 Where it just goes completely over the top then I give almost zero

00:28:24 Moral advice to my athletes. I’m a jiu jitsu coach not a preacher

00:28:29 If I can if I may

00:28:31 We are entertainers

00:28:34 You know, we’re athletes or professional athletes, but we make

00:28:38 We make a living because of people or want to see us perform

00:28:44 Same thing an actor or something a singer and a lot of the time

00:28:49 especially in the fight game

00:28:51 An event is promoted. It needs to be with emotion

00:28:58 Love me hate me, but do not ignore me

00:29:04 You know it

00:29:05 when it’s authentic and

00:29:08 It’s done. Well, I think me my personally my my favorite fighters to watch are the one that are that

00:29:14 That I that have a sort of some sort of a bad persona

00:29:18 I really enjoy watching those guys because

00:29:22 They bring an emotion element into a fight, which is great

00:29:26 You know, I I feel to me it’s more interesting to watch when there is an emotion involved and I believe that’s why

00:29:34 Some fighters make more money than others, you know, you know what I mean?

00:29:38 They would that’s the reason why we may we can make a living out of this

00:29:41 Yeah, they’re better entertainers, but you’re right. The authenticity seems to be really important. There’s actually something very interesting there

00:29:47 It’s time to break out some some secrets

00:29:52 Do you know who like you think of George St. Pierre you think of like the highly technical polished

00:29:58 Martial artists. Oh, this is gonna be great. Do you know who his favorite fighters to watch were?

00:30:06 You’d probably be thinking of probably someone who’s really technically advanced

00:30:10 Actually, it was Mark Coleman. Oh, no, Kevin Randleman and Phil Barone

00:30:16 He used to love watching that was a hammer house. That was his favorite. He would love those guys and

00:30:22 whenever their fights were on georgie watching the hammer house crew and

00:30:27 It’s funny what you said about how those guys bought an intensity to

00:30:33 To MMA that was off the charts. Have you ever met those guys in?

00:30:38 And in their prime, let me tell you it was it was something to behold and

00:30:42 I had this crazy larger than life personality

00:30:47 Most of the things I did made no sense whatsoever

00:30:49 But I mean technically but that was their appeal and they were these guys and George loved to watch them more than anyone else

00:30:56 You never know what what could happen with these guys. I remember when Mark Coleman won the Pride Grand Prix

00:31:01 I was in my living room. I was jumping I was so happy. I was like, yeah

00:31:04 Yeah, he beat Igor Vorchevchin. That was like I like for to me. It was amazing. You know what I mean?

00:31:12 Because of the emotion that they brought into the fight George is actually very

00:31:17 interested by something you said that normally when I

00:31:21 Ask what is the appeal of a given fighter?

00:31:25 And what makes people watch a fight you talked about the idea that fighters entertain us and that’s absolutely correct that they are

00:31:32 It’s this weird weird industry where you’re you’re

00:31:37 Both an athlete and an entertainer and you need to be successful in both regards to become

00:31:43 financially successful insofar as

00:31:47 Your favorite athletes to watch at least were people who are almost like the polar opposite of who you are

00:31:55 I’ve always said that most people if you look at

00:31:58 Say a million people watch a pay per view event

00:32:03 What percentage of those million people have a genuine?

00:32:08 technical understanding of what’s happening as they watch a fight

00:32:12 It’s tiny

00:32:15 It’s absolutely tiny the vast majority of people who watch a professional fight have almost no

00:32:23 technical understanding of

00:32:25 What’s going on in front of them? So how do they relate to the fight? What’s the only way they can?

00:32:31 it’s through emotion and

00:32:34 So when they get a sense that these two don’t like each other then they can relate to the fight

00:32:40 But only a tiny percentage of people watching a given professional fight can relate to it on a technical level

00:32:46 The overwhelming majority will always form an emotional attachment to the fight

00:32:51 That’s why when you see things shows that USC primetime, they never focus on

00:32:57 tactics and the techniques of the fight they focus on the emotional elements the

00:33:01 Preparation the view of their own family members as athletes get ready

00:33:05 It’s always an emotional pull because that’s how 99 percent of the viewers

00:33:09 Relate to the fight if I haven’t think about chess, okay, if I have minimal knowledge of two world champions

00:33:17 Coming to fight each other in it or match up against each other in a game of chess

00:33:22 I know so little about chess tactics and I can’t really form any kind of technical

00:33:29 appreciation of what’s going on on the board

00:33:31 But if you tell me that these two chess players hate each other’s guts and they’ve got a rivalry which goes back five years

00:33:37 And they’ve said this and that about each other in public then suddenly on my ears break up and I’m like, oh, okay

00:33:42 This sounds interesting

00:33:44 because I just don’t have the the knowledge to appreciate what’s going on on the board and a chess game to be able to

00:33:51 to appreciate the

00:33:53 The technical nuances of what they’re doing. So any

00:33:57 Interest that I have in the chess match is going to have to come from some kind of emotional level because I’m just not qualified

00:34:03 To make technical assessments and that’s exactly how it is in the case of both grappling and mixed martial arts

00:34:09 That’s why the ones who evoke the most attention are always the ones who can form some kind of emotional appeal

00:34:15 Conor McGregor was the all time master of this. I

00:34:18 believe also

00:34:20 Emotion can be used as a weapon

00:34:23 For example, I’ve learned I’ve learned this from my favorite boxer is sugar a Leonard

00:34:29 Sugar a Leonard. I remember I was very young

00:34:31 So I watched his fight later when I was older, but I know that sugar a Leonard

00:34:36 Was the best boxer of his era to me personally and I don’t think nobody could beat him

00:34:43 I think it was skill skill wise it was the best. However, when he fought in Montreal Roberto Duran

00:34:51 Roberto Duran

00:34:55 Made it in a way that Leonard became very emotional he wanted to stand in front of Duran and

00:35:01 fight a different fight that that he normally does because he wanted to show that he’s a man and

00:35:09 He lost that fight, which was a mistake

00:35:13 Then later on he beat Roberto Duran in quite easy, you know, the if the fair everybody remember the no mask thing

00:35:21 but my point is

00:35:23 Emotion can be used in a way that it can make your derail your opponent out of his game plan

00:35:32 And I felt a lot of my opponent trying to do that with me. So that’s why I never got involved

00:35:37 that was my way to defend myself against

00:35:41 Some kind of bullying is to put like a like a shield in front but some other guy like

00:35:47 Gordon he expressed himself differently. Of course, there’s a language barrier, but for him he’s better

00:35:54 Given giving giving back that says he’s a better counter attacker, you know

00:35:58 that’s the way you respond to to to the aggression of

00:36:02 An emotional attack. I think everybody is different in that regards. What’s interesting that John said that he doesn’t

00:36:11 Study the tactics of this game or maybe you’re not interested in the tactics of this game

00:36:16 Because it seems like this is more than just being an entertainer

00:36:19 It seems like it could be an effective part of the match. Yeah, I just feel like whatever investment you make in that is

00:36:27 It’s going to get negligible rewards first of all, it’s probably only going to pertain to one match in front of you rather than the

00:36:33 totality of your career and

00:36:36 Whatever gains you get out of psychological trickery and play

00:36:41 Typically

00:36:43 Don’t last long you you’ve raised an excellent example with sugar rate Leonard. He did fight outside of his usual

00:36:51 manner in that regard, but rather than me try to tell someone hey

00:36:56 Behave like this before a fight

00:36:58 I would have been probably more forceful between rounds with an athlete and say no

00:37:02 No, you’re fighting this fight the wrong way and that would have a much

00:37:08 beneficial impact on my athletes and

00:37:10 Psychological trickery before a fight. I believe another example of

00:37:16 Emotion that leads to failure is a

00:37:19 Jose Aldo against Connor McGregor. I think it was it was on purpose that Connor McGregor

00:37:26 Did this try to bait Aldo to become over aggressive to open himself because he’s an excellent counter puncher puncher

00:37:34 That’s what I believe. It made a mistake

00:37:36 There’s another great one my match against cyborg

00:37:40 2018 no gi worlds where he didn’t even try to win

00:37:43 He just like wanted to smack me in the face the whole time cuz he was so angry

00:37:46 I was talking shit to him before the match and

00:37:49 It was like the finals of the absolute it was like the biggest

00:37:52 Match of the weekend and he just didn’t even try to pass my guard or do anything

00:37:55 He just wanted to hit me in the face and I was like sick. I just won

00:37:59 It was incredibly fresh. It’s fascinating to watch like a grown man sort of lose

00:38:04 composure

00:38:06 Gordon one thing I’ve always been very impressed with you and that’s

00:38:13 No matter how heated talk gets

00:38:17 Before a match with you when you go out to grapple. You’re absolutely cold

00:38:22 Like I’ve you’ve never gone into a match

00:38:26 carrying anything other than just cold blooded calculation and

00:38:30 You’ve always been able to separate very well the idea of words and deeds. And I think that’s always been one of your

00:38:39 One of your strongest assets a way I often measure this is when a match is over

00:38:44 I will ask the athlete questions about the match and

00:38:49 If they can’t answer the question, what were you doing in the fourth minute? Okay

00:38:53 What was that set up you used in in the third minute?

00:38:56 They got you into the Kimura law if they can’t answer that that tells me they were just fighting on instincts and emotion

00:39:03 But with Gordon, it’s like a logbook

00:39:07 It’s like okay in the seventh minute you went for that

00:39:10 Judy Gatami set up from from on the left side

00:39:14 What were you thinking? He can always give an answer. He’s absolutely stone cold

00:39:20 Speaking of emotion

00:39:22 Speaking of emotion Gordon you will potentially if you’re healthy face Andre Galvao and the ADCC

00:39:31 coming up super fight

00:39:33 Who is Andre Galvao for people who don’t know? Can you tell the story of your beef with?

00:39:39 The the emotional interaction with a man. Yeah, so Andre is

00:39:45 He’s considered the greatest ADCC competitor of all time

00:39:50 multiple time black belt world champion

00:39:52 winningest ADCC champion ever he has six six gold medals and

00:39:57 I’ve been trying to compete against him

00:40:00 Pretty much forever like since I got my black belt in 2016. I’ve been trying to get matches with him

00:40:05 he was in the first DBI that I did and he ended up pulling out and that I’ve been trying to get matches with him and

00:40:12 He would always say no and give one reason or another and then

00:40:16 After the last ADCC, I was like, hey Andre said he was retiring after this after this

00:40:23 This competition so if he wants to retire, you know, he’s he’s the greatest ADCC competitor of all time

00:40:29 And I think it’s great. But if he wants to compete and that’s great. I was like super nice and then he started like

00:40:35 posting like passive aggressive Instagram

00:40:39 Captions and

00:40:41 then we started going back and forth in the internet and there was like one point where I saw him in person when he

00:40:47 Acknowledged he’s like I understand like what you’re doing like we’re gonna pump this fight up and he was like totally on board

00:40:52 but then there must have been something that happened where like it changed from like him like going along with it to being like

00:40:57 Actually pissed and then there was that one night at flow where I went to go shake his hand

00:41:01 I mean he flipped me off and then he followed me backstage and started to try to fight me and then I smacked him and

00:41:07 Then he didn’t want to fight anymore and then we’ve been going back. He’s actually blocked me on Instagram now

00:41:13 So he just won’t engage no one from Atos will engage now

00:41:17 But it’s gonna be interesting how he how he shows up if he can keep it under control or not

00:41:21 Do you think how do you explain that level of emotion? Is this fear of losing your throne?

00:41:26 Is it or is it just a human being like with the cyborg just

00:41:31 Just becoming emotionally unstable. Well, it might just be me

00:41:34 I just have a way to get and get under people’s skin. It’s just I don’t know

00:41:38 He’s he’s he was he was cool for a while and then I just I don’t know it just

00:41:43 Then everyone gets like this. They’re all so emotional by the time they actually step up to compete that it’s pretty easy to read them

00:41:48 They’re either so emotional that they want to actually come forward and and beat me like like Tim Sprague’s is a perfect example at

00:41:54 ADCC I posted like

00:41:57 On my story on Instagram like ten minutes before a match

00:42:00 I said like what I’m gonna do to Tim Sprague’s is gonna be criminal and he’s like a very stally guy and he came

00:42:06 He saw that and then he came out and actually tried to fight me

00:42:09 Like he came and actually engaged my guard and I ended up submitting him

00:42:12 So it either has that effect or it has the effect where they know I’ve talked so much shit leading up to the match

00:42:17 That they’re so afraid to lose that they just get super stally and they move away

00:42:22 So either has one effect where they come forward and they want to they want to beat me beat me or they want to just

00:42:26 They’re so afraid of getting submitted that they know if they engage they’re super cagey and they just back away and don’t really do anything

00:42:32 Do you think this match happens?

00:42:35 There’s a lot of variables and what I have to see how my stomach is and to if I’m actually gonna show up and compete

00:42:41 My stomach’s healthy. I doubt that Andre will actually show up to compete

00:42:44 I’ve been trying to compete against him for six years and he hasn’t done it

00:42:48 So there’s no reason to think he would now is it possible for you to speak to where like your estimates are about your stomach?

00:42:54 Or is it too unclear for now still too early to tell I have this round of treatment that I’m doing until late February

00:43:00 And I’m pretty sure that I need to do the same test

00:43:03 They did initially to retest all my levels and then go from there

00:43:07 So I’ve been feeling a little bit better. Like it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be

00:43:11 I was explaining to someone the other day like for the last four years

00:43:15 I would be so nauseous that every time I would walk into a new room

00:43:18 I’d have to actively locate a garbage can in case I have to throw up

00:43:22 So I’m like one step above that right now. I’m like doing a little bit better than that

00:43:26 So it’s definitely getting a little bit better, but it’s not it’s not where it needs to be

00:43:30 Can we talk about diet for just a sec because both of you George and and Gordon?

00:43:36 Like suffered from stomach issues different kind and have arrived for now for different places

00:43:44 so can you maybe George speak to

00:43:46 The general question of what is the best diet for performance for training like what have you learned through your career about this?

00:43:54 Well, I think everybody is different

00:43:57 to me personally

00:44:00 I implement fasting

00:44:03 Time restricted eating and and prolonged fasting

00:44:07 What’s the longest you’ve done so far? The longest I’ve done is five days. I do it quite often

00:44:12 I do I do four times a year. I do

00:44:14 three to five days

00:44:17 water fast

00:44:19 And I liked it. It helps me with inflammation. I think it boosts the immune system and

00:44:26 That this about the I read papers about about this and I it helps me also feel

00:44:33 Feel good. It’s kind of

00:44:35 Tera very therapeutic to physical and mental just mental

00:44:38 It meant mental and physical because when I eat my when I break my fast and I sit at the table with with other people

00:44:46 It doesn’t matter what I eat if we all eat the same thing. I always tell them

00:44:51 I said my food right now tastes better than all of yours, you know, because I you know, I I have that this

00:44:59 thing that I think I believe sometimes you need to put yourself into suffering to realize how

00:45:07 Pleasurable something is and I

00:45:13 Personally like diet wise I eat whatever I want

00:45:17 Whenever I want, I don’t I no longer have any problem with this

00:45:21 but if I would have a competition coming up like

00:45:25 Knowing that I what I know now about my body I would

00:45:29 orient myself

00:45:31 more towards an animal based diet

00:45:33 That’s because I’ve tried different things and that’s the kind of diet that I believe helped me

00:45:40 Having less inflammation and feel better in terms of performance for for for doing something physical

00:45:46 So high protein high fat low carbs

00:45:50 This is is different between animal based diet and keto. I mean there is carbs. There is a lot of fruit

00:45:57 I got a lot of the the carbs from the fruit

00:46:00 Okay, a lot of organs organs. I

00:46:05 Know a little bit about paleontology and in the past

00:46:10 About you a prehistoric human and and I I know that

00:46:14 And not not only about that. I know because I have travels a certain place in the world

00:46:19 I want to visit the Maasai in Africa the hunter gatherer tribe and I know that when they kill an animal

00:46:25 They go for the organs first and I know a pretty most predatory animal. They do the same thing

00:46:31 So organs I believe is something that normally in our culture in the western part of the world

00:46:37 We don’t really eat but it’s something that is very nutritious

00:46:41 Have you been able to convince Gordon to try fasting?

00:46:46 Talk about diets

00:46:48 It’s a different situation. I think for Gordon because he’s an heavyweight. He doesn’t want to lose weight

00:46:53 You know when the heavyweight the range of like my range was like I was a welterweight and middleweight

00:46:59 But the heavyweight it’s like some of the guys that you compete can compete against their it might be 300 pounds. So if you lose weight

00:47:07 It’s a it’s a big problem. You know what I mean?

00:47:09 So and there is things that will work for me that might not works for Gordon, you know

00:47:14 So we have to make his own experience and and I told Gordon sometime when everybody goes left

00:47:18 You try to go right see how you feel with certain things experiment

00:47:22 Not not a topic

00:47:25 That’s part of your optimization

00:47:27 Optimal performance formula. Well what I used to do before my stomach issues and for those of you listening who don’t know I had

00:47:34 recurring staph infections in

00:47:36 2018 and I took a bunch of oral antibiotics and it just completely wiped out my stomach

00:47:41 So I just was diagnosed. It was misdiagnosed as gastroparesis

00:47:45 So for those of you messaging me on Instagram who are just watching Rogan asking me about my gastroparesis. That’s not what I have

00:47:51 They misdiagnosed it and I did some other tests and for four years

00:47:56 I didn’t even know what it was and then I got this I went to this doctor in California who?

00:48:02 Diagnosed me with H. Pylori and then a fungal and a bacterial overgrowth in my small intestines. So the issues in the small intestines

00:48:10 so what I used to do was I used to do like

00:48:12 Seasons where I’d have a very clean season where I was competing and I would have a lower body weight

00:48:18 And I would do like an offseason kind of like a bodybuilder where I would eat a lot more food and a little bit

00:48:23 Dirtier food and I would have cheeseburgers and pizza at nighttime to have the extra calories

00:48:27 But now I can’t eat those foods because they upset my stomach

00:48:30 So now I pretty much just try to eat whatever I can and maintain the weight the best I can

00:48:35 Based on how my stomach feels. So right now it’s like rice chicken eggs fish

00:48:41 vegetables fruits and

00:48:43 Pretty much nothing else like anything hard to digest

00:48:45 Anything spicy red meat fast food all that’s all that’s hard for me

00:48:52 Which sucks because in Texas things? Yeah barbecue

00:48:57 And I mean this diet is really important for you John I can tell

00:49:02 Like is it is that something you think about for athletes at all again, that’s part of the I’ve to be honest with you

00:49:09 I’ve never seen any

00:49:11 measurable

00:49:13 Improvement in sports performance in jiu jitsu by change of diet. I do believe that diet is important for longevity and

00:49:21 Human beings and I do think it makes a difference, especially once you get past the age of 40

00:49:26 with regards longevity

00:49:28 For older athletes. I do believe it makes some difference. But my observation is in athletes and

00:49:35 In their youth and working up into their prime. I’ve seen athletes have the worst

00:49:42 God bless Travis Stevens for that guy won Olympic silver medal basically on McDonald’s and candy. Yeah

00:49:50 George St. Pierre for 80% of your career. You were powered by McDonald’s and coca cola

00:49:55 To Gina Alfredo. That was my yeah, my meal of choice before a championship fight

00:50:01 Gordon for him his youth was just five guys hamburgers Gary Tonin the same thing

00:50:06 I’ve worked with Japanese judo players who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and won Olympic gold medals

00:50:11 I’ve worked with Russian wrestlers who just ate

00:50:18 Whatever was put in front of them and their athletic performance was outstanding

00:50:24 I’ve worked with other guys who did have what would be considered a very clean diet and

00:50:28 Their performance was no better than anyone else on the mat. So I’ve never I’ve never seen someone say

00:50:34 Okay, I changed my diet and because of that there was a measurable

00:50:39 Improvement, you know in sports performance another way to phrase it though is I have noticed with a lot of lead athletes what they eat

00:50:47 They begin to believe that that either is not a hindrance or it’s actually good

00:50:53 Like Travis Stevenson is an example of somebody who eats shitty

00:50:57 Because he believes it’s like it’s like a power because whatever he’s traveling across the world

00:51:03 He can’t rely on healthy good food to be there

00:51:05 So I’m going to eat shitty so that that’s the like my body knows how to perform under whatever skittles or whatever

00:51:12 Everywhere’s got McDonald’s everywhere’s got McDonald’s

00:51:14 So that makes like and they’ve convinced themselves and you talk about Russian athletes. A lot of them have very

00:51:21 Strong beliefs about like this

00:51:24 Particular food being good for them, but there’s no agreement among them. Exactly. No agreement. Yeah

00:51:29 Yeah, so believe is more important than the actual time. Yeah

00:51:32 I’m sorry if I can after

00:51:36 You know after a night out when you’re hanging over I

00:51:41 Think the best thing and and I’m saying this and all certain sincerity

00:51:45 I think the best thing to eat to me was like like a cheese cheeseburgers with

00:51:51 We call that a puts in back home because it’s very fat. It’s greasy. So it up so the next day

00:51:57 When you wake up, I think you feel better because it absorbed the outcome. There you go. I’m

00:52:05 My mom told me the same story once and then I try it was like I was hung over for some party and

00:52:10 I woke up. I was like probably I don’t know 19 or 20 I woke up and

00:52:15 My mom’s like, yeah, just have it have a cheeseburger go go eat something greasy and I did and I was like

00:52:20 Oh, I feel kind of better now. I do not know that science the exact science behind it

00:52:25 but I I always notice and I don’t know if it’s placebo, but I always notice that if I

00:52:32 I’m if I party hard and I’ve been drinking a lot

00:52:35 If I don’t eat before I go into bed if I don’t eat

00:52:38 Shitty food the next day will wake up and feel worse than if I eat shitty food. I feel better

00:52:44 I know it sounds crazy. I don’t know why but it works for me

00:52:47 Yeah, but it’s also hard to do science on extreme performers so the discussions we’re having is amongst the very

00:52:53 You know that this might not apply to a general like recreational athlete, but for the elite

00:52:59 I’ve just seen champions in every kind of combat sport and I’ve never seen a

00:53:04 Correlation between dietary habit and performance and people under the age of 30. I do believe that diet is important for longevity. However, and

00:53:12 For that alone it may well be worth investing time in it

00:53:16 But with regards sports performance at least in jiu jitsu, I’ve never seen any significant difference

00:53:21 Well, we had a little bit of a difference of opinion on this

00:53:25 I think what about strength training and muscle building or at least we had a discussion about this

00:53:29 So what do you believe is the value of?

00:53:33 Of you know training outside of the sport so fitness

00:53:38 Lifting heavy lifting explosive all kinds of lifting

00:53:42 Personally for me, I believe and I’ve learned that from from John

00:53:48 I used to do like

00:53:50 To train like a bodybuilder before because I thought in my early days of competition

00:53:56 That was the most efficient way to do things to because it was like I was watching Jean Claude Van Damme

00:54:03 Arnold Schwarzenegger, we thought back back in the day. That was the thing

00:54:07 That that’s how we should do it, you know for to get ready for a fight

00:54:12 But I realized later on

00:54:15 That it’s all about efficiency and some guys they don’t lift at all and they’re doing pretty well, so I

00:54:24 Do cross training mostly for longevity

00:54:28 It’s mostly for a therapeutic

00:54:30 Like a therapy. It’s more therapeutic than

00:54:33 For performance is to keep my body healthy to do a certain movement that are different than what I do every day in the gym

00:54:40 in combat sport to keep me

00:54:44 Healthy and and athletic so all the interesting movement stuff that you’ve done outside the sport that was for

00:54:51 Therapeutic mostly therapeutic. I think it does it could

00:54:55 Transcend to performance, but it’s mostly therapeutic. I do not believe that

00:54:59 Squatting five plates or bench bench pressing three plate will make me a better fighter

00:55:06 I do not I believe actually it could hurt me more. It could damage me more than than benefit me

00:55:14 Gordon as somebody who on instagram posts

00:55:18 A lot of pictures of you being shredded and huge

00:55:21 What’s the value of of strength? So I do like a combination

00:55:25 John got us big into like gymnastics type movements like toes to bar and muscle ups and things like that when we were young

00:55:33 Like toes to bar because that’s like the exact motion you have to do when you’re retaining guard it needs to chest

00:55:38 So I do a lot of that stuff

00:55:41 In combination with I do a lot of

00:55:43 Opposite of george. I do a lot of bodybuilding workouts

00:55:46 Where I do like a basic split like a chest to chest

00:55:50 Triceps back and biceps day. Um, and my idea is that

00:55:59 Weight lifting should always be a supplement to jiu jitsu. So you shouldn’t be missing a jiu jitsu session to lift weights

00:56:06 So I don’t do I do probably I train jiu jitsu every day and I lift three to four times a week

00:56:12 Um, I feel like lifting seven days a week for me is is too much and the lifting takes a lot of energy

00:56:17 When you do like hard lifts like that, um, but my idea is if you want to get good at jiu jitsu

00:56:21 Do jiu jitsu and if you want to be bigger and stronger lift weights and uh, and eat food and um,

00:56:29 I I generally don’t go super heavy when I lift because you start putting crazy weights then start tearing muscles and stuff

00:56:35 Um, so I usually do moderate weights with a with a very high rep rep range like four sets of 20 with

00:56:39 a drop set at the end to fatigue the muscles break the fibers and

00:56:44 Okay, so four sets of 20 that’s interesting. So that that’s more for endurance and raw strength

00:56:50 yeah, and also I think

00:56:52 close to the competition i’ll pick the intensity up and

00:56:56 While there’s no real way to get significant gains in vo2 max. I think that lifting

00:57:02 And just getting used to mentally redlining

00:57:05 Um gets me kind of in competition shape because a lot of times in jiu jitsu the guys i’m training with

00:57:11 They’re not on a technical level

00:57:13 where they can

00:57:14 Physically exhaust me to the point where I feel like i’m going to die

00:57:17 But uh, I get most of that like when i’m wrestling because i’m not as efficient in wrestling

00:57:20 So I get a lot more tired

00:57:22 Um and lifting when you do like if you do like four sets of 20

00:57:26 Leg press to squat and you go back and forth like you’re like about to die at the end

00:57:30 And I think I feel like gets me in the mental habit of redlining before competition. But does muscle help you?

00:57:37 It’s like the actual mass of muscle

00:57:39 Like the actual mass of muscle like this. So I think being stronger will always help in a combo will always help. Yeah

00:57:44 To some degree. It’s not going to be to a degree where

00:57:50 It overrides efficiency, but I think that

00:57:53 It can’t help being strong or can’t hurt being stronger. There’s a bunch of people who believe depending on the sport that

00:58:01 The strength can quickly become a

00:58:04 That have detrimental effects to efficiency

00:58:06 Yeah, like I agree that certain kind of I mean if strength is purely is like very cleanly

00:58:13 Purely applied to the exact movements of the sport. So in judo the explosiveness you need

00:58:18 Is very difficult to replicate in any kind of way except by doing judo. Yeah, I mean

00:58:24 for us, uh

00:58:25 You always have to understand there’s only so much technique that can overcome a certain amount of strength

00:58:30 Like if we all try to fight a silverback gorilla, it’s gonna kill us

00:58:33 Um, but that that being said, um, I do think that

00:58:37 Like for example heavyweights are usually the least technical because they rely on their size and strength to beat smaller people

00:58:45 Um, but I think that if you stay with this with the discipline of doing everything very precise

00:58:50 And I train with a lot smaller people most of the time so I get out of the habit of using uh using my strength

00:58:56 Um, I think if you’re very precise with the way that you train I think that the the extra size and strength can help you

00:59:02 A quick question. How would you fight a silverback gorilla?

00:59:07 I mean, is there which animal do you think you can actually defeat that would be impressive that most people would say you can’t

00:59:14 you know, I actually

00:59:16 I don’t have an uh an answer to this

00:59:17 I thought you were gonna say I want I want I want to say that me and john had like a four hour discussion on

00:59:23 This one time i’m like, what would win bear or gorilla?

00:59:26 Uh, and he went into like this whole dissertation about how like jaguars spin underneath and like berimbolo silverbacks and kill them and like rip

00:59:33 Their rip their artery and their legs out. It was amazing. I guess. Okay, so before we talk about strength john, let me ask you what

00:59:40 Do you think people would be surprised by if two animals faced?

00:59:44 One of them would win and people wouldn’t predict that

00:59:47 So they would be surprised by the effectiveness of certain animal at fighting in the whether it’s in the forest in the jungle

00:59:53 So let’s slow down here. Okay, so there’s two animals of different species fighting

00:59:59 And and most people would pick

01:00:03 So for example, the lion gets a lot of credit for some reason i’m not exactly sure why the king of the jungle

01:00:09 well, I

01:00:10 You know a lot of people told me that the lion

01:00:13 for example, the tiger can

01:00:15 Be a lion. Yeah, this is one of those age old debates

01:00:18 It’s okay. Yeah. Well in grappling in fighting it feels like some animals use

01:00:25 And some use other parts of their body also like bear actually, I don’t even know how they

01:00:33 They have extraordinarily powerful

01:00:35 And long claws and in addition, they’re powerful biters as well. So I wonder and the same with the silverback

01:00:43 I don’t know how much they’re I love that we’re having this discussion

01:00:45 I think we need joe rogan for this discussion. I think so. Yeah, I think so. Um, so

01:00:51 Your your question has gone in about five different. So it started with strength. Uh, and let’s go back there, which is

01:01:00 Do you think for for an athlete in jiu jitsu? Let’s let’s stick to grappling

01:01:05 All right. Do you think strength strength is helpful or detrimental? Uh, i’ve always believed that

01:01:11 two things will

01:01:13 Uh create whatever

01:01:15 Whatever effectiveness you have in grappling those are your skill set and your attributes

01:01:22 And the best athletes are those who excel in both

01:01:26 Don’t kid yourself if someone gets twice as strong

01:01:30 By some kind of magic potion they’re going to be a more effective grappler if someone gets

01:01:36 Twice the level of endurance that they had previously they will be a more effective grappler

01:01:40 These physical attributes have a very important outcome on the uh, sorry

01:01:46 A very important effect upon the outcome of matches

01:01:49 Um, it’s always a good thing to be stronger. It’s always a good thing to have better endurance

01:01:54 It’s always a good thing to have better balance or whatever other attribute you throw out there. Um

01:02:00 Gordon’s point was okay. Everyone agrees on that but there’s a problem in order to build these things

01:02:06 You have to carve into other elements of your training regimen and then it becomes well, which becomes more important

01:02:14 increases in strength or increases in skill

01:02:18 There comes a point where

01:02:21 Investing in strength training starts to get diminishing returns

01:02:25 I can’t tell the difference between someone who bench presses

01:02:28 300 pounds on the mat versus someone who bench presses 400 pounds, but that’s a big difference

01:02:34 That’s a hundred pound difference and for an athlete to go from bench pressing 300 pounds to 400 pounds

01:02:39 That would require a great deal of uh of training effort and focus

01:02:45 But if I can’t tell the difference when I grapple and then why bother?

01:02:48 Okay, once you get to a certain strength level

01:02:51 It doesn’t really help that much to go from a 400 pound bench press to a 450 pound bench press

01:02:56 If that’s the stage you you’re really getting a diminishing in returns on your training investment

01:03:01 um now skills on the other hand

01:03:05 Experience far far less in terms of diminishing returns every new skill you develop

01:03:13 can translate

01:03:15 Very very well into big increases in performance. Look at the example of gary tonin that we talked about earlier

01:03:20 investments in guillotine

01:03:23 Made a significant improvement in his uh effectiveness in matches and led directly to some of his most important victories

01:03:31 But if he had invested the same amount of training time in

01:03:35 Developing a bench press that was 25 pounds more than previously that would have had no outcome no

01:03:40 Influence on the outcome of those matches

01:03:42 So the question always becomes yep. Everyone acknowledges that these physical

01:03:47 Attributes are important and everyone understands that becoming stronger or fitter is a desirable thing and every athlete should work on them

01:03:56 The interesting question becomes okay at what point?

01:04:00 Do you start to say i’m not going to be helped by further increases?

01:04:05 in in strength training or endurance training, um

01:04:09 And my point with my athletes is in the overwhelming majority of cases

01:04:16 If there’s any kind of doubt invest more heavily in skill training than attribute training

01:04:21 Especially once you get to a certain level on the attributes

01:04:24 Well, the interesting thing that I think you should account for with strength training

01:04:31 There’s instagram

01:04:33 There’s the world. It’s uh, it seems to be more fun to build muscle mass

01:04:39 Um, it’s like an addiction that people have there’s also economic elements too

01:04:43 Like most people I I hate to say this but it’s true. Most people are more concerned with image

01:04:50 than function and uh

01:04:52 Uh, it’s hard to sell

01:04:56 A fighter or a jiu jitsu athlete who doesn’t look like one looks like fedor

01:05:01 Yeah, it’s a tough sell now

01:05:04 You can do it in fighting and jiu jitsu because ultimately it’s about whose hand is raised at the end of the match

01:05:09 And you could even use it as a selling point

01:05:11 You can be a guy that doesn’t look like he should be winning but he is winning that is a selling point

01:05:15 but if you give most people a choice between

01:05:18 Looking like arnold schwarzenegger and winning matches versus looking like fedor and when he matches most people will select

01:05:25 I wish I’d rather look like arnold schwarzenegger

01:05:27 And so most athletes feel almost like an economic compulsion to be in good shape and in order to advance their marketability

01:05:36 Yeah, nike’s not going to sponsor fedor or tank abbott. Yeah tank abbott

01:05:42 Fedor, maybe

01:05:44 Yeah, yeah, we need at the very top. There’s there’s something about uh aesthetic

01:05:49 Like image of strength and power. It’s also and also a personal thing if you look at yourself in the mirror

01:05:56 Do you like what what you see? You know what I mean? Yeah, you find yourself attractive

01:06:00 You know, what what can you do to make you look better?

01:06:02 And I think to me to me it was something that one of the reason I work out it’s also for for that

01:06:07 Well, i’m sure if fedor looks in the mirror. He says I look damn good today

01:06:11 Yeah, you could be too. It’s also a genetic factor some people, you know, it’s harder for them. I mean, yeah

01:06:18 All right. So the question on training you guys john gordon train

01:06:24 Often three times a day every day

01:06:27 um, georgia had a different like, um

01:06:32 a different approach to training so like what is uh

01:06:35 For for no, I don’t mean that in a kind of the opposite or something. It’s just not every single day

01:06:41 and obviously you are

01:06:44 legitimately at the very top

01:06:46 Uh in terms of performance accomplishment in the field. So what have you learned about?

01:06:53 What it takes to train to become not just the lead but the best well, I I um

01:07:00 A lot of people when you say train they they see training hard. I believe you need to be very constant

01:07:06 Uh, and uh, very disciplined you need to train but you don’t need to train hard every day

01:07:12 That’s what john, uh taught me

01:07:16 For me is the nervous system. Sometimes I feel if I load it up too much it comes to a point that you’re

01:07:23 It’s too much. There is no no more information that I can absorb

01:07:29 Uh, and I do believe that it’s something that you can train to your the capacity your capacity of being able to learn of

01:07:37 absorbing certain thing

01:07:39 and uh, I did a lot of volume of training but when I when I

01:07:44 Was getting ready for a fight, especially during sparring day

01:07:48 I like to do it quick because my when I fight it’s five round of five minutes

01:07:53 I don’t like to to spend

01:07:58 uh an hour or two hours in a gym because

01:08:02 I need to know how hard I can be

01:08:05 Going for 25 minutes, you know when I not for two hours for 25 minutes and at my last fight

01:08:12 john and I we we we

01:08:15 We were thinking of how could we

01:08:19 make me more

01:08:21 Of a better finisher, you know more opportunists

01:08:24 And then john I remember we we when we were training with gordon jake shill came gary tonin

01:08:30 my round of grappling were different than if I would be training for uh

01:08:36 Abu dhabi, you know for for abi or like some like in grappling the round or longer but

01:08:42 in a mixed martial art fight

01:08:45 it’s very rare that you’re gonna spend

01:08:48 more than

01:08:50 Four minutes or four minutes and a half on the ground. It’s it’s very unlikely. I mean it could it can happen but

01:08:57 Do you remember we did the round three minutes? We did all the round I was doing were three minute round

01:09:03 So it gives a different

01:09:05 Uh rhythm to the training it forced me to be more opportunist

01:09:10 To be more of a finisher because I had only three minutes to to do what I needed to do

01:09:14 So if I if I see something I need to to go for the kill right away. I cannot be too over patient

01:09:20 You know what? I mean?

01:09:21 And it it served me well in my last fight and I think it that’s a good blueprint to follow

01:09:27 um when you’re a mixed martial art fighter, I if I would if

01:09:32 the result was great and I think

01:09:36 Maybe I should have done that before it was a great great idea that we had not to do

01:09:41 Be very careful on doing too much volume

01:09:43 Yes, try to get out and then try to focus on finishing and getting getting out as quickly as possible

01:09:49 To build up your foundation. I believe you need a lot of volume

01:09:52 But when you get ready for a competition, you need some to be something that replicate

01:09:58 What you’re gonna be facing? What do you what are we talking about? What do you think?

01:10:03 Like is there rest days five days a week?

01:10:06 Twice a day once a day. Is there any one formula like that? I don’t know

01:10:09 This this I don’t I do not believe in overtraining. I believe in under arrest

01:10:14 I believe

01:10:17 You can be under arrest and

01:10:20 people

01:10:21 Always link that immediately to the volume of their how much volume they they train

01:10:27 Which it could be something else. How are you feeling? I’m emotionally. Are you you having uh,

01:10:33 Problems, uh personal problem. Do you have a have a hard time sleeping because you have a like someone died or I don’t know

01:10:41 Like you you hold money you’re broke or what like, you know what I mean could be anything

01:10:46 There is something that can affect you psychologically or emotionally

01:10:51 That made it in a way that you cannot sleep. Well because your your stress your cortisol level is high

01:10:57 You’re you know what? I mean all these factors need to be take taken in consideration. It’s not only about the volume of training people

01:11:05 always think

01:11:06 The volume of the training is the only thing that can affect

01:11:11 Recuperation which is not you know. Yeah, you have to minimize the amount of stress from all kinds of factors

01:11:16 It’s a very stressful job to be a professional

01:11:19 combat athlete whether you’re a grappler a boxer a kickboxer a fighter and you need to be taking

01:11:28 Into account is it more or less stressful than marriage? Just kidding

01:11:33 Uh next question, uh

01:11:37 So, I don’t know how to ask this question given what george just said but you’re training three times a day

01:11:45 And finishing

01:11:47 And what what have you learned about what what brings out the best in you as as the elite level grappler?

01:11:53 Um, so over the recent years have actually changed it up a little bit

01:11:57 um when I was

01:11:59 Coming up through from white to black belt

01:12:02 Uh, I felt that the volume was the most important so it would be anywhere from like three

01:12:09 To seven sessions a day

01:12:11 Um going from school to school from new york to new jersey. Um, and I think that the volume was very important to build the skills

01:12:19 um where I just

01:12:21 Didn’t know how to move my body at purple belt the way that I should. Um, so I think that building the skills

01:12:26 Is uh is super important. I think that early on volume is very important

01:12:31 Uh now that I already have the skills built. I think that acquiring more knowledge is the most important

01:12:36 Um, so I think that the volume is the most important

01:12:38 Is the most important um, so I find that if I do

01:12:43 So many sessions a day like if I do three sessions a day

01:12:46 Um, I feel sometimes by the third session i’m just like so mentally like there’s just there’s so much information

01:12:53 That’s went through my head the first two sessions that I feel like i’m not even there mentally on the third session

01:12:57 Um, so I feel like doing less volume now

01:13:01 But having more mental clarity per session is more important because I already have the foundational skills acquired

01:13:07 So a lot of your training is almost like

01:13:09 Just thinking like learning a lot of it. Yeah, so i’ll do like

01:13:14 I mean our schedule has been messed up since the pandemic because henzos got shut down

01:13:18 And they were using a french gym in puerto rico and now we’re using a french gym in our and in austin

01:13:23 Um, but once we have our own school

01:13:25 We’ll have a setup schedule where I can pretty much just be there all day long

01:13:28 But right now I do like a lifting session in the morning and then i’ll come in and help teach

01:13:32 At henzos, so i’m there mentally i’m seeing what’s going on and i’m playing around with ideas in my head

01:13:38 Uh, and then i’m there physically and very sharp mentally for the competition class during the 1 p.m

01:13:44 Session and then after that i’ll go home i’ll rest and get ready for the next day

01:13:51 What have you learned on seeing all these different athletes is there a

01:13:54 A universal rule that applies or is it um, athlete specific? Yeah, uh, first one thing

01:14:01 It needs to be addressed is that george and gordon play very different sports with very different athletic demands

01:14:09 Gordon can be in matches that range from anywhere from six

01:14:13 minutes to literally hours long

01:14:16 um as a result, uh the overall

01:14:20 Pacing and intensity of matches is massively different most obviously there is no striking in gordon’s sport

01:14:28 Um striking by its very nature is a much more explosive physical action than grappling is grappling is primarily an isometric

01:14:36 kind of uh sport based around isometric tension and endurance

01:14:40 um george’s sport is

01:14:43 It does feature a significant amount of isometric tension, but

01:14:47 The majority of it is based around explosion. So the physical demands of the two sports are radically different

01:14:52 different in addition the time of application is is radically different

01:14:58 George raised a very interesting point his matches seem long 25 minutes for a championship match

01:15:04 Um, but always understand it

01:15:07 It makes martial arts fight

01:15:10 at championship level

01:15:11 if it goes the distance is really

01:15:14 five five minute matches each round

01:15:17 Is a match in itself and that’s exactly how you’re scored. You’re scored by who wins the most matches over five matches

01:15:25 As a result the application of the techniques, especially the grappling techniques has to be done at a certain pace as george pointed out

01:15:33 realistically

01:15:34 the maximum application time you’re going to get in most situations is somewhere between

01:15:40 15 seconds and three minutes

01:15:42 Even for a specialized grappler like damien meyer. There’s still a significant part of each round which is

01:15:48 Spent in set up time to actually get the match to the ground

01:15:53 Um, it’s very likely that at some point your opponent will stand up out of grappling and you’ll have to reinitiate the entire process again

01:16:00 So that even for specialized grapplers, you might be spending only three minutes out of a five minute round

01:16:06 Uh on the ground and as a result, you’ve got to get your work done in a very short time frame

01:16:13 gordon ryan

01:16:14 Once it goes to the ground and it can go to the ground because he chooses to sit to the ground

01:16:19 Uh may spend the entire match in ground positions. Um

01:16:25 As a result the matches have completely different pacing and completely different physical demands and the preparation that the two athletes go through will reflect that

01:16:33 If george saint pierre in training for mixed martial arts becomes fatigued to a point

01:16:39 Where he’s no longer physically effective and able to defend himself the consequences for that in mma training can be very deep and deep

01:16:47 Okay, if you make a mistake in mixed martial arts because you’re fatigued and tired and you take a full power roundhouse kick to the head

01:16:54 That’s some deep consequences. A grappler doesn’t have to face that you can be completely

01:16:59 Exhausted and grappling and just sit in the bottom of the mountain. Just practice just survival skills

01:17:03 We just don’t get submitted from bottom out and that can still be an effective training session

01:17:08 complete and utter physical breakdown and fatigue can be

01:17:12 Can end an athlete’s career in mixed martial arts

01:17:16 the consequences of

01:17:18 training through fatigue and mma

01:17:21 Potentially very deep and very disturbing

01:17:23 Um, the consequences of training through complete physical exhaustion and grappling aren’t really that severe

01:17:30 Okay, you just tap whenever there’s a problem just tap

01:17:32 Um, and so they’re very very different sports in the way you you prepare for them

01:17:39 And a grappling

01:17:41 Athlete like gordon ryan, we can take

01:17:44 Many more liberties with physical exhaustion and the amount of hours a day you spend training

01:17:49 Than you could with a mixed martial arts athlete like that should be a benefit. Uh exhaustion as a

01:17:55 As a framework of learning so like from a place of exhaustion

01:18:00 Is there any benefit to the you on the you said being at the bottom of mouth sort of understanding?

01:18:06 Jiu jitsu or grappling somehow deeper because you’re physically absolutely

01:18:10 Absolutely, because then the only thing you have left in your favor is the training and the training

01:18:15 Absolutely, because then the only thing you have left in your favor is your technique and then you’ll see how technical you are

01:18:22 In addition you’ll get to explore realms inside your mind that we don’t spend a lot of time in

01:18:28 And you’ll learn a lot about yourself and your ability to endure which will

01:18:33 have uh

01:18:34 Potentially great benefits in similar situations and matches. Yeah, there’s uh, I mean for me for a recreational person

01:18:42 getting

01:18:43 Exhaustion allows you the great benefit to experience what it feels like to really get dominated

01:18:49 At an even greater frequency than you otherwise would

01:18:53 And there’s something there. There’s some animalistic thing. That’s very unpleasant

01:18:57 and then afterwards it takes you to a nice to a place of

01:19:01 like, um humility and

01:19:04 I don’t know you get it forces you to rethink life

01:19:08 in positive ways

01:19:09 There’s something about dominance. It can mean if you get dominated a few times you can uh, rationalize it somehow

01:19:17 You say okay

01:19:17 Well, I screwed this up

01:19:19 But with when you’re exhausted and you have to do like 30 minutes or 40 minutes or an hour of just being dominant

01:19:25 Over and over and over being submitted

01:19:27 It uh, I don’t know. It’s it’s a very good process for

01:19:32 For other avenues of life I find it’s I can’t explain why because i’m i’m

01:19:37 uh driving home crying afterwards listening to bruce springsteen, but afterwards

01:19:45 yeah, this

01:19:46 Afterwards somehow you can think clearer you can see clear about what is the right path through life in all walks of life

01:19:53 Like relationships work, but also the grappling

01:19:57 Actually, the grappling is the hardest one to see what you have to do

01:20:01 It clarifies other avenues the humility. It’s the it removes the bullshit

01:20:05 It’s like we see

01:20:07 The world through some kind of fog and it just removes it and now you can see things clearly. I don’t know what that is

01:20:14 I think I think it’s important like you mentioned to push yourself like sometimes

01:20:18 to see

01:20:20 How far you can go because sometimes you you can go further than where you think and it can boost your confidence

01:20:25 You know, you can push yourself through a certain limit

01:20:29 And maybe you thought your limit were was before that point and you push through it

01:20:33 But like john just mentioned

01:20:36 It’s a risky thing to do in

01:20:38 Striking because if you’re exhausted you’re gonna get brain damage

01:20:43 In grappling it’s you know, you tap if something wrong, but you can do it also in strength conditioning

01:20:48 I like to run track. I do it all the time and track and feel

01:20:52 it it helps me to

01:20:54 To to know myself better. I think it’s important. It’s a it’s a good point

01:20:58 It’s like it’s like the scrimmage wrestling rounds we do. It’s like, you know, if you stop moving

01:21:03 That you’re gonna get scored on and you know in your mind like there’s no mechanical reason

01:21:08 Why I am why I should give up a score here, but you’re so exhausted that you’re like, oh man, this is terrible

01:21:14 If I if I stop moving i’m a pussy

01:21:17 If I don’t stop move if I don’t stop moving i’m gonna be twice as exhausted when we actually do stand up

01:21:21 So it’s uh, it’s an interesting game. You have to play inside your mind. It’s it’s your

01:21:25 That keep you that keep you uh sharp, you know what I mean? Because you just want to lay down and beat it

01:21:31 Because you’re completely exhausted, you know

01:21:35 What do you think uh is the connection john between this ego pride thing?

01:21:41 Martial arts and actual violence in our with our ancestors. Do you think

01:21:47 You ever plug into that? Do you think that’s a good thing?

01:21:50 With our ancestors. Do you think you ever plug into that?

01:21:54 You think there’s echoes of something going on there or like you mentioned you have flaws and demons

01:22:00 Is it deep in there somewhere? Do you think we’re struggling with those demons?

01:22:04 Yeah, uh, you’ll need to patch up your question a little bit though. It’s going to say we’re different donations. Wow, that was

01:22:11 Not only might be dominating just I mean dominating interviewing. No, no, no, but i’m not

01:22:15 Patched up that question. Uh, it’s not brother seeing where they’re like, okay now we interview you

01:22:21 But you you went down the evolution

01:22:24 I mean, do you think do you um, I don’t mean just the line between what is what is martial arts and what is violence?

01:22:31 I mean there there seems to be a gray area

01:22:34 And that connects us to the the evolutionary ancestors. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I think there’s a deep

01:22:42 recognition in all of us that

01:22:44 um, and this is

01:22:46 The evidence for this is is so easy to uh to see in in in daily life. Um

01:22:54 If you’re walking down the street and suddenly you hear a commotion and two people are fighting

01:23:01 You will see literally everyone on that street stop whatever they’re doing and watch the fight

01:23:08 Humans are fascinated by violence

01:23:14 And you’ve got to ask yourself why and of course, it’s a recognition that for a significant part of our evolutionary history

01:23:23 Violence was one of the most important elements in human existence

01:23:29 As much as we curse it as much as we talk badly of it. Um

01:23:34 Um, the juxtaposition between humans social nature and their their need to for each other to get along and to express

01:23:43 love amongst the

01:23:45 the various members of a given community

01:23:47 there are

01:23:49 Disputes between humans that can’t be resolved and ultimately

01:23:53 throughout history violence has been the number one method of

01:23:57 conflict resolution

01:23:59 um for better or for worse and there’s a recognition in all of us that

01:24:06 This is where we come from and there’s a reason why

01:24:10 combat sports have this

01:24:12 thing where

01:24:13 People will watch them and they might even be repulsed by them, but they find it difficult to take their eyes from it

01:24:19 and um, uh

01:24:22 I do believe that most combat athletes carry that sense

01:24:27 of their

01:24:29 even if it’s on a subconscious level this kind of belief that

01:24:34 This is who we are. Um george used the word pride and I believe that’s a big part of it. I believe that um,

01:24:44 Humans have this sense of self worth and pride which they’re willing to fight for

01:24:49 And uh, if it gets crossed by someone else they’re willing to stand that

01:24:54 Some people will stand more early and some people will be pushed further back, but everyone’s got that

01:24:58 That line beyond which they won’t be pushed

01:25:01 And there’s some kind of deep recognition in all of us that we have that somewhere within us

01:25:07 No matter how hard we try to bury it or what have you

01:25:10 And that’s why I believe there will always be this eternal

01:25:13 interest in combat sports

01:25:18 I don’t believe that most people today have any kind of respect for unrestricted violence or

01:25:25 non consensual violence

01:25:27 um, I think most people most good people are repulsed by that now i’m

01:25:32 I’m sure that as humanity

01:25:35 Improves out into the future that will become more and more widespread

01:25:40 That’s not to say we we can’t exercise these these

01:25:44 old evolutionary demons inside of us and um, uh and

01:25:50 sometimes there are just disputes between different people different cultures different nations where

01:25:55 ultimately it’s going to come to

01:25:58 Into into a shoving match and that will degenerate further into violence. There’s always going to be

01:26:03 a need for humans to be able to

01:26:07 express themselves

01:26:09 Through violent methods and to use physical force to get to their their goals and objectives

01:26:18 Our need as humans is always to find a balance between

01:26:22 The two forces of conflict and cooperation

01:26:26 We need cooperation because humans isolated from each other are more or less helpless and useless

01:26:32 uh in order to

01:26:34 advance human communities need to build and grow

01:26:37 And so that sense of cooperation

01:26:40 occurs in most of our daily lives

01:26:43 But there will also be irresolvable conflicts where physical force has to be used to to form a resolution

01:26:49 more resolution and so most human beings find themselves

01:26:53 swinging like a pendulum between conflict and cooperation

01:26:57 and um, uh, and that is something which

01:27:02 Really gives birth I think to combat sports because sorry. I really have to ask you about this then. There’s a guy even harvard

01:27:10 uh named richard rangham

01:27:12 And there’s a lot of people that believe this he wrote this book that um

01:27:16 Um, basically, there’s a lot of people studying is what happened? How did we get from apes to humans?

01:27:21 Like what was the magic thing? Right a lot of people attributed to fire and ability to cook meat

01:27:28 There’s a lot of different theories

01:27:30 he actually um

01:27:34 His theory

01:27:36 How do I describe this is basically that that the beta males won?

01:27:41 that the the

01:27:44 Apes that were able to cooperate so you though the way you develop cooperation is that there’s a big bad leader

01:27:52 that uh, the the alpha male

01:27:55 that you can only

01:27:57 um knock off their throne if you cooperate

01:28:01 And so we build big tribes that just excel the cooperation by practicing the overthrowing the leader

01:28:07 and so and anytime an alpha male would rise up they would get would we would uh

01:28:13 Develop our skill further and further of cooperation

01:28:16 And so we’re all just beta males, uh, the descendants of beta males

01:28:21 that’s this uh kind of theory that cooperation is fundamental and it’s so distinct to the the rest of the

01:28:28 neighboring animal kingdom

01:28:30 So fascinating. I wonder what you think about this tension of violence of cooperation

01:28:35 And how important is this cooperation to the core of yeah, uh who if you you can look at it in the uh,

01:28:42 in a given training room, um

01:28:45 Jiu jitsu and mixed martial arts is solo sports a solo athlete steps into the cage or steps onto the mat

01:28:51 but all of your preparation is done in a cooperative training environment with many peers and

01:28:58 Uh as much as it’s an individual sport

01:29:00 All of your preparation is done in as part of a group. Um

01:29:07 There’s a sense in which uh

01:29:09 That’s an interesting metaphor for humanity itself everything we do in life. We do alone, but we grow up in this

01:29:15 Given community and and what have you?

01:29:21 With regards to the the whole alpha male beta male thing, um

01:29:26 Humans are it’s true. This fellow’s correct. We you know, most

01:29:31 Primates do have very strongly defined alpha males who rule the roost and determine the entire direction of the um, uh,

01:29:41 of of uh

01:29:43 The community they they build around themselves

01:29:48 Humans on the other hand

01:29:50 Don’t have an alpha male in that strict biological sense of someone who’s

01:29:55 Responsible for the next generation dominates all the female population, etc

01:30:01 Physically dominates, but we do on the other hand have our own version of alpha males insofar as we have political and sociological

01:30:09 Leaders who have a disproportionate impact on the direction of a of a community. Um

01:30:17 uh, so was the cooperation allowed us to

01:30:20 To have a greater scale of hierarchy with the alpha male on top or the alpha creature on top. Yeah. Yeah

01:30:27 No, that’s a fascinating theory

01:30:31 In in nature, we’re we’re very weak as a species

01:30:35 So we needed to cooperate cooperate in order to to evolve that I think

01:30:41 Made us uh, the the top of the food chain if you look at um,

01:30:45 Humanity in in nature, really the two things that seem to

01:30:52 More than anything else determine whether or not a given human community will be

01:30:58 Successful in a predatory world are numbers and technology

01:31:02 Okay, the more your numbers increase and the the higher the technology of the weapons and support systems you have around you the more successful

01:31:09 You’ll be in a predatory world

01:31:11 um, so it’s not clear that just killing off the idea of an alpha male was the

01:31:18 The the single biggest thing. Um, the rise of technology

01:31:23 Uh and the growth of community

01:31:25 After the imposition of language, these are other things that would have been

01:31:28 Very very important factors and and humanity’s rise george. You made an interesting point if you look at humans

01:31:35 Just the raw material of humans. We’re we’re

01:31:37 We’re fucking pathetic. We did and a predatory animal kingdom. We’re just the absolute bottom of the food chain

01:31:44 Um, we don’t have a single

01:31:47 effective

01:31:48 Weapon other than better than average endurance. That’s about it

01:31:53 But you put us in a community who can talk to each other with language and give us the time

01:31:59 To come up with technological advances such as metal

01:32:03 um, and suddenly a human will go from no combat effectiveness in the animal kingdom to a

01:32:10 A human armed with a simple metal tip spear can kill

01:32:14 damn near any animal in the uh,

01:32:16 In the animal kingdom and working as a group

01:32:19 I’ll beat your silver back. You know how i’ll fight him in a deep water pool because he cannot swim

01:32:26 So I don’t have to touch him

01:32:28 You’ll be in a

01:32:29 Because he cannot swim so I don’t have to touch him you’ll drown and I’ll get him into the pool

01:32:35 You know why because someone told me because we live in a community someone told me that information. So I know he passed it on to me

01:32:42 Yeah, he taught you

01:32:44 Well, you have to convince him to you have to somehow convince them to join you in the pool, which is very difficult

01:32:50 It’s very problem. Very very difficult. Um

01:32:55 From a

01:32:56 technical perspective john you’ve looked at

01:33:00 Martial arts fighting in general and grappling. What’s the difference between fighting and grappling?

01:33:05 That’s something i’d love to

01:33:07 Ask all of you. Maybe john you can start like, um, well, uh when you talk about fighting you mean unrestricted

01:33:14 Uh mma top type fighting. Yeah, it’s funny. You said unrestricted mma type fight mma type fighting

01:33:21 So there’s there’s this street fighting. Yep. Yeah, there’s mma fighting and then there’s grappling

01:33:27 It’s really the sport of grappling. You’re saying okay. What’s the difference between mma and grappling? Yes. Okay

01:33:32 Um, see that would have been a much better question to ask. Um, well the uh, uh the single

01:33:39 When you talk about grappling you’re talking about jujitsu rules or yeah

01:33:42 I mean you could maybe also mention different rule sets that somehow fundamentally challenge change the sport, you know

01:33:48 Um in the sport of mixed martial arts

01:33:53 You’ve got two

01:33:55 Ways to inflict damage on the human body. You’ve you’ve got kinetic energy which is done through striking

01:34:01 kicking knees elbows fists, um

01:34:05 and you’ve got

01:34:06 uh isometric tension used along the lines of

01:34:11 lever and fulcrum

01:34:12 Which can be used for strangulation and and joint breaking

01:34:17 In grappling you lose one of those you’re no longer allowed to hurt your opponent with kinetic energy

01:34:22 you can do it accidentally through a throw, but you’re not allowed to just

01:34:26 You know knock someone out with a throw in most grappling sports it can happen

01:34:29 But it’s relatively rare and it’s it’s not encouraged by the rule set

01:34:37 Yeah, you got close, um, uh, so

01:34:40 So there’s a sense in which in mixed martial arts you got twice as many problems to deal with and um, uh, and they occur

01:34:51 A much shorter time frame the single biggest difference between grappling technique as a weapon

01:34:58 In human combat versus striking technique is time

01:35:01 Grappling technique takes a huge amount of time to apply

01:35:06 The great advantage of grappling technique is certainty of outcome once you get there

01:35:11 It takes a huge amount of time to set up a takedown

01:35:16 Physically take them down

01:35:18 Work their way work your way towards a dominant position culminating in your opponent’s back and then apply a strangle hold

01:35:25 that’s a long chain of events as opposed to

01:35:30 A strong punch or kick which can take

01:35:33 A quarter of a second an application from start to finish and the match is over

01:35:39 and so

01:35:40 there’s a sense in which uh grappling is is it’s

01:35:46 It’s fighting for the patient and the calculating

01:35:50 Whereas striking is much more for

01:35:54 In this short time frame where everything gets done in the in the blink of an eye

01:35:59 There’s a sense also which grappling is a much more forgiving sport. You can make a terrible mistake

01:36:05 End up in a terrible position and still fight your way out and win

01:36:10 In mixed martial arts, it’s much much less forgiving

01:36:16 If you get hit and stunned your chances of recovery

01:36:19 Are minimal you’re going to get swarmed on and unless it’s right at the end of the round you it’s very very hard to recover

01:36:26 From getting hit and swarmed on. Um

01:36:30 uh, so there’s a sense in which

01:36:33 The biggest difference between them is time of application of technique

01:36:36 Uh in mixed martial arts, it’s incredibly unforgiving in terms of time

01:36:41 Even the smallest error can have the deepest consequences

01:36:44 In grappling you can make massive errors and still come back and win

01:36:49 um grappling will typically be won

01:36:51 In a much higher percentage case by the more skilled and conditioned grappler. Whereas there is

01:37:00 much more of what they call a punches chance in mixed martial arts where

01:37:06 There’s a much higher likelihood of a lesser athlete

01:37:09 Defeating a greater athlete in mma than there is in grappling simply because of time of application of the techniques

01:37:16 Even the smallest period of inattention

01:37:18 In mma and the match is over gordon ryan could fall asleep for 30 seconds

01:37:24 Have his opponent mounted on and wake up and finish him five minutes later. It’s not going to happen in mma

01:37:30 Okay, so the the stakes are much higher

01:37:33 You can do a lot of damage in a very small amount of time and just the dynamic temporal dynamics of how things happen

01:37:38 Is very different everything you’ll see will be a reflection of that then you go further into things like rule sets

01:37:44 In the sport of grappling if gordon ryan comes out and sits down in the middle of the mat

01:37:49 His opponent must follow him to the ground and engage

01:37:54 in mixed martial arts

01:37:56 If you come to the center of the cage and sit down

01:37:59 The other guy can just walk away from you. They’re completely

01:38:03 Oriented in different directions grappling is ground centered

01:38:06 Mma is typically standing centered at the beginning of every round you have to start standing again

01:38:11 If I disengage from a ground grappling situation stand up and walk away from my opponent

01:38:17 My opponent must follow me up to the feet

01:38:20 In grappling it’s the exact opposite. If I sit to the ground my opponent must follow me to the ground

01:38:25 It’s written into the rule set and so one is inherently ground or oriented and one is inherently standing oriented

01:38:31 So it’s more it’s more difficult to dictate where the fight happens in mixed martial arts

01:38:35 Yes, you have to be able to impose where the fight is whereas in grappling you can simply choose it. So

01:38:42 George, what is uh your sense of the the difference in terms of how you approached it?

01:38:47 Uh between the two sports so you also are a student of wrestling and grappling so in preparing for fights

01:38:56 What parts of grappling purely the sport that you have to leave behind

01:39:02 well, I I uh

01:39:03 I’m, very lucky. I had the opportunity to I train with I consider the best

01:39:09 mentor trainer I ever ever had

01:39:12 and I have

01:39:13 Some of the best grapplers that I can train with they were they were there to help me through my career

01:39:21 uh for my training is

01:39:24 Of course because I do not dedicate as much time in one specific area. It’s hard to be

01:39:30 You know a world class athlete and that in in only one particular area always

01:39:36 for me

01:39:37 Like the idea to be more well rounded to be very competent in every of those areas striking grappling

01:39:46 Take downs and and all those areas then being just very good at one

01:39:52 And not as good at as as others, you know, because I like the idea that

01:39:57 It gives me more option when I fight someone I can

01:40:02 Mold myself to become the perfect nemesis to a that person better if i’m more well rounded

01:40:09 If I do not have those well rounded skill

01:40:13 I don’t have that option, you know

01:40:16 You have less tools to work with less technology. What about you gordon? What um,

01:40:21 You know, what do you think is very distinct about grappling in the way you approach it versus fighting? I think most of it was covered

01:40:27 But I think that the the one one of the big things is the fact that when you’re looking at mma

01:40:33 You have a pretty general agreed upon and unified rule set where if you look at ufc versus bellator

01:40:40 They’re they have slight differences in the rules maybe um, but it’s pretty much the same thing

01:40:45 Whereas in grappling you have ebi rules, then you have adcc rules. You have ibgf rules. You have no time limit rules

01:40:51 um, and

01:40:53 Each rule set will play to the skills of different athletes. Um, if you have if you do adcc rules

01:41:00 Uh, it generally is slightly biased towards wrestlers or if they can stall to the overtime

01:41:05 And then hit a takedown in the overtime and not really doing jiu jitsu, but they score a takedown. They’re gonna win

01:41:10 Whereas if you have like a jiu jitsu

01:41:12 Takedown they’re gonna win whereas if you have like an ebi for example

01:41:16 You have to finish the guy in regulation or you start in a jiu jitsu position with your back taken or in an armbar

01:41:23 um, so I think that you have

01:41:25 certain rule sets that play in the favor of certain athletes, um and

01:41:32 Certain athletes can win in one rule set, but then they just have no chance of winning in the other

01:41:36 Like when I fought yuri the first time in ebi

01:41:38 I beat him in ebi the chances of me beating him on that night under an adcc rule set were probably pretty low

01:41:45 Um when I fought liandra low under an adcc rule set

01:41:48 He beat me that day, but the chances of him beating me on the same day in an ebi rules that were like next to zero

01:41:54 So I think it’s interesting that

01:41:56 In mma you have one unified rule set which have small differences, but they’re all generally the same

01:42:02 um, and in jiu jitsu, you have a wide variety of different rule sets that um have

01:42:09 biases towards

01:42:10 a certain athlete skill sets you mentioned liandra low

01:42:14 I gotta ask you again about adcc

01:42:18 You have lost very very few times in your career

01:42:22 Uh one

01:42:24 I mean this is the same is true for george and uh, the only person who has ever submitted you is philippe penya black belt

01:42:30 Yeah at black belt

01:42:32 Um, he is adcc world champion multiple time abby jjf gi and no gi world champion

01:42:39 You may face him adcc or elsewhere in the future

01:42:43 Will you beat him?

01:42:45 uh, yes, I mean I have to say yes, right, um, but uh

01:42:50 I fought him initially when I first got my black belt, um that I fought him a year later. So 2016 and 2017

01:42:57 Um, and despite what people remember about the match

01:42:59 And whenever people talk about it’s like oh, yeah, the guy who strangled gordon, but no one remembers that the first match was like a 45 minute

01:43:07 Um, and then the second match with the full 20 minutes of adcc and if I didn’t get my back taken in like the last

01:43:13 Minute and a half two minutes, it would have went into an overtime. Um that could change the outcome of the match

01:43:20 I think that if you look at philippe’s performances

01:43:23 Especially nogi specifically nogi since then it looks like he’s almost gotten worse

01:43:28 Whereas since that match

01:43:31 uh in 2017

01:43:33 Uh, the only match I lost after that was against vinnie, uh, magalesh by by points and uh, i’m on like a 55

01:43:41 match win streak

01:43:43 um over the course of four years, um winning all the major tournaments nogi and uh philippe since that match I think is like five and two

01:43:51 uh, nogi

01:43:52 Um, and he’s lost his last two match matches one was convincingly where he was dominated by andre and one was by submission

01:43:59 Um, so I don’t think that he’s progressed nearly as fast if anything

01:44:03 He looks like he’s worse than he was when he beat me in 2017 based on his previous performances

01:44:08 Um that being said, I know he’s going to come in training very hard for this one and he’s he’s going to be prepared

01:44:13 but I just don’t think

01:44:16 In terms of technical ability. He’s anywhere near my level and um, he was much bigger than me both times

01:44:23 We fought um the first time he was much bigger than me the second time. He was one weight class above me

01:44:28 um, so now there’s not going to be an advantage in

01:44:32 Technicality and it’s also not going to be a physicality advantage. So I think he’s just going to be beat everywhere

01:44:40 This is uh, this is a good example of the scientific response to a um,

01:44:43 Um to a comment to a to a question. Yeah, so he’s not um,

01:44:51 That’s a match you’re you’re not deeply concerned with

01:44:55 And in terms of the set of opponents because you you have and you will be facing a lot of really difficult

01:45:01 That’s actually in my opinion one of the easier matches because of the fact that we’re relatively the same size

01:45:06 um, if I show up at 230 pounds like a lot of the guys are

01:45:10 260 270 plus so that extra weight does make a difference. I think out of that entire bracket. Um,

01:45:17 Felipe is probably going to be the one of the easiest matches because of the fact that I can easily take him down

01:45:21 And if I take him down i’m going to pass his guard

01:45:24 Whereas I feel like the other guys because they’re so much bigger and they’re very cagey. Um, it may take me a while to actually

01:45:31 Take them to the ground. Um

01:45:33 And get on top of them

01:45:34 And I think it may be they may be longer drawn out matches because of the fact that they’re so much bigger and

01:45:38 And stally it’s hard to take them down, but flea based relatively my size and as wrestling is atrocious

01:45:44 So i’ve already taken them down in the last adcc match

01:45:47 So i’m pretty sure I can just easily put them down pass them and then finish them

01:45:51 Well, i’m, not sure what response I was expecting but uh, that was that was that was phrased beautifully

01:46:00 We talked about the tiago alves fight that george had and john borrowed up in class yesterday

01:46:06 I believe but the point is we’re talking about wrestling and I think that that’s a fascinating fight

01:46:12 that um

01:46:13 There’s an incredible display of strategy of skill of heart

01:46:17 Uh, george, could you maybe talk about that fight john? Maybe two what lessons you gained from that fight?

01:46:24 Go ahead. It was you’re fighting on mine

01:46:28 Well, maybe it also tell what happened in terms of your injury I think third round. Oh, yeah. Um

01:46:34 Um, so I was fighting tiago alves and uh in the third round I um

01:46:40 Tear my adductor muscle

01:46:42 Um, it happened when I was on the bottom and he I think he pushed my knee down tried to pass my guard and I

01:46:47 Heard a pop

01:46:49 I didn’t know what I think you were going for an armbar

01:46:52 You were on his back you switched to armbar and he cleared the leg by pushing on your leg

01:46:56 And you went in with a preexisting injury and it tore

01:46:58 Yes, and and it it it get worse and and I heard a pop

01:47:04 I didn’t know what it was, but I know it really hurt. So I came back standing up and

01:47:09 there’s a

01:47:10 A famous video one that goes on the internet about when I go back in the corner

01:47:15 And I tell my my coach i’m like, I don’t know what it is. I think I tore my my my adductor muscle and

01:47:21 Greg jackson is like, I don’t care hit him with your groin

01:47:24 I was very worried because I I wasn’t pain, but I didn’t know I didn’t know what what I had

01:47:30 So I didn’t know the gravity of it and it it it plays on your mind

01:47:35 So but I had to buy to bite down my mouthpiece and finish the fight, you know

01:47:39 I knew I was ahead on the on the scorecard and uh, I needed to finish finish strong

01:47:45 So what was your strategy there in terms of strikes in terms of wrestling so he’s an

01:47:49 Exceptionally difficult opponent to take down. Yeah. Well at at first I I I knew I would add a good jab a good

01:47:56 You know to stay always

01:47:58 From the outside, you know fight him from the outside and and use my footwork because he was like a tank

01:48:04 He was much bigger and much

01:48:06 stronger than me and uh

01:48:08 I didn’t want never wanted to stay in front of him

01:48:11 So he was all the way out or all the way in and when I was coming all the way in

01:48:15 It was with my uh proactive or reactive takedown where I myself

01:48:21 initiated the takedown by uh, using a distraction like a jab to make it is is and goes up and then I go

01:48:29 with a single double leg or uh to react like baiting him for him to come hit me and then

01:48:37 While he’s coming to hit me I go change level and and that’s the way I like to take my time

01:48:43 And that’s the way I like to take my opponent down, you know some guys for example, like like uh, cabbie

01:48:49 for example, he’s very good at at

01:48:52 Bringing his opponent to defense and use chain wrestling to to take his opponent down. I find it for me for myself. I specialize more into

01:49:00 Explosive takedown in the center of the octagon because I found it

01:49:04 more economical for me

01:49:08 What what did you see you were you’re commenting john about the wrestling

01:49:11 That was that was quite interesting. I mean also, can you generally comment on the fact that george sanpia who don’t I don’t think you wrestled

01:49:20 I wrestle I started wrestling. I was 19 years old, but I wrestled some very good russian guys. So they took me underneath their wing and

01:49:29 My ability to cover distance

01:49:31 Come from karate does not come from wrestling wrestling is how I finish once I got the leg how I finish the takedown

01:49:38 Uh, so the the timing and the movement and the explosion required for this karate. Yeah

01:49:44 I think an important distinction to make here is um one which george

01:49:50 uh made throughout his career and I

01:49:52 Believe george you were the greatest innovator in mma history

01:49:56 um with regards to this

01:49:58 and this is uh

01:50:00 The creation of what george calls shoot boxing which is the amalgamation

01:50:05 Of striking technique in george’s case mostly karate because that was his martial arts background

01:50:11 um into grappling and in particular takedowns

01:50:17 when most people say

01:50:19 So and so has better wrestling in mixed martial arts

01:50:25 You have to be very careful what they mean by this there are many highly credentialed wrestlers

01:50:30 In the early days of mixed martial arts who went in and truly struggled to hit a takedown

01:50:36 Now these are very very good wrestlers who in a wrestling match would easily put down their opponent

01:50:44 In a striking situation where the ranges are completely different and the setups are entirely different

01:50:50 The stances are different even the the overall conditions are different. You’re no longer wearing shoes

01:50:56 People underestimate just what an impact it is for a wrestler to take the shoes off

01:51:02 You lose like 20 of your forward drive the minute you take off the shoes

01:51:07 Uh, all of these make massive differences in whether or not you’re going to be able to even make contact with an opponent for a takedown

01:51:16 As george pointed out the true value of wrestling in mma is finishing the takedown once you’ve established contact

01:51:24 But that’s only about 20 of the action of a of a mixed martial arts takedown 80 of it is an understanding range

01:51:31 rhythm setup

01:51:33 opportunity, etc, etc, and

01:51:37 That’s not part of wrestling at all

01:51:39 You’re even the overall conditions are completely different in the sport of wrestling

01:51:42 You start a very close range in a very bent over stance and you’re expected to wrestle for

01:51:48 In international stars for three minutes at a time

01:51:50 Um now suddenly you’re completely upright

01:51:57 You’re not wearing shoes all the conditions the the the rhythm and speed of it is different

01:52:02 The counters are completely different. It’s just an entirely different animal

01:52:07 And so george was an early recognizer of this

01:52:11 And started to put the emphasis on direct training for shoot boxing

01:52:15 In addition to wrestling so he practiced with very good wrestlers in the montreal wrestling club

01:52:22 Just the sport of wrestling and that’s what made him very good at finishing takedowns, but it was in his shoot boxing training

01:52:30 Which he himself largely developed remember george started at a time when mma was pretty damn young

01:52:38 and um

01:52:40 Um, he we were when when you entered the sport of mixed martial arts george, it wasn’t even allowed on tv

01:52:47 Like it was completely banned. It was in his country. It was

01:52:50 physically banned

01:52:51 Uh, they had to fight on indian reservations and you know, and this is way back in the wild west days of mma

01:52:57 and so as a as a young developing athlete he had to

01:53:01 More or less do this by himself

01:53:03 If you ever want to hear some incredible stories talk about teenage george saint pierre

01:53:07 Who had a coach who used to make him put on boxing gloves now?

01:53:12 He was 16 17 years old and just put him on a hardwood floor against a professional boxer who was in his

01:53:19 Late 20s at the peak of his career and he said george you’re not allowed to punch

01:53:24 You just got to take him down while he tries to knock you out

01:53:27 And it was and it was crazy

01:53:30 darwinism, he was like

01:53:32 It’s like you’re gonna you’re gonna

01:53:34 Adapt or you’re gonna die

01:53:36 Literally and he had that it could have been very bad, but it turns out to be great

01:53:40 He’s admitted

01:53:41 but there’s a sense here in which

01:53:43 People think oh, you know what determines your takedown ability in mma as your wrestling skill

01:53:51 Your wrestling skill will determine your finishing ability on takedowns, but there’s so much more to it than that

01:53:59 Whenever people say, you know, what what are the broad

01:54:02 elements that determine the outcome of a mixed martial arts fight

01:54:07 Okay on the broadest possible level. I always give the same three things

01:54:13 The athlete who can dominate the pace

01:54:16 of the match

01:54:17 The athlete who can dominate the direction of the match and the athlete who can dominate the setups will win the vast majority of fights

01:54:26 They’re in those three things

01:54:28 The direction the pace and the setups you dominate all three of those

01:54:33 You’re going to win 90 of the matches. You’re in

01:54:37 Um, george could always dominate the direction of the fight because he could stop the other guy taking him down

01:54:42 And he could impose his own takedowns at any point in a match

01:54:46 So whether it went to ground or whether it stayed standing was always up to him

01:54:51 George had the most sophisticated array of setups into takedowns

01:54:54 That i’ve personally ever witnessed

01:54:59 um, the whole distinction between reactive and proactive takedowns came very early in george’s career and

01:55:05 He excelled in both most people tend to favor one or the other

01:55:10 Most athletes have a very hard time

01:55:14 imposing

01:55:15 Their setups on an opponent and as a result they have to use

01:55:18 The cage as a crutch for their for their setups where they just bully someone towards the cage and then put them down on the cage

01:55:26 George is one of the very few people who was equally good against the cage or in the open

01:55:30 And could do so in both proactive and reactive

01:55:33 situations

01:55:37 And the scary thing is that as good as

01:55:41 All of you saw him look in the octagon

01:55:44 Um, anyone who knows george as a coach will tell you he was twice as good as that

01:55:50 In the gym where he would often go against people several weight divisions above himself

01:55:55 I could sit here all day. I won’t name names, but I always laugh when people say oh, this is the greatest

01:56:01 Uh pound for pound guy of all time and i’ve personally seen george

01:56:05 Take that guy down and crush him in the gym

01:56:06 And I can’t say anything because it’s rude to talk about that in public because it’s just training

01:56:10 But i’ve seen george go with people all the way up to light heavyweight some of the greatest names in the history of the sport

01:56:16 Put them down

01:56:17 Advanced position on the ground and dominate them in training. It’s it’s what he did during that time. I uh, george

01:56:24 I I got to say I deeply admire many of the things I saw you do not just in the octagon but

01:56:30 in training as well as um

01:56:33 The the impact that you had on

01:56:36 uh, the

01:56:38 the degree to which

01:56:40 Takedowns were used in the sport was absolutely inspirational

01:56:44 That’s why one of one of the reasons why I always say you’re one of the the only athlete I ever met who taught me

01:56:50 more than than I taught you because you opened my eyes to a whole new world of of shoot boxing and how

01:56:57 I grew up in a time when uh, you I was laughing before when you talked about sugar ray lennard

01:57:01 I was a kid watching that match and um, I grew up in a time where there was

01:57:06 Boxing and there was kickboxing and then I came to america and I learned grappling and

01:57:11 This young man here was the innovator when it came to the integration of the two

01:57:15 Well, then I have to ask because george sits here uncomfortably being complimented

01:57:21 if george saint pierre

01:57:23 And kabib nurmagomedov face each other in their prime who wins

01:57:28 Who that’s a very very loaded question how yeah, like what are the different trajectories you see?

01:57:33 Oh, okay. How does each one win in your view if one wins or the other one wins what happened interestingly they’re actually

01:57:40 very similar in size despite the fact that

01:57:43 George fought at welterweight and kabib fought it

01:57:47 Lightweight if you actually see them standing next to each other the of similar height. Kabib’s actually a little more thick set

01:57:54 Yeah, he’s actually heavier than you walking around. Um, uh, george walked around most of his career between 188 and 191

01:58:01 191 pounds

01:58:04 And so kabib actually would ironically have

01:58:07 a kind of size and strength advantage

01:58:09 Uh despite being in the lighter weight division that’s been the general trend as mma

01:58:14 Has grown is that athletes will come further down and wait to make weight divisions. Um,

01:58:23 I believe that george has the best takedowns in history, uh in the open in the cage

01:58:29 Um, kabib was his great strength was using the fence to facilitate takedowns. Um,

01:58:39 Kabib’s

01:58:40 Other great strength was not only his ability to take people down but to keep people down for extended periods of time

01:58:46 both of them were

01:58:49 Powerful strikers on the ground and could do terrible damage to opponents, uh on the floor

01:58:54 So they’re both very similar in that regard

01:58:57 Um, kabib was mostly a uh, a puncher from the back george was mostly an elbow from the front

01:59:04 Um, but both of them could lay waste to opponents with strikes on the floor

01:59:09 Um, both of them were highly competent with submissions on the ground

01:59:14 They weren’t submission specialists in the sense of someone like gordon ryan, but uh, they were

01:59:20 certainly, um

01:59:22 No slouches with submission holds. Um

01:59:24 Um, yeah, it’s just a fascinating idea. So it’s almost like who gets the first takedown. Yeah, I do believe

01:59:34 They could probably stand up on each other

01:59:37 I don’t think either one of them would be able to hold the other down for a whole round

01:59:41 Um, both of them are notoriously difficult people to hold down

01:59:45 So I don’t think that whoever won the first takedown wins the match. I don’t think it’s like that

01:59:49 Um, I do believe that george would hold a decisive advantage in striking and distance management

01:59:57 um, the few times that kabib did look shaky is

02:00:01 when he

02:00:03 Kabir was either advancing forward menacingly, but when he had to fight moving backwards

02:00:09 There was a definite asymmetry between his ability to fight going forwards, which is very good and his ability to fight going backwards

02:00:16 Which was noticeably?

02:00:17 weaker

02:00:18 Um, george would often fight both forwards and backwards. It was the giago elvis fight

02:00:25 Most of the standing time. Yeah, it was was going backwards. Um

02:00:30 That’s probably the single biggest difference between the two athletes and skill level would be in the standing position

02:00:37 um on the ground, uh

02:00:41 Kabib slight edge and takedowns on the fence george slight edge and takedowns in the center

02:00:48 Ability to inflict damage on the floor roughly equal ability to fight off the back roughly equal

02:00:54 Ability to stand up from bottom roughly equal. It’s a very very hard match

02:01:00 In terms of the biggest

02:01:02 difference in skill level is going to be in a standing position and so it would come down to

02:01:07 um, that doesn’t necessarily mean that kabib would lose in the standing position. He might just push it to the fence and just

02:01:13 use match tactics where he

02:01:15 Kept the fight on the fence for significant periods of time

02:01:20 Uh, and you can win rounds in that fashion. So it’s a match that could go either way

02:01:24 Both of them are absolutely the best that you’ll ever see

02:01:27 I’ve always believed the three greatest mixed martial artists i’ve ever seen in my life were george saint pierre kabib. Noam, get off and john jones

02:01:35 Um, the three of them have some interesting similarities and differences

02:01:39 all three

02:01:41 Uh beat every single person they ever faced

02:01:46 I I know john jones officially has a loss by dq, but no one believes that was a loss

02:01:54 uh, george does have two losses, but he

02:01:58 Defeated both athletes decisively

02:02:00 Uh in rematches kabib did it by having no losses

02:02:03 Interestingly all three athletes have at least one match which is controversial in terms of who won and who lost

02:02:13 John jones has had several matches which could have gone either way on the judge’s scorecard kabib’s

02:02:19 Uh match against glaceon t bell could have gone either way

02:02:22 Uh george’s match with hendrix was could have gone either way

02:02:26 They they all had matches that they won which people would dispute the outcome. So that was a similarity between the three of them. Um,

02:02:34 all three of them

02:02:37 Have had the ability

02:02:39 To dominate the direction of fights when they want it to go down it goes down when they don’t want it to go down

02:02:45 It doesn’t

02:02:47 That’s why I put such a heavy emphasis on that idea that a mixed martial arts champion

02:02:51 Must be able to determine the direction of a fight. It’s the single most important attribute that they all must have

02:02:59 As to which of the three is the best it’s going to come down to criteria

02:03:04 You you can’t pull them apart

02:03:07 Which answer you give as to which of those three is the greatest of all time will come down to the criteria that you use

02:03:13 Okay, is it being undefeated?

02:03:16 Uh, is it the amount of time was it the quality of the opponents that they had if you do it by quality of opponents?

02:03:22 I think you probably have to give it to george if you do it by um

02:03:27 Uh measured dominance through not being defeated and it has to go to compete

02:03:33 Arguably you could say the same with john jones since his one

02:03:36 losses

02:03:40 But then you could also say the last three or four fights that john’s had haven’t been the same measure of dominance as we saw

02:03:46 previously

02:03:47 so ultimately

02:03:49 You’ve got those three guys in my opinion

02:03:51 And which one you choose will come down to who it says more about who you are as a viewer than it does about

02:03:57 The respective label of the athletes you could throw a blanket over them. The three of them are just that good and um

02:04:04 Uh, and which one you select will probably say more about who you are as a viewer than it does about them as athletes

02:04:12 I I believe the best fighter the goat is not even born

02:04:17 because

02:04:18 the generation

02:04:20 That is present

02:04:22 Benefit of a huge advantage

02:04:25 They have knowledge technology that we didn’t have before

02:04:29 And we had the the knowledge that the other generation did not have before

02:04:35 I believe the best the goat is not even born yet as good as they are today. I think you

02:04:41 In sport where you can measure the performance, uh track and field

02:04:46 Olympic lifting you can you know someone

02:04:49 Is better than the other one because you can measure the performance fighting. It’s all subjective. We always debate of who would win

02:04:58 10 the tendency in sport

02:05:01 is that

02:05:02 Performance get better. I don’t think it’s because the athlete necessarily get better

02:05:06 It’s because they have access to better technology knowledge

02:05:10 And they learn from their predecessor

02:05:13 As long as that knowledge is transferred forward

02:05:16 Something tells me that the greatest of all time lived a few thousand years ago and it’s forgotten some of the greatest warriors

02:05:23 Like you imagine the kind of grapplers. We just the history didn’t record them

02:05:29 There could have been small tribes where they developed many ufcs

02:05:33 And they’ve developed the kind of things we you have to think of like, uh, the gracies

02:05:38 Just a small family was able to develop so much so quickly

02:05:42 I often

02:05:43 As this this discussion with john and I think it’s very important like to mention I asked you very several times like

02:05:50 What would happen if we would take?

02:05:53 A fighter of modern days facing the champion of pancration. This is an interesting question

02:05:59 And you brought some incredible good point and and people don’t don’t realize it, you know

02:06:04 yeah, no, I think um, one of the great tragedies of martial arts history is our loss of

02:06:12 uh, the historical records of pancration like most of what we know was

02:06:17 Uh from what i’m told is actually lost in the fires of the library of alexandria

02:06:22 And we’re left with only a pitiful amount of information on uh pancration matches

02:06:28 But what we do know is that there was a very

02:06:33 uh participation in the sport and that it was

02:06:36 Why they considered the most popular

02:06:39 Sport in the ancient olympics and that it was represented in the ancient olympics for many hundreds of years

02:06:45 Plus a long period of time before its introduction into the ancient olympics

02:06:50 And so the development time

02:06:52 That it may have had would have been very significant it

02:06:56 Uh as far as we know most of the development would have been in the major greek city states for

02:07:03 Uh, literally hundreds of years of development

02:07:06 Um given its prestige as an olympic sport then the best athletes would have been doing it some of the sharpest minds that we know of

02:07:14 In human history were involved in the sport. Um, plato the great philosopher

02:07:22 Was a pancreasianist in his youth. In fact, his name plato is a nickname

02:07:28 platus is like plate

02:07:30 it means broad or big guy like the big guy and um

02:07:36 Uh, he spoke often about pancreasian and in his written works

02:07:40 Um, imagine people with the intelligence of plato

02:07:45 thinking about

02:07:47 Grappling technique for hundreds of years in the most popular olympic sport of that time

02:07:53 significant numbers of people with

02:07:55 Financial backing as city states put great prestige upon olympic success. They would have funneled athletes in

02:08:01 And brought in the best coaches and they had that for many hundreds of years like it’s quite conceivable that the best pancreasian athletes

02:08:09 were of the absolute first quality and um, uh, it it’s

02:08:16 It’s so sad to think we’ll never know. What was their skill level and uh,

02:08:20 It’s interesting to think about what kind of techniques they developed whether

02:08:25 There’s stuff we haven’t discovered yet in class. You’re talking about the most effective

02:08:29 Of takedown strategy in wrestling and collegiate wrestling. So maybe let me ask first, uh, because we offline talked about this, too

02:08:36 What is the highest percentage submission in grappling overall? You have to go with the rear naked strangle strangles from the back

02:08:44 If you look at most tournaments and most rule sets

02:08:48 It has success across all rule sets. Um, all weight divisions

02:08:53 All body types. It doesn’t require any kind of specific

02:08:57 Physical advantage such as height, uh in order to be effective

02:09:02 Um, it works equally well in both fighting and grappling. Um

02:09:06 It will work regardless of how physically and mentally tough your opponent is. Okay

02:09:11 A heel hook is a very high percentage technique in in modern day competition

02:09:17 But if your opponent simply makes up his mind that he’s not going to tap and is willing to take the physical damage

02:09:23 It won’t result in the end of a match a strangle hold by contrast will always end the match regardless of

02:09:30 Your opponent’s mental toughness

02:09:32 So, um, I believe it’s fair to say that at the end of the day the single most high percentage

02:09:39 method of uh submitting people and grappling is the rear naked strangle. So when you look at an athlete, maybe Gordon you could speak to this like

02:09:47 What’s the best, uh, you mentioned Gary with the guillotine

02:09:49 What’s the best submission to really invest in? Is it the rear naked choke?

02:09:54 To really invest your development like understanding the entirety of the system that leads into that

02:09:59 Uh, I think that I mean you have to do them all obviously

02:10:02 But if I had like one submission that I would only one submission I could pick for the rest of my life

02:10:06 It would definitely be a rear naked

02:10:08 Can you explain maybe some of the actual technical details of why that’s the case?

02:10:14 Well as John spoke about they’re different in joint locks. Whereas

02:10:18 You don’t have to tap you can just let your leg break and then keep going with the strangle. There’s there’s no, uh,

02:10:24 There’s none of that. Um, and then it’s just an inherent

02:10:28 Advantage you have being behind someone

02:10:31 Um, whereas if you go for an armbar you stop you start from top mount and you’re facing the guy and then you put them

02:10:35 Down and you’re not directly behind them with leg locks. You’re facing the guy

02:10:39 Whereas when you’re on someone’s back you have them in a pin where you can your chest to back

02:10:43 You have a body triangle and you’re pinning the guy in place. He can’t explode out. He can’t grease his way out

02:10:48 Most of the time, uh, and there’s an inherent advantage you have being behind them due to the fact that

02:10:53 We’re poorly set up to deal with threats behind us

02:10:57 So would you say that’s the most dominant position jiu jitsu like more than mount?

02:11:02 More than yeah

02:11:04 Sack control more than I think uh, if you look at most matches historically

02:11:08 Most guys who get stuck in positions

02:11:10 For long amounts of time are guys that they’re back taking. Um, if you get

02:11:15 An explosive guy from bottom mountain bridge and he can off balance you and lock half guard maybe and then work back to guard

02:11:20 But if someone locks a body triangle on your back, um, that’s where you see most guys getting pinned in place for long amounts of time

02:11:28 Was uh was the body triangle like a well understood thing

02:11:33 Was that an invention at some point like as a system as a as a control

02:11:37 Yeah, um, perhaps some of your your listeners can correct me on this but I believe there was a technique banned in judo called dojime

02:11:44 Which involved crossing feet or locking a triangle around the abdominals from the back and it was banned in judo

02:11:51 I believe because uh of intestinal injuries which occurred in the early developmental days of of judo

02:12:01 in the modern era

02:12:02 When I first began jiu jitsu body triangles were relatively rare. They were not a standard part of class

02:12:08 Um, and sometime around the late 1990s early 2000s people started to realize hey, this is a stronger method of control

02:12:19 It greatly increases the amount of control you have over your of your opponent’s hips and torso over regular hooks

02:12:25 Uh, it’s not for all athletes. It’s difficult for most people who are of shorter thicker statue, uh, to

02:12:33 Employ on on on big people if your opponent’s very broadly built through the stomach. It’s almost impossible to apply

02:12:39 And so because it can’t be applied by all people it tends not to be taught much at beginner level

02:12:46 So as a result, it was always seen as a

02:12:50 kind of a speciality

02:12:52 It was always seen as a kind of a specialist move for taller athletes at a higher level of competition rather than a broad

02:13:00 Base move for everyone or every body type in every class to employ

02:13:04 So it just didn’t get emphasized that much but in top level competition now

02:13:08 I think you would see that it’s very apparent that the vast majority of athletes whenever they have the opportunity or a choice between

02:13:16 Body triangle and regular rear mounts the majority of modern athletes would use a body triangle

02:13:22 So we also had this conversation about wrestling. Maybe georgie can comment on like what what’s the uh, the highest percentage?

02:13:29 Not statistically speaking. Perhaps that’s also interesting as john talked about but just for you in terms of mastery of a takedown

02:13:36 What’s what’s the best way to take down a human being?

02:13:40 in wrestling well, I

02:13:42 Personally for me, it depends

02:13:45 For every fighter are different. They have a different set of skill

02:13:48 For me, I when I look someone

02:13:52 Want to bring down a tree a big strong high tree

02:13:57 He cut it from the base

02:13:59 So the legs that that’s what we stand on so it was to attack the leg

02:14:05 But is it single leg double leg? Is it we talked about like, uh,

02:14:09 Well, there’s also the the john smith low single. Actually, I don’t even know if that’s applicable for jiu jitsu at all

02:14:15 Applicable for jiu jitsu at all. You you can use it, but it runs into the problem with submission holds

02:14:20 Yeah, it’s it’s not impossible to use but without shoes and in a situation where there’s a whole plethora of submission holds in the scoring

02:14:30 It’s a little more difficult to use, you know

02:14:33 It is interesting something being a high percentage in terms of effectiveness tells a story

02:14:39 You’re saying that every athlete is different. But if it’s more effective for most people

02:14:43 I mean, it’s interesting. It’s it’s interesting what john talked about is that

02:14:49 the highest percentage thing is actually, um

02:14:53 In collegiate wrestling that he was talking about is

02:14:56 On the defensive side, so blocking a takedown and spinning around to the to the back

02:15:02 So that’s an interesting idea then also there’s all of these kind of going in for a singleness switching to a double or

02:15:09 Or wizard position and doing knee tap like there’s all these kinds of combinations that seem to be

02:15:15 Effective when you look at the statistics and it seems like there’s maybe it’s a scientific way of thinking but it seems like there is

02:15:22 Some conclusion to be drawn there. Oh, yeah, I believe you need to the high percentage move

02:15:27 There’s a reason why it works. I think it’s

02:15:30 It’s made

02:15:31 for a bigger amount of people

02:15:35 For example, I one of my main

02:15:37 strength

02:15:39 Athletic strength is i’m an explosive person

02:15:41 So i’ll use technique that are explosive if I got a single leg my my one of my thing

02:15:46 I like to do is to go for the double power double

02:15:50 but for uh

02:15:51 Someone else we got for example in a single leg position. Maybe he likes

02:15:57 Like body throw better. He’s more a greco guy like so or he’s a judo guy. He’s gonna go for something something else. So

02:16:03 But there there is move that are I would say like you just mentioned are universal like statistically speaking. They’re

02:16:10 The highest percentage move that works for pretty much everybody everybody pretty much can do a an adhaka jimmy, you know

02:16:18 It’s very easy

02:16:19 But it’s not everybody that can lock a triangle with their legs

02:16:24 So so those move like a rear naked choke adhaka jimmy is the highest percentage move because it’s maybe

02:16:31 It’s maybe more accessible

02:16:33 It’s accessible for a bigger range. Yeah based on the physical characteristics of the people

02:16:38 Do you draw any wisdom from these high percentages john for like in terms of what to focus on? Yeah, absolutely

02:16:45 Um juditsu has an ocean of moves and you can get lost on that ocean

02:16:49 You can drift for a long period of time and and and that was very little to show for it

02:16:54 So my whole thing is focus. We only live one lifetime

02:16:57 And your training lifetime is even shorter than your actual lifetime

02:17:03 in that time

02:17:04 I must die on the mat

02:17:07 That is the same. Yeah

02:17:10 Uh, I I put a very high value on

02:17:15 Choosing what I believe to be the most high percentage

02:17:19 Uh moves and putting an extraordinary amount of focus on them

02:17:23 Um, the only problem is that in one generation a move which can be considered low percentage might actually turn out to be high

02:17:30 Percentage in another generation, for example

02:17:33 We talked earlier about leg locks when I was first started judice. They were considered the ultimate low percentage move and

02:17:39 Uh a big part of my career has been convincing people that in fact that was

02:17:43 That was incorrect that they can be a high percentage move if we just change our approach to them

02:17:50 so we can’t just

02:17:52 Follow tradition

02:17:53 And say oh, this is low percentage. This is high percentage. It has to be part of

02:17:58 a fairly systematic study where you investigate

02:18:02 What are the reasons why it’s high percentage or low percentage with regards to takedowns?

02:18:09 If you look at what?

02:18:11 We can consider the most high percentage takedowns

02:18:13 If you’re in front of someone the single most high percentage way of taking them down is to get a hold of both of their legs

02:18:19 And push them backwards

02:18:20 Okay, if you get a hold of one of their legs and put a force on them

02:18:24 They can use their other leg to defend themselves and hop around and

02:18:27 Funk their way out of takedowns and cause all kinds of problems for you

02:18:30 I don’t care how athletic your opponent is if you get a hold a firm grip

02:18:34 Of both of his legs and start pushing him backwards. He’s going to fall down to his butt

02:18:38 Now he might be able to recover from there, but he will fall down

02:18:42 Even easier than that is to be behind someone

02:18:44 Takedowns from in front of someone are difficult you go right into their hips their head their hands

02:18:50 You go into all their defensive weapons. If you’re already behind someone and you’re doing what in america

02:18:55 They refer to as a mat return. This is significantly easier than taking someone down from the front

02:19:01 If you have control of their head in a front headlock position

02:19:06 You have already closed distance on your opponent. You already have close contact. You don’t have to worry about shooting anymore

02:19:11 There’s no sprawl out of that. You don’t have to worry about guillotines kimoras or the uh, standard defenses

02:19:16 Those will intrinsically be easier takedowns out of front headlock

02:19:20 And so if we’re going to talk about high percentage technique, I always go back to the mechanics of it

02:19:25 Rather than just historical tradition because historical tradition can be wrong. It was wrong about leg locks

02:19:31 It can be wrong about other things too

02:19:34 So my primary thing is okay. Talk to me about mechanics

02:19:36 That’s what ultimately is going to determine whether something is high percentage or not. Um,

02:19:41 Gordon pointed out earlier that when you’re behind someone you have innate physical advantages over the other guy the human

02:19:47 We the human body is set up entirely to to defend threats from the front

02:19:52 We are poorly adapted to defending threats from the rear. We don’t have eyes in the back of our head

02:19:57 We can’t apply pushing strength backwards

02:20:00 If you get behind someone take downs are 10 times easier from behind someone than they are when you’re in front of someone

02:20:05 If you have to take someone down from the front get a hold of both of their legs

02:20:10 If you can get a hold of both of their legs and impart a pushing force, you will almost always knock them down

02:20:17 If you can get a hold of their head

02:20:20 And work takedowns from there again

02:20:22 It’s much easier because most of their defensive apparatus is being taken away from them before the takedown even begins

02:20:28 and so

02:20:29 For me, the most high percentage takedowns will always be from the front double legs

02:20:33 From the front double legs from any takedown from the back is going to be significantly easier than any takedown from the front

02:20:40 So all manner of matte return takedowns are going to be very high percentage

02:20:45 And takedowns done out of situations where the opponent is broken down in front of you and you have either front headlock or front

02:20:51 Chest wrap position are going to be significantly easier than takedowns from the open

02:20:56 Of course, you have to consider the full

02:20:58 Full spectrum of mechanics involved here. It’s possible that an outside low single leading to a double leg is much higher percentage

02:21:07 It’s like there’s a lot of chain wrestling yet

02:21:09 You know that needs to be considered as a possibility maybe a straight on and part of this cultural too

02:21:15 Are people afraid of this kind of thing that they came to be the case with leg locks?

02:21:19 Are people aware of this?

02:21:21 Are they worried about this? Are they training for this to defend this?

02:21:24 And and then this opponent specific of course that um, you know with jordan boros people are preparing for the double

02:21:31 Which is why he had to develop

02:21:34 A whole other kinds of different stuff and then the head to all the different controls all the different ties

02:21:40 within the rule set

02:21:42 And that’s where it’s so fascinating to see the effect of rule set on all this judo over the past

02:21:47 I think 20 years went through this every olympics different changes to the rule set like fundamentally different

02:21:54 In terms of what’s allowed to grip whether you’re allowed to touch the legs at all. That was a big one in 2012, I think

02:22:01 And and that changed the sport completely and so interesting

02:22:04 It’s so interesting to watch how tiny change in the rule can change the sport

02:22:10 At the highest when you’re talking about people competing at the highest level

02:22:14 and the cool thing there is

02:22:18 The rule change happens on a scale of every four years

02:22:20 So you get to see people that are at the top of their game have to like recompute

02:22:27 So it’s not like you have a new generation of people coming up with the rules. They have to figure oh shit

02:22:31 You’re not allowed to like it’s it’s the equivalent of saying you’re not allowed to kick anymore in mma

02:22:37 Because you were not allowed to grab legs anymore in judo

02:22:41 interestingly if you look at the case of judo if you look at the world rankings

02:22:48 of athletes

02:22:50 When they went through one of the most significant rule changes in judo history where they banned any form of grabbing the legs

02:22:58 The ranking of athletes didn’t change much

02:23:02 Yeah, that tells you that they’re um, there’s a reason why those guys are at the top

02:23:06 Yeah, and it doesn’t have to do that. They’re specific to a rule set

02:23:10 Yeah, think about that in terms of

02:23:13 Imagine for example in mixed martial arts if they just said hey

02:23:17 starting next week

02:23:18 Instead of having three five minute rounds. It’s going to be 15 minutes straight

02:23:23 That would massively change the preparation of the athletes

02:23:27 It’s a different game at that point and judo literally was a different game before 2010 and after 2010

02:23:33 and yet

02:23:35 The international rankings didn’t really change that much the countries that were dominant before

02:23:40 Remained dominant the athletes that remained before largely remained the same

02:23:45 You would think was such a massive change all the rankings would have been thrown upside down, but they weren’t and uh, again

02:23:54 It goes back to this idea that there’s a reason why the guys at the top are at the top

02:24:00 And now for something completely different we talked about aliens earlier. Yeah, so uh, george brought up babasar. I I um,

02:24:08 will likely probably talk to babasar on this podcast and then um

02:24:11 Um, and then john had this a skeptical look on his face about about aliens. So let me ask uh, john and gordon

02:24:20 Uh, do you think there’s intelligent alien civilizations out there in the universe outside of our own?

02:24:27 The universe is unimaginably large

02:24:30 the idea that we are the only life forms in a cosmos as large as this is

02:24:37 I think naive and foolish

02:24:41 There’s a very high likelihood that if life could evolve on this planet that it could have done

02:24:47 So on many many other planets around the uh around the cosmos

02:24:51 I think anyone who puts even a moment’s thought into this would realize that there’s

02:24:56 Almost certainly other forms of life out there

02:24:59 the real question with regards the alien community is um, have they got here and are they

02:25:05 Yeah, circling our planet in um little silver saucers and making observations and periodically stealing people

02:25:13 For experimentation purposes doesn’t have to be silver saucers. It could be different other color saucers

02:25:18 Um, and that question i’m i’m i’m not at all convinced. No, I I don’t think

02:25:24 recently

02:25:25 um navy footage

02:25:27 has come out showing

02:25:29 Some very interesting phenomena if you talk to almost any experienced pilot they will tell you they’ve seen things in the upper atmosphere

02:25:37 That are very difficult to explain

02:25:39 Uh, i’ll be the first one to agree with you on this

02:25:41 There are some things out there that are extremely difficult to explain like literally ufos unidentified

02:25:47 Yeah, I mean we just don’t know what they are

02:25:49 but to go from the idea that there’s things out there that we don’t understand to

02:25:55 there’s

02:25:57 Little creatures running around and um, uh, and these somehow exist. Uh,

02:26:02 I just reserve judgment. I just say i’m agnostic about these things. I think it’s possible but

02:26:08 all the evidence that i’ve been showing so far was insufficient to come to any kind of definite conclusions until

02:26:15 Aliens land in central park on tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m

02:26:19 And get out with little alien ray guns and start shooting people. I didn’t believe in

02:26:24 Many of the stories that get told

02:26:26 Well, what about if it’s not little aliens with ray guns, but something very different very very difficult to detect for us humans

02:26:33 That’s very human central creature at that point. It’s a it’s a fascinating idea and it’s certainly possible, but show me the evidence

02:26:41 All right, what about you gordon

02:26:44 Do you do you uh look at the cosmos and ponder the stars often? I think it’s fair points. John raised

02:26:51 uh, something really interesting I saw the other day was uh,

02:26:53 Someone posted like if an alien organ or a civilization

02:26:58 65 million light years away

02:27:00 Somehow managed to look at earth

02:27:04 They would theoretically see the dinosaurs because they’re 65 million light years away. So like imagine us looking at

02:27:10 Galaxies that are 100 million light years away. That’s 100 million years ago. You have no idea what it looks like now

02:27:15 Um, so that’s super interesting to me about it

02:27:17 Yeah, the the expanse is huge and so much cool stuff could be going out there. Yeah, and um,

02:27:24 The scary thing of course is if they haven’t visited us yet

02:27:29 There has to be a good reason for it

02:27:31 And the the set of scary reasons of all the fact that they maybe once you get sufficiently advanced in your development

02:27:38 You destroy yourself naturally as humans seem to be approaching now

02:27:42 We more and more have the tools to destroy ourselves completely in terms of our weapon systems

02:27:49 Um, and we’re developing them more and more and they’re becoming better and better

02:27:53 And then we’re starting to get angry and anger on twitter and instagram at each other

02:27:58 Those are good points you’re raising

02:28:01 History has taught us that

02:28:03 Everything that lives one day will die. So we will we will perish one day. Yeah

02:28:08 There’s also just the the sheer difficulty of um, of

02:28:14 Of travel through space like space is an unimaginably inhospitable

02:28:19 environment

02:28:20 And to the best of our knowledge

02:28:24 This even the theoretical speeds that we can attain in space even if we could

02:28:30 Travel at the speed of light. We’re not even remotely close to that

02:28:33 Still the distances that need to be traveled to get to even relatively close solar systems. Um,

02:28:40 Very very long if you look at astronauts

02:28:44 Who have spent significant amounts of time in space just orbiting the earth?

02:28:48 It has severe health effects on them. We’re just not built for space. We’re supposed to be

02:28:53 In a gravitational environment, but we you’re referring to your biological meat bag that’s containing the essence

02:28:59 Of the mind that is john donahoe. Maybe we can transfer the mind

02:29:05 The the the the bag the meat the meat bag is not designed for space

02:29:09 But maybe the but again, this is all that’s of the mind. It’s

02:29:13 It’s possible, but what do you think of concrete evidence you folks who like difficult things?

02:29:20 Uh, what do you think about uh, elon musk going to colonize mars?

02:29:24 Is this something that’s going to happen?

02:29:26 Colonize mars. Is this something you find an interesting or a um,

02:29:35 Aimless pursuit. I think it’s a must or a salvation

02:29:39 We need to leave at some point the planet because historically in the past we know that we’ve been bombarded by a steroid

02:29:46 volcano

02:29:48 There are crazy things happen here. It’s very unstable. You know, we if you look at it to

02:29:52 To a lifetime of a human being it’s nothing but just look 12 000 years ago. What happened, you know, so so

02:29:59 There is cataclysm that happen all the time. It’s very unstable. So

02:30:04 if we want to survive as a species, I think it’s it’s we need to get out to be able to get out and

02:30:10 spread our seed

02:30:12 so these are the early steps on a on a really long journey, but is there something about like

02:30:16 You know, we we don’t get that exploration from most of modern society, you know, the kind of exploring that people did throughout the centuries

02:30:23 of uh, you know coming to the

02:30:25 North america just throughout we were shrouded in physical uncertainty of what’s out there

02:30:32 And now we get to do the same kind of exploration with mars

02:30:35 Is there so I mean is there any aspect of you that wants to travel out to space that wants to travel to mars?

02:30:42 There, you know, the goal is to allow civilians to travel

02:30:46 Perhaps in our lifetime

02:30:48 Meaning affordably you can do so now unaffordably

02:30:52 Traveling to space and traveling to mars are two different things. I think I would like to travel into space

02:30:58 I don’t know if I would like to travel all the way to mars because of the risks involved

02:31:03 just because

02:31:05 Boring

02:31:06 Is there some part of you that enjoys the I think that if I was like towards the end of my life

02:31:10 I would like to travel to mars because it’ll be nice just die just for the experience. Yeah, but if I go to mars

02:31:14 I’m not coming back. I think that’s it

02:31:17 one way ticket

02:31:19 May with the technology we have now maybe in the future maybe our

02:31:22 The children of our children will will be able to to experience that to go to the well the the weekend on mars

02:31:31 Uh, well the the whole design of the starship that spacex is working on is supposed to come back

02:31:37 Supposed to be reusable. So it’s not it’s not a one way ticket. That’s the whole point

02:31:41 It’s always going back and forth back and forth. What’s the time frame between two planets?

02:31:47 Like to travel from I think the current thing you’d be stuck on mars for two years

02:31:52 But how long does it take to get from earth to mars? Oh, it’s pretty I’m not exactly sure but it’s pretty quick

02:31:57 It’s pretty quick. Like, uh, I don’t know and the scale of months not scale of years. You might not be healthy

02:32:03 When you come back, you know, all the astronauts they experience health issues, you know, they lose a lot of muscle mass bone density. So

02:32:10 Yeah, I don’t think the technology is good right now. I mean

02:32:14 Let’s say that it is I would love to be doing it for a weekend if it’s safe

02:32:19 I would love to be the first one to do it for a professional fighter who sacrifices body for something

02:32:25 So there’s some sacrifice we do in life, right? I don’t want to be the first I wouldn’t want to I least

02:32:30 The other one but when I know it’s it’s safe. Okay, count me in

02:32:34 So one of the things that people say and this is something I wonder about is

02:32:38 It’s like having children or something once you see once you’re out in space and you look out and you see earth

02:32:43 You look back at earth. That’s an experience. It’s not like anything else like you can’t replicate it here

02:32:49 Um is to look back at that like blue dot

02:32:53 And that’s nerve wracking

02:32:55 Like you see like earth disappear into the distance. Yeah. Yeah disappear

02:33:01 Into the distance and then you get to actually stand on mars and see

02:33:04 And just to look you’re standing on the ground and you’re looking out

02:33:08 And you see the planet from which you came and where you might not be coming back

02:33:12 But there’s a challenge to the whole thing. Whereas the risk is tremendous

02:33:16 And I don’t know I find that risk really compelling for some reason but that could be just

02:33:22 The exploration like I guess that’s a genetic thing too. How much do you want to explore?

02:33:27 There’s a sense though in which even in the best case scenario where they did get the technology to whisk you to mars and

02:33:35 fairly short period of time

02:33:37 it’s kind of an inauthentic sense of exploration because

02:33:42 your participation in it is

02:33:45 no more exciting than your

02:33:47 Participation in an airline flight to a foreign country. You’re basically you

02:33:51 You didn’t have anything to do with the creation of the of the vessel. You’re not in command of the vessel. You’re not

02:33:57 In any way shape or form important to the mission

02:34:00 You’re just a person sitting in a passenger seat

02:34:02 And you get off in a destination the same way you would if you flew to singapore or london or someplace like that

02:34:07 Well, there’s a hierarchy of there’s a leadership and then there’s a bunch of people that all have roles

02:34:12 There’s a hierarchy of there’s a leadership and then there’s a bunch of people and they all have roles

02:34:17 You don’t get to go to mars without having a skill set to contribute

02:34:21 You made it sound like space tourism where you just pay a ticket

02:34:24 I I don’t I think it’s a long time before you have space tourism to mars. We have nothing to contribute

02:34:30 Okay, like you will have to tell what you do you go through like a training program you go training program and then there’s uh,

02:34:36 There’s technical things you’ll be contributing. So they would bring

02:34:39 people

02:34:40 You know in terms of agriculture, I don’t know. Okay, so this is this is better

02:34:43 This sounds like they’re actual they’re more like explorers like if you talked before about

02:34:48 explorers and and human history where

02:34:51 Magellan sets off on his boat and every person on the boat had a specific function. They were they were all

02:34:56 Into the mission in a very authentic fashion if they weren’t on the boat the performance of the crew would somehow suffer

02:35:02 So this sounds much better and just with like with Magellan. I think most of the crew died

02:35:08 A significant number did yeah

02:35:12 And from uh, yeah from bacteria, I mean from things that are unexpected and so on and if we discover life on mars

02:35:20 I mean, who knows what that entails because that’s like a manned mission to mars

02:35:25 Would likely be very driven by the research to do all the kind of um

02:35:30 Exploration required to find life now from uh, mr. Musk’s, uh

02:35:36 Uh point of view as a developer presumably there has to be some kind of financial incentive here, too

02:35:42 is there

02:35:43 some kind of financial benefit to mars missions is is

02:35:48 presumably

02:35:51 There wouldn’t be that many people on earth that could afford a ticket to pay for the kind of research and development that would require

02:35:57 This is there some kind of mining on mars of minerals that would be useful

02:36:01 I think there’s a lot of answers to this but the only honest answer is the one that looks back into human history

02:36:06 Where we did a lot of things just because we we could

02:36:10 A lot of hard things just because we could and that led to a lot of innovation that ultimately made our life better

02:36:16 So this is more this is why you have nasa. This is why you have government organizations. Like what’s the purpose of nasa?

02:36:23 NASA would answer that by saying okay. Well, we’re helping

02:36:25 We’re helping launch satellites up there all that they’ll have a bunch of answers, but the reality is the programs

02:36:34 funded in large part by our desire to explore the unknown

02:36:38 and um, there’s some aspect to which we have to all invest into that because historically speaking

02:36:44 That has produced a lot of cool things along the way that were totally unexpected

02:36:48 Like uh, but nasa is funded by public funding the taxpayer

02:36:52 Uh, how is mr. Musk going to fund this? Well currently

02:36:57 most of the funding was the spacex is nasa giving

02:37:04 So they’re making a competition who can who can get our satellites. We need to go to

02:37:11 you know for the space station to

02:37:14 Resupply the space station or we need to launch satellites up who’s going to carry those quote unquote payloads

02:37:19 But they just need so nasa’s paying whoever the heck wants to

02:37:23 uh get

02:37:24 kilograms of thing up into space

02:37:28 Why did this is nasa’s specialty? Why did they just give up on that?

02:37:32 Well, they why they realized or mr. Musk came along and then bezos and others that said we could do it for one tenth the price

02:37:41 So why did the why should the taxpayers pay for the why don’t you nasa do what you do well?

02:37:46 You know, which is like test out cutting edge stuff. Make sure they’re safe

02:37:50 and now

02:37:52 That we’ve developed

02:37:54 um a car

02:37:55 Let us let us ups and fedex take care of

02:37:59 Doing this at scale doing it cheaper doing it better. I mean that’s the argument

02:38:03 And nasa took what they realized is it took way way too long to do stuff

02:38:08 When you’re investing millions if there’s billions of dollars into a project

02:38:13 the bureaucracy builds up

02:38:15 And the conservatism builds up to where you’re I mean you really have to test everything out

02:38:20 So projects take years and then you have somebody like ilan musk coming along and says well, let’s do

02:38:25 launches every

02:38:27 Every week and as opposed to just throwing away the rocket. We’ll reuse the rocket. That was one of the sort of cutting edge inventions

02:38:36 It’s a dumb obvious idea

02:38:38 Like ilan says why do you throw away the play? It’s the equivalent as if you flew a plane every time you threw it away

02:38:44 Why are we every time throwing away the plane?

02:38:46 But nasa’s tried that kind of thing with the space shuttle since the 1970s

02:38:50 And yes, well, they did that with the space shuttle, but not not at the scale here that uh, it was the space shuttle was seen as this

02:38:59 Majestic amazing thing that requires a huge amount of investment with ilan musk is like no every basic rocket

02:39:06 Should be reusable

02:39:07 Nice cut cut cost cut cost. Do you do you think like?

02:39:11 Like the more technology we have the more advanced we become the more

02:39:15 Specialized we need to be like is that for that reason that now they they there’s different branch

02:39:20 Like you just explained out now that so they’re specialized in this but they left, you know other branch

02:39:26 Yeah, there’s there’s the greater and greater specializations. We build up more stuff, which is fascinating because

02:39:32 Is it making us?

02:39:35 Dumb in a way. Do you think like like like yeah, I don’t know like

02:39:39 Like you you know, but I use a cell phone, but I don’t know how to build it up from that

02:39:44 I mean, it’s that beta males building up this whole society

02:39:48 um, because we’re this collective intelligence we rely on each other more and more and

02:39:55 I do also see sort of the rise of conspiracy theories and all those kinds of things

02:39:59 because

02:40:01 Like i’ve been talking to a few folks about flat earth recently it’s fascinating it’s fascinating

02:40:07 there’s a large community of people that believe the earth is flat and

02:40:11 That idea takes hold in this day and age of all the ideas. That’s the one that takes hold for a large number of people

02:40:19 I think that’s a consequence of this kind of specialization where it’s just a huge amount of experts

02:40:25 But if you look out into our world and try to reason simply about our existence

02:40:30 We we are losing the skills to do that because more and more people are specialized as opposed to general thinkers

02:40:36 We’re like extremely good at specific things. Are we capable now to do?

02:40:42 A robot that is self aware

02:40:45 That’s that’s one the legged one. I uh, it’s self aware. It’s not self aware

02:40:49 It’s been listening, but it’s not self aware. But do you think a human being is self aware or that’s a good question

02:40:57 I mean I ask this question all the time when the robots move there’s a sense of

02:41:03 When they turn on

02:41:05 Something entered that robot

02:41:07 Wow, and when it turns off something left

02:41:11 Uh if they move in a certain kind of way and if they’re if they surprise you there’s certain elements that enable us

02:41:19 to see the magic in

02:41:21 In a living being and some of them I mean we can care we can maybe list them

02:41:27 but it’s the ability to surprise you it’s the

02:41:30 The ability to make mistakes and learn from them visibly there’s a bunch of things that you just

02:41:39 I don’t know. It just feels

02:41:41 Like it has the magic of what is a living being

02:41:44 And which is what humans have and I try to think about how do you replicate that into a machine?

02:41:50 So when you turn it on enough you feel like it dies every time and he reborn

02:41:55 So for most machines, we don’t feel that way. We don’t when we unplug things

02:41:59 Things we don’t feel that way. I don’t know why we don’t feel that way. That’s an interesting question. But I think when

02:42:08 When the robot has certain qualities

02:42:11 like memory

02:42:13 Like ability to recognize you

02:42:16 Yeah, you start to feel like you’re turning off an organism

02:42:19 So so whenever I have like the robots that recognize me

02:42:23 And remember this is important that all the things we’ve experienced together

02:42:28 Then it’s like holy shit

02:42:30 That’s a that’s a living thing. But does he remember? It feels like a living thing. Does he remember

02:42:36 Your robot does he remember things that happened before you unplugged it? Is it like he’s sleeping?

02:42:43 Like is he wake up or is he like that? So right now we start to zero everything. Uh, no, it doesn’t start at zero

02:42:49 It remembers everything. That’s the key. Every time you like you you unplug. Wow

02:42:54 It’s storing the memory, but the memories are basic. They’re like

02:42:57 they’re like, okay, we walked around the kitchen and then

02:43:01 Um, you looked at me. I mean the memories it’s like data. It’s just it’s not like we’ve experienced it’s able to actually

02:43:08 Uh experience anything deep like we humans can but just the fact of memory

02:43:14 It’s like the toaster or the microwave. Don’t don’t give a shit about me

02:43:19 They don’t know me. They don’t know me by name. They wouldn’t recognize my face

02:43:23 As being different from gordon’s they wouldn’t know the difference and they wouldn’t

02:43:28 Remember the microwave currently doesn’t remember, you know, the times i’ve been sad or happy

02:43:34 Like what food I put into it

02:43:36 it doesn’t remember this when I was being a fat ass or what I was being in good shape and

02:43:41 All just those memories are enough to make you feel when you turn a thing off

02:43:46 That’s like shit

02:43:48 That’s a living that’s that that’s a living thing disappearing. Of course, that’s kind of an anthropomorphism we do to each other

02:43:55 But uh, that’s something

02:43:58 You know that

02:43:59 That’s something that makes me believe it’s possible to create. Um

02:44:05 Systems with which we can have a connection that are nonhuman like similar to dogs and cats and so on

02:44:11 It just makes me and that’s what’s interesting to me because ultimately I feel like that’ll help us understand ourselves

02:44:20 And maybe practice grappling moves anyway, um

02:44:26 Well, let me ask the uh advice question

02:44:29 Uh, now that we’re together i’ve asked i’ve spoken to john. I spoke to george

02:44:34 What what advice would you give to young folks whether?

02:44:38 we’re talking about

02:44:39 sport like excelling becoming great at grappling becoming great at fighting become a great at whatever sport they take on or

02:44:47 Life in general whether there may be in high school or in college

02:44:50 What advice would you give them to uh, excel?

02:44:55 At that thing they take on I don’t know if i’m qualified to answer this because i’m only 26

02:45:01 So you’re at the top you said giving advice to young people. Um

02:45:06 for me, I think the two biggest things are

02:45:08 Are find something that you’re both talented in and you enjoy

02:45:14 I think that if you enjoy something, but you’re terrible at it. It’s going to be hard for you to be successful

02:45:19 In life at that given in that given area

02:45:22 Um, and it’s going to be hard to do something for long amounts of time

02:45:27 Uh if you’re talented at it, but you don’t enjoy doing it. Um, it’s easy to come in

02:45:33 train hard for a month or for two months or for a year, um, you can be very talented at it

02:45:39 But if you come in it’s but it’s a different story to come in

02:45:42 every day for five years in a row for 10 years in a row for 15 years in a row, um, so I think

02:45:48 I think finding something that you’re both talented in

02:45:51 And something you enjoy are probably the two biggest things for me

02:45:55 How do you find the joy in it? So you’ve been training insane amount, you know a lot you’ve been doing it for a long time

02:46:02 Um, is there’s is there ways to rediscover the joy in it?

02:46:06 Yeah for me initially

02:46:08 It was just learning new stuff, you know

02:46:11 You come in as a white belt and every day you learn you see a different move and you’re like, oh man, it’s that’s awesome

02:46:16 um, and then when I started to compete more seriously towards my professional career it was

02:46:22 Uh the joy of doing camps and seeing the result of those camps and beating high level athletes

02:46:28 Um, and then it got to a point where i’d beaten all the high level athletes already. So

02:46:33 Who am I gonna compete against? Um, so now for me the joy is just

02:46:39 The best athlete I can possibly be until I reach my pride which i’m hoping is somewhere between 35 and 40

02:46:47 Um, so instead of competing against the other athletes

02:46:50 I’ll be bored already because I already beat all the rest of the guys

02:46:53 um, but

02:46:55 I know that now I know that I can be better in a year from now or two years from now

02:47:00 Than I am today and that for me is exciting

02:47:04 By the way, is there some aspect of teaching that’s exciting to you?

02:47:07 Yeah, I because you become a better and better teacher over the years. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely uh, I enjoy teaching and

02:47:15 I used to teach

02:47:17 A lot before I met john and then I met john and I was like, yeah, I just have no idea how to teach

02:47:22 Um, so that’s like a completely different element, uh of the sport

02:47:26 Um, you know doing things and being good at doing things or being good at winning

02:47:30 uh and actually being able to communicate those skills and knowledge to

02:47:34 To a vast amount of people is two completely different things

02:47:38 George advice for young people

02:47:40 like yourself

02:47:44 First I was I would tell them find

02:47:47 What you want to become what you want to do?

02:47:50 and long term

02:47:52 Use certain things maybe sometimes you don’t love but where you want to propel yourself in the future?

02:47:58 Not what your parent your your friend wants you to become what you you you want to become

02:48:04 So one once you find it

02:48:07 You cannot

02:48:08 Doing it by yourself everything that are that is big achievement in life. We cannot do it doing it by ourselves

02:48:14 so what I would say is second thing is

02:48:17 Try to build up your team and try to build up your team to be able to achieve your goal

02:48:23 Of people that are competent

02:48:25 And people that you trust

02:48:27 You need both competency and trust

02:48:30 I see a lot of people sometime in business. For example, they hire people they that are that they trust but they turns out to be incompetent

02:48:38 So now you have to fire a friend or otherwise your business going down the same problem

02:48:43 If you do the opposite you are you’re someone that is competent, but you cannot trust is gonna is gonna screw you, you know

02:48:49 So it’s very important to stay away from the negative build up your team people you trust and that are competent

02:48:56 And I would say the third one is to work to work hard to sacrifice yourself

02:49:01 Yeah, you have to go through hell sometime, but yeah, you have to see the light at the end of of it

02:49:06 You know to keep your dream in mind is going to give you the motivation to go through the tough time

02:49:11 It’s nothing easy to go work work work. It’s nothing you can accomplish without hard work

02:49:17 The fourth one I would say

02:49:19 To invest on yourself constantly

02:49:22 If you do not invest on yourself on whatever you are in which business and sport the game will catch up to you

02:49:29 For example, if you’re if you become

02:49:32 Champion at something and if you stop improving the other guys that are trying to be champion, they’re gonna catch up to you

02:49:38 So you need to invest on yourself and most people

02:49:42 Most athlete they make the mistake when they start to having money

02:49:45 They buy luxury stuff and that’s one thing I didn’t do when I start making money

02:49:50 I was investing of on traveling to new york trying with john gordon and the guys to learn

02:49:55 What is new in the the game of jiu jitsu? I used to go in thailand train muay thai

02:50:01 In las angeles to perfect my boxing skill

02:50:07 So instead of taking that money to buy me jewelry cars and to do what a lot of guys do because it’s a mistake

02:50:15 I I invest it on myself because I know there were people coming they don’t want my place

02:50:19 So I want I didn’t want them to catch me

02:50:23 And the last one I would say it seems weird I would say

02:50:26 To give back and it’s not because i’m a nice guy and it’s not that I don’t say that to look good. I say that

02:50:34 When you you make it

02:50:38 It creates opportunity where you can help certain group of people

02:50:43 But when I say give back not give back to everybody to anybody give back only to the the cause that you want

02:50:50 I give back

02:50:51 Not because i’m a nice guy. I’m kind of it’s kind of selfish

02:50:54 I only give back to the people that I want to give back

02:50:57 Because I give back to them and I know that if i’m more successful

02:51:01 I’m going to be able to give back to people. I loved the cause that that that count for me

02:51:06 So it’s it brings me more motivation because I don’t compete

02:51:11 For myself anymore. I compete to help people. I love in a way

02:51:15 So when you you reach the top in your game, you need to find new motivation if you’re satisfied is

02:51:22 The end of it your success will go down. So you need to

02:51:26 To find new motivation. What can motivate you? You know, what do you want?

02:51:30 Oh, I want to help this so I need to to be successful. I want to

02:51:34 You know, you need to find reason who what you want to do with your success

02:51:38 So when I say give back it’s not because i’m not because i’m necessarily it’s not to be to look like a nice guy

02:51:44 To keep your motivation

02:51:46 to be able to

02:51:47 Keep climbing the ladder even more

02:51:49 That’s beautiful, george, uh, john

02:51:53 Um, first off the two responses given so far covered. I think the most important things already. Um,

02:52:01 Gordon talked about the the need for an underlying passion and enjoyment if you don’t have that

02:52:07 You’re not going to have the longevity that is required in order to build

02:52:12 Skills, which is ultimately everything’s going to come down to your ability to build skills

02:52:15 You’ve got to have some kind of underlying passion and enjoyment which will keep you in the game long enough

02:52:21 To build world championship skills. It’s going to take a minimum of five years and quite possibly considerably longer than that

02:52:28 Um, george talked about the idea of community. You’re not going to make it by yourself

02:52:33 So you’ve got to be able to build people around you and uh, and build a trusting environment

02:52:38 Around you to develop those skills. Um,

02:52:40 What I would add to the the excellent points that both already raised

02:52:46 Alludes to what I said at the start of this podcast. You’ve got to be able to identify

02:52:51 some kind of undervalued

02:52:54 Elements in whatever industry you’re in and show the world what their true value is

02:52:59 in addition

02:53:01 You can’t go through life

02:53:04 Doing the same things as everybody else

02:53:06 Go through life doing the same things as everybody else

02:53:11 And expecting to get different results

02:53:13 This is straightforwardly irrational and worse. It’s even arrogant

02:53:17 It’s essentially the statement that i’m going to do the same thing as everyone else, but I believe i’m different

02:53:23 And so they’ll work for me

02:53:25 But they didn’t work for everyone else

02:53:27 That’s like saying no i’m special

02:53:30 No, you’re not special. We’re all pretty much the same

02:53:33 And um in order to be special you’re going to have to exhibit skills that other people simply don’t have

02:53:42 Thirdly I would say if you want to become something truly impressive in life

02:53:47 You’ve got to be able to focus on one or two things

02:53:51 That you do better than anyone else in your industry

02:53:54 You can’t learn everything but you can take one or two skills and the more innovative those skills are the better

02:54:01 And you can truly excel at them. For example at the peak of his career

02:54:06 No one in the world was better than george saint pierre at integrating striking and takedowns

02:54:12 No one in the world was better at integrating grappling and striking on the ground

02:54:17 He had two things that he could confidently say

02:54:20 He could confidently say he was the best in the world at was he the best at every mma skill? Nope

02:54:27 but he was

02:54:28 Absolutely the best at those two skills and those two skills were skills which he used throughout his career to win

02:54:34 the vast majority of his matches

02:54:36 Gordon ryan at the onset of his career could confidently say there’s no one in the world better than me at leg locks

02:54:44 He could also say there’s no one better in the world than me at late stage defense

02:54:50 Submission holds across the board as he went through his career. He started adding more and more elements

02:54:56 It’s gotten to an extraordinary degree now where you could absolutely say he’s the best at guard passing the best at guard retention

02:55:03 the list just keeps going on and that goes back to what

02:55:08 Gordon said earlier about keeping things interesting over time because we’re always introducing new skill sets the day you start saying

02:55:14 I’m satisfied with my skill set is the day you get bored

02:55:19 and bored boredom to an athlete is a precursor to

02:55:24 Death by boredom

02:55:26 As long as you’re still growing in those directions you’ll stay in the game

02:55:30 For very long periods of time. So the main thing I would add to these

02:55:35 statements by gordon and george is this idea of

02:55:39 Of finding something which is currently undervalued and showing the world what its true value is

02:55:46 Understanding

02:55:47 That you can’t just use the same training methodologies as everyone else and somehow expect to be different from everyone else. You’ve got to

02:55:55 Almost every great rise in human civilization whether it be groups of people or individuals

02:56:01 Required some kind of innovation. You’ve got to look for that new angle

02:56:05 Okay, george st. Pierre found it with shoe boxing early on in his career

02:56:09 Gordon ryan found it with leg locks early on in his career and they branched out from that from that angle

02:56:18 Add to this the idea that you want to become the absolute best in the world in your industry

02:56:24 In one or two things that make a difference

02:56:27 Find out what they are and focus on those things and you’ll go far

02:56:34 Gordon george, this is an incredible conversation. Thank you so much for your

02:56:39 Extremely valuable time george as somebody who’s become famous in part

02:56:44 By commenting on people’s performance

02:56:47 Um, how do you think we did?

02:56:51 How would you evaluate our performance today?

02:56:54 I’m not impressed by

02:56:56 Yeah, thank you. I loved it. I learned all the time. I’ve talked to you guys. I’m

02:57:02 It’s it’s great. I loved it

02:57:04 I was very stimulated. I and really enjoyed it. Yeah, it’s uh, it was it was something

02:57:10 I really was looking forward to I was hoping that would get together

02:57:14 It’s so rare that at the same time in history

02:57:17 There will be some of the greats together and the fact that you guys would be willing to come together and talk like this

02:57:21 This is awesome. And that gordon he would even wear a cowboy hat. I mean, this is just historic

02:57:26 This is like church. You’re all getting together with whoever, you know, this is great and all

02:57:30 But the next one is just going to be us just quizzing john on which animals would win in fights. Yes for the whole three hours

02:57:37 It’ll be just so we’ll invite joe and you’ll just be we’ll we’ll make it a systematic

02:57:41 It’ll be a debate between joe and john on which animal would win. John and I we have a thing that we send each other

02:57:47 Footage all the time of animal fight where we are, uh, very intrigue about animal fight

02:57:57 I get them like 3 30 am on it. He’s like check this out

02:58:01 Like a rhino taking a like a pig like

02:58:05 Literally, it’s not always fair. No, no, it’s not ever but interesting stuff if you people would see what we send

02:58:12 The stuff that we they would judge you harshly. Yeah

02:58:15 Harshly. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. Thanks so much guys. This is awesome

02:58:20 Thanks for listening to this conversation with george saint pierre john donahue and gordon ryan to support this podcast

02:58:27 Please check out our sponsors in the description

02:58:30 And now let me leave you some words from miyamoto musashi

02:58:35 There’s nothing outside yourself that can ever enable you to get better stronger richer quicker or smarter

02:58:43 Everything is within everything exists

02:58:46 Seek nothing outside of yourself

02:58:48 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time